Loose Cannon
2024-10-21 04:54:31 UTC
Over the last year, Australian universities have been subject to a
Zionist political pressure campaign for their varied responses to
ongoing university student protests against Israels genocide of
Palestinians in Gaza. This culminated recently in the Australian
Senate with calls to investigate universities for antisemitism.
On October 2, 2024, the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Legal
and Constitutional Affairs released a set of recommendations as part
of a review of a bill calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism
at universities. The Committee recommended that the Attorney General
refer an inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities to the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. In addition, it
recommended that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency
(TEQSA) will work together with the newly appointed Special Envoy to
Combat Antisemitism to ensure that universities review their
complaints processes to a real and meaningful outcomes for
complainants.
These recommendations, which the government supports, will put the
University sector under constant, ongoing, political scrutiny, serving
as a reminder that they need to keep their staff and students on a
leash. They are part of an ongoing political attack on academic
freedom that predates October 7, which seeks to silence critical
discussions about Israel and to label any academic activity, including
teaching and scholarship, that criticizes Israel as antisemitic and
therefore illegitimate, and illegal.
Zionist pressure on universities
For a number of years now, Zionist groups have been pressuring
universities to adopt the IHRA against calls from academics, student
groups, and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to reject it.
Indeed, university presidents and administration, with some
exceptions, learned a bitter lesson from the experience of the United
Kingdom and elsewhere about the threat that the IHRA poses to academic
freedom and freedom of speech on campuses. And so, while in the U.K.
75% of the universities adopted the IHRA following a threat by the
Secretary of State for Education to withhold funding from
universities, only 5 out of 37 universities in Australia adopted the
IHRA to date. The position of many universities was that Australias
anti-discrimination legislation and their own anti-racism policies are
sufficient protection mechanisms in themselves.
The pressure on universities increased after October 7. Zionist
groups, politicians, and the media created a moral panic about rising
antisemitism in the community and described universities, and
especially the eleven student encampments that were established across
Australia, as incubators for anti-Jewish racism. The language of
safety was weaponized to amplify their claim about the need to censor
pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activities. Realizing that the
universities do not meet all their demands, Zionist groups have turned
to the political route, with two main objectives: 1) to impose the
IHRA definition on universities, and 2) to frame Zionism as a
protected identity, similar to what we see in some U.S. universities.
As a result, the political pressure on universities increased. The
Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, said that Jewish students
dont feel safe at university and that Its obvious that it exists
in our university and Ive made it clear to all university vice
chancellors that theyve got a responsibility to enforce their codes
of conduct. University chiefs rushed to seek advice from the Attorney
General who is in favor of the IHRA definitionon whether
liberationist chants such as from the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free and the use of the word intifada violated the Race
Discrimination Act.
Then in July 2024, the Labor government caved to pressure and
appointed a special envoy on antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who is a
staunch Zionist and the former president of the Executive Council of
Australia Jewry (ECAJ). In one of her first public speeches after
assuming this role, Segal listed examples of what she considers to be
systemic forms of antisemitism that ought to be tackled. These
included posters, graffities, boycott Israel stickers, signs saying
Israel is genocidal, teaching Israel/Palestine in indigenous
studies, and wearing a keffiyeh. As an Envoy, Segal now holds a
government position, has the mandate to represent Australia in
International fora, and is doing the job of a prominent Zionist
organization in a formal capacity, and with the legitimacy and
resources (an office and staff funded by the government) that such
position comes with. Bluntly put, it is a state-sponsored McCarthyist
office.
Weaponizing safety
Australia is now also looking into introducing legislation to
establish a national student ombudsman to combat antisemitism at
universities. Among other things, this office will have the power to
launch its own investigations. As the Australian historian, Henry
Reynolds commented: The minister seems to be unaware of what he is
proposing the appointment of a government official to act as a
political censor inside the universities to control what can be said
or promoted.
Such investigations can be harmful, not just for the concrete
recommendations that they propose. Often, the processes are flawed too
irrespective of outcomes. They create a public protected space for
amplifying anti-Palestinian racism and ungrounded accusations of
antisemitism.
This can be seen in the recent Senate process, where the public was
invited to make submissions, and two public hearings were held in
September 2024. 669 submissions were made public on the Committees
website, with about a hundred submissions by civil society bodies,
universities, and other official bodies such as the Human Rights
Commission or the Attorney Generals department. The rest are
submissions by individuals. Around 150 submissions have been
classified as confidential and their content was not available to the
public.
The submission process was marred by the actions of two lobby groups:
ECAJ and the newly formed Australian Academic Alliance Against
Antisemitism (known as the 5A). The organisations encouraged
individuals to spam the commission with submissions by circulating
templates (see here and here), providing a how-to-complaint guide that
includes dubious examples of antisemitism that can be included in
submissions such as the display of pro-Palestine posters on campuses.
Submissions by Zionist groups and individuals used the discourse of
safety. While this is not unique to Australia, the legal landscape
here is different. In Australia, academic freedom is guaranteed and
protected in legislation and in some collective enterprise bargaining
agreements. At the same time, health and safety legislation includes
provisions about safety, including the duty to ensure psycho-social
safety. Therefore, a main vehicle to censor activities on campus is to
suggest that any criticism of Israel or Zionism harms the
physio-social safety of Jewish staff and students, and therefore, on
balance, academic freedom should be measured against, and be
contingent upon, psychosocial safety and accordingly restricted.
Therefore, many submissions focused on zionist feelings, suggesting
that any activity on Palestine on campus is inherently antisemitic.
Some of the examples included: solidarity encampments with Palestine,
seeing someone wearing a keffiyeh, passing by stickers and flyers with
the Palestinian flag on it, walking by a banner saying that Israel is
committing genocide in Gaza, seeing posters announcing pro-Palestine
rallies, and invitation to students union meeting where BDS motions
are debated. Even class discussions about the genocide in Gaza,
settler colonialism in Palestine, or presenting a slide with the
picture of Adolf Eichmann at a law class on Extradition were deemed
antisemitic. One submission even claimed that setting an exam question
in an international law course, which mentions that the Office of the
ICC Prosecutor requested arrest warrants against Israels Prime
Minister and Minister of Defence, is antisemitic.
Zionist submissions were riffed with anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and
anti-Muslim rhetoric and racism. They targeted Palestinians,
racialized communities like Arabs, Muslims, people of color, and
anti-Zionist Jews who were labeled as token jews, fringe Jewish
individuals and groups, and Nazi collaborators. Submissions
explicitly mentioned the teaching, research, social media activity,
and public talks made by academics who are critical of Israel and the
genocide in Gaza. I was, among others, a target of some of these
submissions, where events I convened and was part of were presented as
prime examples of antisemitism on campus. Some of these events
included conversations with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human
Rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, and the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Food, Michael Fakhri, as well as a panel discussion
about Gaza and International Law that was held at the Australia and
New Zealand Law and Society Annual Conference. Complaints about these
events and labeling them as antisematism before and after they took
placewere also made to my own university, including by my own
colleagues.
A concerted attack on anti-Zionism
The Senate hearings were just as problematic as the submissions. The
first day of hearing included one witness, and that was the Special
Envoy on Antisemitism. The second day had a program stacked towards
Zionist representation, in a move that problematically homogenized
Australian Jewish communities and inaccurately conflated Judaism with
Zionism. Senators acted as cheerleaders of the Zionist organizations
while attacking dissent. Sympathy and support were extended to Zionist
witnesses only and when it was time to hear from the Jewish Council of
Australia, the tone changed. The Jewish Council was established in
opposition to Zionist groups, explicitly rejecting the assertion that
Jews and Zionism and the State of Israel are the same, or that all
Jewish people support the actions of Israel. The Senators displayed
immense hostility to the representatives of the Council, Sarah
Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, and Elizabeth Strakosch, a senior
lecturer at the University of Melbourne. The senators questioned their
legitimacy and demanded to know where the councils position on
slogans like from the river to the sea or intifada. The message
was clear: by refusing to admit that these slogans were antisemitic,
the council was not Jewish enough, and therefore should not be
listened to. The Greens dissent report points out this hostility but
stops short of calling it what it is: antisemitism. However, as one
witness said at the Senate public hearing: Anti-Zionism is inherently
antisemitic, and all senators seem to agree with them.
During the public hearings, Senators from both sides of the political
aisle, Labour and Liberals (liberals being the conservative party in
Australia) proceeded on the basis that all the examples of antisemitic
presented by Zionist organizations are indeed antisemitic without
question, and kept referring to these submissions as a proof that
antisemitism has spread in universities. In other words, the process
itself was instrumentalized to further a concerted anti-Palestinian
agenda: Zionist lobby groups orchestrate a campaign around the rise of
antisemitism, politicians ride the wave and introduce a bill to crack
down on academic freedom, the public is invited to make submissions to
this process, which is immediacy followed by another organized
campaign to spam the Senate with hundreds of submissions. Then, these
submissions are used by politicians to claim that they are acting on a
call from the community.
Despite the harmful nature of the inquiry process, it has made clearer
the current and future pressure points at universities, including
Zionist frequent use of university complaint mechanisms and even
external regulatory occupational health and safety processes in
efforts to make Zionism a protected attribute. This includes an
attempt to suggest that legal definitions of racial vilification are
inadequate as they, for example, pay insufficient attention to the
effect of Palestinian liberation slogans on Zionist sensibilities
and feelings.
Zionists are pursuing these extreme measures because they are losing
the battle on campuses. In recent months, we saw BDS resolutions
adopted in overwhelming majority by students bodies across the
country and trade unions at four major universitiesThe University of
Sydney, The University of New South Wales, the University of
Melbourne, and the University of Technology Sydney. In early October,
the national council of the NTEUthe union for higher education staff
in Australia adopted, again with an overwhelming majority, a BDS
motion and a call for an academic boycott of Israel.
To be clear, racism particularly racism towards First Nations
peoples is a problem in Australia, and antisemitism is only one
manifestation of it. All forms of racism ought to be addressed, and
all students and staff should feel safe on campuses. If a student
walks around campus and sees a poster saying Jews are not welcome or
being attacked for wearing the Star of David, this is antisemitism.
But anti-Zionism is not antisemitic, it is the opposite; it is an
anti-racist and anti-colonial stand. Speaking for human rights and
Palestinian liberation, against Zionism and Israeli settler
colonialism, apartheid, and genocide is not antisemitic. None of these
views make anyone inherently unsafe; at most, it can make someone
uncomfortable, and the two are not the same and their intentional
conflation is dangerous. Discomfort, being challenged, and facing
opinions that you dont agree with are all part of democratic life and
public debate, of being in an education setting like a university.
Zionist communal organizations have fundamentally let down a cohort of
Jewish university students through their campaign that seeks to make
them fear divergent views or to position occupied Palestinians as a
threat to Jewish safety.
In a similar vein, safety, including psychosocial safety, should be
taken seriously. As academics, ensuring that our students are safe is
part of our core mission and of our daily pedagogical practice. But
what is unfolding in Australia in the name of combatting antisemitism
has little regard for safety: rather, it is a concerted effort to
categorically characterize any anti-genocide, anti-apartheid, anti-war
speech and action in relation to Israel as inherently racist, which in
turn justifies sanctions and censorship of anti-Zionist speech and
action. This is not a pedagogical solution, nor an element of an
honest and fair discussion about the role of academia and academics.
It is pure, classic, political censorship.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/australia-is-dismantling-academic-freedom-in-defense-of-zionism/
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
~ Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan on November 26, 1938
Zionist political pressure campaign for their varied responses to
ongoing university student protests against Israels genocide of
Palestinians in Gaza. This culminated recently in the Australian
Senate with calls to investigate universities for antisemitism.
On October 2, 2024, the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Legal
and Constitutional Affairs released a set of recommendations as part
of a review of a bill calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism
at universities. The Committee recommended that the Attorney General
refer an inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities to the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. In addition, it
recommended that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency
(TEQSA) will work together with the newly appointed Special Envoy to
Combat Antisemitism to ensure that universities review their
complaints processes to a real and meaningful outcomes for
complainants.
These recommendations, which the government supports, will put the
University sector under constant, ongoing, political scrutiny, serving
as a reminder that they need to keep their staff and students on a
leash. They are part of an ongoing political attack on academic
freedom that predates October 7, which seeks to silence critical
discussions about Israel and to label any academic activity, including
teaching and scholarship, that criticizes Israel as antisemitic and
therefore illegitimate, and illegal.
Zionist pressure on universities
For a number of years now, Zionist groups have been pressuring
universities to adopt the IHRA against calls from academics, student
groups, and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to reject it.
Indeed, university presidents and administration, with some
exceptions, learned a bitter lesson from the experience of the United
Kingdom and elsewhere about the threat that the IHRA poses to academic
freedom and freedom of speech on campuses. And so, while in the U.K.
75% of the universities adopted the IHRA following a threat by the
Secretary of State for Education to withhold funding from
universities, only 5 out of 37 universities in Australia adopted the
IHRA to date. The position of many universities was that Australias
anti-discrimination legislation and their own anti-racism policies are
sufficient protection mechanisms in themselves.
The pressure on universities increased after October 7. Zionist
groups, politicians, and the media created a moral panic about rising
antisemitism in the community and described universities, and
especially the eleven student encampments that were established across
Australia, as incubators for anti-Jewish racism. The language of
safety was weaponized to amplify their claim about the need to censor
pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activities. Realizing that the
universities do not meet all their demands, Zionist groups have turned
to the political route, with two main objectives: 1) to impose the
IHRA definition on universities, and 2) to frame Zionism as a
protected identity, similar to what we see in some U.S. universities.
As a result, the political pressure on universities increased. The
Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, said that Jewish students
dont feel safe at university and that Its obvious that it exists
in our university and Ive made it clear to all university vice
chancellors that theyve got a responsibility to enforce their codes
of conduct. University chiefs rushed to seek advice from the Attorney
General who is in favor of the IHRA definitionon whether
liberationist chants such as from the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free and the use of the word intifada violated the Race
Discrimination Act.
Then in July 2024, the Labor government caved to pressure and
appointed a special envoy on antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who is a
staunch Zionist and the former president of the Executive Council of
Australia Jewry (ECAJ). In one of her first public speeches after
assuming this role, Segal listed examples of what she considers to be
systemic forms of antisemitism that ought to be tackled. These
included posters, graffities, boycott Israel stickers, signs saying
Israel is genocidal, teaching Israel/Palestine in indigenous
studies, and wearing a keffiyeh. As an Envoy, Segal now holds a
government position, has the mandate to represent Australia in
International fora, and is doing the job of a prominent Zionist
organization in a formal capacity, and with the legitimacy and
resources (an office and staff funded by the government) that such
position comes with. Bluntly put, it is a state-sponsored McCarthyist
office.
Weaponizing safety
Australia is now also looking into introducing legislation to
establish a national student ombudsman to combat antisemitism at
universities. Among other things, this office will have the power to
launch its own investigations. As the Australian historian, Henry
Reynolds commented: The minister seems to be unaware of what he is
proposing the appointment of a government official to act as a
political censor inside the universities to control what can be said
or promoted.
Such investigations can be harmful, not just for the concrete
recommendations that they propose. Often, the processes are flawed too
irrespective of outcomes. They create a public protected space for
amplifying anti-Palestinian racism and ungrounded accusations of
antisemitism.
This can be seen in the recent Senate process, where the public was
invited to make submissions, and two public hearings were held in
September 2024. 669 submissions were made public on the Committees
website, with about a hundred submissions by civil society bodies,
universities, and other official bodies such as the Human Rights
Commission or the Attorney Generals department. The rest are
submissions by individuals. Around 150 submissions have been
classified as confidential and their content was not available to the
public.
The submission process was marred by the actions of two lobby groups:
ECAJ and the newly formed Australian Academic Alliance Against
Antisemitism (known as the 5A). The organisations encouraged
individuals to spam the commission with submissions by circulating
templates (see here and here), providing a how-to-complaint guide that
includes dubious examples of antisemitism that can be included in
submissions such as the display of pro-Palestine posters on campuses.
Submissions by Zionist groups and individuals used the discourse of
safety. While this is not unique to Australia, the legal landscape
here is different. In Australia, academic freedom is guaranteed and
protected in legislation and in some collective enterprise bargaining
agreements. At the same time, health and safety legislation includes
provisions about safety, including the duty to ensure psycho-social
safety. Therefore, a main vehicle to censor activities on campus is to
suggest that any criticism of Israel or Zionism harms the
physio-social safety of Jewish staff and students, and therefore, on
balance, academic freedom should be measured against, and be
contingent upon, psychosocial safety and accordingly restricted.
Therefore, many submissions focused on zionist feelings, suggesting
that any activity on Palestine on campus is inherently antisemitic.
Some of the examples included: solidarity encampments with Palestine,
seeing someone wearing a keffiyeh, passing by stickers and flyers with
the Palestinian flag on it, walking by a banner saying that Israel is
committing genocide in Gaza, seeing posters announcing pro-Palestine
rallies, and invitation to students union meeting where BDS motions
are debated. Even class discussions about the genocide in Gaza,
settler colonialism in Palestine, or presenting a slide with the
picture of Adolf Eichmann at a law class on Extradition were deemed
antisemitic. One submission even claimed that setting an exam question
in an international law course, which mentions that the Office of the
ICC Prosecutor requested arrest warrants against Israels Prime
Minister and Minister of Defence, is antisemitic.
Zionist submissions were riffed with anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and
anti-Muslim rhetoric and racism. They targeted Palestinians,
racialized communities like Arabs, Muslims, people of color, and
anti-Zionist Jews who were labeled as token jews, fringe Jewish
individuals and groups, and Nazi collaborators. Submissions
explicitly mentioned the teaching, research, social media activity,
and public talks made by academics who are critical of Israel and the
genocide in Gaza. I was, among others, a target of some of these
submissions, where events I convened and was part of were presented as
prime examples of antisemitism on campus. Some of these events
included conversations with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human
Rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, and the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Food, Michael Fakhri, as well as a panel discussion
about Gaza and International Law that was held at the Australia and
New Zealand Law and Society Annual Conference. Complaints about these
events and labeling them as antisematism before and after they took
placewere also made to my own university, including by my own
colleagues.
A concerted attack on anti-Zionism
The Senate hearings were just as problematic as the submissions. The
first day of hearing included one witness, and that was the Special
Envoy on Antisemitism. The second day had a program stacked towards
Zionist representation, in a move that problematically homogenized
Australian Jewish communities and inaccurately conflated Judaism with
Zionism. Senators acted as cheerleaders of the Zionist organizations
while attacking dissent. Sympathy and support were extended to Zionist
witnesses only and when it was time to hear from the Jewish Council of
Australia, the tone changed. The Jewish Council was established in
opposition to Zionist groups, explicitly rejecting the assertion that
Jews and Zionism and the State of Israel are the same, or that all
Jewish people support the actions of Israel. The Senators displayed
immense hostility to the representatives of the Council, Sarah
Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, and Elizabeth Strakosch, a senior
lecturer at the University of Melbourne. The senators questioned their
legitimacy and demanded to know where the councils position on
slogans like from the river to the sea or intifada. The message
was clear: by refusing to admit that these slogans were antisemitic,
the council was not Jewish enough, and therefore should not be
listened to. The Greens dissent report points out this hostility but
stops short of calling it what it is: antisemitism. However, as one
witness said at the Senate public hearing: Anti-Zionism is inherently
antisemitic, and all senators seem to agree with them.
During the public hearings, Senators from both sides of the political
aisle, Labour and Liberals (liberals being the conservative party in
Australia) proceeded on the basis that all the examples of antisemitic
presented by Zionist organizations are indeed antisemitic without
question, and kept referring to these submissions as a proof that
antisemitism has spread in universities. In other words, the process
itself was instrumentalized to further a concerted anti-Palestinian
agenda: Zionist lobby groups orchestrate a campaign around the rise of
antisemitism, politicians ride the wave and introduce a bill to crack
down on academic freedom, the public is invited to make submissions to
this process, which is immediacy followed by another organized
campaign to spam the Senate with hundreds of submissions. Then, these
submissions are used by politicians to claim that they are acting on a
call from the community.
Despite the harmful nature of the inquiry process, it has made clearer
the current and future pressure points at universities, including
Zionist frequent use of university complaint mechanisms and even
external regulatory occupational health and safety processes in
efforts to make Zionism a protected attribute. This includes an
attempt to suggest that legal definitions of racial vilification are
inadequate as they, for example, pay insufficient attention to the
effect of Palestinian liberation slogans on Zionist sensibilities
and feelings.
Zionists are pursuing these extreme measures because they are losing
the battle on campuses. In recent months, we saw BDS resolutions
adopted in overwhelming majority by students bodies across the
country and trade unions at four major universitiesThe University of
Sydney, The University of New South Wales, the University of
Melbourne, and the University of Technology Sydney. In early October,
the national council of the NTEUthe union for higher education staff
in Australia adopted, again with an overwhelming majority, a BDS
motion and a call for an academic boycott of Israel.
To be clear, racism particularly racism towards First Nations
peoples is a problem in Australia, and antisemitism is only one
manifestation of it. All forms of racism ought to be addressed, and
all students and staff should feel safe on campuses. If a student
walks around campus and sees a poster saying Jews are not welcome or
being attacked for wearing the Star of David, this is antisemitism.
But anti-Zionism is not antisemitic, it is the opposite; it is an
anti-racist and anti-colonial stand. Speaking for human rights and
Palestinian liberation, against Zionism and Israeli settler
colonialism, apartheid, and genocide is not antisemitic. None of these
views make anyone inherently unsafe; at most, it can make someone
uncomfortable, and the two are not the same and their intentional
conflation is dangerous. Discomfort, being challenged, and facing
opinions that you dont agree with are all part of democratic life and
public debate, of being in an education setting like a university.
Zionist communal organizations have fundamentally let down a cohort of
Jewish university students through their campaign that seeks to make
them fear divergent views or to position occupied Palestinians as a
threat to Jewish safety.
In a similar vein, safety, including psychosocial safety, should be
taken seriously. As academics, ensuring that our students are safe is
part of our core mission and of our daily pedagogical practice. But
what is unfolding in Australia in the name of combatting antisemitism
has little regard for safety: rather, it is a concerted effort to
categorically characterize any anti-genocide, anti-apartheid, anti-war
speech and action in relation to Israel as inherently racist, which in
turn justifies sanctions and censorship of anti-Zionist speech and
action. This is not a pedagogical solution, nor an element of an
honest and fair discussion about the role of academia and academics.
It is pure, classic, political censorship.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/australia-is-dismantling-academic-freedom-in-defense-of-zionism/
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
~ Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan on November 26, 1938