Jewish students are afraid to go to class and facing an environment of intimidation on campus, their peers allege, as the education minister comes under growing pressure to condemn pro-Palestine encampments.
However, while 17 formal reports have been made about “various aspects” of Australia’s longest encampment at the University of Sydney, no breaches related to antisemitism have been found, a spokesperson for the university said.
Pro-Palestine encampments are in place at universities around Australia, with new encampments at three additional universities in Melbourne – RMIT, Deakin and La Trobe. University of Sydney’s encampment is nearing its third week.
But tensions are rising over the camps, with the shadow minister for education, Sarah Henderson, on Monday calling on the education minister, Jason Clare, to resign unless he explicitly banned hate speech on university campuses.
Speaking at a press conference over the weekend, Clare said calls of “from the river to the sea” and chants referencing “intifada” that had been common at the protests could be interpreted as meaning the annihilation of Israel or “the opposite”.
Intifada is an Arabic word that is understood to mean a civil uprising in the Palestinian context, while “from the river to the sea” has been interpreted as calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state.
Henderson labelled it a “train-wreck press conference” that showed an “appalling failure of leadership”. On Monday morning, Henderson met with a second roundtable of Jewish university students, staff and community leaders in Sydney, where she heard “terrible stories” of intimidation, harassment and threats to safety.
Henderson said the situation was “particularly bad” at the University of Sydney, alleging it had failed to uphold codes of conduct and shut down the encampment, “fuelling harassment and intimidation of Jewish and non-Jewish students”.
A spokesperson for the University of Sydney said: “As we’ve consistently told our students and staff, if we find members of our community have violated our codes of conduct we won’t hesitate to take disciplinary action as appropriate.
“We’ve increased our security profile across campus for the time being as a precautionary measure and our protective services team is operating 24/7 if any students or staff feel unsafe.”
The vice-president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Zac Morris, said he had met with the University of Sydney on multiple occasions and was disheartened by their response to growing concerns from Jewish staff and students.
“Students are afraid to go to class, they’re missing lectures and tutorials,” he said. “They’re being filmed, followed, intimidated.”
Morris pointed to a whiteboard displayed at the camp where protesters wrote “globalise the intifada” as well as now-covered graffiti of the words “Zionists = Nazis” on campus.
He also called out offensive messaging from a left-leaning University of Sydney group, associated with the camp, which posted on social media last year that as socialists they “unconditionally support … Hamas’ right to resist Israel’s occupation by any means necessary”.
“This situation is the worst it’s been,” he said. “It’s terrifying. We respect freedom of speech but there is a line that should be clear. Chanting for intifada is traumatic for us, however it is intended.
“Jewish students [on] campus have loved ones who were victims of the suicide bombings of the second intifada [in the 2000s].”
Speaking on the ABC on Monday, Clare reiterated that the community, including politicians, needed to “lower the temperature” to “try to keep our country together”.
“It’s obvious that there are students, Jewish students, who feel that they’re afraid to go to university, and that’s not on,” he said.
Pointed again to the term “intifada”, Clare hardened his stance, rejecting that the word was acceptable to use at protests.
“Anything that stokes fear at universities is intolerable, and I think I’ve made that clear,” he said.
The Zionist Federation of Australia’s CEO, Alon Cassuto, said the situation for Jewish students had “dramatically worsened” since 7 October.
“We told universities last year that two-thirds of Jewish students had faced antisemitism on campus,” he said.
“Since that time … Jewish students have become too frightened to admit their Jewishness to their peers. They are staying away from campus.
“The encampments are a physical, threatening presence telling Jews quite clearly that expressing their ethnic or religious identity on campus is unwelcome, and dangerous.”
Students for Palestine organiser Shovan Bhattarai said the protest movement “unequivocally opposes discrimination and oppression”.
“A lot of Jewish students, some of the key organisers of the camps … totally disagree with their Jewish identity being weaponised,” she said.
Bhattarai said students would be prepared to “lower the temperature”, as Clare has urged, when the number of “bombs raining down on Gaza have lowered”.
“This situation taking place right now in Gaza is escalating,” she said. “Things are getting worse. The death toll is rising … the voices to stand up for Palestine should rise.”
The Jewish Council of Australia’s executive officer, Dr Max Kaiser, said protesters were “taking a brave and peaceful stand against genocide”, adding many Jews had been part of the campus encampments.
