Australian judge rejects IHRA antisemitism definition, rules ‘F*** Israel’ graffiti not antisemitic

Australian man, Mohommed Farhat, carried out a series of vandalism offenses in November 2024, including spray-painting slogans such as “PKK,” “PKK coming” and “F*** Israel” on vehicles and buildings.Follow us on Google A PRO-ISRAEL rally takes place at The University of Sydney last year.(photo credit: Lewis Jackson/Reuters)AUGUST 31, 2026 18:21Updated: AUGUST 31, 2026 18:41An Australian judge rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and ruled that “Fuk Israel” graffiti is not antisemitic.NSW Supreme Court Justice Desmond Fagan made the statements in the recent State of New South Wales v Farhat ruling.The case concerns an Australian man – Mohommed Farhat – who committed a series of vandalism offenses in November 2024. This included spray-painting slogans such as “PKK” and “PKK coming,” referring to the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (although Fagan concluded that Farhat didn’t know what the abbreviation stood for) and “Fuk Israel” on vehicles and buildings in Sydney suburb Woollahra, and setting fire to a vehicle.He pleaded guilty and received a 20-month prison sentence.The NSW government subsequently sought an extended supervision order (ESO) under the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017. An ESO would have imposed 55 conditions on him after his sentence expired, significantly restricting his liberty.Australian justice. Ilustrative. (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)To obtain the ESO, the state had to establish to a “high degree of probability” that, if released without supervision, Farhat posed an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offense.The state argued that the graffiti was evidence of an antisemitic ideological motivation and potentially of an ideology associated with Hezbollah, and therefore relevant to assessing whether Farhat might commit terrorism offenses in future.Fagan rejected the application.'F*** Israel' not antisemitismHe concluded that “Fuk Israel” slogans were “crude expressions of political hostility to the State of Israel, [and were] not antisemitic according to the ordinary understanding of that concept in the Australian community.”Fagan said that the fact that the slogans were graffitied in a locality where a high proportion of residents may be Jewish “does not imbue the curse with an antisemitic character.”He also said that Farhat “did not understand the slogan to convey hostility to Jews as Jews and he did not intend to express hatred of Jews.”His main argument was that “disparagement of Israel is not antisemitic because the Jewish people are not equivalent to the State of Israel,” and that “many Jewish people criticize Israel.”The judge then cites the Jewish Council of Australia as an example of an anti-Israel Jewish organization, despite it being small and fringe, while decrying the Executive Council of Australian Jewry as a “transparently pro-Israel lobbying organisation.”This sparked significant outrage from mainstream Australian Jewish groups.IHRA doesn't reflect established usage of term 'antisemitic'“The good Jews testify; the bad Jews lobby, and procedural justice, which required giving the ECAJ an opportunity to contest the charge, was blatantly ignored,” said ECAJ.Another controversial part of Fagan’s ruling is the part about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.Fagan said that the IHRA formulation “does not reflect the established usage and understanding of the term ‘antisemitic’ in Australia” and therefore he did not use it to determine whether the slogans spray-painted by the defendant were antisemitic.“The IHRA core text is so verbose and imprecise that it could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed member of the Australian public,” Fagan added.“The IHRA formulation propounds a concept different from that which ‘antisemitism’ has long been understood to describe and appropriates that word to the novel concept.”His language remained unusually polemical for a common-law judge.He argued that IHRA’s 11 examples are designed to include criticisms of Israel “that could not be regarded as hostile to Jews as Jews.”“The [purpose of IHRA] is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel,” he said.The Greens party celebrated the ruling.“The IHRA definition of antisemitism is an imprecise and wide-ranging definition which has no place in prosecutions and the justice system of New South Wales,” said Greens MP and spokesperson Sue Higginson.“Justice Fagan has rightly decried the IHRA definition as incomprehensible to the ordinary and reasonable member of the Australian public.”Follow us on Google