Hamas-supporting student Beatrice Tucker runs for president after ANU reversed expulsion

ANU student Beatrice Tucker, who said earlier this year that Hamas ‘deserved unconditional support’, is now running to be student association president after the university overturned an expulsion.

Beatrice Tucker, a student representative on the ANU’s student association last year and an organiser of the pro-Palestine encampment on the university’s campus.

An Australian National University student who declared terrorist organisation Hamas deserved “unconditional support” is now running to be president of the ANU’s student association.

Beatrice Tucker, a leading figure in the pro-Palestine encampment protest at the ANU, earlier this year caused controversy when she declined to condemn Hamas and said the organisation deserved “unconditional support”.

She was subsequently expelled by the university. That action was recently overturned on appeal.

“Guess who got to step on to ANU campus today after 4 long fighting months,” Tucker published on their social media at the time. “My expulsion has been overturned babeeyyyy!”

“Just wanna affirm that Palestini4ns have the right to res1st, by any means necessary as recognised under internal law & we have to continue to fight so say so, continue to assert our right to speak freely on P4lestine, in order to continue the fight for a free Palest1n3!”

A social media post by Beatrice Tucker.

Now, Tucker is listed as a presidential candidate for the upcoming ANU Student Association elections. Her ticket is titled “Globalise the Resistance for Palestine”.

Other students on Tucker’s ticket are running for various positions on the student association and another former encampment leader is also competing for the top job.

An ANU spokeswoman told The Australian that ANUSA is “a student-led organisation that is separate and independent to the university”.

She declined to comment on whether the university would intervene in Tucker’s candidacy.

She also declined to confirm whether Tucker’s expulsion had been overturned, despite confirmation from Tucker’s social media and ANUSA rules requiring candidates to be current students.

“ANU does not comment on specific disciplinary matters,” she said. “However, the university takes seriously any alleged behaviour or speech that contravenes our values as a community, and which go against our codes of conduct.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry slammed the overturning of her expulsion and her candidacy. “Two weeks ago, ASIO head Mike Burgess said, ‘If you think terrorism is OK, if you think the destruction of the state of Israel is OK, if you think Hamas and what they did on the 7th of October is OK, I can tell you that is not OK, and from an ASIO security assessment point of view, you will not pass muster’,” co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said.

“So now we have a candidate for student president at an elite Australian university who would not be allowed into our country if they were a non-Australian applying for a visa.

“This has debased ANU, and the value of an ANU degree.”

In May this year, ECAJ said Tucker should “face immediate expulsion from the university” after she told ABC radio that “Hamas deserves our unconditional support”.

“Not because I agree with the strategy, complete disagreement with that,” Tucker said. “But the situation at hand is if you have no hope, if you are sanctioned every day of your life, if you are told you are not allowed to drive down a road because somebody who is Israeli who gets preference and you sit there for 12 hours, the reality of lives …”

“But Beatrice, that can’t justify what they did in October last year,” the host interjected.

“Nothing can justify what has been happening to the Palestinian people for 75 years,” Tucker responded. “And essentially the UN coming in with the situation of a two-state solution … You know the history of that place, of Palestine, the Palestinians before the UN came in with the two-state solution actually were also under an English mandate, right? Palestinians were promised that they would have self-determination.”

“I will not condemn what Hamas did.”

The ANU Student Association was mired in scandal earlier this year after the university investigated allegations that students had performed Nazi-inspired gestures in an online meeting of the organisation. In that meeting, students voted down a motion from Jewish students to recognise there was a culture of anti-Semitism in the pro-Palestine protest encampment.

This comes ahead of a Senate hearing on a bill to establish a judicial inquiry on campus anti-Semitism. ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell is scheduled to attend on Friday, along with vice-chancellors of other universities that hosted pro-Palestine protest encampments earlier in the year.