The growing support for Australia’s far-right Jewish movement

In four years, the Australian Jewish Association has attracted a hefty 15,000 Facebook followers. Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett asks its president what the AJA stands for and why it strikes a chord

IN 2017, PLUS61JMEDIA reported on the establishment of the Australian Jewish Association. At the time, the Association’s President, Dr David Adler, claimed the AJA represented the “groundswell” of long-ignored politically conservative Jewish Australians overlooked by existing community bodies.

Back then, Adler was reluctant to specify how many had joined the organisation. The AJA had a baptism of fire: In its first year, it faced a backlash for its intermittent involvement with far-right Australian activist Avi Yemini. Two Melbourne Jewish venues refused to host its events.

I was one of the many who wrote off the AJA’s prospects of survival. I had watched conservative splinter groups fizzle out chasing “silent majorities” before and I expected to witness it again.

Four years later, in an interview with The Jewish Independent, Adler claimed “the AJA is the largest Australian Jewish organisation on social media” in terms of engagement, with 15,000 Facebook followers, strongrelationships in Parliament, the media and various think tanks.

The group has received gushing endorsement from Coalition Senator James Paterson and hosted an event with Mark Latham, now the leader of the One Nation party in the NSW parliament.  Adler has appeared on Sky News,the Spectator and was booked as a speaker for the conservative political group CPAC Australia.

According to its website, the AJA team consists of six men, including radio broadcaster Michael Burd, barrister Geoff Bloch, pharmacist Alan Freedman, property valuer Terry Davis and Israel advocate Allan Ellison.

Only three of the men have titles in the organisation, with Burd serving as Treasurer, and Ellison as Honorary Secretary, alongside Adler. It is unclear from the AJA’s mission statement or website how positions in the organisation are allocated. 

In its mission statement, the AJA styles itself as a centre-right representative organisation for Australia’s Jewish community. Although open to members of all levels of observance, it claims to be guided by the “authentic Jewish values” contained in the Torah.

It describes its positions as “mainstream conservative” including support for small government, the disadvantaged, the ‘natural family structure’, free speech and freedom of religion. The group hosts regular events, from community movie nights to panel discussions with figures from the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs.  

At times, finding the ‘centre’ in the AJA’s ‘centre-right’ philosophy can be challenging. In 2019, Adler lambasted “leftist activist doctors” who dared to attribute the bushfires to climate change. In the Marriage Equality postal vote, one of its leaders defended a controversial Bill Leak cartoon that compared queer activists to the SS. The AJA has regularly advocated for the abolition of “gender fluidity education”, which it describes as “child abuse for a Marxist social engineering agenda”.

In this year alone, the AJA has compared the discontinuation of racist Dr Seuss texts to Nazi book burnings and described the Labor Party as having “embraced Palestinian terror”. In March, the group aired an “exclusive interview” with maverick Liberal MP Craig Kelly, defending him against allegations of antisemitism. In June, the group shared a photo on Twitter overlaying the ABC logo with a Hammer and Sickle. The caption reads: “On Twitter and other social media #DefundtheABC is currently trending.”

A degree of historical revisionism can also be spotted in the AJA’s digital soapbox. Aside from claiming that Adolf Hitler “had an objective of socialism” and was “inspired by Karl Marx”, the AJA has also argued “Palestinian Arabs only came to the Holy Land after Jews developed the land”.

In contrast to its assertion of being “centre-right”, these claims position the AJA on the far-right of the political spectrum and have earned stern disapproval from progressive Jewish community leaders.

Liam Getreu, Executive Director of NIF Australia, told me: “Jewish organisations shouldn’t platform prominent political figures who are openly racist, homophobic, misogynistic or who traffic in bizarre conspiracy theories … We won’t want their hateful, toxic views rippling through our community.”

The Australian Jewish Democratic Society, whilst acknowledging “the opportunity be there for the diversity of diversity of views in our community to be represented publicly,” has rejected both the AJA’s positions and the claim that it is reflective of the wider Jewish community.

“The AJDS believes that the Jewish community has fairly progressive political views on issues such as conciliation with Australia’s First Nations people, treatment of refugees action on climate change and social justice. The AJA has its supporters, but it is much further to the political right than the mainstream Jewish community.”

From the limited research available, the AJA appears to indeed be out of step with the majority of Jewish-Australians in many, but not all, of its political positions.

It’s hawkish views on Israel are certainly not unusual – the Gen17 survey found 58% of Jewish Australians support Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and over two thirds reject the Israeli government negotiating with Hamas.

However, other  AJA positions do not appear mainstream: The 2019 The Jewish Independent/Shalom survey asked Jewish Australians what their top issues of concern were: 184 mentioned the environment/climate change, 50 mentioned inequality and 46 mentioned economic issues. Islamisation, terrorism and antisemitism received a combined 37 mentions. In the Gen17 survey, 75% considered supporting social justice causes to be important in their sense of Jewish identity.

I asked Adler about some of the more contested positions his organisation has aired, and the extent to which they align with the AJA’s “mainstream conservative” mission statement.

He contends that “AJA policy positions are often similar or identical to those articulated by … the major centre-right parties of both Australia and Israel.

“We disagree that [Mark Latham and Craig Kelly] are fringe politicians: Latham was previously the leader of the opposition and an alternate Prime Minister … Craig Kelly has been an elected member of the Liberal party for over a decade.”

Asked what the AJA considered to be the top priorities for the Australian Jewish community in 2021, Adler’s nominations were surprisingly uncontroversial: rising antisemitism, Labor’s planned recognition of Palestine, anti-Israel bias in the ABC, Israel advocacy and the community’s security and safety. Not everyone’s cup of tea – but by no means an extreme set of priorities.

There appears to be a marked difference between the AJA’s provocative “go get ‘em” online persona and the more moderate tone of Adler’s answers to my questions about what the organisation stands for. His statements revealed a degree of nuance that is at odds with the group’s public declarations, which position it firmly on the far right.

Whilst the AJA, on separate occasions, hosted a discussion with pro-Defund ABC Senator Jim Molan and accused the broadcaster of spreading antisemitic subliminal messaging – Adler denied that the AJA supported defunding the ABC – stating the group “supported the concept of an independent ombudsman to manage complaints of ABC bias”.

When asked if the AJA believed Palestinian Arabs only came to Israel after Jewish settlement, he replied: “Arabs have lived in the region for centuries” and it was only the movement to describe Palestinians as a distinct indigenous group that was recent.

Does the AJA genuinely regard the Nazi regime to be socialist in character, he suggested I direct my question to the Holocaust Centre [in Melbourne] – “this is a question for the historians to ponder.”

Finally, I asked if the Labor was deemed politically extremist by the AJA. Adler reassures me:

“The Labor Party is not homogeneous. Some elements of it are (the Left faction, Bob Carr), but not (former MP) Michael Danby, Kimberly Kitching, Joel Fitzgibbon and others like them.”

Surprised by Adler’s apparent moderation, I started to wonder why the AJA maintained such a hard-line online presence. In a now deleted post, the AJA published the place of work and identity of an Australian-Jewish man attending a pro-Palestine protest earlier this year. The AJA states that “Judaism and Zionism are inseparable”.

Community members critical of Israel have been described as “useful idiots”, by AJA members, as was the experience of Harold Zwier of the AJDS after he wrote  an anti-Occupation piece in the Age.

“Delegitimising and using invective and abuse against those holding different opinions is not acceptable,” says Zwier. “This is simply bullying behaviour … referring to some Jews as ‘useful idiots’ is odious and a turn-off to many in our community.”

The AJA breaks from the average in its rhetoric and its political priorities – but it cannot be written off as a community pariah. There is no longer any doubt that the Association constitutes a well-organised movement, with its large online support, relationships in Parliament and a leader with an established media presence.

There may not be a silent majority out there with an appetite for the AJA’s views, but, when Adler hypothesised in 2017 that there was an engine of conservative dissatisfaction in the community waiting to be mobilised – it seems clear now that he was not proven wrong.

The Jewish Independent approached the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia for comment about their position on the AJA. Neither responded. However, the ZFA’s President, Jeremy Leibler, has published this opinion-piece in response to criticism from the AJA about the ZFA and its positions.

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A Jewish alt-right? Up close and personal with the new Australian conservative Jewish movement (The Jewish Independent)

Photo: AJA President Dr David Adler