Melbourne barrister apologises for tweet comparing Israel to Nazi Germany
A furious row has broken out in Melbourne after a leading Australian barrister posted a tweet comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
Melbourne QC Julian Burnside sparked outrage at the Victoria Bar after he tweeted that Israel’s “treatment of Palestinians looks horribly like the German treatment of the Jews.” The barrister later issued an apology for his tweet and removed it saying that a “friend at the bar” who had lost family during the Holocaust had contacted him and explained why his comparison was offensive.
Subsequently, Mr Burnside’s wife, Kate Durham, tried to defend the tweet but added fuel to the fire when she told Jewish federal politician Josh Frydenberg that Mr Burnside “knew more about the Holocaust and its subsequent trials” than Mr Frydenberg, adding: “You’re just a Hungarian.”
She subsequently removed her tweet, apologised, and said that she was “unreservedly sorry” for her remarks and that in defending Mr Burnside, she had “made things worse.”
The row had escalated sharply after Mark Leibler, senior partner at one of Australia’s top law firms and a Jewish community leader, expressed his “astonishment” that the President of the West Australia Bar Association, Martin Cuerden, had criticised a senator for suggesting that Mr Burnside should face sanctions from his professional body.
Mr Leibler also rebuked Mr Cuerden for failing to condemn the “blatantly antisemitic post” and said it was “disingenuous at best” for Mr Cuerden to try and defend it “using the principle of free speech.” “Let’s be clear, no one is seeking to limit Julian Burnside’s freedom of speech,” he said.
Mr Leibler also wrote that it was “inconceivable” that in 2021, the president of a State bar association “would suggest that it was ‘a matter of public interest’” for a “respected” member of the Bar to be “spreading antisemitic hate.”
Mr Cuerden subsequently acknowledged that the tweet was antisemitic. Welcoming this acknowledgment, Mr Leibler said that he “hoped and trusted” the Bar Association President now understood the issue had nothing to do with freedom of speech. “People can speak as freely as they wish in this country,” Mr Leibler wrote “but when public figures promote ideas that are antisemitic…their suitability to hold a position of influence is called into question. That is what this issue is about.”
Mr Leibler also noted that by deleting the tweet, Mr Burnside himself “recognised, after the fact, that his comments had crossed the line into antisemitism.”
Mr Burnside is a former high-profile candidate for the Greens Party whose leader Adam Bandt moved to distance his party from the comment.
According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.
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