{"id":844711,"date":"2026-08-05T18:48:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/844711\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T18:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:48:23","slug":"virginia-bell-rejects-suggestion-palestinian-groups-counsel-hijacked-commission-inquiry-hears-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/844711\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Bell rejects suggestion Palestinian group\u2019s counsel \u2018hijacked\u2019 commission, inquiry hears | Antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life in multi-ethnic Australia helped decouple a former skinhead from neo-Nazi groups as he discovered the brotherhood was \u201ca load of lies\u201d.<\/p>\n

The unnamed witness offered his experience to the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion<\/a> on Wednesday, on the same day the commissioner Virginia Bell rejected an assertion proceedings had been hijacked.<\/p>\n

The witness said a somewhat isolated suburban upbringing as the child of British migrants pushed him toward right-leaning skinheads.<\/p>\n

Those friendships, a period of \u201cupheaval\u201d in his life and conflict with a person from a minority background during his time in the defence force helped solidify a hardline supremacist stance.<\/p>\n

But he said working in the wider community eventually helped him leave a neo-Nazi organisation, first for one year, and then in 2013 for good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a good hard look, and I\u2019d also been doing some work in different places where I had been mixing with people of all different ethnicities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these people of different ethnicities were the people that actually had my back and that showed some true brotherhood to me, and I decided that, yeah, [neo-Nazism] was all a load of lies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Great Britain as much as I love Australia. I still identify as very British, you know, but I also am very fervid in the belief that that\u2019s got nothing to do with racist beliefs or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He suggested early intervention and openness to other cultures could have changed his course as a younger man.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, Bell reproached the authors of \u201ctruly abusive, Islamophobic emails\u201d directed at a protest group\u2019s counsel after Tuesday\u2019s hearing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ragni Mathur SC, counsel for Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, asked a Jewish leader about the timeline of Israel\u2019s response to Hamas\u2019s 7 October 2023 attack in the context of a protest held at the Sydney Opera House two days later.<\/p>\n

Alex Ryvchin, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry\u2019s co-chief executive, told the Australian newspaper it was \u201cdeeply concerning that these groups predictably used the opportunity to hijack an examination of lethal antisemitism for their clickbait theatrics and gratuitous slurs against Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, later told News24 Mathur\u2019s questioning was \u201cdisappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Bell, without naming Ryvchin, defended Mathur who \u201cdid not hijack this royal commission\u201d and said counsel appearing should not become subject of attacks.<\/p>\n

The hearing was also told the aesthetics, language and grievances of the radical right were capable of enticing youth without espousing a traditional political ideology<\/p>\n

Modern neo-Nazism is more \u201cperhaps narcissistic, more focused around their identity building\u201d than before, the counter-terrorism expert Julian Droogan said.<\/p>\n

Online content from groups such as involuntarily-celibates or manosphere creators was among the exploitative movements responsible, he said.<\/p>\n

The political sociologist Joshua Roose said antisemitism and blaming Jews for grievances was alluring to the already disenfranchised.<\/p>\n

Individual circumstances \u2013 financial, romantic and broader troubles \u2013 \u201cpushed\u201d many across the political spectrum towards antisemitic narratives, he said.<\/p>\n

Hearings will continue on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Life in multi-ethnic Australia helped decouple a former skinhead from neo-Nazi groups as he discovered the brotherhood was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-844711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}