Dr Nick Riemer and Professor John Keane, academics at the University of Sydney (USyd) and long-time advocates of freedom and justice for Palestinians, are being sued in the Federal Court of Australia (FCA) on trumped up charges of antisemitism.
Their accusers, a group of Jewish staff and students at USyd, claim the academics’ statements and actions opposing Zionism and the state of Israel are “antisemitic hate speech”.
This case, which begins on October 13, will be the first to explicitly test whether Zionism should count as a protected identity under law, with serious consequences for everyone who criticises Israel.
Keane and Riemer are being sued in relation to comments posted on social media, in their personal capacity, after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel.
The Zionists’ lawsuit came a month after the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) terminated a complaint against Keane and Riemer lodged by the same group in April. The complainants allege that Keane and Riemer engaged in racial vilification, in contravention of the contentious Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
They allege that the academics’ criticisms of Israel and Zionism “considered individually or cumulatively, were reasonably likely … to offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate Jewish persons or Israeli persons in Australia and elsewhere.”
Crikey’s Anton Nilsson reported in January that the complainants’ had an information sheet in their first case, which is no longer available online, which stated: “Contributing to the proposed class action is not just a donation — it is an investment; an investment in the future of Australia’s Jewish community: a statement that we, as a people, will always stand with Israel, through thick and thin, and that Israel is not alone in the world. It will always have us, in the diaspora, behind it. We owe it to the people of Israel, and we owe it to ourselves, to take this action.”
Honi Soit reported on June 19 that an open letter in support of Keane and Riemer had been signed by more than 50 Jewish university staff, students and alumni from across the country.
It was published after the AHRC dropped the complaint and in anticipation of the Federal Court action filed in April. “These complainants do not speak for us as Jewish people,” the letter said.
“We repudiate the attempt by those making the complaint to conflate Zionism, a political ideology with Jewish and non-Jewish adherents, with Jewish identity. This implicates Jews all over the world in the Israeli Government’s current actions as well as its longstanding occupation of Palestinian lands and persecution of Palestinian people.
“We and our families have faced the scourge of antisemitism, and we recognise the need to address it proactively. But Jews are not a monolith, and the fight against antisemitism is weakened by confusing the criticism of Israel with racism against Jews,” the letter said.
It said the attempt to silence Riemer and Keane “forms part of concerted and coordinated efforts to silence critics of Israel across Australia’s university campuses and public squares”.
[Join the solidarity action to support Riemer and Keane in Queens Square on October 13 from 8.30am to support Keane and Reimer. Their crowd fundraising campaign for their defence is here.]