ANU hosts anti-Israel speech likening terror organisation Hamas to Nelson Mandela

The ANU has hosted an anti-Israel speech by former senior bureaucrat John Menadue in which he compared Hamas to Nelson Mandela.

John Menadue and a flyer for the event.

The Australian National University has hosted an anti-Israel speech by former secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet John Menadue comparing the terrorist group Hamas to South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela and suggesting that giving weight to Israeli concerns was “like reporting on a bubonic plague and giving equal treatment to the rats”.

The speech, at an event organised by the Palestine Action Group Canberra on Sunday, has been lashed by Jewish leaders as “crude propaganda”, suggesting the university had “learned nothing from the mauling it received” during parliamentary inquiries into anti-Semitism on campus over the past 12 months.

An ANU spokeswoman confirmed the university was investigating the incident and took such matters “very seriously”.

The address, subsequently published in Mr Menadue’s personal public policy journal, claimed “Israel has no right of self-defence against resistance in lands that are illegally occupied” while affirming that “Palestinians have a right to rebel”.

“We join the US in calling Hamas a terrorist organisation when the real terrorists in Gaza are ministers in the Israeli government and leaders of the IDF,” Mr Menadue said.

“ ‘Terrorist’ is a grossly misused word. It suits lazy journalists … (They) often become freedom fighters and heroes. Nelson Mandela, jailed for 27 years, was on the US terrorist list for 10 years.”

A flyer promoting the anti-Israel event organised by the Palestine Action Group in Canberra. Source: Instagram

Mr Menadue was secretary of the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet for the Fraser and Whitlam governments.

The former public servant also took aim at mainstream media and what he called “the Zionist lobby machine”, suggesting anti-Semitism had been weaponised to “shut down free speech and divert attention from the genocide”.

“In the name of ‘balance’, our media give credibility to this Israeli propaganda. It’s like reporting on a bubonic plague and giving equal treatment to the rats,” he said.

“We are told to heed the hurt feelings of Zionists, some on university campuses, who support genocide or have wilfully chosen to ignore it.

“They play the victim card.”

The ANU was one of four Australian universities identified by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency as targets of its “live compliance processes” relating to anti-Semitism complaints.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said by giving a platform to a speech “that is laden with name-calling but devoid of serious analysis, it (ANU) has further compromised its credibility as an institution of higher learning”.

“To compare Nelson Mandela to the butchers, rapists and kidnappers of Hamas, at a time when the people of Gaza are bravely trying to shake off their tyrannical rule, is not merely ludicrous but outrageous,” he said.

“The analogy with the ‘bubonic plague’ and ‘rats’ is reminiscent of the hateful tropes purveyed by the Nazis in the 1930s. This is crude propaganda and it doesn’t belong anywhere in contemporary Australia, let alone a university.”

The comments follow ANU’s adoption of Universities Australia’s unilateral definition of anti-Semitism, which states “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

Former secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet John Menadue made the controversial comparison during a speech at an anti-Israel event held at ANU. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

When asked by The Australian whether these comments would fall foul of this definition, an ANU spokeswoman said “all functions must adhere to the university’s policies and procedures”.

Mr Menadue said he stood by every word of his address, citing “remarkable” support he had received for it. “My speech calls to notice Australia as a settler-­colonial state, exposes ‘terrorism’ as a fear-making fraud, and points to our double standards on Ukraine v Gaza,” he said.

He was one of six guests invited to speak at the event, including UNSW honorary associate professor Peter Slezak who is under investigation by University of Technology Sydney, for saying “we have a duty to make Jews uncomfortable” during a campus pro-Palestine rally.

The organisers of Sunday’s ANU event were approached for comment.