Hyperpartisan accounts of curated lived experiences failed to recall key facts at theRoyal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, writesTom Tanuki.

YESTERDAY,Sami Shahwrote inCrikeyabout grim testimony shared by Jewish Australians, as heard inHearing Block 1at theRoyal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

He talked about Holocaust survivors experiencing renewed fears about wearing Stars of David out in public, children physically attacked in their schools for wearing oneand the account of a traumatised 13-year-old who was in earshot of the Bondi massacre.

Shah took aim at the delegitimisation of Jewish fear and feelings that have occurred in the wake of Israels unfolding genocide.I also think that needs urgent addressing.I am dismayed to see "anti-racists"discredit the notion of local racism because theres also a genocide happening.

But Shah did not pause to mention that other "lived experience" testimony heard at the Royal Commission painted a more curated picture.

Deborah Conway, for example, remembered the graffiti calling her a "genocide supporter"and a "Zionist stooge",left on various buildings.

But she did not recall her lived experience, responding to concerns put to her on ABC Radio about thedisproportionate amount of dead childrenin Gaza, saying:

Sometimes lived experiences relate to other lived experiences, you see.

A provocative Royal Commission submission by Dr Evan Jones argues that Australias antisemitism debate cannot be separated from Israel, Zionism and their political influence.

Joshua Moshetestified that he was kicked out of his band and harassed after his contributions to a secret WhatsApp chat group wereleaked online.

Joshua said of the experience:

But Joshua forgot that the harassment came after his lived experience of offering in the WhatsApp chat to target social justice commentator and activistNadine Chemali.He had asked whether she could be sacked from her occasional work with SBS for being "wildly anti-Zionist".

Selective-memory lived experiences arent the worst of this curation. The worst is that the lived experience of anti-Zionist Jews was deliberately memory-holed by the Commission.Members of the anti-Zionist group theLoud Jew Collectivereported that they were toldthey would not be given leaveto appear.

The Royal Commission did afford theJewish Council of Australiathe opportunity to have its critical voice heard at later stages. But this Commission, pushed for by the pro-Israel lobby and by the right-wing press in Australia, has a political agenda on fairly evident display regarding what it seeks to produce as useful Jewish lived experience.

Campaigns begun in the WhatsApp chat group to have anti-Zionist voices punished, sacked or starved of opportunity were what first alerted me to the fact that tools once considered the domain of the liberal Leftist were being deployed against the liberal Leftist, in the wake of Israels genocide.(Similarly, theExecutive Council of Australian Jewryco-chairAlex Ryvchinspoke in late 2023 about the need to conspire with managers and employers to have young anti-Zionists sacked to send a message.)

Decades of deference to Israel and the U.S. have shaped Australias foreign policy at a high moral cost.

The pro-Israel lobby has since put these practises to work against the liberal, radical and pro-Palestinian Left, to great effect.

Theyve wreaked havoc on theAustralian arts, for example.Arts organisations in Australia have become forcibly tethered to the demand to pander to Zionist sensibilities to avoid being starved of funding.

This censorship has been hand-balled down to working artists, who aresingled outfor crucifixion in the pro-Israel Australian press before having their funding, grants or prizestaken away.This is to protect the lived experience of a curated selection of Zionist voices, whose perspectives are the only Jewish ones which deserve a big platform and government action.

As a result of the Australian pro-Israel lobby, the notion of centring lived experience is no longer just discourse in critical, academic or social justice spaces.

In January, we passed it intolegislation, when theCombatting Antisemitism Billproposed to criminalise conduct that would:

Hate crimes punishable by years in gaolbased on the feelings of a special person in a special category.I remember joking at the time that the "reasonable person"the legislation imagined was Ryvchin.

But thats less of a joke once you see the sample of testimonies sought by the Royal Commission, including ex-IDFmembers, Zionist lobbyists and people who curate their own life stories for political gain.

This hyperpartisan rendition of the "Jewish lived experience"is not being offered up in Parliament in the name of "preventing another Bondi", to be clear, because this Royal Commission didnt happen because of Bondi.

It was already in the pipeline as a result of long-standing demands by the pro-Israel lobby and the right-wing media. This process is being used to prevent another pro-Palestine movement.Curated lived experience works as a kind of weaponised identity politics deployed to help speed up the process.

Our political leaders keep making tone-deaf, overbearing laws, then watch them get almost immediately wrecked by the courts.

I am not comfortable with much of the space created by less principledand much less anti-racist, "anti-Zionists".

Often, I have to watch "anti-Zionists"share popular videos of racisttalking heads likeTucker Carlson,Candace OwensandNick Fuentescrying crocodile tears about dead Arab children.Sharers perhaps werent interested in politics for long enough before 2023 to know or care that those same figures made their names pole-vaulting off dead black or trans bodies for money and clout (and much more besides).

Sometimes I have to read Matt Chunessentialisinga dead child at Bondi into a Chabad ultra-Zionist in order to delegitimise Australians surprise or horror at a mass shooting that happened just down the road from where they live.

This kind of thing makes me sick.

But the pro-Palestine movement is not rooted in dismissing racism any more than it is in utilising the weaponised identity politics of the liberal, tools now deployed to criminalise us, silence us and fire us.Its rooted in the vital politics of worldwide class solidarity, anti-racism and anti-colonialism.

We do what we can to defend Palestine from abroad by pressuring our government because we know its people are our brothers and sisters, who have undergone dispossession and displacement since 1948 and now, since 2023, a brutal, outright campaign of genocide.

We dont know that from hyperpartisan accounts of curated, centred lived experience.Its a statement of fact.

As anti-racists, were able to take the lived experience of Australian children encountering racism seriously, and also take the genocide seriously.Anti-racists have that much left in the tank.

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.