The Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry’s Research Direc­tor, Julie Nathan, was inter­viewed by 2GB’s Ben Ford­ham on world­wide anti­semitism and the vis­it to Aus­tralia of David Icke. Lis­ten to their dis­cus­sion here.

2GB radio host Ben Ford­ham inter­view with Julie Nathan on anti­semitism world-wide and the vis­it to Aus­tralia of David Icke

Tran­scrip­tion of inter­view con­duct­ed on 20 Feb­ru­ary 2019:

BF: When some­one knocks on Australia’s door with a dan­ger­ous mes­sage, do we let them in, or do we ban them? … Julie Nathan is a research offi­cer with the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. She’s on the line. G’day Julie.
JN: Hi Ben. How are you?
BF: Good. Let me go to the break­ing news. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has can­celled the visa of David Icke. Your reac­tion please?
JN: That’s won­der­ful news, because we don’t real­ly need these haters here, espe­cial­ly com­ing in from over­seas, and putting for­ward con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, increas­ing hatred toward Jews or oth­ers. Their ideas are so nut­ty, espe­cial­ly David Icke’s ideas with lizard peo­ple. At the moment we have a Pol­ish radio announc­er in Aus­tralia who is putting out about the Holo­caust that the Jews are rip­ping off the Poles over the Holo­caust. He came in under the radar. But oth­er peo­ple try and come in, and we have enough to deal with here in Aus­tralia.
BF: You men­tion lizard peo­ple. Some people’s ears might be prick­ing up say­ing ‘what’s she talk­ing about?’ He also, apart from his con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry about the Holo­caust, he thinks the world is run by an Illu­mi­nati of lizard peo­ple. Look, the bloke is clear­ly a fruit­cake, but it is that debate isn’t it about whether or not we let these fruit­cakes in and allow peo­ple to decide for them­selves, or whether we say no, we don’t want your dan­ger­ous mes­sage being spread here.
JN: It’s not a mat­ter of free speech, because the guy, or any of these peo­ple, are free to put their mate­r­i­al out on web­sites and wher­ev­er else on the inter­net. The dif­fer­ence is they can do that over­seas, but do we real­ly need peo­ple like that spread­ing hate, spread­ing racism, in Aus­tralia? I don’t think we do, because… Aus­tralia is a great coun­try, although there are issues of racism, but we do not want to add to that or to make things worse.
BF: Should it be a case-by-case basis? Or do we have some kind of blan­ket rule, and if we do, what is the rule? What’s the yard­stick to mea­sure by?
JN: Prob­a­bly, there would be some kind of prin­ci­ple put out, peo­ple who are incit­ing hatred of oth­ers should not be com­ing, but also it could go on a case-by-case basis, depend­ing, because this would go across the whole polit­i­cal spec­trum and reli­gious spec­trum, there’s a whole lot of nut­ters out there.
BF: There seems to be a bit of a clus­ter of cas­es of anti­semitism late­ly. I men­tion the Labour MPs in Britain quit­ting because they say there is a prob­lem with­in that par­ty. In France, the yel­low shirt protests. The Malaysian gov­ern­ment ban­ning Israeli ath­letes. The swastikas appear­ing around Bon­di Junc­tion. Is it just me or is there a bit of a clus­ter of cas­es at the moment?
JN: I think it’s more the media is pick­ing it up. In Britain, in the Labour Par­ty, this has been an ongo­ing issue since about 2015 or 2016 when Labour stu­dents at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty first expressed con­cern about the anti­semitism with­in the Labour Par­ty. It’s been build­ing there and they had an inquiry, an inter­nal Labour Par­ty inquiry, which was basi­cal­ly a white­wash and the per­son who con­duct­ed the inquiry found there was noth­ing much there and then she was giv­en a peer­age or some­thing like that. In France, it has always been a prob­lem for many years. For exam­ple, just recent­ly where a young Jew­ish man was mur­dered, because he was Jew­ish, in 2006, a tree ded­i­cat­ed as a memo­r­i­al to him was chopped down this week. There were swastikas paint­ed on 80 graves. We’ve had the yel­low vest move­ment, which is a con­glom­er­a­tion of a whole dif­fer­ent dis­parate groups and ideas, amongst some of those there has been some call­ing Macron “the whore of the Jews”. And a whole lot of anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of the Jews con­trol­ling this or what­ev­er is real­ly tak­ing hold in many parts of the world.
BF: Well, what­ev­er David Icke has to say, he won’t be say­ing it in Aus­tralia. Thank you very much for com­ing on. Julie Nathan is a research offi­cer with the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has decid­ed that the visa of this con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, David Icke, will not go ahead, so he won’t be able to con­duct his con­tro­ver­sial tour in March. He has effec­tive­ly been banned.