Below is anti-Zionist Jew Janet Parker’s submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.]
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I am an anti-Zionist Jew and speak as someone who has experienced antisemitism only from other Jews.
My worldview is very much formed by my Jewish mother, born Dorothy Berghiner, in Bessarabia (modern day Moldova and Ukraine) in 1929. Her parents lived through the Kishinev pogrom and other forms of antisemitism typical of Tsarist Russia.
My mother’s parents took her to live in Italy in 1932 where they felt antisemitism would be less prevalent. However, by 1938 Mussolini had allied with Nazi Germany and introduced “race laws”. She was expelled from her school because she was Jewish and stripped of her Italian citizenship.
Her parents did not wait for things to get worse, moving to Thailand, and later to Singapore, in search of a better life.
Within two years they were on the move again because of the Japanese advance on Singapore. My grandparents put my mother (then 12) on a ship to Western Australia to live with Jewish friends in the Wheatbelt town of Corrigin. They were later evacuated to Colombo. My mother did not see her parents again until she was 17.
While my mother and her parents were among the “lucky ones”, relatively speaking, her early life was one of dislocationand separation, and these experiencesshaped her world view.
Throughout her adult life, she was a fierce campaigner for social justice and equality for all. In particular, she campaigned against the racism experienced by Australia’s First Nations people and as an anthropologist, taught Aboriginal studies at the University of Western Australia.
Having come to Australia as a refugee herself, she was vehemently opposed to Australia’s gradual abandonment of its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
My mother had a complicated relationship with the Zionist project that is the modern state of Israel. She could never support the violent dispossession of the Palestinians. However, because of her experience and those of her forebears, she felt there was some justification for the establishment of Israel as a supposed safe haven for Jews. While my own political outlook and activism were undoubtedly shaped by my mother’s life and world view, this was perhaps the one area where we differed for a time.
It was not until her later years, after comprehending the scale of Israel’s ongoing and accelerating destruction of Palestinian life, that she changed her views. Important to this shift was attending various public meetings with Jewish Israeli supporters of Palestinian human rights, including the renowned writer and activist Miko Peled.
My mother was an atheist, and while she shared some Jewish cultural traditions, as a child I did not particularly consider myself to be Jewish. As an adult I have wrestled with what it means to be a secular Jew.
I have identified more as a Jew in the context of the genocide in Gaza precisely because, for the first time, I have felt driven to assert my Jewish heritage to challenge the narrative that to be Jewish is to be Zionist.
‘Never Again’?
Although my mother died in 2019, I knew she would have been utterly horrified that Israel was perpetuating a new holocaust on the people of Palestine. Was that not the lesson of “Never Again”? If it is not understood to be universal, as “Never Again for Anyone, Anywhere”, then it is void of all moral value.
So, I reached out to other Jews I knew to form the group Jews for Palestine WA. It has had a very significant profile in the movement in support of Palestinian human rights ever since. We bring together Jews from a range of backgrounds, both religious and secular; Jews of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi heritage.
We attend every rally for Palestine with our banners, we issue statements, organise seminars and film-showings, and fund-raise for medical and other aid to Palestine. We are included, welcomed and have formed deep and abiding friendships as we stand shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians and their supporters.
The same cannot be said about our relationship with the pro-Zionist Jewish community.
We have been vilified and abused, told we should be “ashamed of ourselves”, accused of being “self-hating Jews” or “not real Jews”.
My first experiences of antisemitism by Zionist Jews go way back beyond October 7, 2023.
I have long been a socialist activist and when living in Sydney in the 1990s, would regularly distribute the Green Left newspaper on the street.
I recall two incidents clearly. The first was outside Wynyard Station with an issue featuring an article by John Pilger titled “Palestine: The War on Children”. I was approached by someone declaring themselves Jewish who proceeded to loudly denounce me. On explaining that I was also Jewish, the denunciations became more virulent, with the person shouting and abusing me, claiming that I should be ashamed of myself, that I was a “traitor”, before they spat on me, turned on their heel and left.
The second was later in the 1990s, also in Sydney, outside the Town Hall. Again, an issue featuring Palestine prompted a verbal assault by someone who said they were Jewish and ended with them throwing their drink over me when I explained that I was also Jewish.
Now living in Perth WA, I routinely hand out flyers at the entrance to the Perth underground railway station, promoting events in support of Palestinian rights.
On each and every occasion, I experience abuse — either from Jewish supporters of Zionism or Christian Zionists.
My approach is always to calmly explain that I am Jewish and encourage them to come and discuss the issues with me. I have never had anyone take me up on my offer. Instead, I have people yell at me again, accusing me of being a traitor, that I should be ashamed of myself, that I am a “Kapo” or a “self-hating Jew”.
There is one woman who, for a time, would regularly come and scream at me from a distance of three to four metres.
From the first occasion, I explained that I was Jewish. Every time, I encouraged her to come and have a conversation, that I am happy to talk. This only increased her ire and she redoubled her pitch, screaming that I was a “stupid bitch” and a “Kapo”. She generally kept her distance, but on one occasion, she came up behind me and hit the arm in which I was holding the fliers, such that they ended up all over the ground before rushing off.
Passers-by who witnessed this hurried to help me gather the fliers and one suggested that I report her for assault. I was not inclined to do this. I didn’t know her and would not have expected a sympathetic response from the police. I have not seen her since, and frankly, this is a relief.
Another expression of this antisemitism from within the Jewish community came after the Bondi shooting in 2025, when Jews for Palestine WA organised a memorial vigil on December 21 at South Beach in Fremantle for those killed.
The vigil was very respectful and expressed our genuine horror and sorrow. A local supporter of the Israeli state took offence and, in the lead-up to the event, posted a tirade on a local community social media page calling us supporters of Hamas and ultimately responsible for the deaths at Bondi.
“HOW DARE YOU PARADE AT 7PM” they shouted, in capital letters, concluding: “You can expect a large contingent of Jewish people and others along with the press to expose you.”
We had planned a solemn and peaceful event and were anxious that it not turn into a confrontation.
We contacted the police on three separate occasions to advise that we anticipated there may be problems and would like a presence to ensure things didn’t get out of hand. Initially we were brushed off and advised to call Triple Zero in the event of problems. Eventually, after the fourth approach, it seems the message got through and we then got a response that, if anything, was excessive; more than a dozen police were present, including some with assault rifles. In the end the event was a peaceful and solemn affair attended by some 200 people.
In sum, my contention (and that of Jews for Palestine WA) is that Jews are made less safe by the conflation of Zionism and Jewishness.
Israel’s dispossession
We are supporters of Palestinian human rights because we recognise that Israel was founded on the dispossession of the Palestinian people, that Israel has spent 78 years trying to erase the Indigenous people; taking over their land and seeking to destroy their existence. This is an incontrovertible historical fact. Seeking to deny this reality with disingenuous accusations of antisemitism, as many prominent political figures in this country have done, is both grotesque and has the perverse consequence of fuelling antisemitism.
In Jews for Palestine WA we are opposed to genocide in all its manifestations and regard Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 2023 to be the holocaust of our time.
As a Jew, I feel I have a duty to give my all to the fight against the actions of the Israeli state and ending Australian government support for Israel’s actions through its maintenance of bilateral military ties and failure to take real action to impose any kind of serious diplomatic or economic sanctions on Israel despite its systematic violation of international law.
I will not be deterred by the antisemitism directed at me by supporters of Zionism in the Jewish community, but I can, without hesitation, say that this is the only quarter from which I have experienced discrimination, harassment and abuse.
Not only has Jews for Palestine WA been warmly embraced by the Palestine solidarity movement but more broadly, the movement is vigilant about denouncing any expression of antisemitism. The same cannot be said of the Zionist community who seek to deny the humanity of the Palestinian people, calling them animals, celebrating their slaughter and calling for their erasure.
While I acknowledge the rise in antisemitism, I also know that racism in this country is faced first and foremost by First Nations people, evidenced by the attempted bombing of the Invasion Day rally in Boorloo/Perth in January and the booing of those giving the Welcome to Country on Anzac Day.
Australians of Palestinian and Muslim heritage face discrimination, as do other people of colour. There has been a greater rise in Islamophobia than antisemitism, yet this is not the subject of a royal commission.
I firmly believe that exceptionalising Jews by holding a royal commission only into antisemitism, while the broad anti-racism plan presented to federal government by the Human Rights Commission in November 2024 is ignored, likely increases antagonism toward Jews.
Equally, “hate” laws that are really designed to silence supporters of Palestinian human rights raises the “heat” that government says it wants to turn down.
Surely, the most effective way of dealing with antisemitism is the utilisation of antidiscrimination frameworks and policies that understand the systemic, intersectional nature of racism in all its forms.
For me, my involvement in the struggle to win justice and human rights for the Palestinian people is a tribute to my mother who gave her entire adult life to fighting injustice in all its forms.
I like to think I inherited that from her and, in some way, I like to think we were both inheritors of the Jewish Labour Bund tradition, which condemned Zionism as yet another form of dangerous ethnonationalism.
One day, history will judge us in the same way that history has judged the Nazi holocaust.
But we cannot wait for “judgement day”. We must act now to prevent further deaths and to ensure that the Palestinian people have the right to freedom and self-determination. This is part of — and inseparable from — a genuine fight against antisemitism.
[Janet Parker is a member of Socialist Alliance and Jews for Palestine WA.]