Intifada Tent Land, where bigotry masquerades as courage
What the Pro-Palestine student disrupters need more than anything is a lesson in consequences.
It’s long time since I was at university; close to 30 years, actually, which makes me feel aged. Mine was the cohort coming into tertiary education in the heart of the Keating recession. You know, the one we had to have. The one Jim Chalmers seems determined to go one up on.
Going to university wasn’t a given for everyone and there was no shame in that. Getting a job (if you could find one) was a noble pursuit. Going to university for me at least was a calculated decision because my parents were not in a position to pay my way or support me. I lived at home. I paid board. I worked three jobs: cleaning houses, tutoring and being a dish pig in a cafe. I had started as a waitress but was (cough) demoted due to my inability to mask my irritation on a range of fronts, including but not limited to fussy customers who couldn’t make up their bloody minds and order.
I was an arts major and my class contact hours were far from onerous, which was just as well because I needed to work to pay my way, put petrol in my $500 canary-yellow Mini Minor and, you know, live. Oh, I had a couple of mates who you could say were more fortunate in that their parents were wealthy and paid their HECS and all that, but every single one of them had at least one part-time job. It’s just how we got by.
As I’ve watched the chaos, nonsense and embarrassment of these anti-Semitic campus protests spread with all the charm of a stubborn toenail fungus across Australian universities, I can’t help but wonder: what area of study are these fools enrolled in? Add to that, who is paying for all of this?
It has become clear there are plenty of loser hangers-on involved in it all but, equally, plenty of students looking for their moment in the sun. Searching for god knows what. I’d be curious to know what their core areas of study are, but I’m willing to bet you won’t find many medicine, engineering or physics majors in the fray. They’re too busy learning how to keep humans alive, cure sickness and disease, build critical infrastructure based on complex physics and mathematical principles, and generally make the world a better place.
As a senior medical specialist said to me this week, “My kid is in fifth-year medicine and the only place they have time to assemble is in their bed at the end of a 12 to 14-hour workday, with study on top of that.” Exactly. You think anyone studying to become an anaesthetist has the time for this kind of BS?
I never had a problem with increasing the cost of university degrees, especially arts degrees. Put some weight on the thing and see who’s willing to actually sacrifice to achieve something. I can’t recall how long it took me to pay off my HECS debt but I do recall my first job and being paid the princely sum of $19,500 a year full time (and that involved radio newsroom shifts). I felt like a rock star because I’d earned it with my blood, sweat, tears, cleaning jobs and the full university experience that did not involve racism, hatred or bigotry.
Most of the universities, by now, have been shamed into telling these brats to move on and, unsurprisingly, they’re saying no. So we’re at an impasse, and who will be the first to blink? I’ve got a solution. Just tear it down. Just go in there, tear down the tents and throw them in the bin. Issue them all with suspensions for violating university laws. Kick them off campus for a couple of months. It would be a stupendous life lesson along the lines of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Or choice and consequences. They want to talk about rights? Teach them about responsibilities.
You can dress up this self-indulgent twaddle in any kind of lipstick you like, but it’s still a mud-covered swine soiling itself in front of the rest of the country, which can spot a bigot when we see one. These protesters are not courageous, because there’s no cost. Most are so gutless they mask their faces. They are neither intelligent nor principled.
If this were about principle we might have seen a similar response when, mid-last year, The Netherlands and Canada brought Syria before the International Court of Justice on violations of the Convention against Torture. The Assad regime was so indifferent to the views of the West it didn’t even turn up to court.
Ah, but no Jews, no news. This is what it means to be anti-Semitic. Hidden again in plain sight.
The only thing Intifada Tent Land shows is how we have failed a generation by rewarding petulance; removing consequences; allowing them to grow up thinking this is courage, and they are making a difference and that they are special. None of these things is true. Apart from the despicable failure to keep Jewish students safe on campus, the failure to stop the rot before it took hold, the greatest failure is to a cohort of young people who, when mugged by reality, inevitably will look for someone to blame.
I have a simple question for university leadership, chancellors and vice-chancellors. Are you proud? Do you look at this absolute debacle that’s taking place under your watch and feel any sense of pride? This is a genuine question, not rhetorical.
It is wildly astonishing that University of Melbourne chancellor Jane Hansen can’t see a specific problem with anti-Semitism in higher education. She said there were “many different forms of racism” that were abhorrent and deserved attention. Would you please show us the equivalence? Show us where the tents are pitched to stop Afghan kids going to class, or Italians, or Vietnamese kids. Show me the anti-Catholic graffiti on campus. Likewise, show me how many kids of Palestinian background are being called foul names and told to stay home for their own safety. Please, provide evidence of all of this so we can address it together.
Buildings at Melbourne University’s arts precinct have been graffitied and renamed “Mahmoud Hall”. Again, show us all the equivalent problem affecting students of other races and ethnicity. The truth is, nobody can show these things because they are simply not there.
University chancellors, silent for weeks as these cretins run riot, responded in a heartbeat to pending cuts to their revenue stream, also known as foreign students, announced in the budget this week. Good to know their priorities.
Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, Anthony Albanese has watered down a promised inquiry into campus anti-Semitism. Instead, we’re getting a two-year inquiry of some nebulous description. In keeping on-brand, there’ll be no consequences. This is yet another show of weakness from a government that bleats about social cohesion but does nothing. You can call these protesters Trots all you like, Prime Minister, but talk is cheap. Strong action is needed and the time for that is months overdue.
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