Online Hate Prevention Institute CEO Dr Andre Oboler has been featured in recent J-Wire coverage examining intimidation and harassment directed at Jewish witnesses appearing before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Read: “Commissioner condemns online abuse of Jewish witnesses” 26 May 2026.

The article follows a statement by Commissioner Virginia Bell, who warned of a “dramatic increase in online hate messages” targeting lived-experience witnesses who had given evidence to the inquiry.

Dr Oboler told J-Wire that OHPI had observed troubling online activity directed at witnesses shortly after the first Jewish witnesses appeared before the Commission.

“We have seen content harassing witnesses or talking about them to other people in ways that are highly problematic,” Dr Oboler said.

Dr Oboler explained that OHPI raised concerns with Royal Commission staff weeks earlier and suggested a public statement be considered in response to the online harassment.

“Some of the behaviour was likely intimidation of future witnesses and likely to lead to a breach of the Royal Commissions Act,” he said.

OHPI has appeared as an expert witness before the Royal Commission and is preparing reports for the inquiry on online antisemitism and related online harms.

The organisation continues to monitor trends in online hate and disinformation, including efforts that may discourage witnesses from participating in democratic and legal processes.

The full J-Wire article is available here.

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The Online Hate Prevention Institute has been monitoring online responses to the attack. While there is significant empathy and support for the Muslim community who have been targeted by this attack, there was also glorification of the attack, false flag claims, and general Islamophobia. We also found hate directed against other communities. Some of the responses blamed Jews or Israel for the attack, others claimed the shooters were transgender. 

This report examines the various narratives of hate found online in the immediate wake of the attack and provides examples of this content. The data has been gathered across 12 social media platforms, both mainstream platforms and more fringe platforms focused on minimal moderation. 

As with previous attacks which we have written about, conspiracy theories once again sprung up almost immediately. Some comments also linked the attack to a climate of intolerance towards Muslims, promoted by statements made by a number of politicians and commentators. 

Social media platforms were also criticised for insufficient action on anti-Muslim hate. Some suggested this was a double standard compared to antisemitism. Our work demonstrates this is not the case and antisemitism fairs no better. While  levels of online hate  have continued to rise, some companies have wound back efforts used to address it. This affects everyone, but communities subjected to racism, religious vilification, xenophobia, and bigotry in particular. 

We need to see greater care in the words used by political leaders and other public figures. We need to see greater efforts against hate by social media platforms. Most importantly, we need unity against all forms of hate and a recognition of the harm it does to the fabric of our societies. 

Let’s stand together, united against hate.

The Data

While we collected many kinds of hate and extremism in the comments we gathered, here are the 4 we encountered most frequently. The report discusses others as well.

The report examines false flag claims like the following:

Glorification of violence like the following:

The image above that the poster used is of Baruch Goldstein a Jewish terrorist who attacked a mosque in 1994. He was beaten to death at the scene by the survivors of the attack. The text reflects a comment made in the same forum in response to a post by someone who was about to attack a synagogue, also near San Diego, in 2019.

Islamophobia like the following:

Blaming Jews and feeding anti-Jewish hostility like the following:

Anti-LGBTIQ+ content like the following:

More examples and discussion can be seen in the full report.

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The Online Hate Prevention Institute is an Australian charity that has played a leading global role in monitoring and combating all forms of online hate since 2012. Our work is supported by public donations. You can donate here to support this vital work.

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“…The definition was again discussed during a Tuesday appearance by Andre Oboler, CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute and a long-serving member of the Australian government’s delegation to the IHRA.”

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OHPI’s monitoring of anti-Semitism provides important data on the rise of these campaigns.

“The Online Hate Prevention Institute analysed 13 social media posts made by politicians or mainstream media, finding more than 3,000 anti-Semitic comments.

“Those numbers are high. This is not a discussion initiated by someone anti-Semitic to attract other anti-Semites. This is literally the public square where, you know, everyday Australians are engaging in discussion,” chief executive Andre Oboler said.”

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As printed in Sydney Morning Herald and The Age 13 May 2026:

Dr Andre Oboler, chief executive officer of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, told the commission that most of his body’s work is dedicated to tracking antisemitism.

“There are a number of reasons for that. One is because it is such a big part of online hate. Another one is that there is actually more energy and work in responding to online antisemitism than there is in other forms of online hate,” Oboler said.

“There just aren’t the same number of conferences, parliamentary hearings, etc, and I am talking globally. I think there has been one meeting of special envoys on Islamophobia, and we were able to connect Australia’s special envoy to the European envoy.

“But you compare that to antisemitism, where there’s regular stuff going on around the world.”

Oboler outlined some search phrases the institute uses to monitor for online antisemitism content, such as “holohoax”, a Holocaust denial term, as well as a more recent term, “kiss the wall”, which is often used when politicians visit Israel and take part in a Jewish religious practice of kissing the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

“This is used as an antisemitic trope to say ‘oh look, they went to Israel, they kissed the wall, and therefore they are controlled by the Jews’, so ‘kiss the wall’ as a phrase is something we use as an entry point.”

Oboler told the commission that social media giant X, formerly Twitter, was “behaving very much like the far-right platforms”.

Oboler shared his analysis of the “density”, or prevalence, of antisemitism on social media platforms, where X rated second, only behind free speech fringe platform Gab, which has widely been criticised for hosting hateful content.

Longitudinal data also showed current antisemitism rates across all platforms are higher than the fivefold spike observed immediately after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.

Oboler, an Australian envoy to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said X had “one of the lowest increases” in antisemitism before and after October 7 because “it was already the most prevalent platform for antisemitism to start with”.

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The Online Hate Prevention Institute has been retained by the Royal Commission as expert witnesses. Our CEO, Dr Andre Oboler, is testifying before the Commission on May 12th.

The Australian Government established the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion following the 2025 Bondi terrorist attack, in which the Jewish community were targeted in what was the most deadly terrorist attack on Australian soil.

As Australia’s highest form of public inquiry, the Commission is examining the causes and impact of antisemitism on Australian society. Its goal is to recommend practical measures to improve public safety, strengthen social cohesion, and help ensure Jewish Australians can live free from discrimination and fear.

How we categorise different forms of antisemitism

OHPI’s evidence to the Royal Commission includes analysis from our routine antisemitism monitoring project examining the different forms of antisemitism appearing across social media platforms. The monitoring classifies antisemitic content into detailed categories and sub-categories that allow long-term trends and dominant narratives to be identified across platforms and over time.

The evidence submitted to the Commission demonstrates that traditional antisemitic narratives remain the most common form of online antisemitism. These include blood libel, claims that Jews killed Christ, antisemitic slurs, dehumanising rhetoric, and conspiracy theories alleging Jewish control of governments, institutions, or world events. The monitoring also found that many forms of antisemitism relating to Israel or Zionism draw directly on these same historic antisemitic narratives and imagery.

OHPI’s monitoring is conducted by trained human analysts who assess the context, meaning, symbolism, and narrative structure of the material being collected. This allows the monitoring to identify coded antisemitic language, conspiracy narratives, visual references, and evolving forms of online hate that automated systems frequently fail to interpret accurately.

The submission to the Royal Commission includes the following findings:

“163. Looking across all of OHPI’s routine monitoring periods from November 2022 until March 2026 and at the 27 sub-categories we use for classification, we can see the following aggregate pattern across all platforms:

The most common narrative is ‘3.6’ this category captures all traditional antisemitism that is not otherwise designated to another category and is present in 51.8% of the content. The second most common is ‘4.4 Describing Israel or Israelis using antisemitic words or imagery (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel)’ which accounts for 25.0% of the content and which was just discussed. The third is ‘3.2 Promoting the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy’ which is the foundational conspiracy theory behind the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and accounts for 23.7% of all the content.

There is a significant drop to the 4th most prevalent narrative, ‘3.5 Promoting the idea of Jews controlling government or other societal institutions’ present in 13.9% of the content, and a further drop to the 5th most prevalent narrative, ‘3.1 Dehumanising Jews’, present in 8.3% of the content.

That category ‘2.1 Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion’ is present in 5.9% of the content, and ‘2.3 Calling for harm to Jewish people in general’ is present in a further 3.2% of the content, is deeply concerning.”

The submission argues that understanding the structure and prevalence of these narratives is essential for developing effective responses to online antisemitism and for improving moderation, transparency, and public policy responses across social media platforms.



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Dr Oboler described a study analysing reactions to 13 social media posts by Australian politicians that were in some way related to the Jewish community or the Middle East.

The Institute recorded 2,572 antisemitic comments believed to be from Australian users and a further 644 from users of uncertain origin.

The majority of the posts either referred to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the government and media or blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel, Dr Oboler said.

“This is literally the public square where everyday Australians are engaging in discussion,” he said.

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OHPI’s data on the rise in anti-Semitism provides further evidence of these trends.

Worrying online trend exposed in hate inquiry

The Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) tracks data on anti-Semitism across 10 social media platforms, with the organisation’s chief executive Andre Oboler explaining the four major types cropping up online are Holocaust denial, incitement of violence, traditional forms of anti-Semitism, and Israel/Zionist anti-Semitism.

Dr Oboler said he was particularly concerned by a recent spike in the second category, telling the inquiry it has now risen beyond levels recorded in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

“We saw a high level of glorification and justification of violence after October 7th, people justifying Hamas’ actions,” Dr Oboler said.

“The last few months we’re starting to see a rise again … it dipped, but now that violence category is going up again. That obviously poses the largest safety risk.”

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Data collected and analysed by OHPI was presented to the Royal Commission.

Online Hate Prevention Institute chief executive Andre Oboler shared with the commission his analysis of the “density” of antisemitism on social media platforms, where X rated second, only behind fringe platform Gab.

Longitudinal data also showed current antisemitism rates across all platforms are higher than the fivefold spike observed straight after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Posts justifying antisemitic violence were also on the rise.

“We saw a high level of glorification and justification of violence after October 7, people justifying Hamas’s actions,” Dr Oboler said.

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