Put simply, Bean believed that Monash was a self-promoter. Fair enough, since such a mindset invariably is equated with success. But Bean’s rationale was troubling. He wrote in his diary: “We do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and in-born in Jews, to push themselves.”
Without question, that’s an anti-Semitic comment. But it’s a testimony to Australia’s acceptance as a country that Monash, a Jew with a Prussian background, got to lead the Australian Army Corps on the Western Front. And it’s a testimony to Bean’s character that he came to acknowledge that he was wrong about Monash.
In his 1945 book War Aims of a Plain Australian, Bean supported a proposal that Jews fleeing the applied anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler’s regime and the Nazis should be settled in the Kimberley area of Western Australia. He argued that these “courageous” Jewish people should be given the opportunity to “have a go” and become “good Australians”. So, clearly, Bean was not an anti-Semite at the end of World War II.
This is the portion here of the article by Gerard Henderson in The Australian which discusses Bean’s anti-semitism.