VicPol takes action against antisemitism campaigner

Victoria Police (VicPol) has applied for a personal safety intervention order (PSIO) against antisemitism campaigner Zara Cooper on behalf of Jewish Council of Australia Executive Officer Sarah Schwartz.

VicPol say they acted because Cooper’s social media posts put the safety of Sarah Schwartz at risk. They allege that Cooper’s Instagram posts are severely ­affecting Schwartz’s mental health.

A VicPol spokesperson told J-Wire, “Victoria Police received a formal report at Northcote Police Station on 21 February 2025 in relation to an extensive series of social media posts directed at a 34-year-old woman. The complainant stated these posts, which allegedly include depictions of her face with Nazi imagery, are adversely affecting her mental health.”

“Victoria Police has applied for a personal safety intervention order on behalf of the complainant. Such orders can be made to protect a person from unwanted behaviours including online harassment.”

Schwartz’s Jewish Council of Australia is a far-left group that has supported pro-Palestinian rhetoric. The group has come under fire on two fronts, one that its name may mislead people into thinking the group represents the broader Jewish community, which is confounded by Schwartz’s frequent media appearances, seemingly speaking for the Jewish community.

The second front of issue many have with the Jewish Council of Australia is its positioning on the side of pro-Palestine activists, while appearing to not being concerned about antisemitism from the far-left or pro-Palestine groups, nor the welfare of the hostages in Gaza. In fact, on occasions, Jewish Council of Australia has been accused of downplaying antisemitism faced by the community and on campus.

VicPol will need to convince a magistrate to ban Cooper from posting critiques online of Schwartz. Ironically, Schwartz has previously written about how “the right to protest, free speech and academic freedom are central tenets of a functioning democracy”.

Cooper is a lawyer, formerly of Minter Ellison, and co-founder and current Managing Director and at PaperKrane. She posts online as @clammy_fraud and has been frequently critical of the Jewish Council of Australia, Schwartz and their legitimacy as a voice for Jewish Australians.

Schwartz on the other was condemned broadly within and outside the Jewish community for presenting a slide titled “Dutton’s Jew” at a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) ‘antiracism conference’, which featured as presenters some of Australia’s most controversial attention seekers and antisemites.

QUT was forced to issue an apology after a cartoon character titled “Dutton’s Jew” was displayed on one of Schwartz’s slides. Her presentation stated that “Dutton’s Jew” hates “the radical left”, hates Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, was anti-immigrant and thinks of antisemitism as the only form of racism. Schwartz later claimed she was referring “to the way that Peter Dutton conceives of Jewish people and uses us as political footballs to push his own agenda, not actual Jewish people”.

Acting Sergeant ­Stuart Hall wrote in the PSIO application, “Police believe the respondent’s actions are severely affecting the protected person’s mental health and the PSIO is necessary to protect the protected person.’’ The intervention order application is seeking for the court to prohibit Cooper from going within 5m of Schwartz, or within 200m of where she lives or works. The order, if successful, will also prevent Cooper from publishing anything online about Schwartz.

Cooper will fight the order and has criticised VicPol for becoming involved “in what is a political debate between two Jewish women who have different views about how to combat anti-Semitism in ­Australia” and the encroachment on her “right to free political speech”. Cooper has said that she has never made a threat against the safety of Schwartz and never met her. “I have never spoken with her, threatened her, posted private information about her or encouraged others to do so,”

VicPol stated in their application that Cooper has been “highly critical of the Jewish Council of Australia of which the protected person (Ms Schwartz) is the executive officer”. But that sentiment applies to many if not most in the Jewish community. Posts mentioned by VicPol include those allegedly showing Schwartz on a train to a concentration camp, calling her a Kapo, and images depicting her as a rat. VicPol and Schwartz claim she was “deeply affected” and found it “severely upsetting and offensive” to see her face depicted in Holocaust imagery.

The VicPol application claims that there had been an escalation of posts about Schwartz in the past few weeks.

It does make one wonder, however, in the Australian environment where so many in the community have faced bullying, antisemitic abuse, antisemitic graffiti, death threats, physical assault, fire-bombing, anti-Israel demonstrations, demonstrations near synagogues, targeting of Jewish businesses, students and others cosplaying as Hamas terrorists, and forcible invasion of a Jewish academic’s office, it is this that earns this particular level of police attention.

This application will be heard at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 25 March 2025. The court will decide whether to grant the order.