National

Warning anti-Semitism hurts Jews and Palestinians

By Lucinda Garbutt-Young

Jul 2, 2026

jewish — The Jewish Council will warn the commission of the impacts of sustained personal harassment. -AAP Image

Hatred of Jews has impacts far beyond the intended targets, a high-profile advocacy group will tell the royal commission into anti-Semitism.

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The Jewish Council - a more progressive advocacy group than most other Jewish organisations - will use its appearance to warn of the impacts of sustained personal harassment.

Attacks have been levelled by far-right groups and pro-Israel actors alike, Jewish Council Australia's Sarah Schwartz is expected to say.

"It is important for governments and institutions to understand the real harms to Jewish people and Palestinians, when anti-Semitism is invoked to stifle criticism of Israel and tar supporters of Palestinian rights with the brush of racism," she said before her appearance.

''My targeting and anti-Semitic harassment from neo-Nazi and white supremacist actors shows that this threat sadly continues to go under-recognised and therefore, under-addressed."

The Jewish Council rejects anti-Semitism but asserts that criticism of Israel, particularly the actions of the Israeli government, is not the same thing.

"We reject the assertion that Jews and the State of Israel are one and the same, or that all Jewish people support, without criticism, the actions of the Israeli government and military," its website reads..

"Pro-Israel Jewish organisations, that do not recognise the diversity of views among Australian Jews, do not speak for us.''

The third block of public hearings for the royal commission began on Monday with a focus on the treatment of Jewish people in mainstream and social media.

The ABC and SBS will appear later in the hearings, along with dozens of Jewish Australians who have been subject to online hate.

Experts in social media, online hate and extremism appeared throughout Wednesday and will continue on Thursday.

In Wednesday's hearing, the Online Hate Prevention Institute's Andre Oboler, who has researched hate speech for more than a decade, said social media platforms X and Reddit remove less than a quarter of posts flagged as being anti-Semitic.

Reddit deleted just 17 per cent, while X was slightly better at 24 per cent.

YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram all removed just over 40 per cent.

TikTok - which had less media flagged than other platforms - deleted about 62 per cent, while Facebook removed 54 per cent.

Dr Oboler said AI was presenting new challenges as users could find relatively easy ways to bypass hate-speech filters.