The Labor government has pledged to rush laws through the federal parliament that would ban “doxxing,” where the private details of individuals are published online. The details of the legislation have not been released, but the context makes clear that under the banner of defending privacy, Labor is preparing a far-reaching attack on civil liberties.

Over the past four months of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the issue of doxxing has certainly come into sharp focus.

Dozens of Australian doctors and nurses have been doxxed by Zionists for speaking out against Israel’s bombing of Gazan hospitals and its murder of at least 340 health workers. Many have also been reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency in a cynical and politically-motivated attempt to intimidate them and have their medical credentials annulled. Most victims have been females with Middle Eastern names.

A man who has vocally defended the Palestinians was doxxed in a Zionist Facebook group. In early January, a home-made bomb was strapped to his car in Sydney. The man has said that the police investigation has gone nowhere and officers have indicated no interest in the voluminous evidence he has provided them of the doxxing.

The federal Labor government has said nothing about these sinister activities. Its aggressive support for Israel, including promoting the lie that opposition to the Zionist onslaught is antisemitic, has given succour to such witch-hunting operations. They have also been given a free pass by the official press, which has itself vilified and targeted Palestinian supporters.

Instead, the new laws are a response to the online leaking last week of the contents of a secret WhatsApp group entitled “J.E.W.I.S.H Australian creatives and academics.” The chat had previously been circulated to journalists by a leaker and reported on by well-known national publications including the Sydney Morning Herald.

Despite its benign name, the WhatsApp group served as a vehicle for various Zionists to plan activities supporting the Israeli regime, including vexatious complaints to employers targeting Palestinian activists, attempts to dig up dirt on perceived opponents and doxxing.

The group was involved, alongside another secret WhatsApp chat of the Lawyers for Israel organisation, in barraging the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with complaints demanding journalist Antoinette Lattouf be sacked because she had shared posts critical of Israeli war crimes.

In using the leak to justify their new doxxing laws, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other Labor leaders have simply lied about the political character and contents of the group.

Promoting the as yet unspecified legislation in an interview with right-wing 2GB radio on Monday, Albanese stated: “And let’s be very clear, these are 600 people in the creative industries … who had a WhatsApp group, not heavily political, to provide support for each other because of the antisemitism we’ve seen.”

He added: “Now these people have a range of views about the Middle East. What they have in common is they are members of the Jewish community. The idea that in Australia someone should be targeted because of their religion, because of their faith, whether they be Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu or Catholic, it’s just completely unacceptable.”

Albanese was defaming those who have shared the messages. The interest is not that the individuals in the group were Jewish, but that they were carrying out dirty tricks in support of Israel. In doing so, Albanese demonstrated the cynical way in which official politicians supporting the genocide use false allegations of antisemitism against supporters of Palestine.

Individuals who play such games demonstrate their indifference to a struggle against the scourge of genuine antisemitism, transforming one of the gravest forms of bigotry into a political plaything.

Albanese was largely just repeating what the main Zionist lobbyists in the country said about the leak. It has been branded a “Jew list,” with hysterical claims that the situation in Australia today is identical to that of Germany in the 1930s.

The issue with the “Jew list” assertion is that the people in the list are there because they added themselves to the WhatsApp group, or were added by friends and colleagues. To the extent that individuals were in the group but unaware of its sinister activities, they should direct their displeasure at whoever added them to it.

Members of the group have been given a megaphone in the press to speak of their distress and upset over the leak. Those stories have frequently descended into the absurd. In some instances, people claiming to be fearful for their privacy have given interviews using their full names, photos and detailing the area they live in. One member of the group complained that the exposure had resulted in missed work opportunities. They had been “removed from a prestigious clowning masterclass...”

Two such “victims” in Melbourne, a husband and a wife, were featured in a Nine Entertainment publication, claiming they had been compelled to move the location of their business and their home. The publication of the chat had been an act of antisemitism against them, the two indicated.

That’s not the full story though. The husband had put a call out for information in the group about a journalist, seemingly only because she was Middle Eastern and had been critical of Israel.

“Though it might be worth a deep dive into her past posts as it’s possible she’s breached contract,” he stated. Another group member noted that the journalist’s account was private. The husband responded “I’m on it,” implying he would seek access to her posts despite that privacy setting. The man also posted disparaging remarks about anti-Zionist Jews and Indigenous people that both would likely consider offensive and racist.

Opinion columnist and writer Clementine Ford has been heavily criticised for posting a link to the chat on her social media. In response, she has noted that a central focus of the group was coordinating complaints to her publishers and other employers because she had denounced the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Ford’s name appears in the chat log dozens of times. A typical comment stated: “One of my big goals is taking down Clementine, either by making her have to issue a public apology, or getting her dropped by her publisher, or preferably both.”

Another aspect of the group has been ignored by Albanese and those baying for anti-doxxing legislation.

One member called on others to join and support “Project Oct 7—An incredible new initiative to fight the tsunami of digital misinformation, propaganda and antisemitism has launched on What’sApp. Their online description: Project Oct 7th is led by Israeli tech leaders, in partnership with the Israeli government, the Shavak, and an elite team of 8200 developers to help fight the digital war for public opinion and our legitimacy.”

Members could add positive and negative posts about Israel to a WhatsApp group. The negative ones would trigger malicious reports to social media companies.

“Shavak” appears to be a reference to Shin Bet, one of Israel’s three main intelligence agencies, which is also known as Shabak. Unit 8200 is the wing of the Israel Defence Forces responsible for cyberwar.

Even a small sampling of the activities and discussions demonstrates the fraud of Albanese’s claim that this was a hand-holding support group. The aggressive targeting of pro-Palestinian supporters makes the content of the group, and the list of those who participated, firmly in the public interest.

The members of the group, though some were not particularly active, included the Principal Private Secretary of a former prime minister, well-known academics, artists and journalists. Some of them have been prominent in the media, defending Israel and slandering opposition to the Gaza genocide as antisemitism.

The doxxing laws would seek to outlaw any exposure of the witch-hunting activities. They are a response to the widespread outrage triggered last month by the revelations that the ABC’s sacking of Lattouf had been carried out at the behest of the Lawyers for Israel group and other Zionist lobbyists.

The laws would also likely form part of a broader inroad into press freedom. Genuine investigative journalism has always been based on leaks such as that of the Jewish creatives WhatsApp group.