It’s depressing to return from sojourns in two Muslim countries only to find Australia tearing itself apart with furious protests about the Israeli President’s visit. All things considered, one must ask whether it was a good idea to invite Isaac Herzog while the situation in Gaza remains so raw and volatile. I can’t speak for those members of the Jewish community who have been singing his praises, but Herzog comes across as an awfully dry stick, not the kind of figure who might inspire public sympathy. On the other hand, with the Bondi massacre less than two months in the past, it’s shocking to see the level of frenzy the anti-Herzog protests have attained, partly in response to the Minns government’s new rules prohibiting the usual city marches. Imagine trying to tell the French they couldn’t march through the streets of Paris!
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the new laws, it’s hard to accept claims that the protests are anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic. Zionism – partly through the extreme opinions of some Zionists - has been designated an unspeakable evil, akin to Nazism. This view of Zionism – one promulgated as a deliberate propaganda tactic by Hamas - seems to dominate public opinion nowadays, but there are many Jewish people calling themselves Zionists who cling to a much broader, more basic definition: as someone who believes in the need for a Jewish homeland.
For the vast majority of people, any fine distinctions between Zionists, Israelis and Jews, are non-existent. Although many will swear they are anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic, the anger and hatred on display has disastrous consequences for all Jews, even the most liberal minded ones.
I’d put Morry Schwartz in that category – a publisher who has taken a consistently left-of-centre line on most issues. Schwartz, who resigned from the board of the Biennale of Sydney in 2024, shortly before the appointment of Hoor Al Qasimi as Artistic Director, had previously complained about a posting by the Biennale’s “Artseen ambassador”, Bhenji Ra, that showed a rabbi in a blood-stained robe, treading on the head of a baby doll. The image was conspicuously, undeniably, antisemitic.
The Biennale took a soft line on the complaint, but in January, Bhenji Ra quietly stepped down from this public role. Last week, Schwartz found himself complaining to the Biennale yet again, over a social media post by a participating artist, Feras Shaheen. Under the word “Equality”, in block capitals, Shaheen had written, “Treat your local Zionist like you treat your local Nazi”, and included a picture of Australian Neo-Nazi leader, Thomas Sewell, alongside pictures of Schwartz and billionaire philanthropist, John Gandel.
It would be hard to imagine anything more offensive and provocative than comparing the son of Holocaust survivors to the Nazis, although it appears that the Biennale has simply given Schwartz the brush-off. One week later there has been no public repudiation of this post, which is still viewable on Shaheen’s Instagram feed.
Is this “freedom of speech” in action? Imagine if Schwartz had posted a picture of Hoor Al Qasimi or Randa Abdel-Fattah, alongside an image of a notorious Nazi. There’d be no end to the outrage. The Biennale owes its former board member an apology and should not be seen to be endorsing Shaheen’s inflammatory post. At any other time, they would have suspended the artist pending an inquiry into this incident. Today, the rampant politicisation of the contemporary art scene makes this an unlikely course of action.
It was even more jaw-dropping when, one day after The Australian ran a story about Schwartz’s complaint, this item appeared on J-wire :
The Biennale of Sydney has sought to ease tensions with Jewish community groups by issuing formal anti-discrimination commitments and inviting a senior Jewish representative to an advance preview of its 2026 exhibition…. The festival, running from March 14 to June 14, 2026, this week published a Cultural Safety Commitment Statement declaring “zero tolerance for any form of racism including Islamophobia and antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny and all forms of discrimination”. It adds: “We do not tolerate bullying or harassment in any form, whether within our workplaces, our programs, or the broader public discourse connected to our work.”
To back up this noble series of commitments it might be a good start to ask Feras Shaheen to take down his antisemitic post. The Biennale Board may, however, be of the same mind as Randa Abdel-Fattah, who famously told us that “Zionists” have “no claim or right to cultural safety”. Is Schwartz to be henceforth regarded as an evil Zionist by a board of which he was recently a member?
Once again, we see those spurious rhetorical divisions between “racism” and “ideology”. In the minds of many activists, Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation from Adelaide Writers Week was a “racist” act, but to call Morry Schwartz a Nazi is to stand up against a pernicious ideology. I’m not convinced that either Jews or Palestinians constitute a “race”. It’s also worth noting how this version of racism is included with “all forms of discrimination”, along with bullying and harassment, as absolute taboos, although tarring someone as a Nazi seems to be OK. I’m not even sure about “sexual harassment”, if we may believe a 2022 story in The Australian in which it was alleged that a Biennale employee who complained she was being harassed by a colleague, ended up being the one who got sacked.
Regardless of how we might feel about the slaughter in Gaza, which looks suspiciously genocidal, even if many are unwilling to use that word, this is not an excuse for blatant double-dealing and hypocrisy. Multiplying small acts of hatred on the Jewish community in Australia will not compensate for Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza. To assume that all Jews – indeed, all Zionists - are fervent supporters of that onslaught, is no less “racist” than Adelaide’s cancellation of an ideologically committed writer with a long history of extreme statements.
One of the documents I was sent this week was a detailed analysis of the social media postings of the 175 artists participating in the forthcoming Biennale of Sydney. It was presumably compiled by a Jewish person, but that’s only to be expected. It’s the evidence presented that’s most disturbing. “In total,” it says, “70 of 175 participants, or 40 percent of the program, engage directly with anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian narratives at a high or moderate level.”
It continues: “Beyond individual positions, many participants operate within overlapping professional, curatorial, and activist networks that reinforce shared ideological framings. This clustering effect increases the likelihood that similar political interpretations and narratives will be reproduced across multiple works and program streams, amplifying their collective social impact.”
This strikes me as a realistic assessment of the way a major visual arts event, heavily weighted towards one side of political opinion, may serve to reinforce existing prejudices.
It’s also noted there’s not a single instance of an artist with pro-Jewish or pro-Israel sentiments – which should come as no surprise. To take a pro-Jewish position within the Australian contemporary art scene at present – as artists such as Nina Sanadze have found – is to condemn oneself to oblivion. It’s not very different to the experience of Bindi Cole Chocka, who was shunned when she went from being an Indigenous activist to a born-again Christian. Abandon the party line and be shut out of the club. Examples could be multiplied among other artists, writers and musicians. The political mania has spread like a virus, consuming everything in sight, until the most blatant hate speech seems like business-as-usual.
I wouldn’t argue for pro-Jewish artists to be added to the mix for the sake of a dubious ‘balance’. This tit-for-tat mentality only exacerbates the problem. My personal preference would be for the Biennale, and every other arts organisation in this country, to honestly confront its own political biases – starting with the unspoken assumption that contemporary art is only of value if it expresses the right kinds of opinion and allegiance.
This rampant politicisation is one of the reasons why contemporary art audiences are diminishing and sponsorship becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. What company would happily put its name to an exhibition in which the artists are all beating the drum for a militant political position? When it comes to governments there is a constant, hypocritical encouragement for institutions to pursue politically motivated programs, but an unwillingness to provide support when audiences and sponsors fail. The message is: “It’s up to you to make a success of these inherently unpopular policies.” In most cases, it’s an impossible task, yet those galleries and organisations that pursue a more broad-based approach are penalised by savage government funding cuts. It’s a lose-lose situation, testifying to the chaos and confusion that rules within government funding bodies, as they wish to appear virtuous while expecting a return for their dollar.
In his desperation to make amends after any perceived failings vis-à-vis Bondi, Albo seems to have under-estimated the reaction stirred up by Isaac Herzog’s visit. However, it would be impossible to fault his plea to take the temperature down. We badly need to take the temperature down, as it is spiralling out of control, threatening a season of anger and violence.
Until last week, I would have admitted to hardly knowing a word of Arabic, but in Fouad Ajami’s writings, I’ve discovered one very important word: tatbi’a – or “normalisation”. Ajami recounts how the Israel-Palestine Peace Plan agreed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993, was vehemently rejected by the Arab intelligentsia, who saw it as a sell-out. Their preference was to keep fighting until Palestine could secure a greater share of disputed territory, if not all of it (“from the river to the sea”). They held to this romantic, utterly unpolitical view, even though it was clear that Israel’s military superiority would never permit such a scenario.
After four Hamas suicide bombings, and the assassination of Rabin by a right-wing Jewish fanatic, the Israelis voted against Shimon Peres and the Peace Plan, and installed Benjamin Netanyahu. No less a Palestinian luminary than Edward Said – Louise Adler’s supposed mentor – wrote a piece for Time magazine, welcoming Netanyahu’s election because it put an end to the hated Peace Plan.
As a result, the battles have continued to rage, culminating in the October 7 massacre and the full-scale demolition of Gaza. Arafat, who had grown weary of the futile, revolutionary struggle, sought a compromise. His former backers rejected the very concept, but to reject compromise is to turn politics into an endgame, a fight to the death.
In a far less dramatic example, it’s reminiscent of the Greens rejecting Labor’s modest Climate reforms in 2009, and its equally modest housing package in 2023-24. The reason, on both occasions was that these proposals didn’t go far enough. The Greens paid a price at the ballot box, but the Palestinians have paid a catastrophic price as the lives and livelihoods of millions have been destroyed. One doubts that Said would have been so sanguine in welcoming Netanyahu if he could have foreseen the evil the Israeli leader would perpetrate.
The great fear of 1990, for the Arab intellectuals, was tatbi’a – the normalisation of relations with Israel. The ruling idea was that you must not treat your enemy as if he were your equal, or worthy of respect in any way. This leads inevitably to the dehumanisation of your opponent, justifying any act of violence. It could be argued that many Israelis do the same to the Palestinians, but this doesn’t make it acceptable.
We see this fear of normalisation in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s claim that Zionists have no right to cultural safety, and her willingness to expose the personal details of 600 Jewish creatives on social media. She is furious about being cancelled in Adelaide but has evinced no readiness to debate her views with a Zionist. In brief, she wants it all her own way and seems to view any public discussion with her ideological opponents as strictly impossible. She doesn’t appear to want a ‘normal’ political debate, but a public platform to broadcast her own ideas.
We see the same process taking shape at the Biennale of Sydney, with a list of artists wildly lop-sided in favour of one side of the debate, and a Palestinian-Australian artist being allowed to call a former board member a Nazi, with no official pushback. A genuine attempt at ‘normalisation’ would entail a level playing field in which competing viewpoints could be aired, but this is not going to happen.
In the absence of any workable exchange or discussion, we are left with the danger of a major visual arts event feeding the hate-filled narrative that motivates so many of the toxic posts on social media. I’m getting quite a collection of them.
In an essay on the French philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch, I recently came across a discussion of “decadence” that speaks volumes to our current condition. Jankélévitch argues that decadence produces “two families of monsters: narcissistic monsters of introspection and monsters of excessiveness.” Both these “families” seek to browbeat others into submission in the name of their own moral tenets. The first corresponds to those virtue-signalling puritans who aspire to reshape the world – and everyday language - to conform to their personal views about race, gender, colonialism or religion. The artworld is overrun with these wowsers.
The second, “excessive” category of monster corresponds to the Trumpian practice of saying and doing the most outrageous, offensive things; daring others to object; frequently threatening those who take a different viewpoint.
Jankélévitch sees both types as a function of our need to preserve life from boredom and stagnation… “for want of real problems, the spirit takes refuge in charades, riddles, rebuses.” In this analysis it’s no surprise such mentalities arise in relatively prosperous, peaceful societies such as Australia. The steady, conservative, middle-of-the-road ethos that characterises most of the Australian population serves as a call to action for those who see only an old-style colonialist, racist mentality at work; or those who wish to mobilise the forces of ‘common sense’ to combat the rising tide of political activism that is upsetting the age-old norms of daily life.
Change is inevitable in all societies, but it’s the speed of change that causes problems. When an active minority seeks to impose new codes and rules on a complacent majority, resistance must be expected. Effective social change takes place gradually, by a process of slow and steady persuasion. It’s not realistic to imagine that everyone in Sydney will automatically start referring to the city as “Gadigal”. It’s not at all likely that people who were horrified by the Bondi shootings, will turn around within a month and become dedicated enemies of “Zionism” – a term that many find unfamiliar.
The response of the newly anxious masses is to turn to nationalistic entities such as One Nation, which defend a simplistic, mythical version of Australian life. The surge of popularity for Pauline Hanson’s ragbag party gives a measure of how far we are from the ideal of “social cohesion” that has become Albo’s new mantra. It’s the Liberals, however, who are the biggest losers, with a party in disarray, the leadership a poisoned chalice, and no clear policy platform. One Nation is grabbing the right-wing vote, while Labor controls the centre left. For the Liberals it’s looking like a choice of whether they stay put in the burning building or jump from the 32nd floor.
The Liberal downfall is a tragedy for Australian political life, because One Nation is hardly qualified to be an effective Opposition, and Labor – free to do as it pleases – has a tendency to become more rigid, secretive and autocratic. Albo doesn’t fear the Liberal Party, he is mostly concerned with the forces of anarchy - the clash of ideologies disrupting his tidy ideas about Australian society. No wonder he’s busy turning “social cohesion” into the political cliché of our times.
My only answer to the malaise into which we’ve fallen, is for people to relinquish the joys of groupthink, and stick to a few basic humanist principles. First of all, accept that Jews, Palestinians, and everyone else, have a lot more in common than those things that keep them apart. Secondly, listen for the authentic voice of intolerance, and recognise that it this also the voice of incipient totalitarianism. Thirdly, stop treating “freedom” or “freedom of speech” as the exclusive possession of one group rather than another. Freedom is an empty concept if divorced from responsibility, and everyone’s chief responsibility is not to use their own freedoms to impinge on those of the Other. This springs from the belief that you possess the Truth and others are in error, which is merely a form of fundamentalism, and by implication, extremism. There’s nothing praiseworthy, honourable, or decent in being an extremist.
Artists, above and beyond the rest of society, have a reputation as free thinkers, devoted to the realm of imagination and creativity. Instead, the current version of radical chic finds too many people lapsing into mindless conformism or opportunism. What a betrayal of the artist’s vocation to see the way so many have devoted themselves unquestioningly to a Manichean view of politics in which right and wrong, good and bad, are never to be questioned. True freedom should not consist of the right to join a party, but a fearless disposition to question everything.
I’m working on an art piece I can’t publish right away, so the only new content this week, is a review of Hamnet, Chloë Zhao’s film about Shakespeare, in which the Bard spends much of his time in London becoming successful and famous while his wife, Agnes, deals with family matters in Stratford. I can see lots of good things in this movie, and I bow to the power of the ending, but the hermetic nature of Zhao’s storytelling often leaves the viewer in the dark. As we know very little detail about Shakespeare’s marriage, the story is highly speculative, another good occasion to cultivate one’s scepticism.
An outstanding piece, John. I hope it is widely read.
Another voice of reason and balance that will inevitably find little sympathy amongst the ‘groupthink’ cohort. Many remaining artists who are just getting on with their creative lives may yet have their day. Can only hope !