Campus antisemitism beat-up attempts to crush pro-Palestine activism
Students will be surprised to learn that their campuses are hotbeds of hatred. That’s the claim, at least, of numerous submissions to a Senate committee currently considering legislation to establish a judicial inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities.
Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is moving the private member’s bill in the lower house, argues, “Young Jewish Australians who are taking their first steps in the adult world are facing unprecedented levels of antisemitism. The next generation of contributors are turning up to university open days, to lectures and to university lawns, and being met with a clear message: Jews are not welcome here.”
A litany of establishment voices has joined the chorus. Mark Gregory, chair of the right-wing pro-Israel Australian Jewish Association, used his submission to call for federal funding to be withheld from universities that tolerate pro-Palestine activism. Speaking about the University of Sydney, he said, “We saw for ourselves how extremists in a tent ‘encampment’, had been allowed to take over a portion of the university and disrupt the studies of Jewish students”, before going on to argue that the camp “also targeted and harassed the wider Jewish community”.
Headlines reinforcing these accusations abound in the press. In the Herald Sun: “Students and teachers reveal ‘harrowing’ anti-Semitic experiences at Melbourne universities”. In the Daily Telegraph: “Australia’s dark underbelly of anti-Semitism exposed”.
Not to be outdone, Labor’s federal Education Minister Jason Clare labelled the University of Melbourne’s Gaza solidarity encampment “repugnant”, and Defence Minister Richard Marles asserted in May: “The levels of antisemitism that we have seen in the past few months are more than any that I’ve seen during my lifetime”. In May, Labor supported a motion moved in the Senate by the Liberal opposition which condemned the traditional slogan of Palestinian resistance “from the river to the sea”, describing it as “used by those who seek to intimidate Jewish Australians via acts of antisemitism”.
The Albanese government is so concerned about the situation that in July it established a “special envoy to combat antisemitism” headed by Jillian Segal, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), a stridently pro-Israel lobby group.
As her first major task in this new role, Segal has compiled one of the most expansive submissions to the Senate committee investigating antisemitism. Her submission argues that antisemitism is an “embedded” part of university culture, claiming that several students had been penalised because they were Israeli or Jewish, and that staff have witnessed a “pervasive hatred” of Jews at the University of Sydney. The evidence presented for this claim relies heavily on interviews conducted with just 65 students and staff—all pro-Israel and all of whom object to anti-war activism—and the feelings they report when exposed to pro-Palestine and anti-war activism on campus.
One interviewee complains that they were subjected to frequent references to the situation in Gaza in their Indigenous studies class, the implication being that the two issues are unrelated and not comparable cases of people being displaced and destroyed by an aggressive military power set on expansion. Another interviewee says that they saw a non-Palestinian staff member wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, asking rhetorically: “If I was a student in that class, how kind of frightened would I be?”
One staff member described their experience of being subject to dehumanising hate: “I’ve been to campus, there’s been posters, graffities, boycott Israel stickers ... every single time so I go to work and the first thing that I do is pull down a bunch of posters and try and scrape off some stickers. And then I go to my office and people say how are you? And I have to say, I’m really good, even though I’m like, you know, crying on the inside”. No explanation is provided for why, despite the climate of “pervasive hatred”, this staff member nevertheless felt safe enough to pull down posters opposing genocide and take the time to scrape stickers off walls, without fear of reprisal.
A section of the submission alarmingly titled “Normalisation of antisemitic rhetoric, dehumanisation and marginalisation” cites as an example of this normalisation students being asked “what their views were on the current government of Israel”—a question that many people in Israel themselves are asking and frequently answering with protest. The report implies, without citing any evidence, that pro-Israel students may have had assignments marked down, but concedes, “Those interviewed could not say definitively that their grades or career prospects would have suffered”.
The report further claims as an example of dehumanisation and marginalisation that participants found their social circles had shrunk since expressing support for Israel, and some students who challenged the pro-Palestine views of their lecturers in class had been socially ostracised. Assuming these alleged incidents did happen, they are examples of political beliefs affecting friendships, a common occurrence that might sometimes be upsetting but is hardly “dehumanising”, and that usually affects people on both side of a conflict.
Segal’s submission does include references to some alleged incidents that would constitute genuine and repugnant antisemitism—including the claim that students performed a Nazi salute during a lecture at an unidentified university. This kind of behaviour should be condemned and action taken to sanction it.
But despite the seriousness of these alleged incidents, there is no record in the report of any reports made or investigations undertaken to establish what occurred nor any details about action taken to address them and discipline the offenders. Troublingly, these allegations of genuine antisemitism, along with others, are instead buried in long lists of actions that most would consider completely inoffensive manifestations of Palestine solidarity. So “holocaust denial and minimisation” is listed as an example of observed antisemitic discourse alongside discussion of Israel in “subjects totally unrelated to the Israel Gaza war, such as architecture, Indigenous culture and history and medicine”. No questions are raised about why holocaust denial and Nazi salutes have occurred without discipline against students, while there have been dozens of discipline proceedings initiated against students at several universities who have been involved in protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Segal’s report repeatedly equates criticism of Israel with discrimination against Jewish students. According to this logic, support for a capitalist nation state seeking to enforce ethnic purity, and whatever war or genocide it wages to achieve this objective, is a defining and intrinsic feature of Jewish identity. This equivalence is false; its acceptance is the culmination of a long-term campaign by supporters of Israel to establish it as incontrovertible fact. The promotion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by some universities and student unions in Australia along with the federal parliament, has been important in this campaign. It includes in its definition of antisemitism the designation of Israel as a “racist endeavour”.
Predictably, not a single anti-Zionist Jewish student is quoted in Segal’s report, as this would contradict her underlying premise—that criticism of Israel is inherently a form of racial discrimination. And it would highlight that her assumption that all Jews are necessarily offended or dehumanised by criticism of Israel simply does not hold.
Yasmine Johnson, a Jewish student and pro-Palestine activist at the University of Sydney, explains: “This is one of the key lies used to discredit anyone standing up to a genocidal, apartheid state, and it’s a lie which anti-Zionist Jewish students like myself reject. We shouldn’t allow the legacy of the Holocaust and antisemitic violence to be weaponised to justify Israel’s brutal war on Palestine”.
Segal’s approach, involving bold claims submitted without evidence and conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, is hardly surprising. Segal is no impartial anti-racist umpire; she’s a pro-war activist who has spoken at Zionist demonstrations, defended the bombing of hospitals and opposed calls for a ceasefire. This has been pointed out by anti-Zionist Jewish activists, many of whom criticised her appointment. Sarah Schwartz, executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, argued for instance that the creation of the position stood to “increase racism and division by pitting Jewish communities against Palestinian, Muslim and other racialised communities, and by weaponising false antisemitism claims to silence voices in support of Palestinian human rights”.
None of this has stopped the press from repeating Segal’s claims without challenge or counter-point. The Australian Financial Review on 6 September ran the headline: “Jewish students claim they are being given failing or sub-par grades for assignments, being shunned by friends and classmates and told to study from home”. The article goes on to describe a “disturbing picture of the ostracism, intimidation and vilification Jews and Israelis are encountering”.
Other submissions to the Senate committee make similarly sweeping claims with little foundation. A submission from independent MP Allegra Spender claims, “[T]he findings are clear. Antisemitism is present and growing in Australian universities”, before going on to cite as evidence “Anti-Israel posters around campus” and “Information shared at universities which makes Jewish students feel alienated and silenced”.
Another submitted by a student at Monash University complained of feeling “shut out of student political spaces”, citing the fact that “union meetings have been hosted at 5pm on a Friday”, that is, just under an hour before the beginning of Shabbat. They then went on to argue, incredibly, “This, whilst not directly violent yet, has the potential to mutate into something awful. We saw this during the holocaust”.
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) submission warrants particular attention. It claims, extraordinarily, “Antisemitic activities at the University of Sydney have resulted in restrictions on academic freedom, disruption of classes, display of hate symbols, restriction on freedom of movement, intimidation and abuse, vilification and incitement, and racial discrimination”. What are these hateful actions and impingements on freedom that warrant a judicial inquiry that has the power to subpoena activists?
The submission cites as an example of hatred, encampments “awash with placards highlighting the latest incarnation of the age-old bloodlibel; namely, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”. But claims of genocide are not motivated by age-old antisemitic tropes; they are incontestable fact.
The term “genocide” is defined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, which cuts off food, electricity and water to 2.3 million people who are simultaneously subject to incessant bombing even in declared safe areas with no means to leave, fits that description. A member of Netanyahu’s own war cabinet claimed, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”. Israel’s actions have been found plausibly to constitute genocide by the International Court of Justice. Yet the AIJC insists that charges of genocide against Israel are “hate speech” and, therefore, that the world is duty bound to remain silent about the destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants.
The AIJAC submission further cites: “Sydney University’s famed ‘graffiti tunnel’ is today almost entirely coated in the colours of red, black and green, with graphics such as watermelons (the colours of the Palestinian flag) spraypainted all over the walls, surrounded by text including ‘free Palestine’, ‘Palestinian martyrs’, ‘divest’, ‘Israel does not have the right to exist’, ‘intifada’, ‘occupied tunnel—free Palestine’”.
Most of these examples are longstanding affirmations of Palestinian national identity, offensive only to those who agree with the current Israeli prime minister that Palestinians should never be allowed statehood. If some slogans explicitly challenge the legitimacy of the state of Israel, this is based on the knowledge, common to activists in the campaign, that Israel was established on the basis of an illegal campaign of terror and dispossession, begun in 1948, which drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and continues today.
Supporting the claims of oppressed groups to self-determination and challenging the legitimacy of states that deny them is always going to be controversial. International support for the South African anti-apartheid struggle was offensive to some—in the 1980s leaders of the “free world” including US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher labelled opponents of the regime “violent terrorists”. Indigenous activists who disrespect the Australian flag routinely offend patriots. There are pro-Putin Russians who see Ukrainian resistance to their government’s military occupation as an existential threat and are upset by it.
But the idea that the feelings of those aligned with racist, imperialist or genocidal states should determine what political positions others are allowed to express is preposterous. Terms like “racism” are used to refer to systemic discrimination based on ethnic or religious identification, which is usually reinforced or perpetuated by a government or other powerful institutions. It does not apply to people who feel uncomfortable that there is opposition to a genocide being carried out with the unflinching support of every Western government, including that of Australia.
Conservatives are often heard repeating the mantra “facts don’t care about your feelings”, urging coddled university students to suck it up and face hard truths. The facts of Israel’s war speak for themselves: it’s an assault against a civilian population waged by a state engaged in decades-long illegal occupation. But in this instance, the facts are discarded, and the “lived experience” of the minority of students who support Israel’s genocide treated as sacrosanct.
AIJAC’s submission gives special attention to the use of the term “intifada” in graffiti and on posters across campus, explained as “a reference to the violent Palestinian riots and terrorism campaign from late 1987-1993 and 2000-2005”. Intifada, the Arabic word for uprising, or rebellion, has a special association with the six-year civil disobedience campaign against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West bank. The “violence” of the Palestinian intifada is best encapsulated by the image of a Palestinian child hurling a stone at an Israeli tank—the “violence” of a largely unarmed population fighting back against one of the best-resourced occupying armies on the planet.
Anxiety about the especially “violent” nature of Arabic words (and by association people) led Monash University to ban the use of the word “intifada” at the Monash Gaza solidarity encampment. The same anxiety led Berlin police to ban all languages other than German and English from a protest camp outside their parliament, creating a bizarre situation in which Hebrew was also banned. So under the cynical guise of preventing potentially antisemitic speech, the government implemented an explicitly racist policy of language bans.
The section titled “Encampments Restricting Freedom of Movement”, makes no credible claim that any actual students at University of Sydney had their freedom of movement restricted, instead bizarrely complaining: “The Gaza Solidarity encampment ... eventually grew to cover almost the entire expanse of the front lawn and featured makeshift tents with their occupants’ towels and washing hung out to dry. It was an eyesore and inappropriate”. The sight of wet towels may be an eyesore to some, but it is hard to see how they could be interpreted as antisemitic. For an example of real restrictions on freedom of movement, see the 70,000 Palestinians who have to cross Israeli military checkpoints to get to work each day in the occupied West Bank.
Beyond this, most of what the AIJAC submission describes is run-of-the-mill activism, the bread-and-butter activities that have taken place on campuses to promote political causes. The submission’s section on ‘disrupting classes’ describes students using the age-old tactic of making announcements at the beginning of a scheduled lecture to promote activist events. The authors will be shocked to know that this thuggish method, so clearly a flagrant attack on academic freedom, was also utilised by activists opposing South African apartheid, American students protesting the Vietnam War and socialists supporting marriage equality, all of which no doubt irritated those who supported those regimes, wars and policies.
To cap this all off, AIJAC complains that university administrations have been too cowardly to stand up to the mob. The University of Sydney’s decision to establish a toothless review of research partnerships is described as “a shocking display of appeasement and almost total capitulation to extremism”.
When transparency about research partnerships at public institutions is described as hateful extremism, it’s pretty clear we’ve gotten into some strange territory. The intent increasingly seems less about combating antisemitism and more about generating backlash against a movement that has challenged the powerful by exposing the crimes of Israel and the complicity of Australian universities in these crimes. Shared hostility to this movement has created a coalition that unites the Labor government and official opposition, pro-Israel community groups and university administrations, all of whom have a shared interest in spreading lies and slander about pro-Palestine activists.
Groups like the AIJC would like to see Australia adopt more of the extreme anti-democratic measures seen in places like Germany and the UK, where protesters, including Jewish anti-Zionists, are regularly arrested, students are expelled from university and academics lose their jobs for opposing an unjust war.
To a considerable extent this is already the reality. While there are no recorded instances of discipline being used against those expressing support for genocidal actions of the Israeli government, students and staff standing with Palestine have faced a barrage of disciplinary measures.
The University of Sydney, widely portrayed in the press as a safe haven for Palestine solidarity, has actually been ground zero for repression. Jake Lynch, an associate professor with a long history of anti-racist and anti-apartheid activism, was accused of antisemitism and threatened with the sack in 2015 for participating in an on-campus protest, before later being exonerated. Lecturer Tim Anderson was sacked in 2019 for a lecture slide comparing the Israeli regime to the Nazis.
Students at the University of Sydney, Deakin, University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University and Adelaide University have all been dragged through disciplinary processes for their participation in university encampments earlier in the year. Further restrictions on access to public space have been implemented—the University of Melbourne has permanently placed “no camping allowed” signs on the campus lawns to prevent any further political encampments.
University of Sydney has implemented far-reaching restrictions on the right to protest, now requiring 72 hours’ notice for protests and demanding pre-approval for a wide range of activities, from megaphoning to handing out leaflets. Students hosting a pro-Palestine meeting titled “Degrees of Complicity: Our Universities’ Role in the Genocide in Palestine” were sent a threatening letter from the administration, which said the meeting “may cause distress for some members of our community” and laid out a detailed series of conditions for the event to proceed, warning “participants at the event must not engage in any antisemitic, racist or unlawful conduct”. The university then went on to record the meeting, an intimidating tactic against students engaging in a discussion critical of their university management.
The objection of the pro-genocide coalition is that these measures don’t go far enough. To their frustration, most university administrations still consider criticism of Israel’s war to be a legitimate form of political expression that should be protected. This was expressed in the submission of Universities Australia, the sector’s peak body, to the Senate committee, which argued:
“University campuses are places where ideas are openly discussed and debated, no matter how popular or unpopular they may be. A commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech are criteria for being recognised as a university under the Higher Education Threshold Standards.”
This is what the pro-genocide coalition want to change. And it’s what their allies in the political right have long lamented about universities: that speech is not controlled and repressed because of the feelings of overly sensitive students who don’t want to hear views contrary to their own.
So what’s at stake in the furore over campus antisemitism is whether pro-Palestine sentiment should be considered a legitimate part of political discussion. The flurry of outlandish Senate committee submissions and the media circus surrounding it are an attempt to fabricate evidence, distort the truth and whip up moral panic in order to legitimise further attacks on Palestine solidarity. The powers that be are worried that Israel’s actions are generating far-reaching opposition to Israel, especially among young people, that can be a problem in the future. The media are assisting in fuelling this false impression of campuses.
If the widely repeated claim that Jewish students are being targeted on campuses were true, it would warrant serious media attention. Journalists would be expected to come to campuses in order to ascertain how they have become such breeding grounds for hate. They should have at the very least reported on the recent wave of mass meetings hosted by Students for Palestine across the country—the largest open forums ever held by students to discuss anti-Israel politics, where presumably they could have experienced first-hand this climate of hatred.
Instead, what they have done is uncritically repeat propaganda from the government and pro-Israel sources. When members of Students for Palestine at RMIT called a press conference to announce their plans for a student general meeting to vote on divesting from Israeli institutions, not a single media outlet sent a journalist to report. Why the lack of curiosity? Because they’re not really all that interested in investigating racism on campuses. They’re enthusiastic participants in a pro-Israel political pile-on, brazenly designed to conflate criticism of Israel’s genocidal war with discrimination against Jews and demonise committed activists as racists. The facts can only get in the way of this.
The role of journalists should be to hold the claims of the powerful up in the cold light of day. If they cared to step out of their offices and investigate the arguments of the pro-genocide coalition, they would find Palestine protests on campus where racism is treated with zero tolerance. They would find Jewish students who can articulate why they reject the conflation of Jewish identity and support for Israel, and Palestinians who can explain why they’re fighting for a state that provides equal rights to all. But this would mean challenging the establishment consensus in support of Israel.
Those who stand against genocide today can’t rely on “independent” inquiries or journalistic investigations to promote an “unbiased” account of our movement. We only have our actions, our mass meetings, our ability to keep mobilising in the streets and our conviction that we stand on the right side of history.
