News.com, 11 May 2026

Jewish singer Deborah Conway accuses Aussie actor of running anti-Semitic boycott campaign against her

By Clareese Packer and Samina Rakhshani
Read the article online at news.com here.

Jewish singer-songwriter Deborah Conway has accused an Australian actor of running an anti-Semitic boycott campaign against her while speaking outside a hate inquiry.

Fifty-six witnesses were called in the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week, sharing how “Nazi style slurs” are being hurled at children in schools that now look more like prisons due to increased security concerns in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Conway, a Jewish Australian, told the commission several of her shows have been pulled over the last few years, claiming an Australian actor, who she did not name inside the hearing, had sent letters to venues stating “Deborah Conway is a self-confessed Zionist and a supporter of genocide”.

The letters also allegedly included words to the effect that if they were to platform her “you are complicit in genocide”.

“I think some of the venues found that incredibly disturbing and they pulled back,” Conway said.

Conway revealed the name of the actor she has accused of running the campaign while speaking outside the hearing, however NewsWire has chosen not to name the woman.

“She signed her name very boldly and openly and she was proud of the letter she had written,” Conway claimed outside the hearing on Monday.

Conway also detailed how in another instance, 70 people wearing balaclavas rocked up to a venue hitting pots and pans together, and said if they went ahead with one of Conway’s shows “we will make sure that we turn up with 300 people, and we will make sure that business is very hard for you”.

“So they pulled it, which I don’t blame them — I would too,” Conway said.

The musician also copped a flurry of online abuse after she and a group of about 600 Jewish creatives were doxxed in February 2024.

“I hope your entire family dies in an air strike and you have limbs amputated without aesthetics — I assume he means anaesthetics,” Conway read to the commission on Monday.

“I hope that after this happens you have no access to clean bandages, antibiotics or food.”

Conway described anti-Zionism as a “genocidal impulse”, telling the hearing that “when people chant from the river to the sea … that is a call to end the entity of Israel”.

“I want there to be peace, I want there to be a two-state solution, I want everyone to just relax. Let everyone eat their hummus and get on with it,” Conway said.

“But unfortunately … we’re not living in the land of unicorns and rainbows.”

She said she can’t bear the idea of young artists who are being targeted and vilified for believing Israel should be allowed to exist.

“That’s their crime, and that’s a crime that I think is completely beyond the pale,” she said.

“When they say Zionism equals Nazism … genocide … and then they end up with a sign that goes in the bin.

“They’re throwing us all in the bin. It’s not going to end well.”

The father of a 14-year-old who survived the Bondi attack with bullet wounds paid tribute to Rabbi Eli Schlanger who died in the Bondi attack on December 14 last year.

The speaker was present at the Chanukah by the Sea event where two gunmen allegedly opened fire, killing fifteen people.

“He was so happy, it was an amazing event ‘til the minute before,” the man said.

He described Mr Schlanger as “larger than life” and “an amazing human being” who was always ready to help.

His 14-year-old daughter was shot while shielding children during the attack, with the man saying his daughter had asked him afterwards “(Dad) why they hate us so much, why they want to kill us?”

The speaker also told the royal commission a Jewish community member brought their Mezuzah — a religious scroll placed at the door of Jewish Homes — to see if it was intact and correct.

Once he opened it he found a “Free Palestine” scroll in it instead of the religious verse.

A 15-year-old Jewish boy, known only as ABB, detailed how he had been bullied since the end of 2024 and was targeted in a Minecraft chat group comprised of children from his school.

Someone had written “I hate the Jews” in the chat group at one stage, but his stomach turned “upside down” after someone commented “rabid filthy rotten gut-wrenching grotesque rabbi yamaka wearing bank owning iron doming Hashem following Jew” on another occasion.

“It made my stomach turn upside down, I really just had to step away from my computer for a little bit and then, when I came back, I think I just closed and logged off for the day,” the teen said.

The children continued with the abuse after the 15-year-old confronted them at school and “told them to stop because it was destroying my mental health”. 

He didn’t tell his parents right away because he thought he could handle it, “but it just got out of hand”.

“I walked into their room and said I have no friends left,” the teen told the hearing.

His mother, ABD, said her son had “tears in his eyes” as he told them how his friends had locked him in a part of the game and left him alone to die.

“Appalled”, ABD said her stomach drops knowing how her son had “normalised” and had to “make his peace” with the ordeal.

“(He) accepted it as part of his school life,” she said.

His parents said the school handled the situation really well and held an investigation, with three of the children also apologising to ABB.

However if ABB is near the group too long at school they tell him to leave, the boy said.

“Every time I go up to them, because some of my other friends sit with them … if I stay there for a little too long, they’ll be like ‘get out of here’ or something like that,” ABB said.

ABB also told the hearing of how a group of Year 12s recently shouted something along the lines of “Hitler was right to kill them all”.

“I turned around expecting to see somebody staring at me or pointing at me but I found it was just a group of Year 12 boys who were just talking amongst themselves using it for general conversation,” he said.

The boy’s father, ABE, said he no longer recognises this country, telling the hearing people used to be “a lot more tolerant”.

“All of those Australian idioms that we have for people having a fair go, that seems to have been lost,” he said.

“I would like to see something come out of this commission where we can chart the course back towards that Australia, or that attitude that we had in Australia.”

Rabbi Daniel Rabin, who is part of a synagogue in Caulfield in Melbourne, said “we wouldn’t be sitting here if this was just about criticism of Israel”, telling the hearing Australians are being fed propaganda which is fuelling the disunity the country is experiencing.

Mr Rabin acknowledged that criticism of Israel is OK, but “huge lies” are circulating, telling the commission the word “genocide” is being “thrown into everything”.

“It’s the seeping through of this propaganda that’s found it’s way everywhere,” he said.

“I think there are those who naturally have this hateful mission, but I think it’s affecting many regular Australians who are being fed this narrative, which I think is causing so much of the disunity and this discord that we are finding ourselves in at the moment.”

He recounted a campaign of abusive calls his synagogue had received, with the phrase “baby killers” seeming to be the favourite.

“When you say somebody is a baby killer … I can’t think of anything more grotesque to say about a person,” he said.

“It’s actually mind boggling that people are accusing us of that and then calling our synagogues … it’s hurtful, it’s disgusting.”

Mr Rabin spoke of having eggs and anti-Semitic slurs thrown at him before October 7, 2023, but the abuse has increased in the wake of Hamas’ attack.

Just days after the attack a car passing by he and his 10-year-old son shouted out “horrific things” he didn’t feel comfortable repeating at the inquiry.

“Having my 10-year-old son with me, of course he looked at me and he said ‘Why do these people hate us?’” he said.

“And that was very confronting … very difficult to explain to him.”

Jewish musician Joshua Moshe told the hearing how his life started to fall apart after he was doxxed, with he and his wife both receiving hate messages and threats.

The couple’s homeware shop in north Melbourne was vandalised with boycott stickers and graffiti in the wake of the doxxing, while photos of them both taken from their social media accounts and plastered with “Zionists” and “Boycotting”.

At one point he received a photo of his son along with a voicemail that said “You racist motherf***er better keep watching your motherf***ing back”.

The abuse forced the couple to close up their shop and move to a different spot in the city. “This was devastating to experience … ongoing torrent of messages.. I was feeling extremely anxious, devastated, feeling like my life was starting to unravel,” Mr Moshe said.

A saxophonist and composer, Mr Moshe was part of an award-winning band for seven years up until the doxxing incident, when he found out via social media that he’d been kicked out of the band.

The band had posted an online post — which they recently issued an apology for — which said the group was “disgusted, deeply shocked and betrayed”, claiming Mr Moshe had made comments in a Zionist WhatsApp group.

“We explicitly condemn any form of Zionism, racism, bullying anti-Semitism and prejudice of any kind,” the post said.

Mr Moshe said the Zionism that he believed in was that Jewish people deserved a home in some part of their ancestral homeland.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) research director Julie Nathan described the “horrifying” moment a sexualised caricature of her was shared on the internet.

The caricature was accompanied with the words “Julie simply desires to be filled with Aryan seed”.

“It’s very much a sexualisation, so you have this Jewish caricature, this is the feminine version of it, with the long, curly hair, and the long fingernails … It was horrifying to see” Ms Nathan told the royal commission.

Ms Nathan, who authors the Jewish group’s annual report on anti-Semitism in Australia, said a new form of anti-Semitism has emerged since October 7, 2023 telling the hearing there was a 316 per cent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Australia according to their 2024-2025 annual report.

“We’re getting much more brazen and much more confident coming out and not ashamed or worried about it being anti-Semitic and inciting violence against Jews,” she said.

Online posts or publications are not included in the report “because there are so many it’s uncountable”, Ms Nathan said.

“It’s like trying to count the stars,” she said.

Pro-Palestine material is also not counted as anti-Jewish, with Ms Nathan explaining a “free Palestine” sticker would only be considered anti-Semitic if it was stuck on a synagogue or a Jewish school, for instance.

“Israel is a state like any other state, and just as we in Australia are free to criticise our government, our country … we accept that, and even though people may lie about things or may use offensive language,” Ms Nathan said.

“We accept that as being, you know, political discourse or political language. It’s only when it crosses the line into anti-Semitism, that’s when we will count it as anti Semitic.”

The incidents, which are all personally reviewed by Ms Nathan, are recorded under six different categories including: physical assault, vandalism, verbal abuse, hate messages, graffiti and material such as banners and stickers.

She spoke of some people on social media screenshotting the annual report and making fun of it, saying: “We’re doing well boys, let’s keep the momentum going”.

Fireworks in the streets as Israel was “still counting its dead” in the wake of Hamas’ 2023 attack “set the tone” for the normalisation of Jewish hate in Australia, the leader of a Jewish organisation has told a hate inquiry.

Many pointed to the Sydney Opera House protest on October 9, 2023, as a critical turning point in the rise of Jewish hate; however, Dor Foundation Tahli Blicblau chief executive instead submitted that scenes at a Western Sydney protest the day prior were pivotal.

“The events of October 7 were described as a day of pride and courage,” Ms Blicblau told the royal commission on Monday.

“Cars were driving through Western Sydney setting off fireworks … that glorification of violence that night at a time when Israel was still counting its dead really set the tone for a permissive environment in which glorifying violence was accepted and permissible.”

Research from the Jewish body, which was established in 2024 to combat anti-Semitism, has revealed that most Australians can’t recognise anti-Semitic tropes.

Radical ideologies had converged in such a way that anti-Semitism was slipping into public discourse easier, Ms Blicblau said.

“They’re shrouded just enough in language, often of human rights, to be acceptable,” she said.

“Most Australians can’t recognise anti-Semitic tropes when they see them, so they’re presented with these hateful tropes and because they don’t recognise it as being anti-Semitic, it’s more likely to become normalised and accepted.”

Ms Blicblau also spoke to the role of online spaces in helping move anti-Semitism away from “shameful radical fringes”.

“The role of the internet and social media allows these hateful comments to reach millions of people within milliseconds, so in order to combat the new form (of anti-Semitism) … we need to operate there,” Ms Blicblau said.

The hearing continues.