No safe space on campus for support of Israel

The main quadrangle building of the University of Sydney

Last week a group calling itself Sydney University Staff for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions held an on-campus forum to discuss the conflict in the Middle East.

The event, Gaza in Context: The Duty of Solidarity in the West, warned of “Palestinians being made the objects of genocidal violence”. Our duty as scholars – if we’re to believe this organisation – is to stand with Hamas against a genocide perpetrated by Israel. BDS is a global campaign to isolate Israel. At least 90 present and former University of Sydney academics have signed the BDS pledge. Many more support it less publicly.

My colleagues say they are not anti-Semitic and I take them at their word. While not vilifying Jewish people or the Jewish faith, they do claim “Israel is a brutal, colonising power” that has “laid the ground for a second Nakba”.

That’s an interesting choice of words. The Arabic word Nakba (catastrophe) gained prominence in the 1990s as a Palestinian counterpart to the Hebrew shoah, which carries the same connotation. In the Shoah (more widely known as the Holocaust) roughly six million Jews were systematically murdered between 1941 and 1945. By contrast, during the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, roughly 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were driven into exile. Their departure was prompted by a UN resolution to divide Palestine into independent (and roughly equal) Jewish and Arab states. But they didn’t leave peacefully.

They left after attacking their Jewish neighbours, with no thought for negotiation, on the declaration of the State of Israel. At the same time, the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria all invaded Israel in support of the Palestinian cause. In short, Palestinian Arabs and their allies attempted to expel the Jews from the Holy Land but failed. That was their catastrophe.

My colleagues are aware of this history. They’re also aware that Jewish minority communities since have been driven out of every Arab country. Yet they continue to seek “peace, equality and justice … in solidarity with Palestine”, blaming the current “tragedy” on Israeli “apartheid and ethnic cleansing”.

Salvatore Babones

My colleagues may not be anti-Semitic but such strongly professed condemnations of Israel in defiance of history and logic make our universities safe spaces in which anti-Semitism can flourish. No one on campus is brazen enough to call for a second Holocaust. But anyone with a first-class honours in the liberal arts can parse the obvious implications of calling for a Palestine that runs “from the river to the sea”.

And it is in the liberal arts – and in staff unions led mainly by arts academics – that tacit support and tepid contextualisation of the horrific October 7 terror attacks is concentrated. In those disciplines that should know better, “justice for Palestine” is, if not the absolute majority view, at least the majority view among those who have a view. For our arts faculties are divided between those who condemn Israel, and those who don’t view the Arab-Israeli conflict as a topic of particular interest.

Those who might support Israel publicly, condemn Palestinian terrorism or present a straightforward factual history of the Arab-Israeli conflict are strikingly absent because they were never hired in the first place. Academic supporters of Palestine strenuously object to the hiring of Zionists (supporters of a Jewish homeland in Israel). But the reverse is not true: those few who support Israel generally object only to outright anti-Semitism, not to candidates who merely express support for Palestine.

A member of Palestine Action Group Sydney holds a Palestinian flag during a rally against Israeli occupation of Palestine in Sydney.

What’s true of hiring is also true at the beginning of the pipeline. Pro-Palestinian activist professors often will not give a fair reading to class papers that oppose their view. They won’t take on honours students who support Israel, or supervise PhD projects that expose Palestinian crimes. It is near-impossible for a committed Zionist to get on the academic ladder, never mind get an academic job.

As a result, there are two camps in arts academe: committed activists who condemn Israel for supposedly calling down on itself terrorist atrocities such as the October 7 attacks, and people who steer clear of the entire region. Academic freedom protects the first group. The second just keeps their heads down and let the BDS crowd run the asylum.

Salvatore Babones is a University of Sydney associate professor.