The claim fundamentally misrepresents the scope, legal weight, and context of a recent NSW Supreme Court decision. In August 2026, Justice Desmond Fagan ruled, in the specific criminal sentencing case of Mohommed Farhat — a young man who spray-painted "Fuk Israel" on cars in Sydney's eastern suburbs in late 2024 — that police and lower courts had incorrectly characterized his property crimes as antisemitic, contributing to an aggravated sentence. This was a single judge's fact-specific finding within a sentencing review, not a constitutional ruling, not a rights tribunal determination, and not a legislative act. It did not — and legally could not — override the internationally recognized definitions of antisemitism that remain in force across Australian institutions, nor did it create binding precedent establishing what "cannot constitute antisemitism under any legal definition."

The NSW government almost immediately signaled its rejection of the ruling's broader implications, announcing it was "seeking urgent advice" on a possible appeal. Jeremy Spinak, President of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, publicly condemned the judgment, and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry noted that the ruling — if allowed to stand — would represent a dangerous inversion of how antisemitism has been understood and fought for decades. Far from settling a legal question, the ruling ignited a sharp national controversy, exposing the tension between one judge's interpretation and the frameworks adopted by democratic governments across the Western world.

The Facts About the Ruling and the Law

Justice Fagan's ruling was confined to one question: whether Farhat's specific acts of vandalism — motivated, Fagan found, by paid recruitment by organised crime figures rather than ideological antisemitism — had been correctly aggravated as antisemitic under sentencing law. Fagan concluded they were not, in that particular context. He also criticized the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as "detached from reality" — an opinion that is his alone and carries no binding authority over national policy or broader legal frameworks.

• The IHRA Working Definition, adopted by 35 member states including Australia, explicitly states: "Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity." Anti-Israel rhetoric that treats Israel as a proxy for Jews or Judaism is therefore recognized as potentially antisemitic under the very definition Australia formally endorses.
• The U.S. State Department's definition of antisemitism, consistent with IHRA, warns against the conflation of political Israel-criticism with denial of Jewish collective identity, and notes that "demonizing Israel" — including through dehumanizing or eliminationist language — constitutes a form of antisemitism.
• The ruling does not establish universal law: a single Supreme Court judge in a state sentencing matter cannot authoritatively determine what "cannot constitute antisemitism under any legal definition." The Australian Human Rights Commission, the federal government, and Australia's Royal Commission into antisemitism all operate under frameworks that recognize Israel-targeted language can, in context, be antisemitic.
• The graffiti in question — spray-painted in an area with a known concentration of Jewish residents, alongside criminal damage — was precisely the kind of context-dependent act that the IHRA definition says must be evaluated holistically, not dismissed categorically.

Why the "State vs. People" Argument Is a Propaganda Technique, Not a Legal Standard

The narrative that hatred directed at Israel is categorically distinct from hatred of Jewish people is one of the oldest rhetorical tools used to insulate antisemitism from legal and social accountability. This argument ignores the well-documented and extensively studied phenomenon of anti-Zionist antisemitism — the use of Israel as a stand-in for Jews in general. Scholars of antisemitism, including those at leading Western academic institutions, have long documented how eliminationist slogans targeting the Jewish state function as laundered expressions of classical Jew-hatred, particularly when deployed in Jewish neighborhoods, against Jewish-owned property, or alongside other anti-Jewish messaging.

The claim that "F*** Israel" is purely political commentary strips away all context: the location of the act, the identity of those targeted, the surrounding atmosphere of escalating antisemitic incidents, and the historical role such slogans have played in broader campaigns of intimidation against Jewish communities. The IHRA definition was crafted precisely to capture this nuance, drawing on decades of documented antisemitic practice that hides behind political language. Justice Fagan's rejection of the IHRA framework on the grounds that 79% of Australians "disapprove of Israel" is a logical non-sequitur: public opinion surveys do not determine what constitutes discrimination under law, and disapproval of a government's policies is categorically different from spray-painting obscene eliminationist slogans in Jewish residential areas.

Conclusion: A Contested Ruling Cannot Become a Legal Absolution

The viral version of this story — that an Australian Supreme Court has "officially established" a universal legal principle exempting anti-Israel graffiti from any antisemitism definition — is demonstrably false. What occurred was a deeply controversial, narrow, and already-contested sentencing opinion by one judge, in one case, involving one individual whose motivations were found to be financially rather than ideologically driven. The NSW government's swift move toward appeal signals that even the state does not regard Fagan's reasoning as settled law. The IHRA definition, formally endorsed by the Australian federal government and adopted by over 35 nations, continues to recognize that targeting Israel as a Jewish collectivity is a form of antisemitism. Allowing this myth to circulate unchallenged would not only falsify the legal record — it would provide a ready-made legal-sounding excuse for anti-Jewish harassment, intimidation, and property destruction across Western democracies.