Hundreds of local government councillors, including mayors and assorted political and religious leaders, will gather on the Gold Coast for a free three-day conference on antisemitism in September. Many of them will have accepted a personal invitation from the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s (CAM) Israeli CEO in Tel Aviv.
According to the conference website, registrations have now closed.
CAM boasts 900 partners and runs regular conferences. One of its key aims is to integrate what it regards as the “gold standard” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism at every level of government.
The definition has been widely criticised, including by its lead drafter, for conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Australia’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, is part of the Combat Antisemitism movement, and will be a keynote speaker. Her own recently-released Action Plan reflects CAM’s agenda. If implemented, those identified by the Australian government, per Segal’s advice, as antisemitic according to the IHRA definition, could face serious consequences.
These include the defunding of public institutions and universities, the deregistration of charities, and the enforcement of certain approved media narratives.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (EACAJ) is a conference partner with CAM. Its pro-Israel published policies include that it “Reaffirms Australian Jewry’s strong and unshakeable solidarity with Israel and her people”; “Condemns the prevalence of anti-Jewish rhetoric in sections of the mass-media which masquerades as political criticism of Israel”; and condemns the International Criminal Court as antisemitic, following its prosecution of Israeli war crimes.
Segal’s role as EJAC’s immediate past president was one of the conflicts of interest that, some argue, made her unsuitable for appointment.
Shortly after Albanese appointed her last year, Segal attended a Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism Forum, in Argentina in July last year, where 35 countries, including Australia, adopted US guidelines, including the IHRA definition, to combat antisemitism.
While Segal is best known locally for her role as an Israel supporter and Zionist lobbyist, she is just as well connected with the international Zionist scene. At the end of July. Segal was thanked by the US State Department for hosting an online meeting of Antisemitism Envoys.
Donald Trump connection
CAM was founded in 2019 by Republican donor Adam Beren, an oil magnate from Kansas, whose family has contributed millions to pro-Trump causes. Beren remains a major patron of CAM. He was appointed by Trump to the US Holocaust Memorial Council during his first term.
At a CAM roundtable in Tel Aviv at the end of July, CAM Advisory Board Chair and former Israel Deputy PM Natan Sharansky identified “modern forms of antisemitism rhetoric”. This included “branding Israel an apartheid state guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide” and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which “shape anti-Israel narratives”.
Since Trump’s reelection as US president, CAM has successfully lobbied to pass laws monitoring and enforcing the IHRA definition into practice for public schools and universities in at least seven US states.
Two of CAM’s advisers are recent graduates from the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Israeli ministry founded in response to the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Before Sima Vaknin Gill served as Director-General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Brigadier General was Israel’s chief military censor. In this role, every Israeli news article concerning national security matters required her IDF unit’s approval.
Today, Gill sits on CAM’s advisory board.
CAM senior advisor Revital Yakin Krakovsky served as the Executive Director for Strategy and Communications at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs between 2017 and 2021.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
CAM is closely connected with and promotes the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF Executive Chairman, Reverend Johnnie Moore, is a CAM Advisory Board Member. In June, he addressed CAM’s state leadership Summit on Antisemitism and Support for Israel. Moore’s speech celebrated President Donald Trump’s support for GHF in “providing aid” to Gaza.
Within three months of GHF’s operations, more than 1000 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed in the vicinity of its sites.
Last month, CAM honoured Congressman Randy Fine with a baseball bat dubbed “The Hebrew Hammer”. Fine is a Florida representative known for his outspoken conservative views. He has stirred controversy with his genocidal rhetoric toward Gazans and his blatant Islamophobia, including calls for the streets of Gaza to “overflow with blood”, tweeting “Gaza must be destroyed” and recently telling Gazans to “just starve”.
In July, CAM welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement of US sanctions on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which it described as a “long overdue move to hold [her] accountable for her heinous record of antisemitic conduct and rhetoric!”
Australian conference
Planning for an Australian CAM conference became public in January when CAM Deputy CEO, Yigal Nissel published a story, “From Paradise to Peril,” in the Jerusalem Post. He wrote: “Thousands of [Australian] extremists, spanning the radical left, the far right, and parts of the Muslim community, seized on the conflict in the Middle East as a pretext to unleash their latent antisemitism.”
Nissel, who is based in Israel, announced that a CAM conference of hundreds of mayors would address the problem. Previously, Nissel was the Israeli “emissary” to the Australian branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
JNF’s connections to the speakers, sponsors and board members of CAM’s planned Australian conference run deep. The JNF in Israel aims to develop “the land of Israel, strengthening the bond between the Jewish people and its homeland”.
Since the 1948 Nakba, JNF’s primary activity has been transforming ethnically cleansed Palestinian land into Jewish settlements and national parks. Last year, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) revoked JNF Canada’s charitable status on the basis that it had used funds to support Israeli soldiers and build military infrastructure.
In June, Nissel left CAM to become the CEO of Mosaic United, an initiative of Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
However, Nissel’s involvement with CAM continues with a three-month contract as its advisor on Australian affairs, which will cover the period leading up to the conference.
CAM’s CEO, Sacha Roytman, is an Israeli army veteran who established and commanded the IDF’s Digital Media Unit.
Earlier this year, Roytman won the Zionist Council in Israel’s “Hero of Israeli Society” award in the “Public Diplomacy and the Struggle for Israel” category in recognition of CAM’s pro-Israel advocacy efforts.
The Zionist Council in Israel is an arm of the World Zionist Organisation, another “National Institution” of Israel.
Recently, credible reports from many mainstream media organisations, including the BBC, that Palestinians seeking aid have been deliberately shot by the Israeli Defense Forces, Roytman described their reports as a deeply antisemitic “blood libel”.
Roytman has signed the invitation letters offering free attendance at the conference to Australian councillors.
Sydney Mayor declines
One invited guest is Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney. In response to questions, a spokesperson said, “Clover was invited and declined to attend. She has a prior engagement convening the Council of Capital City Lord Mayors meeting.”
The Lord Mayor did attend the March for Humanity: Save Gaza protest across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3, which included protesters from several Jewish organisations and a speech from anti-Zionist Jewish journalist and film-maker Antony Loewenstein.
But none of this was noticed by CAM’s observers, who spied an image of two protesters holding up signs – one said “Never again is now means Never Again for Anyone” and another compared the Israel regime to Nazism.
This was enough for CAM to declare on its social media: “This is Holocaust inversion, one of the sickest forms of anti-Semitism”.
The post ignores the intention of the two women and the explicit repudiation of antisemitism by the March for Humanity organisers and hundreds of thousands of protesters. It is also a good indication of the agenda driving CAM’s conference on the Gold Coast.
[Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. Yaakov Aharon is Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is reprinted with permission.]