Quote van de dag: “The curse “Fuk Israel” is not antisemitic”
De uitspraak van de Supreme Court van New South Wales (State of New South Wales v Farhat (final) [2026] NSWSC 985 (17 August 2026)).
Inzet was: HIGH RISK OFFENDER – Application for extended supervision order – Final hearing – Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 – Whether the defendant “poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offence” – Whether defendant was recruited to commit offences of damaging property for reward – Where defendant spray-painted slogans including “PKK”, “PKK coming” and “Fuk Israel” – Whether offences were committed with antisemitic intent – Whether the curse “Fuk Israel” is antisemitic – Whether defendant adopted an ideology associated with Hezbollah – No significant risk of defendant committing a serious terrorism offence – Summons dismissed.
Fragment: The state of Israel cannot be equated with the Jewish people
89. Disparagement of Israel is not antisemitic in the accepted sense of the term firstly because the Jewish people, who as a whole are the object of antisemitism, are not coextensive with or in any sense equivalent to the state of Israel. The world’s total population of Jews is approximately 15.8 million. About half of that number are members of minority communities in the populations of many countries, including Australia. Israel’s population accounts for only the other half the world’s Jews and includes about 1.6 million Palestinian Arabs.
90. Israel is a nation state, the product of the Zionist movement that began in the late 1800s. The openly stated objective of Zionism, at least from early in the 20th Century, was the establishment of a state in Palestine with demographic Jewish dominance. On 29 November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 concerning partition of Palestine. The inception of Israel was declared from 15 May 1948. It achieved demographic Jewish dominance during that year and into 1949 by forcible expulsion of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from the territory of which it took control and by the demolition of over 500 of their villages. Those events are uncontroversially established in extensive historical literature, much of it compiled by professional Israeli and other Jewish historians, drawing upon Israeli and British archives.[2]
91. The Jewish people, an entire group spread around the globe and identified by their common faith and culture, are distinct from Israel, a state comprising a localised population in a small territory (the borders of which have never been declared by Israel), living under a constitutional legal structure applicable only to that population. The Jewish people are not a political or juridical entity capable of adopting or carrying out policies in the name of the whole. Israel, as a state, is such an entity: it adopts policies and takes unified action to implement them.
92. As objects of possible hostility or prejudice, the Jewish people and the state of Israel are in every material respect different things. Logically, conceptually and empirically, hostility or prejudice towards Israel cannot be equated to hostility or prejudice towards the Jewish people.”
En dan, ter mijner afsluiting, nog een fragment van alinea 88: “[…] An allegation that a person is antisemitic is a grave imputation on character. Misapplication of the term to statements and attitudes concerning political subjects, such as disapproval of the state of Israel or disagreement with the ideology of Zionism, has the effect of unfairly damaging the person so accused and weakening the abhorrence that the word “antisemitic” should properly evoke.”
https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWSC/2026/985.html
Meerdere alinea’s van de uitspraak zijn interessant. Zie bijvoorbeeld ook de kritiek op de politiek gemotiveerde pogingen om de IHRA verklaring met voorbeelden gelding te laten krijgen (108e.v.)
Voor bespreking van de uitspraak door de betrokken mensenrechtenadvocaat Nick Hanna op video: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1594952628875238