The Israel lobby wrote itself a dictionary. Governments adopted it, regulators enforced it and police made arrests under it. Then it met a judge who required evidence and it collapsed in an afternoon. 

Justice Desmond Fagan’s decision in State of New South Wales v Farhat wrecks the architecture designed by Jillian Segal, adopted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and enforced across Australia.

Australians have been instructed that hostility towards Israel is hostility towards Jews. The lobby never won that argument. It changed the dictionary instead.

Albanese supplied the imprimatur. NSW Premier Chris Minns supplied the muscle. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli criminalised protest slogans. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas carried the doctrine into the South Australian parliament.

Different parties. Different states. The same obedient genuflection.

The vandal who wasn’t an antisemite

Mohommed Farhat was a vandal for hire. He caused more than $110,000 in damage, torched a vehicle and painted “Fuk Israel” across Woollahra.

Fagan found he was recruited and did not know what some slogans meant. Yet the State of NSW wanted him branded an antisemite and shackled with 55 terrorism supervision restrictions.

His judgment is an autopsy of how propaganda becomes administrative fact. Police, prosecutors, the Crown Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions repeated an unexamined claim until repetition replaced proof.

The label was false and “injustice to the defendant” followed.

Then Fagan turned to the definition. The IHRA formulation promoted by Segal and embraced by Canberra was, he found, “verbose and imprecise” and “detached from the reality of common........

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