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Highlights from the leaked Zionist groupchat
Alex McKinnon
February 05, 2024
In January it was revealed that Lawyers for Israel, a large WhatsApp group of Zionist lawyers, was coordinating to successfully pressure ABC management into firing journalist Antoinette Lattouf for her statements in support of Palestinians. Last week the existence of another group was revealed when the transcript of a WhatsApp groupchat called ‘J.E.W.I.S.H Australian creatives and Academics’ was leaked to pro-Palestinian activists.
The groupchat’s original purpose was to collect signatures for the open letter published by Jews 4 Humanity in November. Since then, however, some members of the group have been coordinating to have artists, writers, actors, academics, journalists and others who’ve expressed support for Palestine fired, denied work, professionally censured or otherwise silenced.
At the time of the transcript being leaked the groupchat contained more than 600 people. Notable figures in the group include high-profile comedian John Safran, songwriter Deborah Conway, Warner Music Australasia president Dan Rosen, award-winning gender equity advocate and 2022 independent ACT Senate candidate Kim Rubenstein, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions head of disaster solutions Associate Professor Roslyn Prinsley, Archer Magazine editor-in-chief Roz Bellamy, Bell Shakespeare board member Michael Napthali, Sydney Chamber Opera director of opera Netta Yashchin, Splendour in the Grass talks and ideas program curator Fay Burstin, Always Live Victoria program director Emily Ulman, Swinburne University of Technology School of Health Sciences dean Janet Hiller, former Age journalist Julie Szego, former ABC RN Drive presenter Ramona Koval, journalist and author Ginger Gorman, former News Corp columnist Darren Levin, Archibald Prize-winning artist Yvette Coppersmith, and Real Publishing founder Romy Moshinsky.
This is not a comprehensive list — the group includes art gallery owners and curators, psychiatrists, psychologists, academics, teachers and business owners. While names are published, other identifying information such as emails, phone numbers and home addresses has been redacted. There are also a significant number of messages that were deleted by the group’s administrator, author Lee Kofman, before the transcript was leaked for being “inflammatory”. While links to external pages are usually viewable, the transcript does not include images of screenshots posted in the groupchat, which can strip some conversations of context.
The transcript is extremely long, running from the groupchat’s formation on October 30 to the leak on January 17. It contains an enormous amount of information, much of which is being collated on Instagram by accounts like @fortressofoppression and Matt Chun, but which is being shared piecemeal across different platforms.
The consequences of the groupchat’s leak are currently playing out across a lot of different artistic, activist and academic spaces, especially in Melbourne. I’m not privy to a lot of those communities so it’s pretty likely there are things of import that I’m missing due to a lack of background knowledge. If you know of any part of the transcript I don’t cover below that you think deserves another look please reach out.
Any images below with horizontal white lines indicate separate parts of the transcript that I’ve put together to make the context clearer.
Overland
The groupchat identifies literary magazine Overland as a priority target. Editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk have been vocal in their support for Palestine and local Palestinian writers and artists. The transcript details an attempt to pressure the Victorian government into withdrawing $80,000 in annual funding to Overland unless Dunk “apologises or resigns” for an essay he published in November, ‘To Let Suffering Speak’.
It also reveals attempts to have Araluen and Dunk fired from their lecturing positions at Deakin University. J.E.W.I.S.H Australian creatives and Academics coordinated with Lawyers for Israel to that end.
Campus Watch
The group also worked with Lawyers for Israel on an initiative called Campus Watch to “ensure that antisemitism (masquerading as anti-Zionism, or otherwise), is removed” from university campuses.
While the term ‘Campus Watch’ in this context appears only to refer to a subgroup of Lawyers for Israel, the name derives from a decades-old initiative run by the Middle East Forum, a Zionist thinktank in the United States, that has been extensively criticised for fostering an environment of “McCarthyism” on college campuses against critics of Israel.
J.E.W.I.S.H Australian creatives and Academics organised at least one effort against an Australian academic they deemed to be too critical of Israel: Dr Mohamad Assoum, an epidemiologist at UNSW’s Kirby Institute. Assoum helped organise a candlelight vigil in December for those killed in Gaza and a parliamentary petition urging the government to investigate whether Australian citizens who travelled to Israel to join the IDF had committed war crimes.
Assoum has also been the target of employment harassment by @balanceisnotonesided, a Zionist Instagram account encouraging people to complain to the Kirby Institute and describing him as a “Jew hunter”.
Click Against Hate
One of the group’s members, Jeremy Kalbstein, is the content author and learning designer of Click Against Hate, a resource for primary and secondary teachers to “teach students about complex issues such as: online dangers, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, freedom of speech, cyber bullying and more”.
Started in Victoria in 2010, Click Against Hate received $3 million in federal government funding in 2020 to make the program available in schools nationwide.
Click Against Hate is run by the Anti Defamation Commission, an organisation that began as a local initiative of Zionist advocacy group B’nai B’rith International. B’nai B’rith believes that “anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism,” and is “committed to fighting against anti-Zionism as we do all other forms of the pernicious virus of anti-Semitism”.
ADC chair Dr Dvir Abramovich is a regular presence on Sky News and in News Corp opinion pages — in November he accused the organisers of the School Strikes for Palestine of “[taking] a leaf out of the Hamas playbook in using kids as human shields”.
Click Against Hate resources are restricted to teachers — if any teachers out there are able to access them I’d love to take more of a look.
Project Oct 7
One of the sources of disagreement within the group was the legitimacy of something called ‘Project Oct 7’. Groupchat member Jonathan Armstrong repeatedly posted messages encouraging other members to join a separate WhatsApp group and participate in an online data collection project supposedly being run “by Israeli tech leaders in partnership with the Israeli government” and intelligence agencies.
Some people who joined the Project Oct 7 WhatsApp group began expressing reservations, noting a lack of information about the ‘project’ elsewhere and details that seemed off, including the project’s logo seemingly being the same as that of Yeshiva University. People were also worried that the group was asking for personal details. Armstrong responded by assuring that Project Oct 7 was legitimate.
Eventually another groupchat member brought the matter up with the Israeli embassy, who told them to immediately leave the Project Oct 7 group. By this time dozens of groupchat members had shared personal information with what may have turned out to be a scam.
Ged Kearney
One member, musician Joshua Moshe, claims to have a personal connection with his local federal MP, who he describes as being “somewhat receptive to my views”.
The member for Cooper, the federal seat that covers the Darebin Council area, is Labor minister Ged Kearney. Kearney’s near-silence on Gaza has made her a particular target of criticism from pro-Palestinian activists, who have staged demonstrations outside Kearney’s office several times in the last few months over the government’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Kearney has seemingly scrubbed old social media content expressing support for Palestinians, such as photos of her at a Palestine solidarity rally in 2021.
Some very normal sentiments
The following was written after one of the group members encountered a protest for Palestine in Hyde Park:
According to the member there were “a lot of people who I think given the slightest provocation would have become violent” at the protest, although apparently telling a kid with a flyer to go fuck themselves doesn’t qualify.
The assumption that supporters of Palestine are inherently violent and waiting for an excuse to attack Jews is one of the groupchat’s recurring themes, especially regarding Muslim and/or Middle Eastern men:
The presumption of latent violence also extends to people wearing the keffiyeh, which is described as “aggressive”. At one point, Joshua Moshe questions why a children’s book would include depictions of people wearing keffiyehs.
For a groupchat that has supposedly been scrubbed of comment deemed “inflammatory” there is a great deal of casual racism towards Muslim, Middle Eastern and North African people, who are presumed to be anti-Semites or Islamic fundamentalists based on statements or actions in support of Palestine.
One instance that stood out to me was a long analogy comparing Palestinians to aliens on a spaceship that is “savagely attacking” Earth.
Another trope that pops up repeatedly is the idea that Palestinian advocates are “grooming” children. This was especially mentioned in the context of the School Strikes for Palestine.
There is also some very strange thinking throughout regarding Aboriginal people. Supporters of Zionism such as Marcia Langton and Nova Peris are lauded, while Indigenous people who point out the parallels between the colonial violence of the Australian and Israeli states have their identity questioned or are accused of “misusing” their Indigeneity.
These are the last ones that jumped out at me. None of them are especially newsy I just think they’re funny.
That’s all I’ve found so far. I’m going to keep skimming through in coming days to see if anything else interesting or newsworthy catches my eye. If you recognise any names or can provide more context to some of the screenshots above please get in touch.
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