Federal Court Justice Michael Lee, a fanatical pro-‘Israel’ activist, was given the casting vote in a Federal Court test case on academic “intellectual freedom”. That appointment underlines how worthless the Australian courts have become in defending freedom of speech. How can we expect impartial decisions on such matters from a Zionist activist?

In NTEU vs the University of Sydney (2020-2024), a case brought by the Academics Union to oppose my dismissal from Australia’s oldest university, mainly over comments against “Israel”, five of the seven federal court judges ruled in our favour, leading to an order for my reinstatement. However, the case was finally decided by a second full bench panel in which Michael Lee voted against us in a two to one majority. The case hung on whether my harsh criticism of “Israel” was compatible with the “right to intellectual freedom”.

Judge Lee did not disclose what he now calls his “personal” commitment to defending the Jewish people and the genocidal Israeli regime, engaged in an ideological battle against what they call a rising crisis of “antisemitism”. Evidence to support claims of such a “crisis” has mostly to do with the outraged public reaction at the Gaza genocide; but for those who conflate “Jewish people” with “Israel”, there is no contradiction.

In what one newspaper report dubbed “stunningly personal comments”, Lee lamented what he termed the “growth and mainstreaming” of anti-Semitic acts since October 7, 2023, saying that this “antisemitism” must be tackled by Australian society. In a passionate speech, he said any attack on the Jewish community is “an attack upon my wife and my children.” With typical Zionist bias, he said nothing about the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Quoting his wife’s grandfather, who said in 1946, “I shall treat any attack on the Jews as an attack upon my wife and my children,” Lee added that, while he was not Jewish, “I can say I feel exactly the same way.”

Michael Lee is from a Catholic family but married into a Jewish family and has taken on the defense of “Israel” with the reckless zeal of the “born again”. He told an “antisemitism” summit in Sydney he agreed with former Prime Minister John Howard that “strong, moral leadership has an important role to play in combating antisemitism” and that he was “pleased to see” that the University of Wester Sydney [of which he is a board member] had “no encampments” [i.e. protests at complicity with the Gaza genocide] and that “the leadership of [UWS] spoke out promptly and firmly, against antisemitic speech” … in contrast to other universities.

Indeed, UWS is one of the Australian universities which adopted a version of the IHRA definition of antisemitism that conflates Jewish people with “Israel”. They say, “For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity.”

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Though he probably knew better, Lee’s fanaticism made him blur the difference between Jewish people and the Israeli regime, a double racism where Palestinians are denied both advocacy and resistance while all Jewish people are branded as accomplices to the criminal Israeli regime.

The result of this ludicrous “definition” is to raise a shield for the vicious colonial regime in Palestine. Judge Lee has joined the ranks of what UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese labels the “morally corrupted, deeply racist and politically weaponised … fight against antisemitism”, where Jewish and Israeli sensibilities are considered more important than Palestinian lives.

The judge’s reactionary bias does not stop there. In his speech at this “antisemitism summit”, he launched a spray at the state school curriculum and university activist culture. Linked to his racist arguments about making universities “safe for Jewish students”, Lee attacked national curriculum priorities which included Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture, and encouraged student cynicism of “the achievements of western civilization.”  He went on, sneering at the “ahistorical and ideologically driven notions of so-called settler colonialism ... which diminishes the western tradition”.

Judge Lee’s contempt for the indigenous people of Palestine extends to the indigenous people of his own country. Of course, he is far from alone spreading this sort of bile and disinformation.

In late 2024, USyd Vice Chancellor Mark Scott claimed that I had been dismissed for ‘antisemitism’, saying, “I believe we're the only university in the country that has fired someone for antisemitism.” However, this is not what the Federal Court found. In NTEU vs The University of Sydney, primary Judge Tom Thawley said on my ‘Gaza Graphic’, which linked Israeli racial massacres to those of Nazi Germany, “no part of that graphic should be taken ‘out of context’, It was created ‘for an academic purpose’ and was not intended ‘to incite hatred of Jewish people’.”  University managers did not appeal that part of his judgement.

For his part, Michael Lee had to find a way around the earlier full bench decision in which Judges Jagot and Rangiah said, “It does not matter whether [a Nazi-Israel] comparison may be considered by some or many people to be offensive or wrong … offence and insensitivity cannot be relevant criteria for deciding if conduct does or does not constitute the exercise of the right of [lawful academic] intellectual freedom.”

The loophole provided by the University of Sydney managers (to overturn the earlier rulings that my right to intellectual freedom had been breached) and approved by Judges Lee and Perram, was that, even in the exercise of intellectual freedom, the enterprise agreement required that this right be exercised “consistent with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards.” The onus for proving this lay on the person exercising intellectual freedom. That is, having breached no university rules, I had to prove a case of having acted in the “highest standards”, without specific criteria, to those who were censoring me.

What sort of human being, after sitting though a year of live-streamed genocide - with confirming indictments from the ICJ and the ICC over the deliberate slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians - could entirely ignore Palestinian suffering and instead indulge in some pompous bleating about his own privileged family not feeling safe, while abusing those students with a conscience who opposed the crimes of what he sneeringly calls “so called settler colonialism”? How can we tolerate such deep racism in a public official responsible for the administration of justice?