‘Wreaking some destruction’: The schism in the Greens driving out Jewish members

Over the past decade, Daniel Coleman tried to address what he and other members of the Greens had identified as a growing problem: antisemitism within the party. He helped found the Jewish Greens Working Group in Victoria and along with the late David Zyngier, a local government councillor and respected party figure, worked to develop policies and educate party members about the ancient hatred.

In the days and weeks after Hamas’ atrocities in southern Israel, the muted response from the party’s elected officials convinced him the project had failed. The Greens had not adopted a policy on antisemitism proposed by the working group and, more distressingly, he says the party appeared to give little thought to the Jews murdered, raped and taken hostage by terrorists.

“It was brought home to me after October 7 that Jewish lives were just not a concern to the Australian Greens party,” Coleman says from his Melbourne home. “It really became untenable for me to continue as a member.

“I believe that had it been any community other than a Jewish community subject to that sort of attack, the Greens would have spoken out.”

In November last year, Zyngier died of cancer. Coleman mourned his friend. Then he cancelled his membership with the Greens, ending a 40-year association which began before he immigrated to this country from the United States.

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton rose this week in federal parliament, one after the other, to condemn the Greens for seeking to exploit for political ends social divisions created by the war in Gaza, there were party politics in play. But what Albanese and Dutton said went beyond electoral calculus. The raw anger in the PM’s voice sliced through the usual cant and theatrics of question time.

Greens leader Adam Bandt described the politicians’ attacks as outrageous, saying his party had drawn a clear line between peaceful protests and any actions which escalate into violence or destruction of property. He reiterated what has become his party’s three-point mantra. “The Greens condemn antisemitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. And the Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza.”

Coleman believes it is an empty slogan.

The Greens’ abhorrence of the catastrophic loss of life in Gaza, eight months into a conflict that continues to frustrate the diplomatic efforts of neighbouring Arab states and the Biden administration to broker a ceasefire, is genuine and heartfelt. So far, more than 36,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of using starvation as a war tactic.

Less than a month after October 7, Coleman was dismayed when Bandt posted promotional material for a “stand with Gaza” rally in Melbourne. In the accompanying image, Israel is wiped from the map and replaced by a “Free Palestine” taking in all of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank.

Coleman says this is contrary to Greens’ policy, which supports a two-state solution.

“They have done nothing to combat antisemitism or to acknowledge it within the party or to call out and oppose the terrorism of Hamas,” Coleman says.

“It is really all about winning elections. They are looking for votes and they want to shore up the far left as their base. If you like Hamas, your party of choice is going to be the Greens.”

Greens members are precluded from publicly discussing internal party matters. Bandt and former Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam did not respond to interview requests.

How did the Greens arrive at such a juncture? To understand the transformation going on inside the party, the best place to look is the Australian Greens Victoria.

The Victorian Greens is administratively controlled by a 15-person state council. A month ago, elections were held to decide half the positions. Shortly before nominations were opened, the constitution was changed to remove a requirement to be a party member for at least two years before serving on state council, and a further requirement to be a member for a year to vote in state council elections.

The change removed a perceived anomaly within the constitution. The result was the elevation of a group of predominantly young, inexperienced political activists into positions of responsibility within the party. One has just started work as a school teacher. In a campaign statement, she said she wanted to convince the public that it’s possible to live in a socialist utopia. Another is a young ACTU campaigner who said the party needed to do more to provide a home for politically active socialists.

Another is a university student who described themselves in their campaign statement as a secular Jewish person and is now in charge of the Jewish Greens in the state party. Last month, the student formally endorsed the regular pro-Palestine protests outside the State Library of Victoria.

There is also a new state councillor, AJ Judd, who tweets under the handle ‘Non-binary “terrorist”’. Two years ago, Judd advocated “wreaking some destruction” within the party to reconstruct it in a new, hard left image.

Judd’s first attempt was directed against one of the Greens’ own candidates. In a letter to all state councillors on 20 May, Judd accused the party’s candidate for the federal seat of Higgins, Angelica Di Camillo, of indirectly profiting from “Israel’s genocide of Palestinians” because her partner, an aerospace engineer, works for BAE Systems, a multinational defence company that has contracts with the Australian, US and Israeli armed forces.

Di Camillo’s candidacy is unclear, as the AEC has announced its intention to abolish the seat of Higgins. She said that when the election is held, all Greens would be united in favour of peaceful protests for Palestine. “The next federal election represents a historic opportunity to elect more Greens who will advocate to end the invasion of Palestine, and for real action on the cost of living, housing and climate crises,” she said.

Judd did not respond to questions.

At the time of the state council elections, there were 125 active misconduct complaints by Greens party members against each other. “This is not healthy, and as a result many members have quit,” another newly elected state councillor warned.

The elected state councillors will take their seats on July 1. When they do, the party will see an exodus from the council of long-serving Greens members, each with decades of organisational and life experience. “The new guard doesn’t have any experience or wisdom, they don’t understand the importance of playing the longer game,” a Greens member lamented. Another Greens member said the changing face of the party’s organisation was crushing internal debate. “In the Greens, as in society more broadly, there is a strong element of young radicals who are quite absolutist in their view of the world,” they said. “There has always been radical young people but that tendency has seized dominance in the Greens.”

The influence of this shift in the Greens is evidenced by the party’s embrace of a pro-Palestinian protest movement that, in the eight months since October 7, has progressively adopted slogans, chants, dress and symbols favoured by Hamas and other militant Palestinian organisations.

A graphic example was left outside the electoral office of Labor MP and former ACTU president Ged Kearney last Friday by keffiyeh-wrapped members of Darebin4Palestine, a protest group centred in Melbourne’s deep-Green local government area.

Amid Palestinian flags, an invitation for Kearney to “resign, genocide” and “F— the ALP” graffiti on the walls of her office, a placard made a play on the well-known Palestinian liberation chant: “From the River to the Sea, Death to the ALP.” The placard also carried an upside down red triangle; iconography used by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas which carried out the 7 October attacks.

The vandalism outside Kearney’s office was part of a “Day of Action Against the ALP” co-ordinated between pro-Palestinian groups and promoted by one of the Greens Victorian State MPs, Gabrielle de Vietri, to her Instagram followers. On the same day, Labor MP for Wills Peter Khalil needed a police escort for staff to safely exit through protesters who had blockaded the front and rear entry to his electoral office in Coburg.

Khalil’s seat of Wills is on the front line of Labor’s electoral battle with the Greens, who have pre-selected popular former state leader Ratnam to try to win a federal seat which, under the Australian Electoral Commission’s proposed redistribution, would become marginal. However, there is a perverse irony in Khalil, the son of Egyptian migrants whose father and grandfather fought in wars against Israel, being targeted over the plight of Palestinians. Two of his staff members who needed security protection to leave work are Muslim women.

Khalil says every citizen has the right to protest government policy but the Greens, in their determination to harvest votes from a tragic conflict and loss of innocent life in Gaza, were putting something else at risk.

“They are standing there, speaking at these protests, encouraging and enabling radicalised positions and violent imagery and rhetoric,” he tells this masthead. “On top of that, they are riding a tidal wave of misinformation and disinformation. They are lighting a match, throwing it into the bushes, watching it burn and then stepping back and claiming no responsibility for damage caused by the fire.

“I am really concerned and this goes beyond politics. As elected representatives, we have a responsibility to unite Australians and protect our democracy and ensure community safety and cohesion. You have got a political party that has representatives in parliament who are fanning the flames of hatred and division and grievance and tearing asunder the social fabric for short-term political gain. It is not the party of Bob Brown any more. That’s for sure.”

If Ratnam has concerns about what happened outside Khalil’s office, she showed none two days later when she addressed the weekly pro-Palestinian rally outside the Victorian State Library. Quoting from Martin Luther King’s famous letter from Birmingham jail, she warned against “moderates who are more devoted to order than they are to justice”.

“If you have a heart, if you have a conscience, if you have any morality, you get what’s happening. You’re turning out like here, speaking up, demonstrating, protesting and escalating and doing everything you possibly can.” In a speech last month at the University of Melbourne, she urged student protesters to “keep being radical and get more radical”.

RedBridge pollster Kos Samaras said the Greens strategy was working among young voters, with his latest survey showing that 28 per cent of voters between the age of 18 and 34 say they will vote Green at the next federal election. The flipside, he says, is that the party is losing support among older voters.

He says that, like the Liberal Party in Victoria, the Greens are becoming an extreme version of what they used to be.

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