Uni leaders enable ‘ugliest behaviour in nation’s history’

Tensions reached boiling point at Deakin University’s Burwood campus as Palestine and Israel supporters clashed at a “solidarity with Gaza” encampment, leaving one staff member with cuts and bruises.

Dear University vice-chancellors,

After weeks of your inaction, the time has come for you to listen hard – not only to your Jewish students and Jewish staff, but also to Jewish parents.

Your acquiescence to the growing unruly mobs that have gathered on campuses around Australia has given way to the ugliest behaviour this country has ever seen. You have stood idly by in the name of free speech while Jewish university students have been verbally and physically vilified in the name of a conflict on the other side of the world.

I experienced this targeting of Jews first-hand when I accompanied my 20-year-old daughter to the pro-Palestinian rally at Deakin University last week.

We stood quietly to the side with other Jewish staff and students, as protesters and rally organisers chanted at us, “F..k off, Zionist scum”, “bye bye, Zionists” and “shame, Zionists, shame”.

We were called “Zionist creeps” that “should be running for the hills”. We were shouted at, physically intimidated, and even photographed by strangers who knew nothing about us, but guessed we were Jewish. I am still processing what happened, as is my daughter. This experience has given me a tragic insight, as it should to you, into what it’s like to be a Jewish student right now.

These students have every right to be enjoying university to the fullest, as I did 30 years ago. University is about meeting new people, personal growth and learning in a stimulating environment.

Jewish university students, like their peers, should feel physically, culturally and socially accepted in all settings, including on campus. Instead, they are targeted just for being Jewish.

In my daughter’s class recently, an activist wearing a keffiyeh stood up to talk about the “inspiring American encampment movement”. You would know that these “movements” have resulted in Jewish students being verbally abused, physically assaulted and blocked from entering spaces.

In Australia, there have been multiple cases of lectures by Israeli academics cancelled due to boycotting campaigns by student groups.

It is no wonder many Jewish students now dread coming to campus or that they feel compelled to hide their Jewishness or connection to Israel out of fear.

This pains me terribly, as it should you. Through the refusal of your universities to take a clear position and ban inciteful, violent chants such as “intifada” and “from the river to the sea”, you have given the green light for a violent mob to exercise hate freely. It is clear they are becoming unrulier by the day.

Thousands of protesters march through Sydney to the Sydney University Gaza solidarity encampment, on the Quad lawns for the Hands of Rafah demonstration. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Free speech is not an absolute right, nor does it override the right to safety and freedom from discrimination. Protesting students and nefarious visitors have in fact exploited freedom of speech and weaponised the conflict in Israel to express their violence towards Jews here in Australia.

Many students who do lodge complaints to their university receive generic emails with links to multiple policies about conduct, safety and counselling. But this is not about policies and legalspeak. It is about what is right, and what is wrong. It is about what sort of places we want our educational institutions to be – places of hate and harassment, or places of tolerance and respect.

Please act now before there is further dangerous escalation on campus. You still have the power to be on the right side of history.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Moran Dvir is a co-founder of the Jewish grassroots advocacy group, Project A.