The looming Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) summit is backed by an assortment of human rights advocates, astroturfers, property developers and Zionist agitators.
Two of the key participants at the CAM antisemitism summit on the Gold Coast, September 3-5, are Jillian Segal, the controversial Antisemitism Envoy, and businessman David Gonski, who co-chairs the committee running the event.
The conference will be chaired by Tom Tate, Liberal National Party Gold Coast Mayor, and the CAM invitations highlight Australian Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay’s participation as a speaker.
We asked Finlay how much she knew about CAM, the organisation running the conference, before she accepted the invitation to speak. The AHRC media unit replied: “Unfortunately, the Commissioner is unavailable.”
Most speakers are openly conservative, including Woollahra Mayor Sarah Swan and Waverley Council’s Will Nemesh, who are promoting the Summit. Nemesh recently welcomed Robert Gregory to Waverley Council’s Multicultural Advisory Committee.
Gregory is the CEO of the hard-right Australian Jewish Association (AJA), which has partnered with Advance and is currently being investigated by the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW for alleged racial and religious vilification of Palestinians and Muslims.
Labor’s pro-Israel hawks are well-represented by retired Senator Nova Peris, who is Patron of Labor Friends of Israel, and retired Labor politician and businessman Michael Easson, whose company, EG Funds, is also a sponsor.
Peris is a vehement supporter of Israel and played a prominent role in the pro-Israel Better Australia campaign. The ex-Olympian has shared content on social media referring to Muslims as “Satan worshipping cockroaches [who] need to be eradicated”.
CAM Summit supporters
Many of the organisers, partners and sponsors have connections to Israel’s National Institutions, which exist to building up Israel with the constant efforts of Jewish people in the Diaspora.
- Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), which historically acts as the executive arm of the World Zionist Organisation, advocates for immigration to Israel.
- The United Israel Appeal (UIA), also known as Keren Hayesod, raises funds for “Israel’s national priorities” and identifies those priorities together with JAFI and Israel’s government.
- The Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded for the sake of “purchasing lands” for Jewish settlement. Since 1948, JNF’s primary activity has been transforming ethnically cleansed Palestinian land into Jewish settlements and national parks.
- The Zionist Federation of Australia, the peak roof body of pro-Israel lobby groups in the country, partners with both JAFI and UIA.
CAM Summit Committee
The first publicity for the conference emerged in January when then Israel-based CAM Deputy CEO, Yigal Nissel, published a story in the Jerusalem Post, one of CAM’s partnering organisations. Nissel was the Israeli “emissary” to the JNF in Australia and is well connected in Australian Zionist circles.
While he has now moved on to a project run by the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, he remains with CAM as a temporary special advisor for “Australian Affairs” in the lead-up to the conference.
His first job was to set up a four-person committee of Australian organisers, who were also appointed to CAM’s international Board of Advisors.
The Summit Committee has two chairs: one is Australian businessman David Gonski and the other is Stanley Roth, property developer and Segal’s brother-in-law.
Gonski has been the Chancellor of UNSW for many years. He is less prominent in Zionist circles than some others involved in the summit, but is a strong supporter of investment in Israel.
Gonski and Segal are close. They have known each other since emigrating as children from 1960s Apartheid South Africa. Both were top students at UNSW Law School and were awarded alumni awards together. Gonski mentored Segal in the business world and then, as UNSW’s Chancellor and Deputy Chancellor, respectively, for several years.
Roth is the honorary Life President of United Israel Appeal (UIA) Australia. He told a UIA AGM that “Jews in the Diaspora, and in particular in Australia, almost live our lives vicariously through Israel”.
His property company, Henroth Investments, which he owns with Segal’s husband, John, is a gold sponsor of the UIA NSW. Through the brothers’ discretionary trust, Henroth has been a big donor to the LNP and, to a lesser extent, Labor over the years. It has recently shot to prominence for its $50,000 donation to the right-wing third-party political campaigner Advance.
Segal and Advance
Segal said she was not involved in the Advance Australia donation scandal, and has declined to answer questions about when she was first aware of it. But apart from what Segal knew, Henroth Investments’ Advance donation should not come as a surprise.
In the lead-up to the federal election in May, Advance invested millions of dollars to persuade voters to “put the Greens last” on the basis of the party’s support for Palestinian rights.
Advance also supported another astroturfing group, Minority Impact Coalition, a front for the Queensland Jewish Collective and targets the Greens in Melbourne and Brisbane.
Never Again Is Now, a right-wing Christian Zionist group with connections to Advance, is also a partner in the CAM summit.
The Triguboff family sponsors the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and has a long record of supporting JNF, including making a major contribution to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers recruited from abroad, through the Garin Tzabar project.
Ron Weiser, a dentist, is on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel and is a former president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.
The CAM summit’s four-person committee in Australia is supported by Justine Williams, who worked as JNF NSW’s Executive Director until two months ago. We reached out to her but received no acknowledgement.
Alex Polson and astroturfers
Polson is the sole director of DBK Advisory, which specialises in corporate strategy in the Middle East, said to “empower family offices, growth companies, and non-profits across the MENA and APAC regions to achieve a competitive edge”.
He was recently appointed as one of only four senior advisors to CAM.
Polson is a familiar name to those following the astroturfing campaigns in Australian elections. He was a leader in the bipartisan Better Council astroturfing campaign, which targeted the Greens in last year’s local government elections.
Ironically, Better Council urged councils to return their focus to “roads, rates and rubbish”, and argued it was the Greens who had become preoccupied with antisemitic obsessions.
More recently, Polson acted as a director of the Better Australia campaign, which spent in excess of $300,000 on election resources, including paid pro-Israel campaigners at election booths. Its campaign urged voters to “Put the Greens and Teals last” in the May federal election.
Polson, who once worked for the retired Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham, is one of the Liberal connections in Better Australia, with Sophie Calland, Ofir Birenbaum and Eric Roozendahl connected to Labor.
Better Council and Better Australia overlap with the Together with Israel group.
Never Again is Now
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies and Never Again is Now have partnered with combatantisemitism.org to present the conference.
Segal was the president of ECAJ, so it is not surprising that they fully endorse her plan.
Never Again is Now was founded by right-wing Christian Anglican minister Mark Leach. Israeli-Australian Ofir Birenbaum, a key player in Better Council and Better Australia, also claims to be a founding member. Leach and his daughter, Freya Leach, who is a commentator for Sky News, see their support for Israel as part of a battle between the values of Western Civilisation on one side and neo-Marxist and jihadist views on the other.
Mark Leach introduced the Never Again is Now partnership with Combat Antisemitism Movement in April, which he endorsed as “an all-expenses-paid” opportunity.
Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer and Jewish Council of Australia Executive Officer, has warned against Never Again is Now. She described one of its rallies as featuring speakers with “a history of anti-trans, anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments.
“This fusion of rightwing Jewish and Christian fundamentalism under the misleading banner of fighting ‘antisemitism’ is very concerning … the weaponisation of false antisemitism accusations and Holocaust memory – by saying ‘Never Again is Now’ – to be directly lobbying for Israel is particularly egregious.”
Needless to say, Jewish advocates expressing such views are not on the speakers’ list for the Summit.
[Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon write for MichaelWest Media, where this article was first published.]