A press conference by Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Thursday marked a new stage in the campaign to criminalise mass opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and Australia’s complicity in it.

They were speaking alongside Jillian Segal, who they appointed as the country’s “Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism” last year. Segal and her office have nothing to do with fighting antisemitism or any other form or racism.

Prior to her appointment, Segal was a full-time Zionist lobbyist. In that capacity, she explicitly defended Israel’s bombing of hospitals in Gaza and campaigned against any ceasefire. Segal has continued from where she left off, but now holds an unelected government position and receives federal funding.

The real purpose of the “envoy” role is as witch-hunter in chief in the push to outlaw political opposition to the genocide which is fraudulently conflated with antisemitism. That was made clear by the subject of the press conference, a report Segal has issued.

The report is a proposal for a police-state. Its recommendations are clearly inspired by the attacks on democratic rights being carried out by the fascistic US President Donald Trump.

For almost two years, the Labor government has unconditionally supported Israel, as the Zionist state has committed genocide. It has overseen repeated crackdowns on opposition, including police attacks and anti-democratic legislative changes.

But Segal and the pro-Israel lobby she represents are demanding more. The proposed measures include Trump-style imprisonment of international students and immigrants who defend the Palestinians, the withdrawal of government funding from institutions that fail to suppress opposition and Zionist censorship of the media.

Albanese and Burke fawned over Segal at the press conference. The three of them made totally unfounded assertions of an eruption of antisemitism, demanding an unprecedented response. No evidence whatsoever was provided nor does Segal’s report contain any.

Significantly, one of the only examples Albanese provided was a long-ended encampment outside his electorate office. Albanese presented this as an unacceptable action that had inconvenienced his staffers and ordinary people.

The protest was entirely peaceful, had nothing at all to do with antisemitism, and involved numbers of anti-Zionist Jews. The protest was not directed against Jewish people but at Albanese’s complicity in a genocide.

The centrepiece of Segal’s report is a demand that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism be rolled out and enforced across all levels of government and civil society.

Segal has stated that this must include not only the definition, which is benign, but also the examples that accompany it.

Those examples include: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Amnesty International and other rights’ groups, having repeatedly declared Israel is practicing apartheid, would fall foul of the definition. As for the comparison between Israel’s actions and those of the Nazis, it is an objective reality. This week for example, Netanyahu, other Israeli leaders and Trump, openly called for the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza and announced the creation of a mass concentration camp.

On the basis of these fraudulent foundations, Segal called for the most wide-ranging assault on democratic rights outside of the two world wars last century, when Australian governments, including those led by Labor, established internment camps and prosecuted anti-war opponents.

* The “Envoy will review, and where appropriate, strengthen federal, state and territory legislation addressing antisemitic and other hateful or intimidating conduct.” Segal has repeatedly described mass, peaceful pro-Palestinian protests as unacceptably intimidating to supporters of the Israeli war crimes.

* Universities would be provided with a “report card” on their progress in suppressing antisemitism, i.e., opposition to the genocide. Those that fall foul will have their federal funding restricted or cut off altogether. Again, Segal is on record as condemning peaceful student encampments opposing the genocide as beyond the pale.

* Funding cutoffs for insufficient rigour in persecuting those voicing pro-Palestinian sentiments would extend to virtually all government-funded bodies, including those involved with artistic, academic, community and charity endeavours.

* “The Envoy will advocate to continue to have the appropriate authorities investigate sources of overseas funding entering public institutions, including universities, which might drive extreme ideologies.” That is the grounds for a McCarthyite witch-hunt, which Segal’s report does not even attempt to justify.

* Segal demands that the school curriculums be overhauled across the country, to teach students about the perils of antisemitism. Given that the Holocaust is already widely taught in schools, and Segal’s fraudulent use of the term antisemitism, what she is proposing is a course for children of anti-Palestinian propaganda.

* Migrants and refugees will have to be subjected to far more stringent tests on their attitudes to antisemitism. The Labor government has already overseen draconian processes for the handful of Palestinian refugees allowed to enter the country. On Thursday, it raided and detained a 62-year-old Palestinian grandmother on the basis of a secret adverse security finding from the country’s spy agencies.

The Zionist organisations with which Segal continues to collaborate have repeatedly stated that no Palestinian refugees should be permitted to enter Australia, because they all may be terrorists.

* “The Envoy will monitor media organisations to encourage accurate, fair and responsible reporting and assist them to meet their editorial standards and commitment to impartiality and balance and to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives.”

* Social media must be monitored and censored to prevent antisemitism, which Segal identifies as opposition to Israel, with the hostility of young people to the genocide a particular concern.

Throughout the 20-page report, Segal slips from describing the powers as hers, to deeming them as measures that would have to be instituted by governments. Albanese and Burke hailed the proposal for dictatorial powers, but did not immediately commit to implementing all of them, no doubt concerned about public opposition.

Segal has stated that it is not the government alone that can implement the changes she is calling for, given that they touch on every aspect of society.

In two interviews, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporters pushed back against Segal’s demands for authoritarian control over the media. In the first, Segal could not describe a single instance of the promotion of antisemitism by the ABC.

In the second, Segal incoherently claimed that the ABC had, “six months ago,” ascribed the bombing of a hospital in Gaza to Israel, when it was accidentally carried out by Palestinian militants. Segal appears to be referencing an incident that occurred in October, 2023, i.e., almost two years ago, not six months ago.

Israel’s lying claim that the hospital was bombed by Palestinians was rejected by rights’ organisations. Moreover, the Zionist regime has since proven in practice its readiness to target medical facilities, demolishing all of those that service the population of the Gaza Strip.

The Jewish Council of Australia, an anti-Zionist organisation, has correctly stated that Segal’s proposals have nothing to do with combating antisemitism, but will stoke racism and division.

The fact that Segal’s recommendations are clearly derived from Trump underscores the fraudulent claim that any of this is remotely connected to fighting antisemitism. Trump’s cabinet includes out and out antisemites, and the would-be American Fuhrer has repeatedly followed the playbook of Hitler.

Segal is a Zionist ideologue. More significant is the response of the Labor government. Its open embrace of the Zionist witch-hunting, following occasional phony attempts to distance itself from the genocide, signals its full support for the final ethnic-cleansing operation that is underway in Gaza.

What Labor is carrying out in Australia is paralleled by the Labour government of Keir Starmer in Britain, which is seeking to proscribe Palestine Action, an anti-genocide activist group, as a terrorist organisation.

In both cases, the assault on democratic rights and support for genocide is bound up with the broader eruption of imperialist militarism, threatening a new world war. Britain is on the frontlines of the US proxy war against Russia. Australia is central to Washington’s plans for a catastrophic conflict against China.

The central lesson is that the fight against authoritarianism, war and genocide cannot be advanced through plaintive appeals to these governments. It requires an independent movement of the working class, based on a political struggle against Labor, the entire political establishment and a capitalist system that is returning humanity to the worst horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.