Editorial: Impact of anti-Semitism on campuses emerges
Jason Clare had warned that Australians should expect to hear ‘horrific evidence’ during the Royal Commission’s probe into Antisemitism on university campuses. He was immediately proven correct.
Tertiary institutions hold important places in Australian society.
They are places where our best and brightest go as they embark on journeys of discovery and learning.
As well as enriching the lives of students, campuses around the nation help enrich and shape the course of the nation’s progress as students take their knowledge and skills into the world around them.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Universities and their academic staff have a real and powerful role in shaping young minds at a time when they are at their sharpest, keenest and most curious.
All of which makes the evidence given to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on Monday deeply troubling.
The high-profile probe, which was launched in the wake of the terror attack at Bondi Beach in December, opened its fourth block of hearings in Melbourne.
At the weekend Education Minister Jason Clare had warned that Australians should expect to hear “pretty horrific evidence”.
He was immediately proven correct.
Counsel assisting Zelie Heger said on Monday the commission would hear of Jewish staff and students “being verbally abused, intimidated, and even physically assaulted on campus”.
Australian National University student Liat told how she was isolated by former friends after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and would hide her Jewish identity on campus.
“Every single day when I would make the walk into uni, I would have to pick: am I Jewish Liat today, or am I regular Liat?” she said.
“I wouldn’t use my name ordering at coffee shops for fear that someone would ask me where it’s from.
“That series of micro-calculations that you make every single day and at every single instance is exhausting.
“I was called a baby killer and a genocide supporter, with relative regularity,” she said.
She told how she had noted to a tutor during the time of pro-Palestine encampments that they had an intimidatory and isolating effect on Jewish students.
As the discussion went on the tutor “gave me a once over and goes: “you’re Israeli?’ And I said: ‘I’m an Australian-Israeli, yes’.
“(He replied:) ‘well, that’s a shame’,” Liat said.
A Jewish University of NSW student working as a tutor told how he was targeted with Nazi salutes.
Beyond being “offended and threatened”, he described being disappointed by the university’s “lacklustre” reaction.
Students for Palestine organiser Yasmine Johnson, behind the 2024 University of Sydney student encampment, later appeared before the commission and defended the protests.
Ms Johnson defended demands for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” and calls for Intifada because she did not “hold movements for the justice of the oppressed to a standard that says there can never be any violence” .
These were not some kind of theoretical musings or academic studies.
They were real world examples of behaviours which had real impacts on real people.
For Jewish students, campuses became not carefree and joyous places of learning and friendship, but centres of fear, harassment and intimidation.
The royal commission has shown again how every effort must be made to ensure real change.
