Since Israel launched its offensive on Gaza in October last year, supporters of the war have waged a worldwide campaign to smear legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Vocal opponents of the war have been fired, blacklisted, and intimidated. Palestinians themselves have been the biggest victims of this campaign.

In response, a wave of opposition to this intimidation has emerged from Jewish communities. Conservative Jewish organizations have attempted to conceal dissent or present themselves as representing a monolithic community — but many young Jews are now openly defying them and opposing the war, Zionism, and the occupation.

In Australia, a group of progressive Jewish activists has formed the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) to confront the establishment’s equation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel. The group takes its name from the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, a left-wing organization that represented Australian Jews in the 1940s. The JCA rejects claims from groups like the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) that Jews are “one people, with one mission and one destiny” and that they hope “for the swift and complete victory of the heroic forces of the IDF.”