- The Guardian
- Issue #2108
Do we need an anti-semitism envoy? Do we need an anti-Islamophobia envoy?
These questions may have gone through your mind if you noticed that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has appointed an Anti-Semitism Envoy, Jillian Segal, former NAB CEO. If you’re wondering what envoys even do, you’re not alone.
The answer seems to be ‘not much’ or in the case of Barnaby Joyce ‘pretty much nothing’ (Joyce was made ‘drought envoy’ by PM Scott Morrison. There was no evidence of any activity on Joyce’s part, but we were told he’d sent a text message to Morrison.)
Envoys are mostly a rubbish way of spending a little money to make it look like the government is taking a topic seriously, so don’t hold your breath for Jillian Segal to do anything earthshaking. However, the appointment of an envoy tells us something. In the case of Barnaby Joyce, it told us that Morrison knew people were worried about drought, and that he wanted to keep Joyce’s National Party happy.
Segal’s appointment tells us that Albanese wants to buy off one section of the Australian Jewish community. He’s appointed a fiercely partisan pro-Zionist who has lobbied universities to take disciplinary action against student protestors, and claimed that there is “no evidence that Israel is not observing the laws of armed conflict.” She’s repeated discredited claims that infants were beheaded by Palestinian fighters and criticised the Australian government for using the term “occupied territories.” Segal has also said that calling an attack on hospitals a “war crime” is part of a “new wave of anti-semitism.”
Segal is not so much an anti-semitism envoy, so much as an envoy for the Zionist view that absolutely any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. She certainly does not represent all Australian Jews. Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz has said that Segal’s appointment “risks breeding and fuelling antisemitism … by aligning us all with the state of Israel.”
Segal was at NAB during 12 years of NAB engaging in bribery and forgery, charging customers more than $600 million for no service. What does her appointment say to the victims of Australia’s big four banks?
Racism, including anti-semitism, has been a problem in Australia for a long time. Appointing a partisan Zionist envoy won’t solve any of it. It doesn’t mean as much as Social Services Minister Bill Shorten’s recent photo op with professional racist Pauline Hanson, says a lot more to Aboriginal and Asian Australians than any envoy appointment.
Racism in this country, and elsewhere has long been used as a way to distract working people from the exploitation we face from Australia’s corporate capitalist class.
You can see the distraction at work when lifelong racism-user Peter Dutton blames migrants for cost of living problems after he spent almost a decade in a government that opposed wage rises or increases in unemployment payments. Labor will happily lean into the racism-as-distraction tactic, as we’ve seen in its recent public fretting about “faith-based parties.”
We don’t need envoys. We need to fight the exploitation that racism provides cover for. It’s no coincidence that the anti-semitism envoy is being appointed at the same time as Labor is attacking workers’ rights by demonising an effective union, the CFMEU.
Envoys are at best useless, just a pretence of doing something. By encouraging the Zionist view of any opposition to an ongoing genocide as ‘anti-semitism’, this appointment is much worse than useless.
We need effective strong unions, and we need socialism. That’s what the Communist Party of Australia is working for.
