Published: 11 December 2025
Last updated: 12 December 2025
Everyone accepts that education is needed to combat the wave of antisemitism that has erupted since October 7 and the war in Gaza. But agreeing about what should be included in an education program is much more elusive.
The ASECA report by Jillian Segal stressed the centrality of the Holocaust. “A relatively consistent national approach to antisemitism education, including an understanding of the Holocaust as a major case study of where unchecked antisemitism can lead, should be adopted across all schools,” Segal wrote.
But the experience of the past two years and the results of the Crossroads25 survey on Australian attitudes to Jews and Israel have highlighted the need for a more nuanced approach than Segal’s emphasis, to address the diverse and often paradoxical factors that shape antisemitism.
These include the resistance of left-wing antisemitism to education, the long-term history of Israel’s connection to the land, and the need to train teachers better to ensure complex messages are not subverted.
Mishandled education, particularly focused on the Holocaust, can backfire. The judge in the Brighton Secondary College case found teaching a Holocaust text had led to increased antisemitism at the school. A study released this week found more than 30 antisemitic incidents in 2024 in Victorian schools.
Comments3
David Steinberg12 December at 07:20 am
Wesley, this argument is a re-packaging of the old Khazar thesis: that Ashkenazi Jews are essentially converts who wandered in via trade routes rather than a continuous Jewish population.
The claim isn’t new, and it isn’t daring. It’s been examined and repeatedly dismantled. Large-scale population genetics — most notably Behar et al., Nature (2010), among many others — show Ashkenazi Jews clustering tightly with other Jewish and Levantine populations. There is admixture, as with any long-lived diaspora, but the continuity is clear.
So this isn’t brave revisionism or suppressed truth. It’s a recycled trope, now dressed up in postgraduate language. The content hasn’t changed — only the tone.
Ian Light11 December at 08:59 pm
There are barbarians at every gate .
Education alone does not shift barbarian genocide psychopaths .
Many Nazis had university degrees including the sadistic Nazi doctors .
Wesley Parish11 December at 07:36 am
Several questions crowd my mind: 1) I’m majority English descent. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes left the area from South Jylland to North Holland for England/lowland Scotland less than 2000 years ago. Does that grant me the right to move to that area and ethnically cleanse the people living there? 2) The Roman Empire couldn’t afford to exile everybody in Judaea, Samaria, Galilee – empires require taxes, and a depopulated province threatens imperial bankruptcy. So the Palestinians are the descendants of the 0CE-0BCE Jews. I figure they converted after the disasters of the Revolts and the crusades. 3) The majority of the world’s longest-standing Jewish communities are along the nodes of major trading routes, so they are the descendants of converts and their teachers. Putting this in Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu contexts, makes the world weird – if I become a Hare Krishna, does that entitle me to “return” to India? And as far as victims turning into aggressors, the world is full of examples. The Third Reich was founded on the claim that the German Empire was a victim of other European powers.