Today I want to talk about cancellation in Australia. I want to talk about it under the same heading as the Green party in the UK, at a meeting where they had to have a \u2018safe room\u2019 for Jewish Greens, passing a motion that Zionism is racism but failing to pass the addition that Jews should be safe in the UK. That heading is sometimes \u201cAll is well just as long as we make decisions for you.\u201d That heading can also be \u201cAs long as no-one knows what\u2019s actually happened here, we can pretend everyone\u2019s safe.\u201d Mostly it\u2019s \u201cJews must remain silent here. We do their thinking for them.\u201d.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time there was a mass murder in Israel. October 7 2023. Many people who had been closet antisemites came into the open. A bunch of Jewish writers and artists and others who create needed to talk, so someone made a Whatsapp channel and lo, they worked towards healing. A few of them (maybe five, maybe six (I read the material in question, but didn\u2019t count) talked about writing letters to make it clear that Jewish Australians and Australian Jews were scared by the rise in antisemitism. Someone doxxed all 600+ people in that group. Their argument was mainly about evil Jews plotting. So many in the Arts in Oz were hurt by this and Jews have been given purity tests for literary festivals. I was not doxxed myself, because I can\u2019t get WhatsApp to work so I never joined the group, so I\u2019m only targeted by those purity tests and by erasure. I didn\u2019t have to move house for safety and over that time, I have only received one death threat.<\/p>\n
This was in 2024. So the problems are now past for Jews in the creative industries in Australia? Not at all.<\/p>\n
I myself (undoxxed) am still only welcome at most events as an audience member as long as I carry or wear nothing that indicates I\u2019m Jewish. My home town excludes me more than anyone: I am not (at the moment of writing this post) on the programme for anything to do with writing in the Canberra region. When I ask, I am given \u2018reasons.\u2019<\/p>\n
Some organisers elsewhere won\u2019t let any racism enter their doors and do not exclude Jewish writers. I was both delighted to be a minor part of the Sydney Fringe (I gave a workshop and panel at the science fiction weekend at Old Government House) and why I celebrate whenever I am welcome into a place without anyone wanting to shout \u201cFree Palestine\u201d or \u201cJews murder babies\u201d at me.<\/p>\n
The doxxing happened in 2024. I say this again because something important just happened. Jewish artists and writers and musicians created a film called \u201cCancelled,<\/a>\u201d Explaining what has happened through the life of four who had to deal. It was shown at a film festival\u2026 then it was cancelled<\/a>. Right now, it\u2019s impossible to see.<\/p>\n First doxxing then cancellation \u2013 this sums up three years of life in the Arts in Jewish Australia for most of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I want to talk about cancellation in Australia. I want to talk about it under the same heading as the Green party in the UK, at a meeting where they had to have a \u2018safe room\u2019 for Jewish Greens, passing a motion that Zionism is racism but failing to pass the addition that Jews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636,56],"tags":[656,112,580,970,88,39],"class_list":["post-4874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-life-experiences","tag-antisemitism","tag-australia","tag-jewish","tag-jews","tag-politics","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}