Protesters gather in Canberra, Australia in support of Palestine and to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, on November 4, 2023. (Photo: Leo Bild/Flickr)
Over the last year, Australian universities have been subject to a Zionist political pressure campaign for their varied responses to ongoing university student protests against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This culminated recently in the Australian Senate with calls to investigate universities for antisemitism.
On October 2, 2024, the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs released a set of recommendations as part of a review of a bill calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism at universities. The Committee recommended that the Attorney General refer an inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. In addition, it recommended that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) will work together with the newly appointed Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism to ensure that universities review their complaints processes to a “real and meaningful outcomes for complainants.”
These recommendations, which the government supports, will put the University sector under constant, ongoing, political scrutiny, serving as a reminder that they need to keep their staff and students on a leash. They are part of an ongoing political attack on academic freedom that predates October 7, which seeks to silence critical discussions about Israel and to label any academic activity, including teaching and scholarship, that criticizes Israel as antisemitic and therefore illegitimate, and illegal.
Zionist pressure on universities
For a number of years now, Zionist groups have been pressuring universities to adopt the IHRA against calls from academics, student groups, and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to reject it. Indeed, university presidents and administration, with some exceptions, learned a bitter lesson from the experience of the United Kingdom and elsewhere about the threat that the IHRA poses to academic freedom and freedom of speech on campuses. And so, while in the U.K. 75% of the universities adopted the IHRA following a threat by the Secretary of State for Education to withhold funding from universities, only 5 out of 37 universities in Australia adopted the IHRA to date. The position of many universities was that Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation and their own anti-racism policies are sufficient protection mechanisms in themselves.
The pressure on universities increased after October 7. Zionist groups, politicians, and the media created a moral panic about “rising antisemitism” in the community and described universities, and especially the eleven student encampments
that were established across Australia, as incubators for anti-Jewish racism. The language of safety was weaponized to amplify their claim about the need to censor pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activities. Realizing that the universities do not meet all their demands, Zionist groups have turned to the political route, with two main objectives: 1) to impose the IHRA definition on universities, and 2) to frame Zionism as a protected identity, similar to what we see in some U.S. universities.
As a result, the political pressure on universities increased. The Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, said that Jewish students “don’t feel safe at university” and that “It’s obvious that it exists in our university … and I’ve made it clear to all university vice chancellors that they’ve got a responsibility to enforce their codes of conduct.” University chiefs rushed to seek advice from the Attorney General— who is in favor of the IHRA definition—on whether liberationist chants such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and the use of the word ‘intifada’ violated the Race Discrimination Act.
Then in July 2024, the Labor government caved to pressure and appointed a special envoy on antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who is a staunch Zionist and the former president of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry (ECAJ). In one of her first public speeches after assuming this role, Segal listed examples of what she considers to be systemic forms of antisemitism that ought to be tackled. These included “posters, graffities, boycott Israel stickers”, signs saying “Israel is genocidal”, teaching Israel/Palestine in indigenous studies, and wearing a keffiyeh. As an Envoy, Segal now holds a government position, has the mandate to represent Australia in International fora, and is doing the job of a prominent Zionist organization in a formal capacity, and with the legitimacy and resources (an office and staff funded by the government) that such position comes with. Bluntly put, it is a state-sponsored McCarthyist office.
Weaponizing “safety”
Australia is now also looking into introducing legislation to establish a national student ombudsman to combat antisemitism at universities. Among other things, this office will have the power to launch its own investigations. As the Australian historian, Henry Reynolds commented: “The minister seems to be unaware of what he is proposing — the appointment of a government official to act as a political censor inside the universities to control what can be said or promoted.”
Such investigations can be harmful, not just for the concrete recommendations that they propose. Often, the processes are flawed too irrespective of outcomes. They create a public protected space for amplifying anti-Palestinian racism and ungrounded accusations of antisemitism.
This can be seen in the recent Senate process, where the public was invited to make submissions, and two public hearings were held in September 2024. 669 submissions were made public on the Committee’s website, with about a hundred submissions by civil society bodies, universities, and other official bodies such as the Human Rights Commission or the Attorney General’s department. The rest are submissions by individuals. Around 150 submissions have been classified as confidential and their content was not available to the public.
The submission process was marred by the actions of two lobby groups: ECAJ and the newly formed Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (known as the 5A). The organisations encouraged individuals to spam the commission with submissions by circulating templates (see here and here), providing a how-to-complaint guide that includes dubious examples of antisemitism that can be included in submissions such as the display of pro-Palestine posters on campuses.
Submissions by Zionist groups and individuals used the discourse of “safety.” While this is not unique to Australia, the legal landscape here is different. In Australia, academic freedom is guaranteed and protected in legislation and in some collective enterprise bargaining agreements. At the same time, health and safety legislation includes provisions about safety, including the duty to ensure psycho-social safety. Therefore, a main vehicle to censor activities on campus is to suggest that any criticism of Israel or Zionism harms the physio-social safety of Jewish staff and students, and therefore, on balance, academic freedom should be measured against, and be contingent upon, psychosocial safety and accordingly restricted.
Therefore, many submissions focused on zionist feelings, suggesting that any activity on Palestine on campus is inherently antisemitic. Some of the examples included: solidarity encampments with Palestine, seeing someone wearing a keffiyeh, passing by stickers and flyers with the Palestinian flag on it, walking by a banner saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, seeing posters announcing pro-Palestine rallies, and invitation to students’ union meeting where BDS motions are debated. Even class discussions about the genocide in Gaza, settler colonialism in Palestine, or presenting a slide with the picture of Adolf Eichmann at a law class on Extradition were deemed antisemitic. One submission even claimed that setting an exam question in an international law course, which mentions that the Office of the ICC Prosecutor requested arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, is antisemitic.
Zionist submissions were riffed with anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim rhetoric and racism. They targeted Palestinians, racialized communities like Arabs, Muslims, people of color, and anti-Zionist Jews who were labeled as “token jews,” “fringe Jewish individuals and groups,” and “Nazi collaborators.” Submissions explicitly mentioned the teaching, research, social media activity, and public talks made by academics who are critical of Israel and the genocide in Gaza. I was, among others, a target of some of these submissions, where events I convened and was part of were presented as prime examples of antisemitism on campus. Some of these events included conversations with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Food, Michael Fakhri, as well as a panel discussion about Gaza and International Law that was held at the Australia and New Zealand Law and Society Annual Conference. Complaints about these events and labeling them as ‘antisematism’ —before and after they took place—were also made to my own university, including by my own colleagues.
A concerted attack on anti-Zionism
The Senate hearings were just as problematic as the submissions. The first day of hearing included one witness, and that was the Special Envoy on Antisemitism. The second day had a program stacked towards Zionist representation, in a move that problematically homogenized Australian Jewish communities and inaccurately conflated Judaism with Zionism. Senators acted as cheerleaders of the Zionist organizations while attacking dissent. Sympathy and support were extended to Zionist witnesses only and when it was time to hear from the Jewish Council of Australia, the tone changed. The Jewish Council was established in opposition to Zionist groups, explicitly rejecting the assertion that Jews and Zionism and the State of Israel are the same, or that all Jewish people support the actions of Israel. The Senators displayed immense hostility to the representatives of the Council, Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, and Elizabeth Strakosch, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. The senators questioned their legitimacy and demanded to know where the council’s position on slogans like ‘from the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada.’ The message was clear: by refusing to admit that these slogans were antisemitic, the council was not Jewish enough, and therefore should not be listened to. The Greens dissent report points out this hostility but stops short of calling it what it is: antisemitism. However, as one witness said at the Senate public hearing: Anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic, and all senators seem to agree with them.
During the public hearings, Senators from both sides of the political aisle, Labour and Liberals (liberals being the conservative party in Australia) proceeded on the basis that all the examples of antisemitic presented by Zionist organizations are indeed antisemitic without question, and kept referring to these submissions as a proof that antisemitism has spread in universities. In other words, the process itself was instrumentalized to further a concerted anti-Palestinian agenda: Zionist lobby groups orchestrate a campaign around the rise of antisemitism, politicians ride the wave and introduce a bill to crack down on academic freedom, the public is invited to make submissions to this process, which is immediacy followed by another organized campaign to spam the Senate with hundreds of submissions. Then, these submissions are used by politicians to claim that they are acting on a call from the community.
Despite the harmful nature of the inquiry process, it has made clearer the current and future pressure points at universities, including Zionist frequent use of university complaint mechanisms and even external regulatory occupational health and safety processes in efforts to make Zionism a protected attribute. This includes an attempt to suggest that legal definitions of racial vilification are inadequate as they, for example, pay insufficient attention to the “effect” of Palestinian liberation slogans on Zionist sensibilities and feelings.
Zionists are pursuing these extreme measures because they are losing the battle on campuses. In recent months, we saw BDS resolutions adopted in overwhelming majority by students’ bodies across the country and trade unions at four major universities—The University of Sydney, The University of New South Wales, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Technology Sydney. In early October, the national council of the NTEU—the union for higher education staff in Australia— adopted, again with an overwhelming majority, a BDS motion and a call for an academic boycott of Israel.
To be clear, racism – particularly racism towards First Nations peoples – is a problem in Australia, and antisemitism is only one manifestation of it. All forms of racism ought to be addressed, and all students and staff should feel safe on campuses. If a student walks around campus and sees a poster saying “Jews are not welcome” or being attacked for wearing the Star of David, this is antisemitism. But anti-Zionism is not antisemitic, it is the opposite; it is an anti-racist and anti-colonial stand. Speaking for human rights and Palestinian liberation, against Zionism and Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide is not antisemitic. None of these views make anyone inherently unsafe; at most, it can make someone uncomfortable, and the two are not the same and their intentional conflation is dangerous. Discomfort, being challenged, and facing opinions that you don’t agree with are all part of democratic life and public debate, of being in an education setting like a university. Zionist communal organizations have fundamentally let down a cohort of Jewish university students through their campaign that seeks to make them fear divergent views or to position occupied Palestinians as a threat to Jewish safety.
In a similar vein, safety, including psychosocial safety, should be taken seriously. As academics, ensuring that our students are safe is part of our core mission and of our daily pedagogical practice. But what is unfolding in Australia in the name of combatting antisemitism has little regard for safety: rather, it is a concerted effort to categorically characterize any anti-genocide, anti-apartheid, anti-war speech and action in relation to Israel as inherently racist, which in turn justifies sanctions and censorship of anti-Zionist speech and action. This is not a pedagogical solution, nor an element of an honest and fair discussion about the role of academia and academics. It is pure, classic, political censorship.
Source: mondoweiss
