The audacity of APAN: antisemitism on trial, and the activists lining up to rewrite it

Australia has established a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion because something has gone badly wrong in this country.

That is the context. Now here is the disgrace.

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, APAN, is mobilising to engage this Royal Commission, including advertising a role specifically to coordinate its movement’s engagement and gather documents in support of that effort.

Let’s call this what it is. Not community contribution. Not social cohesion. Not good faith engagement. It is an attempt by an activist network to muscle into a national inquiry into antisemitism and shape the frame, the vocabulary, and the outcome.

Yes, Royal Commissions are open processes. People can make submissions. That is not the point.

The point is the moral obscenity of it.

A Royal Commission into antisemitism is not a generic public policy forum. It is not another arena for slogan wars. It exists because Jewish Australians have been targeted, harassed, intimidated and isolated. It exists because institutions have failed to protect Jewish people in public life. It exists because too many leaders have been frightened of activist backlash and have chosen appeasement over principle.

So when a group like APAN prepares to “participate” in the very process established to confront antisemitism, we are seeing the problem in real time. This is the same activist ecosystem that has spent years trying to redefine antisemitism until it becomes invisible, deniable, or somehow the fault of the Jews who raise it. It is the same political machinery that has trained a segment of Australian civil society to treat Jewish fear as contentious, Jewish security as provocative and Jewish identity as something that must be justified before it is respected.

This is what we are dealing with.

The most corrosive tactic in modern antisemitism is not always open bigotry. It is respectable minimisation. The insistence that antisemitism is rare, exaggerated, and weaponised. The demand that Jewish Australians must tolerate behaviour that would never be tolerated if aimed at any other minority. The constant shifting of the burden of proof, as if Jewish Australians must submit a legal brief to earn the right not to be abused.

Now imagine how perverse it is for activist networks that benefit from that climate to sit down and draft submissions to a Royal Commission into antisemitism. The instinct is not to listen to the Jewish community. The instinct is to manage the inquiry. To make sure “their side” is heard. To inject doubt. To muddy definitions. To turn a Commission about antisemitism into a Commission about whether Jews are allowed to name it.

This is why people are angry. Because the pattern is obvious.

If you cannot stop an inquiry into antisemitism, the next best option is to saturate it with competing narratives. To argue that the real story is not antisemitism, but accusations of antisemitism. To insist that the inquiry treat antisemitism as a political dispute rather than a form of hatred with well-documented tropes, modern expressions, and real-world consequences.

We have all watched the manoeuvre where antisemitism is narrowed to cartoons of Nazis, so everything else gets waved away. We have watched Jewish Australians told that if they feel unsafe, it is because they are too sensitive, too political, or too something. We have watched a climate where antisemitic intimidation can be rationalised as protest, while Jewish responses are treated as provocation.

This is not a debate. It is a pressure campaign.

So yes, I am saying this plainly. It is appalling that APAN can even consider positioning itself as a contributor to a Royal Commission into antisemitism. It is cynical. It is a signal that parts of Australian activism now view Jewish safety as a variable to be negotiated, not a right to be protected.

And if Australia is serious about confronting antisemitism, the Royal Commission must respond with spine, not politeness.

The Commission must insist on evidentiary standards. Submissions are not moral testimonials. They are claims. If organisations want to assert facts, they must provide proof. Where a submission is ideological advocacy dressed up as evidence, it should be treated accordingly.

It must refuse false equivalence. Antisemitism is not a rhetorical football. It has distinct characteristics. It often appears under the cover of politics. It targets Jews as Jews, even when it pretends it is only about something else. If the definition is diluted until it no longer describes reality, the result will be a report that makes Australia feel virtuous while leaving Jewish Australians exposed.

There are groups that will try to turn this inquiry into a referendum on whether Jewish Australians are allowed to describe their own experience. There are networks that will attempt to reframe antisemitism as merely political disagreement. There are activists who believe Jewish security is illegitimate, Jewish fear is inconvenient and Jewish visibility is a challenge to be met.

That is the moral sickness we have to name.

So no, this is not normal civic participation. It is a statement of intent. It is a declaration that even a national inquiry into hatred of Jews will be treated as a battlefield for narrative control.

If Australia cannot draw a line here, if we cannot say plainly that Jewish Australians are entitled to safety without qualification, then we are not talking about social cohesion at all.

We are talking about surrender.

Michael Gencher is the Executive Director, StandWithUs Australia