Bob Carr’s genocide claims are dangerous for social cohesion

Labor’s Friends of Israel group has made this point forcefully. They call for principled criticism, but without resorting to inflammatory analogies or energising conspiracy-style narratives. Their message is clear: debate must be rooted in facts, not driven by rhetorical provocation or latent prejudice.

Once we escalate to claims of genocide we weaken the moral authority of real victims and discredit those advocating policy change. Rather than illuminating public conversation, rhetoric that paints with the broad brush of totalitarian atrocities and erases important historical distinctions only deepens division and invites suspicion.

When invoking a charge as grave as genocide, public figures, who know that what they say commands attention, must be guided by evidence and acknowledge ambiguity where it exists.

This rhetoric sends a clear message: speaking in these terms is no longer scandalous – it is acceptable. Yet the recent firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue, violent threats to Jewish Australians and the vandalism of Jewish property show that such language has real-world consequences.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded more than 2000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024 – a staggering 316 per cent rise year-on-year. That surge demands more than condemnation. It calls for action: legal, educational and cultural measures, such as those outlined in the government’s new antisemitism plan strategy.

The challenge is to stem the normalisation of bigotry, which occurs when inflammatory rhetoric is not tolerated as serious commentary. When we gloss over the moral and legal distinctions between wartime conduct and genocide, we risk making antisemitism socially acceptable – something today’s social justice warriors claim to oppose.

Australia is a liberal democracy with a strong multicultural foundation: robust debate, freedom of expression and protection from hate and violence. In a plural society, we do not need uniformity of opinion, but we do need boundaries of decency. When historical distortions obscure those boundaries, what follows is not diversity of thought, but moral chaos.

The antidote is moral clarity: informed public debate, careful language and clear-eyed legal definitions. What we need is serious, sober political discourse.

Our task is to ensure that moral outrage does not become moral distortion. Some analogies are beyond the pale – not because Israel is beyond criticism, but because history demands truthfulness. The normalisation of hate is not the price of liberty. It is its undoing.

Peter Kurti is director of the culture, prosperity and civil society program at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Photo by Soufiane Chafiq.