Plenary Session One

The Devil that will not die: Understanding the new Anti-Semitism

A crisis of anti-Semitism – has enveloped Britain’s Labour Party and poses a serious threat to Jeremy Corbyn’s hopes of ever moving into 10 Downing Street. It is also a resurgent problem in other European countries, such as France, where Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized, businesses daubed with graffiti, and people assaulted in the streets. In the USA, worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh were gunned down in October 2018. Jews throughout Europe and the USA are reporting a growing sense of unease and anxiety about the emergence of what many commentators have described as “the New Anti-Semitism”.

But what exactly is new about today’s form of an ancient hatred? Associated in the past with right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism today is equally likely to come from the left as well as from within some branches of Islam – and even from Muslim members of western legislatures, such as the US Congress. Anti-Semitism is still directed at individual Jews and Jewish communities; but increasingly it is also directed at the existence of the state of Israel itself.

Dr Daniel Pipes

Founder and President, Middle East Forum, publisher Middle East Quarterly Journal, (US)

Máté Hajba

Director, Free Market Foundation, (Hungary)

Rev Peter Kurti 

Senior Research Fellow, Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society Program, CIS

Mr Julian Leeser MP

Liberal Party Member for Berowra

Director and Founder of the Centre for Independent Studies

Professor of Public Policy and Director, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University

 

Sociologist, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.
Author of The New Authoritarianism

Director, Free Market Foundation, (Hungary)

Health Director, Health and BioSecurity, CSIRO

Director and Founder, Academy of Ideas, London, (UK)

Founder and CEO, Cognoscenti Group

Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative (NZ)

Australian writer and columnist for the News Limited Press

Research Director, CIS

Programme Co-ordinator of the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of Western Australia

Chinese Canadian human rights advocate

Senior Research Fellow, Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society Program, CIS

CEO and Founding Director, China Matters

Former Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives and Cabinet Minister

Pro Vice-Chancellor Arts and Academic Culture, and Professor of History, Australian Catholic University

Cancer researcher and clinical oncologist, with Genesis Care Newcastle

Founder and President, Middle East Forum, publisher Middle East Quarterly Journal, (US)

Professor of Economics, University of Melbourne

Senior Research Fellow and Director, Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society Program, CIS

Internationally acclaimed novelist and journalist, (US)

Head of Economic Research, Reserve Bank of Australia

Executive Director, CIS

Professor of Economics at Stanford University; Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and Chair of the Working Group on Economic Policy, (US)

UQ-CSIRO Chair in Personalised Nanodiagnostics, Professorial Research Fellow, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland

Diplomat, American Board of Pathology

Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure

Liberal Party Member for Berowra

Australia’s Ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, Chairman & CEO of Geoff Raby and Associates Ltd based in Beijing

Director of China and Free Societies program, CIS

Senior Research Scholar, Marron Institute of Urban Management, New York University, (US)