How Long Will the Antisemitism Envoy Be Permitted to Reshape Australia in Israel’s Vision?

Despite the noise around antisemitism having quietened since the hearings of the Royal Commission ended in late August, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal continues to propagate her plan to insert a definition of antisemitism, or prejudice towards Jews, into the heart of all Australian institutions, because it actually serves to stifle criticism of Israel.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese first appointed Segal to the newly minted position of antisemitism envoy on 9 July 2024. Segal was not elected to this position. And the public was then unaware that this official would have the ability to disrupt both public and political spheres, via the drive to see all Australian institutions adopt the IHRA working definition on antisemitism.

The foisting of the unelected antisemitism envoy onto the public is one of the greatest disservices that Albanese has served this nation. Australia was supposed to be undertaking truth-telling about its colonial inception right now, but instead, it’s engaging in the adoption of a deceptive definition that serves to propagate Israel’s false narrative about its inception as standard in this country.

The key aim of Segal’s July 2025 Plan to Combat Antisemitism is the adoption of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition “across all levels of government, public institutions and regulatory bodies”. And AHPRA (the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) adopted it in June 2026, and now there is a focus on making arts funding dependent on it.

The public remains unaware of who was ultimately behind the imposition of this US created position. Following the release of the plan, federal Labor ignored it until the ISIS-inspired Bondi Beach mass murder occurred on Gadigal land on 14 December 2025. And four days after 15 innocent people were killed, Albanese suggested the envoy should be made a “permanent feature of our landscape”.

Shielding Israeli atrocities

AHPRA’s adoption of the IHRA definition midyear marked the first major institution to incorporate it since the plan was rolled out. This reform serves to conflate political criticism of Israel with antisemitism, or prejudice towards Jews. And particularly vocal opponents to the genocide, Australian health practitioners could now face discipline or even unemployment if critical of Israel.

The reason the IHRA definition has such an effect is that when it was developed in 2005, the basic two-line definition was accompanied by eleven examples of prejudice towards Jews, and seven of these specifically mention Israel. And since Albanese adopted Segal’s plan post-Bondi massacre, prominent members of the local Israel lobby have been regularly making such conflations publicly.

Then Oxford University PhD candidate Jamie Stern-Weiner’s 2021 doctoral thesis on the IHRA definition describes how the representatives of the May 2016 IHRA Plenary meeting, which led to the adoption of IHRA, didn’t actually properly vote to adopt. And one of its original 2005 drafters, Kenneth Stern, now warns that Zionists are employing IHRA to shield Israeli human rights abuses.

Zionism is the late 1880s European doctrine advocating for the establishment of Israel on historic Palestine, which was developed by Jewish Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl. Zionists advocate for the Israeli settler colonial project. Not all Zionists are Jewish people. And right now, in the United States, there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jewish Zionists.

Currently, tertiary education regulator the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is requiring that Australian tertiary institutions adopt either the IHRA definition, or the February 2025 antisemitism definition established by peak body Universities Australia, by early January 2027. The Universities Australia definition is based on IHRA, and it incorporates the conflating mechanism.

APAN (Australia Palestine Advocacy Network) has this week again called on Australian “governments at all levels, universities, schools and other institutions to reject calls to adopt definitions of antisemitism”, as the body is “warning that the definitions currently being promoted entrench anti-Palestinian racism and threaten political expression”.

A Zionist stooge

On announcing the antisemitism envoy, Albanese didn’t mention that other allied nations already have one. His government did signal, however, that Australia would be appointing a Special Envoy on Islamophobia as well. This is an original position that appears to have been necessitated by our society’s makeup. And the importance of the Islamophobia envoy’s role has since been downplayed.

The United States first appointed an antisemitism envoy in 2004. Canada, Greece, Israel, Romania, the United Kingdom and the European Union all have antisemitism envoys. The Organisation of the American States has its own envoy too. And these appointed and unelected officials are charged with designing policy in the democratic nations that they operate within.

On her appointment in July 2024, Segal’s first task was to fly to Argentina to attend the meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism conference. So, while the public was made aware that a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry was being appointed to a special position, no mention of the global network of envoys was made.

The Klaxon revealed in mid-2025 that Segal’s family trust was the second biggest donor to far-right, white nationalist lobby group Advance. This ultraconservative group produces online content that propagates racist messaging, which decries the loss of the White Australia policy, whilst demonising First Peoples and immigrants.

And whilst the forces that prodded the prime minister to spring an antisemitism envoy on the public remain unknown, Segal’s $1,000-a-day paid position sees her assisted by six staffers at dual offices: one on Gadigal land in Sydney and another in Naarm-Melbourne.

A dangerous conflation

Prominent US Jewish intellectuals, like professors Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler, have explained that the Jewish state of Israel and its various lobbies in western countries have been propagating the conflation of criticism of the Israeli state as equalling antisemitism since the late 1960s, for the specific reason of shielding its violent settler colonial project from foreign scrutiny.

In terms of western nations over the years of the ongoing Gaza genocide, Australia, in particular, appears to have caused the Netanyahu government headaches, because of the strong local Palestine solidarity movement, of which the authorities have been powerless to suppress. And the 100,000-strong 3 August 2025 march for Palestine over the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a case in point.

Two recent court cases have revealed that the Australian judiciary hasn’t been bullied into submission by the local Israel lobby, in terms of propagating the IHRA myth that serves to block the nation from criticism of its mass commission of atrocity crimes, as the tendency to conflate criticism of the Jewish state with antisemitism did not withstand the scrutiny of reason.

Justice Angus Stewart found in the July 2025 Federal Court case of Wertheim versus Haddad that “the ordinary, reasonable listener would understand that not all Jews are Zionists or support the actions of Israel in Gaza and that disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or ethnic group”.

“Needless to say, political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity,” the justice added.

While NSW Supreme Court Justice Desmond Fagan specifically condemned the use of the IHRA definition in his August 2026 findings, in a case that involved a man having perpetrated arson and graffiti attacks in Sydney’s Woollahra, which involved anti-Israel messaging. Fagan found that the graffiti was not antisemitic, despite the repeated assertions of NSW authorities.

And even with these judicial warnings about the incorporation of IHRA, along with the rejection of the conflating practice that serves to shield Israel from political criticism and the broad civil society movement for Palestine, Segal continues to progress her plan to see all prominent Australian institutions incorporate the falsehood into their foundations.

So, the question that remains is how long will the Australian polity and the local constituency simply standby as Segal ensures that all levels of Australian government, its institutions and its regulatory bodies adopt the IHRA working definition on antisemitism, which then serves to conceal the grave atrocity crimes of the Israeli state: a nation that the envoy appears to chiefly serve?

Image: Official photo of Jillian Segal from the Antisemitism Envoy website. IHRA definition logo and the Israeli flag are in the public domain.