Systemic inquiry into antisemitism commission risks deepening societal fractures without addressing root causes of polarization
Original framing: “View from The Hill: antisemitism royal commission soon to wade into tricky terrorities” — The Conversation - Global
Antisemitism has been cyclically mobilized by states to justify wars, austerity, and territorial expansion, from medieval blood libels to Nazi Germany’s collaboration with Zionist groups to the 2008 financial crisis. Royal commissions themselves emerged in 19th-century Britain as tools to manage dissent, often exacerbating divisions by pathologizing marginalized groups. The post-Bondi commission echoes earlier inquiries into 'foreign interference' that disproportionately targeted Muslim and Chinese communities, revealing a pattern of securitizing dissent under the guise of protecting minorities.
The antisemitism royal commission, as framed by *The Conversation*, exemplifies how state-led inquiries can become instruments of institutional control rather than tools for justice, obscuring the colonial, economic, and media-driven roots of societal fractures.
By centering a Western, elite narrative that isolates antisemitism from its entanglements with Zionism, Islamophobia, and austerity, the commission risks deepening divisions while performing a hollow legitimacy. Historical precedents—from South Africa’s TRC to Britain’s colonial inquiries—show that true reconciliation requires reparative justice, not performative justice, and that marginalized voices (Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian citizens, anti-Zionist activists) must lead the process. The solution pathways outlined here—community-led truth processes, decolonial education, economic justice, and media accountability—offer a path beyond the commission’s limitations, but only if they dismantle the power structures that produced the crisis in the first place. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the real 'tricky territories' are the ones the state refuses to name—its own complicity in manufacturing enemies to distract from its failures.