Anti-Israel Sydney University students turn their backs on Jewish speakers
Sydney University students have turned their backs on Jewish speakers defending a new anti-Semitism definition and the existence of Israel | WATCH
Scores of students at the nation’s oldest university turned their backs on Jewish peers who were pleading for support to stamp out anti-Semitism on campus and defending the existence of a Jewish state.
The meeting of Sydney University students ultimately rejected a new definition of anti-Semitism adopted by Australia’s universities and called for the elimination of Israel, leading to fierce condemnation by peak Jewish groups.
“We need your help … you’re meant to stand for solidarity for minority groups on campus,” Jewish undergraduate student Jack Mars said at the student gathering.
“Quite frankly, we feel abandoned. You turn your back on us … You say it’s all some sort of conspiracy to silence criticism of Israel. That’s ridiculous.”
The motions moved on Wednesday night by anti-Israel activist group Students Against War, which passed almost unanimously, will lead to the Students’ Representative Council rejecting in full the university’s definition of anti-Semitism, declaring it was “not anti-Semitic to call for the elimination of the apartheid state of Israel”.
The second student general meeting held on campus in under a year also reaffirmed previous calls, backed by the SRC, for a “single secular democratic state across all of historic Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea”.
Student activists speaking in favour of the motions to a crowd of more than 200 claimed Israel had “no right to exist, and every student should be able to say that without fear of suspension or disciplinary action”.
“This is a genocide and this new anti-Semitism definition has nothing to do with combating racism or protecting Jewish students,” an anti-Israel speaker said.
“We will force our government to end their support for this genocide. From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free.”
Kovi Rose, a Jewish-Israeli postgraduate student from Sydney University who spoke against the anti-Israel motions challenged non-Jewish students to consider “why it is that you deserve a loud voice, if any, on the topic of defining what is or isn’t anti-Semitism”.
“Anti-Zionism currently takes all of the evils of the world like colonialism, white supremacy, and genocide, and projects them onto the Jewish people,” he told the room. “All that Jewish students are asking for is the right to determine for themselves and not be told by their detractors what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be discriminated against and what it means to be anti-Semitic.”
After condemning proscribed terror organisation Hamas and its grip on Gaza, a large majority of the crowd stood up and turned their backs to the Jewish student.
Students Against War activists, who in the lead up to last year’s student general meeting distributed pamphlets on campus with the Hamas triangle symbol on it, also claimed: “There is no such thing as a two-state solution … the only solution is a one-state solution” and that there was “no such thing as Jewish self-determination in Israel”.
These statements fly in the face of the newly adopted university definition of anti-Semitism which states: “Criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the state of Israel.”
A university spokeswoman said it was aware of the meeting. It had “liased with key members of relevant student groups and reminded them of their obligations to manage their meetings in a way that is respectful of the opinion of others”.
“The definition of anti-Semitism developed by the Group of Eight universities and endorsed by Universities Australia … will be used by decision makers to assess complaints and allegations of anti-Semitism,” she said.
A small collective of representatives from the Australasian Union of Jewish Students who attended the meeting to defend the definition said it was “very intimidating to go up against a crowd of 200 people that can get quite vitriolic at times”.
Mr Mars, an undergraduate student at the university and AUJS’s public affairs co-ordinator, said students turning their back on him and his fellow Jewish student speakers was “absolutely symbolic of the last 15 months”.
“At every stage where there has been an opportunity to engage, and listen to us and take us seriously, they prefer to claim that we’re making it all up … That it’s all part of some conspiracy to attack free speech,” Mr Mars said.
“There’s clearly a culture problem on campus that’s been allowed to develop which has allowed things like this to blossom … It’s going to take a lot of work to correct that culture.”
Mr Mars had earlier told the meeting that the new definition wouldn’t infringe on people’s ability to criticise Israel, suggesting it was a “national past-time” in the Jewish state. “It does stop you however from using anti-Semitic tropes when you do that … If the only way you know how to criticise Israel is by using Holocaust inversion, by using Nazi rhetoric … you’re not interested in criticising policy, you’re interested in making Jews feel unsafe,” he said on Wednesday night.
Jewish bodies at national and state levels criticised the “openly anti-Semitic conduct” at the student general meeting and called for the university to distance itself from the motions.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s head of legal Simone Abel said the motions moved during the meeting would have “zero consequences for the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians” but would hold real consequences for Jewish students on campus.
Australian Academic Alliance against Antisemitism director David Knoll argued it was “profoundly racist” to deny the right of self-determination to Jewish people and only Jewish people. “Any reasonable person would expect the university to disavow and disassociate itself from this resolution quickly and firmly,” he said.
Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Michele Goldman, said while the group acknowledged and appreciated efforts by the university to ensure the meeting went ahead smoothly, “the core purpose of the meeting was to vote on motions that were inherently racist”.
UNSW professor Peter Slezak, the subject of a UTS investigation for suggesting that “we have a duty to make Jews uncomfortable” at a pro-Palestinian rally last year, was set to speak at the event but was barred by “university restrictions”.
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