Earlier this week we woke up to news of The Lancet confirming what was already widely known: that the numbers of Palestinians murdered in Gaza by Israel far exceeds the 40,000 or so that has been repeated for months, and are estimated to be closer to 186,000 — or approximately 8 per cent of Gaza’s population. Numbers do not do justice to explaining what this actually means, nor to articulating what’s happening throughout the rest of Palestine.

No one will be shocked to learn that Anthony Albanese said nothing about this on social media, or elsewhere. Penny Wong didn’t tweet about it, and neither did Andrew Giles. These genocidal murders are seemingly irrelevant to them. Or perhaps they were all still too busy asserting that there’s no place for Muslims in politics when they act as Muslims.

What we now know is that the government was getting ready to announce on Tuesday morning morning the appointment of a “Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism”. We can talk about the person they’ve appointed — who has been part of the Zionist lobby for a long time, and in October last year told an audience at a ‘United with Israel’ event in Sydney that “the barbarians have breached the gates”, such that her appointment ensures that any speaking up for, or acting in solidarity with, Palestine and Palestinans will continue to be depicted as antisemitic. But the truth of it is that there is no appropriate person for this role, because the role simply should not exist.

Australia isn’t the first country to create this kind of role. They exist in a few countries, and work together under the SECCA (or Special Envoys and Coordinators Combatting Antisemitism) forum, which is part of the World Jewish Congress — the conference that Australia’s new envoy will be attending next week in Buenos Aires. Clearly, then, there was an external deadline which prompted the government to make the appointment. And so they did, regardless of the fact that this would not be accompanied by the parallel “Special Envoy for Islamophobia.”

The pressure to get to this point was significant, the lobbying explicit. The Jewish Independent — a conservative publication which has been known to smear left-wing Jews (full disclosure, this includes me) — has trumpeted its involvement, writing: “The appointment follows an extensive campaign by The Jewish Independent and other communal organisations, which have been calling for the creation of a position to fight antisemitism since December 2023.” Zoe Daniel and Allegra Spender have been public about their joint campaign.

While the government is also seemingly trying to create an Islamophobia Envoy, it’s not clear that anyone wants that job (the Islamophobia Register hasn’t even been consulted, their founder and chair, Mariam Veiszadeh, has said). Furthermore, in doing so, it participates in the furthering of a false and harmful binary. It is simply not true that Jews and Muslims are two distinct groups who are counterposed to each other. It is not true that antisemitism is a form of racism that requires distinct and primary concern in our polity today. It is not true that the racism that is flourishing in our society right now can be cured, or even lessened at all, by the creation of these two Special Envoys. On the contrary, they will do great harm. Making Jews a hypervisible and distinct group with special needs who sit outside of history, politics, or regular society, is an antisemitic technique. And why now for an Islamophobia envoy, when racist violence towards Muslims has long been a problem? In their logic of raising this now, they expose their racism, while Muslims remain entrenched as a less-than. This is disgraceful.

With this pairing move, the government is reinforcing the false idea that the genocide that Israel is waging against Palestinians is a question of different and clashing religions. It is not. It is a matter of colonialism. We must be clear about that.

What the appointments also erase is that the primary racial violence in this country is waged against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We are on sovereign First Nations land. We cannot forget that, even for one second. Did it even occur to the government that the announcement of these Envoys took place during NAIDOC week?

In segmenting off Jews, and Muslims, these Special Envoys function as a technique of racism, pitting groups against each other. But we can only fight against racism by working together, collectively and in coalitions. This is not just rhetoric, but a material and political reality. We will not end racism unless we understand that it functions in multifarious, diverse, and interlinking ways. We will not end racism in this country while we are a settler-colony, relying on racial rule.

This is a time of extraordinary anti-Palestinian racism. In spite of the ongoing genocide, Palestinians and all they are facing routinely get erased in all this race talk, with “Islamophobia” becoming a stand-in. But this is not an appropriate cipher. The stories which are already emerging from the newly established register of anti-Palestinian racism in education settings are bone-chilling. The stories that I hear from my friends, and the things I experience and witness myself, are overwhelming in their violence. We have seen too, in recent days, weeks and months, the relentless bullying and harassment of Senator Fatima Payman, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, Nasser Mashni, and so many others in our media, by our politicians, on the streets, and in workplaces. Kids working in stores wearing Palestinian pins are getting harassed and doxed. Children are being told they can’t speak or write Arabic at school.  People are losing their jobs, and are facing very real violence. It is clear that there is an urgent problem, and that the rhetoric and behaviour of our political and media class contribute to it.

So for the government to stand up and claim that they are appointing this Special Envoy because “there is no place for racism, prejudice or hate in Australia” is to try to gaslight us all. It is both trying to pretend that this racism/prejudice/hate is something done “over there”, by unnamed people; and that Palestinians and those who support them are the key site for producing racism, prejudice and hate. Both of these things are untrue.

These ‘special envoys’ are a form of what I have elsewhere termed ‘cruel care’: a technique of government couched in languages of care and concern that produce harm and racism instead. This vocabulary enables the speaker to claim to be doing good, when in truth the work that is being done is dangerous and injurious. And this is all a distraction from actually dealing with racism and its deadly effects.

For it is clear that there is no safety or justice or anti-racism to be found in state power. We should be refusing these attempts to be incorporated, not celebrating them. Because none of this will stop antisemitism. All of it will help increase all forms of racism.

We have obligations to each other, none of which will be met through the creation of these positions. But what we need to remember is that this isn’t an accident. This isn’t them not knowing what they’re doing. This is the government making a decision about what kind of society they want to shape. This is a government saying to many of us that we simply do not fit and are not wanted. This is a government that is enabling genocide and racism, and who trying to distract us from this fact.

The task before us is difficult, but it is important and necessary. We must keep coming together in ways which are truly anti-racist and which oppose colonisation and genocide from here on Kulin land to Kanaky to Palestine and everywhere in between. We must be creative and we must be staunch. We cannot give up.

From the river to the sea, always was, always will be.