So you think your views on Israel are your own 

 

Submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism in Australia.

I wish for this submission to be publicly available, while my authorship remains anonymous.

ABC media bias increases antisemitism

One of the causes of antisemitism in Australia is the public media’s double standard on reporting news from the middle east conflict. Unfortunately, while other distant conflicts do not provoke hate crimes in Australia, this conflict does.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 (the ABC Act) requires the ABC Board to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information are accurate and impartial.

The Ombudsman Office in 2024 found that ABC was in breach of its guidelines when the report of 28th May 2024 included the following errors on the part of the ABC, among others1.

• The report did not include any reference to the fact that Hamas continues to launch rockets into Israel;

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings referred to were misrepresented because the ICJ did not rule there was a plausible case of genocide and the ICJ did not order Israel to stop its military offensive;

However, as the climate of antisemitism in Australia intensified over time, just one year later the Ombudsman failed to find the following to be breaches of ABC guidelines.

For almost 10 months in 2025, the ABC again did not report any Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza, ignoring their first breach of guidelines identified by the Ombudsman. The ABC did not cover any prior rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza (or from Yemen) in 20252 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. The first such report was on Oct 10th 202510, although the story focuses on the Israeli response presented as fact, while the Hamas attacks are qualified as allegations only.

Despite the Ombudsman’s additional finding that the ABC misrepresented the ICJ ‘plausible case of genocide’ ruling, the ABC continued to platform false allegations of genocide against Israel. An ABC Radio National ‘Genocide Experts Panel’ on 28 July 2025 platformed the following:

Israeli policy makers saw the October 7 attack as an opportunity to finally implement what they wanted to do which was to ethnically cleanse this territory and settle it with Jewish settlers.11

Despite the gravity of such a claim, the ABC panel did not offer any evidence to support this allegation, or any Israeli perspective on this claim. This time, however, the Ombudsman found no breach of editorial standards. The Ombudsman did not address the obvious failure by the ABC to include an Israeli spokesperson in the story and the claim has become accepted as fact within the social discourse of Australia. Instead of following up on ABC bias since 2024, the Ombudsman has become a rubber stamp for anti-Israel bias.

The ABC’s bias against Israel adds to the atmosphere of antisemitism in AustraliaAustralians who are misinformed by the ABC demonize Israel above all countries. Attacks against Israel are under-reported, while the suffering of Palestinians often leads the news with little regard to who is responsible for Palestinian suffering.