Last week, I posted about QUT’s National Symposium on Unifying Anti-Racist Research and Action, which contained speakers engaging in antisemitism.
One of the most egregious examples was one Sarah Schwartz, a Jew-ish human rights lawyer who heads an organization called the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), which has come out of nowhere following October 7, pretending to represent Australian Jews, while only representing an extremist fringe of Israel-hating ones.
After Schwartz’s antisemitic comments about “Dutton’s Jew” were exposed, she did not apologize. Rather, she claimed her presentation was part of a “comedy debate,” and she wasn’t actually describing actual Jewish people, just Peter Dutton’s conception of us.


And the JCA account has now tweeted this:
Help defend the Jewish Council’s anti-racism work against Murdoch press smear campaign
Over the last week, our Executive Officer, Sarah Schwartz, has been subjected to a strategic, coordinated and racist campaign by the Murdoch press, far-right social media accounts and right-wing pro-Israel groups, which aims to silence her voice and the voices of diverse Jewish people such as ourselves.
Sarah was invited by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) ‘Symposium Unifying Antiracism Research and Action’, led by First Nations academics, to give a presentation at a comedy event titled ‘the Great Race Debate’. The event aimed to critique, in a humorous way, conversations around race in Australia.
Sarah’s speech critiqued and challenged racist stereotypes of Jewish people, pushed by Peter Dutton, Donald Trump and the far-right, which are used to promote division, attack diversity, and push an anti-immigration agenda. In her presentation, she used an image of ‘Dutton’s Jew’ as a visual representation of Dutton’s racist and reductive conception of Jewish people as the defenders of “Western civilisation” against other racialised groups.
Sarah’s reference in her presentation to ‘Dutton’s Jew’ was about Peter Dutton’s racist conception of Jewish people, not actual Jewish people. Against this conception, Sarah spoke about how the Jewish community is diverse and not a monolith. Sarah has worked tirelessly as part of the Jewish Council to open up space for these diverse voices in the beautiful Jewish communities we are a part of and aim to support.
A single image and parts of Sarah’s presentation were leaked to the Murdoch press by a bad-faith actor, who, in his own words, has “co-supported … suppression of” our voices at the Jewish Council of Australia. The sharing of a single image of Sarah’s speech, devoid of any of the context of her presentation, has resulted in a gross misrepresentation of the content and intention of her presentation.
QUT, Education Minister Jason Clare MP, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, are all receiving pressure from the Liberal National Party and Israel lobby groups to condemn Sarah’s presentation. We encourage our supporters to send polite emails to the following people with your support for Sarah and the right of Jewish people to critique and challenge the racist stereotypes which are projected onto us:
•Professor Margaret Sheil AO, QUT Vice Chancellor: [email protected]
•The Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education: [email protected]
•Committee Secretariat, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights: [email protected]This is all part of a campaign to try to silence Sarah, to distract the Jewish Council from our work in fighting against antisemitism and all forms of racism, for human rights and for Palestinian freedom and justice. The campaign aims to send a warning to other Jewish people that they will be smeared, bullied and defamed if they dare to do the same.
The campaign against Sarah includes threats of coordinated complaints to Sarah’s workplaces, attacking her role as a lawyer, targeting her academic affiliations, and threatening to drag her into baseless legal actions. Sarah has been flooded with racist abuse and threats. In particularly egregious examples, the Australian Jewish Association, the National Council for Jewish Women Australia, and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, have made defamatory social media posts attacking Sarah, and some of these groups have allowed offensive and antisemitic comments about Sarah to proliferate on their social media pages.
We are not going to back down in the face of this malicious bullying from the Murdoch Press and Israel lobby and we’re not going to be silent in criticising Peter Dutton for fuelling racism.
We encourage media outlets not to promote this offensive and defamatory campaign aimed at silencing critical Jewish voices.
This response is highly dishonest.
While it is true her presentation was part of a comedy debate, this does not reduce the standard of care when it comes to antisemitism. And her presentation was, indeed, antisemitic.
Contrary to her claim, it was not just a single image of her speech, devoid of any of the context of her presentation, that was shared. Heck, I was one of many who shared way more than that:
A hideous, antisemitic display by Jew-ish Israel-hater and antisemitism apologist @Sarah__Schwartz of @jewishcouncilAU, at a @QUT "anti-racism" symposium no less. cc: @PeterDutton_MP pic.twitter.com/9jF8pL3x4B
— 🎗️ David Lange (@Israellycool) January 23, 2025
It is clear from her presentation that “Dutton’s Jew” is not meant as a mere conception. As you can hear, she claims “Dutton’s Jew” “has really, really helpfully provided a human shield for him to talk about some of his favorite topics” and “His party no longer needs to defend the right to be bigots, because “Dutton’s Jews” can do this for him.”
In other words, Schwartz is describing Jews who exist, and not just in Peter Dutton’s head.
And if you analyze the slide of Dutton’s Jew, many of the bullet points describe the vast majority of Jewish people in the world;

We do promote ‘Judeo-Christian’ values, and we are wary of the (pro Hamas) protesters, for example. Some of the other points are misrepresentations of our views; for instance “hates the ‘radical left'” and “thinks of antisemitism as the only form of racism” is a misrepresentation of our taking the antisemitism and terror support of the far left very seriously.
As I wrote in my previous post, her presentation paints Australian Jews as privileged, racist, only caring about antisemitism to the exclusion other forms of racism, and malevolently working with politicians for nefarious purposes – while undermining the very real menace of antisemitism. There was also nothing “conceptual” about her attack on Christian friends who protest against antisemitism.
Her dishonesty does not end there. Her claim that she has been attacked as part of a “strategic, coordinated and racist campaign by the Murdoch press, far-right social media accounts and right-wing pro-Israel groups” ignores the plethora of voices from across the political spectrum and society condemning her presentation.
For instance, Indigenous Australian academic Marcia Langton wrote this in the Australian:
Now the principle of academic freedom has been significantly undermined with the inexplicable events at the Queensland University of Technology, where a conference billed as an anti-racism symposium hosted Sarah Schwartz, of the Jewish Council of Australia. Much of her presentation, which she claims was a comedy event, is shocking and readily available to all on her X account.
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Her claim to being satirical is deluded. Her claim to communicate the message, that there are “good Jews” like herself who oppose the war in Israel and neighbouring territories and countries, also backfired. She presented a series of hateful stereotypes of Jewish people that have been used to persecute them for centuries and justify genocide, and despite her claimed intent, has managed to reinvent them to show all Jews as bloodthirsty monsters.
She deeply offended Jewish Australians and other Australians, including me. She showed an image of “Dutton’s Jew” and, while I am no fan of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, there was nothing satirical about this message. It was objectively anti-Semitic in its depiction of her nemesis, the “bad Jew”, who she imagines has lost all agency and is an unwitting puppet of various warmongering masters. As a Jewish friend said to me about this, the “good Jew/bad Jew” narrative is the “absolute epitome of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory”.
This narrative seeks to isolate those who do not conform to wider mainstream society expectations. Sarah Schwartz has claimed her Jewish identity as a licence to broadcast inane, hateful nonsense about her fellow Jewish Australians in her absurd and ineffective attempts to support Palestinians. She is entitled to her views about Israel and the war with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, but she is not entitled, even though Jewish, to be anti-Semitic towards Jewish Australians.
What’s more, Schwartz’s claim that pressure from the Liberal National Party and Israel lobby groups led to her condemnation only serves to play into the antisemitic stereotype of powerful Jews trying to control others through their power over politicians and the media.
Meanwhile, Sarah Schwartz is very much “Nasser Mashni’s Jew”, and I strongly suspect an investigation of the JCA’s funding will confirm this.