Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Jeremy Jones

Fredrick Toben is in an Australian jail, for continuous, contumacious contempt of court.

He has a record of more than 15 years of promoting the fiction that Jews, academics, politicians and others conspired to hoodwink the rest of the world to believe that the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews during the Holocaust. But it was his refusal to abide by the orders of the Federal Court which was the proximate cause of his incarceration.

Unlike the other individuals who have been ordered by Australian courts to cease diminishing the rights of other Australians to live their lives free of harassment, insult and vilification, Fredrick Toben seemed determined to bring punishment upon himself by flaunting the very gentle “penalty” of being directed to obey this country’s laws.

Holocaust denial was not the only strand of antisemitism within the publications of Toben’s blandly titled “Adelaide Institute”. At various times, he promoted the view that there was never a “Russian Revolution” – but rather a Jewish takeover of Russia. Another recurring Adelaide Institute theme is that Jews, no matter what stream of Judaism they identify with, or how secular, religiously or culturally-disengaged they may be, are automatically and existentially opposed to non-Jews due to the pervasive influence of the Talmud, a body of work the Adelaide Institute neither understood nor sought to understand.

One of the justifications Toben gave for his campaign of assault on history and human decency was the claim that understanding of the Nazi Genocide was not merely one reason some people have sympathy for Israel, but that Israel could not survive if the world accepted his proposition that the Shoah was a mass fraud perpetrated on humanity.

This contention brought Toben invitations to speak at Iranian academic institutions and to extremists in Indonesia.

Toben is in prison, but another individual who has spent decades promoting vicious myths has been elected to the decision-making body of the Fatah movement.

Uri Davis, the man who has the dubious distinction of being the best-known and longest-acting promoter of the claim that Israel practices apartheid, also has the distinction of being simultaneously a Muslim convert and being described in the media as the “first Jew” to serve on the Fatah Council.

I met Uri Davis on the first day of the infamous NGO Forum preceding the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001.

While having a friendly discussion with a dedicated left-wing activist I had met a few year earlier, a scruffy man with an arrogant demeanour walked up to us and after a brief first-name introduction started telling us that he and his colleagues were going to “use the Holocaust”. When pressed, he recommended we come to the session on antisemitism and see for ourselves.

As a speaker, I was already committed to be at that session and saw first-hand what Davis meant.

After the speakers had presented, and after a delay caused by an attempt to violently disrupt proceedings, the session broke up into working groups. I went from group to group to answer questions on my paper and to assist in drafting resolutions.

Davis was there, arguing that antisemitism was irrelevant and opposing Holocaust commemorations. His “compromise” point was to commemorate “holocausts”, including the one he and his motley crew of mainly South African followers claimed Israel either had committed or was in the process of committing.

When he was out-voted, he mockingly stated that he had the overwhelming backing of the most influential people at the NGO Conference – a fact that, while true, was hardly a feather in his hat.

Fredrick Toben has not been promoted to the pantheon of martyrs to the cause of free speech, as Australians have too much common sense and decency to fall for that furphy. But amongst those who have railed against his imprisonment have been some of the most prominent anti-Israel campaigners, who seem to think any antisemite is a natural ally and any acceptance of the Shoah as reality weakens their cause.

No one should be surprised.