ECAJ statement on Wayne Swan’s recent activity on X.

Attrib­ut­able to ECAJ President Daniel Aghion KC:

At a time of intense trauma for the Jewish community in Australia, a small section of the crowd at Sunday’s vigil booed the Prime Minister over the government’s mani­festly inad­equate responses to the orches­trated surge in antisemitism over the previous two years. The cri­ti­cisms of the gov­ern­ment are legit­im­ate; the booing was not the right way to express them, and should not have happened.

Yet in the midst of our community’s grief and anguish, we are appalled that a national figure like Wayne Swan chose to re-tweet another person’s post which seized on the booing episode to try to diminish and del­e­git­im­ise the out­pour­ing of sympathy our community has received from the Aus­trali­an public.

The tweet, and the implied endorse­ment of it, was a subtle form of dehu­man­isa­tion which exem­pli­fies the sewer of antisemitic hatred that has blighted Aus­trali­an society for the last two years and which helped spawn the murder of 15 innocent people at Bondi Beach.

Swan’s sub­sequent jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the re-tweet and his claim that it was in support of national healing and unity, is risible.

He should resign as President of the ALP and the Prime Minister should disown him.