Australia’s Jewish community leaders score an own goal over the Holocaust
Recently, NSW soccer team Sydney United 58 was fined A$15,000 by Football Australia (FA) after some of their fans displayed Nazi symbols and salutes at last month's Australia Cup final.
Picture: Australian Jewish News
It also issued suspended sanctions which include further fines, a points deduction and suspension from the Australia Cup.
The FA had previously issued a lifetime ban to one spectator (aged 19 according to some reports) for making "a fascist salute or similar gesture" during the final, where semi-professional football side Sydney United 58 lost 2-0 to Macarthur FC at the Western Sydney Stadium.
The first non-A-League side to reach the final, Sydney United 58 were previously known as Sydney Croatia / Getty Images
According to an article in the Australian Jewish News, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) and its CEO Darren Bark came out with all guns blazing, saying the displays at the Australia Cup final “were some of the ugliest scenes we have seen by spectators at a football game in our country”.
“The response by Football Australia to these deplorable incidents is to be commended. We hope the sanctions issued to Sydney United will act as a warning to other clubs that racist behaviour of any kind will not be tolerated,” Bark said.
“Fighting hate is everyone’s responsibility. The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies is proud to work with Football Australia and Sydney United on programs to counter antisemitism and other forms of discrimination,” noted Bark.
While it is true that many eastern European communities and some sports teams in Australia have struggled with far Right and even neo-Nazi sympathisers and symbolism, the response from the Board to one teenage boy (out of a crowd of some 16,500 spectators) doing an undoubtedly stupid and disgusting gesture seems a bit over the top considering this same body actively ignores - some would go as far to say covers up - real life Nazis literally marching right outside their front door.
As was pointed last year by Lev Golinkin in the world’s oldest Jewish magazine, The Forward, the JBD seems to have no problem with Nazi statues in public, like that of Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović (1893–1946) in front of a Canberra center named in his honour.
Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović statue in front of the Serbian Centre Draža Mihailović, Canberra (Wikimedia Commons).
Picture: The Goldman Report
It is a historical fact that Mihailović’s Chetniks, a Serbian nationalist militia, had collaborated with the Nazis and the Nazi puppet government in Serbia.
And we are not talking about just one statue. There are many just like it across Australia, used at least a couple of times each year to honour and celebrate not just Serbian Nazi collaborators but also Allied and Australian soldiers.
Serving and former Australian soldiers salute Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović statue in Blacktown, Sydney, 2022 / Facebook
Picture: Serbian Chetniks with German Nazi allies (left) and with Australian flag at ANZAC Day march, Sydney, 2016 / The Goldman Report
It also doesn’t seem to bother either the JBD or the Australian Jewish News how Australia officially honours an SS-led unit that was under the direct overall command of one Otto Globocnik, also known as the ‘The Worst Man in the World’ - a sadistic SS officer who committed suicide shortly after his capture by British soldiers in May 1945.
Picture: The Goldman Report
The unit in question, known as the Dinara Division combined in 1944 with a bevy of other Nazi collaborationist groups such as Dobroslav Jevđević's Chetniks, Ljotić's Serbian Volunteer Corps, and the remnants of Nazi quisling Milan Nedić's Serbian Shock Corps to form a single unit under the command of this evil creature, who also went by the name SS Leader Odilo Globocnik.
Hitler’s Man in the East & the head of the Dinara Division – Otto Globocnik
Dinara Division field commander Momcilo Djujic (extreme right) and two of his senior commanders pose for photo-op with German Nazi Officers, 1944 / Wikipedia
It is a matter of public record that on October 2, 2017, the Victorian branch of the RSL bestowed Life Membership on two brothers, Toma and Marko Banjanin, who according to their own public testimony, were members of the Dinara Division, that was under direct German SS command for the last 18 months of the war.
Victoria RSL head Dr. Robert Webster (left) awarding life membership to the Banjanin brothers, who were members of the SS-led Serbian Chetnik Nazi collaborationist Dinara Division/ Facebook
And while the entire Serbian Chetnik movement is classified by Yad Vashem and most historians as being a ‘Nazi collaborationist’ force, the Dinara Division was inextricably linked to the Nazi war machine as it was set up by the Italian fascists and then under direct German SS command as of September 11, 1943.
Chetniks with Germans, 1943 / The Goldman Report
Despite Yad Vashem stating: “As the Chetniks increased their cooperation with the Germans, their attitude toward the Jews in the areas under their control deteriorated, and they identified the Jews with the hated Communists. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans”, the JBD has no issue with their inclusion in official Australian allied celebrations.
Serbian Chetniks marching in ANZAC Day parade, April 25, 2021 / Facebook
Several journalists, civil rights campaigners and ex-RSL members have approached a range of national media outlets to point out the absurdity of having Nazi’s and former SS-run units march with Australian veterans only to be told by a Rupert Murdoch-owned online news portal that ‘It’s not news - Australian’s don’t care about Nazis anymore’.
Picture: Senior NSW RSL leadership team and a serving ADF Officer lunching with Serbian Chetniks in Sydney, April 2022 / Facebook
This leaves Australia in the absurd position as a country that decries it will stamp out the evil of Nazism while at the same time allowing a group of Nazi collaborators from Serbia to publicly march as ‘Allies’, despite the fact this same group is forbidden to march as ‘Allies’ even in Serbia itself.
This is who Australia ‘celebrates’ each year as an Allied force / Wikipedia
Has the JBD as much as uttered a word publicly about this or complained to the RSL or Australian government?
As far as the Goldman Report can ascertain, that answer is a firm no. But when it comes to pointing out random teenagers acting like idiots at soccer games, the entire leadership of the Board reacted as if its collective hair was on fire.
During a time in history when anti-Semitism is once again on the rise across the world and even in Australia, where an Executive Council of Australian Jewry report on anti‑Semitism revealed that from September 2016 to September 2017, the number of anti-Semitic incidents increased by 9.5%, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies finds it more important to carry on over one teenage soccer hooligan while at the same time ignoring an SS-led unit and a collaborationist militia marching opening in Australian streets, side-by-side with Allied veterans.
It’s not clear what message this is supposed to give those fighting Nazis and White Supremacists, but when it comes to the wider community, this is hardly a good look.
After all, it’s these actual Nazis that are the real enemy; Nazis that were responsible for the Holocaust along with their collaborators who killed not only Jews, but also members of other minorities they despised.
Making the situation even more dire, in 2018, it was reported that a number of Chetnik RSL members in Australia have formed alliances with neo-Nazi groups such as the Greek Golden Dawn, which was implicated in the Srebrenica Massacre, nationalist Russian Cossacks on ASIO watchlists and various local far-right extremists like Jim Saleam and Kim Vuga.
Draz Brkljac, (far right), co-head of Serbian Chetniks RSL with Greek Golden Dawn and Russian Cossack members giving far Right Wing neo-Nazi salute.
So for NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Darren Bark to then go on to claim the scenes at the Australia Cup final “were some of the ugliest scenes we have seen by spectators at a football game in our country” is sheer and utter nonsense considering that bona fide Nazis, some even subsidised by Australian taxpayers, operate out in the open without even of word of protest from either Mr Bark or the JBD.
The sight of Australia’s Jewish community leaders wasting time, resources, and media goodwill to condemn a teenage boy accused of making "a fascist salute or similar gesture" at a soccer match brings up many questions.
According to a Football Australia insider, the teenage offender would have received a life ban “regardless of whether the Jewish community said anything or not.”
Moreover, wilfully turning a blind eye to the violent and anti-Semitic far Right is also not in the interests of Australia’s 130,000-strong Jewish community.
There is a name for that kind of behaviour.
One would expect that the leadership of Australian Jewry, some of whom descended from Holocaust survivors would understand this.
