Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney

09/07/2026

JVOIS has joined the Australian BDS Alliance and is adding the B and D to our calls for government sanctions to halt the genocide and apartheid

07/07/2026

Add your voice

We are deeply alarmed by the reports that there is an imminent threat to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s life as a result of torture and other ill treatment he has been suffering while in Israeli custody.

Join us in demanding the Australian government use its diplomatic influence to urgently raise his case, and call for Israeli authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Dr. Abu Safiya: https://www.amnesty.org.au/act-now/call-on-foreign-minister-wong-free-dr-abu-safiya/

Pending his release, we call on the Israeli Prison service to ensure he is fully protected from abuse, granted urgent adequate medical care and allowed immediate visitation by independent monitors.

03/07/2026

We have made a submission to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the Human Rights Bill 2025. The executive summary:
JVOIS supports the Human Rights Bill 2025 and urges the Committee to recommend its passage. NSW is currently among the jurisdictions with the weakest statutory protection of human rights in comparable democracies. Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland have each enacted human rights legislation; comparable common-law democracies including Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have done so as well. A NSW Human Rights Act would bring this State into line with those jurisdictions and place dignity, equality and democratic freedom at the centre of government decision-making.
Our support is informed by our community’s history and by the evidence about what makes minority communities safer. The rights protected by this Bill are precisely the protections that make minority communities, including Jewish Australians, safer: particularly freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, equality, privacy, liberty, humane treatment and fair hearing, and the right to take part in public life.
Repressive and punitive approaches, by contrast, tend to erode social cohesion and harm the very communities they claim to protect.
This submission sets out seven reasons for our support, identifies seven areas where the Bill could be strengthened, and makes fifteen recommendations.

23/06/2026

We have written to the VC of Macquarie University expressing our concern over the firing of Prof. Bayeh

Two senior academics from Macquarie University allege they were targeted for redundancy because of their union activity.

20/06/2026

Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney (JVOIS) has now made seven thematic submissions to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion as well as numerous individual submissions from our member. Together they tell one clear story.

We've argued that the IHRA "working definition" should be rescinded: it's too vague, it conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with hatred of Jews, and it's already being misused. We've shown, through our members’ own testimony, that Palestine solidarity slogans aren't experienced as antisemitic by the Jews who march calling for the end to the genocide. We've drawn on German history and policy as a case study to warn against repressive, speech-restricting laws that fail to make anyone safer. And we've argued that real, evidence-based drivers of antisemitism; Israel’s actions coupled with conflation with Jewish identity, economic inequality, far-right extremism and media polarisation, are being ignored in favour of a politicised, fear-driven narrative that polices dissent within our own community.

Antisemitism is real and serious. But conflating it with political speech doesn't protect Jewish Australians – it undermines both the fight against genuine racism and Australian democracy itself.

Our submissions:
- Defining antisemitism: a critique of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism and recommendations for reliable identification of antisemitism in Australia
- The real drivers of racism and antisemitism in Australia, the case against repressive approaches, and recommendations that will reduce hate while protecting freedom and democracy
- Fear, antisemitism and social cohesion: distinguishing genuine threat from institutional amplification and misclassification
- Germany case study: Repressive legislative frameworks fail to combat antisemitism and undermine social cohesion
- Experiences of antisemitism of Jewish Australians: Testimonies of Jews about attending Palestine solidarity rallies
- Discriminatory antisemitism guidance works against social cohesion
- University of Queensland case study: Use of an antisemitism definition in relation to the decision to cancel Bila, A River Cycle

15/01/2026

We agree with Dr Kaiser that antisemitism must be addressed as part of a structural approach to addressing all forms of racism in our society

15/01/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17u7onbWUN/?mibextid=wwXIfr

14/01/2026

Jewish Voices are signatories to this statement calling for the President of Israel’s invitation to be withdrawn -
https://www.facebook.com/share/16aA289m5c/?mibextid=wwXIfr

12/01/2026

Our submission to the NSW Legislative Assembly Committee on Law and Safety Inquiry – Measures to prohibit slogans that incite hatred

08/01/2026

Jewish Voices will work with the RC to understand how racism against Jewish Australians is linked to structural racism in Australia and how we can work in solidarity with other racialised peoples