Reality of Rafah a world away from campus hatred

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare’s foolish claims that anti-Israel chants such as “From the river to the sea” and “intifada” have different meanings to different groups deserved the rebuke he has received from Anthony Albanese. Jewish people, including students, have no doubt that “From the river to the sea” is an unequivocal call for the destruction of Israel. Intifada refers to Palestinian uprisings against Israel. In the past week Mr Clare has been negligent in failing to take a stand against anti-Semitic encampments on university campuses. Any responsible education minister should defend the rights of Jewish students to go about their studies without harassment by pro-Palestinian protesters stoking fear. The danger in Mr Clare’s language, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said, was: “It doesn’t envisage peaceful coexistence with Israel and its eight million Jews, it anticipates their destruction.”

The Prime Minister was clear when The Australian’s Sarah Ison asked him at a press conference on Monday to comment on whether he thought the slogan “From the river to the sea” was offensive in light of the pro-Palestinian campus protests. “It is a slogan that calls for opposition to a two-state solution,” Mr Albanese said, standing beside Mr Clare. “My position is very clear and the government’s position is clear.” It has been a bipartisan position for a long time.

Mr Albanese also took a welcome firm stand last Friday when he met rabbis at the Central Synagogue in Bondi Junction in Sydney’s east. He reportedly committed to “unequivocally fight anti-Semitism” and said he would like to “come out a lot stronger than perhaps in the past”. Central Synagogue’s Rabbi Levi Wolff confirmed Mr Albanese was dismissive of many of the campus protesters, whom he labelled “Trots” looking to instigate and make trouble. “He even said: ‘What do these people think? That the Jewish people came to Israel only in 1948? Do they not know the history?’,” Rabbi Wolff said.

While out of step with Mr Albanese, Mr Clare is probably motivated by the fact 35 per cent of his southwestern Sydney seat, Blaxland, is Muslim. So is 27.2 per cent of his cabinet colleague Tony Burke’s seat of Watson. On Sky News on Sunday, Mr Burke did not condemn the protests either but he said anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were both repugnant. Free speech matters; it is a core Australian value. But where protesters are supporting the destruction of Israel (river to the sea) or terror (intifada), or supporting Hamas, as organisers of the Australian National University protest did last week, the encampments should be cleared. As former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, a prominent member of the Jewish community, tells Cameron Stewart: “Unless a line is drawn, these encampments will grow bigger and stay longer, and the chances of violence will increase by the day. So why not act now before it gets even worse?” Anti-Semitism in Australia has reached an unprecedented and dangerous level since October 7, Mr Frydenberg said. His documentary, Never Again: The Fight Against Anti-Semitism, in which he interviews prominent Australians including Mr Albanese, John Howard, Julia Gillard, Sir Peter Cosgrave, Peter Dutton, musicians, sportspeople and Holocaust survivors, will appear on Sky News on May 28.

On Monday, the Israel Defence Forces began evacuating about 100,000 people from eastern Rafah ahead of an expected ground assault. It urged them to head to an “expanded humanitarian area” in the Palestinian territory. Once there, the people deserve to be provided for properly until Hamas is defeated. Only then will the process towards a two-state solution, favoured by most right-thinking people, and a sustainable settlement of the long-running conflict be able to get under way. While Iran-backed terrorists favouring the destruction of Israel from the river to the sea are still in the frame, that is impossible. The positions favoured by most of the campus protesters would do ordinary Palestinians no favours.