It is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Jews in Australia – and for good reason!

By  Judy Maynard

As a life-long resident of Sydney, a graduate of the University of Sydney, and the grateful-to-be-Australian-born daughter of Holocaust survivors, it would be an understatement to say I’m having trouble recognising the place.

Sydney distinguished itself – unfortunately – on October 9 with the shameful antisemitic protest outside our iconic Opera House, that took place just two days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and well before Israel took any action against Hamas. It was but the first public attempt locally to drown out any narrative that could be construed as sympathetic to Israel.

Much hateful activity has ensued here since, as elsewhere around the world, mostly in the form of street protests and attempts at cancelling pro-Israel voices, but also in copycat encampments on various university campuses.

Try picturing the University of Sydney (founded in 1850), or at least its sandstone Gothic Revival style Great Hall, its impressive hammer beam roof, carved wooden angels and gargoyles. It’s on the lawn outside here that Gaudeamus Igitur could be heard playing on the carillon on the day of my graduation decades ago, but which has for the past few months hosted the ugly noise of the pro-Palestinian protesters.

Just last week, in yet another of those “you couldn’t make this stuff up” moments that we’ve become so used to since October 7, Australia’s oldest university’s slow-motion bid to make it all just go away has resulted in its humiliating capitulation to protesters linked to an outlawed terrorist group.

As the Australian newspaper reported, the Sydney University Muslim Students Association was the protest’s last holdout. Its defiance of the institution’s orders to vacate has now been rewarded with, amongst other things, a seat at a working group to review the university’s defence and security investments.

Federal Opposition Home Affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson, called the arrangement a “pathetic capitulation” and claimed it:

 “Raises very real questions about whether the university can be relied on … to conduct sensitive national security and defence research funded by taxpayers.”

His views were echoed by other security experts.

The roof body of the Australian Jewish community, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), issued a furious joint statement with other leading Jewish organisations, declaring no confidence in the University’s ability to provide for the safety of Jewish students and staff, several of whom have declared an intention to leave or are considering doing so. The deal struck with the activists could only encourage further more extreme disruption in the future, and the organisations rejected – and encouraged others to reject – any offer by the University to participate in the proposed process to review the University’s investment and research activities.

Why the University felt the need to appease the protesters rather than, say, just kick them off campus, I couldn’t say, especially when many of them were not even students. The deal was announced on 21 June, only days after the revelation on Australian TV current affairs program “60 Minutes” that the protests had been infiltrated by the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned as a terrorist group in the UK (and elsewhere) for praising Hamas and calling for global jihad.

Displaying the muddle-headed logic we so often see these days, University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor, Mark Scott, had previously defended the protesters’ free speech, even as other staff and students were complaining of feeling unsafe and intimidated by the activists. On 20 May, he told Ben Fordham on Sydney radio station 2GB that:

 “free speech can be like that. At times people will exercise their free speech in a way that will offend and upset other people… that’s the price of free speech.”

Then he added to play down the concern:

 “it’s a big university… and it’s very possible to work your way around” the encampment.

Gosh, thanks, Mark.

Yet in March at this same institution, Tel Aviv University staff -invited by Sydney University to promote their exchange program – found themselves locked in by security guards with protesters who had come to occupy the room where they were sitting. According to the Daily Telegraph, the activists descended on the room with “the explicit aim of trying to get the Tel Aviv University officials kicked off campus.” They filmed videos directly in front of the Israeli women while accusing Israel of genocide and promoting anti-Israel boycotts. After an hour and a half of this, the Israelis gave up waiting, and were escorted by security to a car. This was celebrated by the activists who, according to the Telegraph, “claimed they left in fear.”

“They slunk away, in cowardice, in fear,” a student was reported to have said.

If some of our institutions seem to be falling over themselves to empower the haters, sadly, they’re not seeing much in the way of a good role model from our federal government.

The Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has given very weak leadership on Israel, occasionally saying the right thing but with no follow-up action. For example, he has decried antisemitism, but his government has rejected calls by the opposition and others to establish an inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses, opting instead for a two-year “study” by the Australian Human Rights Commission into racism at universities “including the antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism currently being seen on campuses” and “with a strong focus on First Nations students and staff.” 

Foreign Minister Penny Wong finally travelled to Israel in mid-January, embarrassed into going, some said, by a cross-party delegation of parliamentarians who travelled there in December on their own initiative. Unlike them, however, she refused to visit the kibbutzim where the atrocities took place, but she made sure to visit the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”, Jordan and the UAE.

Volumes can, and hopefully one day will, be written about the Australian government’s limp response to the events of October 7 and the ensuing wave of antisemitism on a scale never before seen in this multicultural country. 

Moving from the national capitol to local politics, the pastorally named Clover Moore will be seeking re-election later this year to serve a sixth term as Sydney’s lord mayor. Moore, 78, has been in the job 20 years but isn’t ruling out running for a seventh term, should she be successful again this time. And why shouldn’t she be when, as she modestly told a journalist, “I don’t think I personally make mistakes because I’m careful about what I do.”

Moore is now considering ending contracts with companies that are targets of the boycott Israel campaign. As she says:

 “If the city’s voice in this campaign can put additional pressure towards a ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian crisis, then I think we should carefully review our investments and suppliers.”

This degree of hubris might be funny if it were not emblematic of the delusion and ignorance of too many of our politicians, officials, journalists, educators and others in positions of influence. At least the time may be ripe for putting Clover out to pasture.

The ECAJ’s Peter Wertheim responded by saying the council had “shown spectacular ineptitude in its latest foray into international affairs. A body that struggles to achieve competence in collecting the garbage and fixing potholes might be over-reaching itself just a tad in its pretensions to forge peace in the Middle East.”

150 years ago, one of the carved wooden angels in the Great Hall of Sydney University, the angel of knowledge, was removed. Seems to me it’s very sorely missed.

About the writer:

Judy Maynard former policy officer at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

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