Governments, university administrations and the mainstream media are increasing their crackdown against Palestine supporters and the right to protest.
They have opportunistically seized on a string of antisemitic attacks to try to demonise and discredit the Palestine movement.
They claim that Palestine protests are responsible for inflaming tensions and encouraging these attacks.
In January, Nazi swastikas and antisemitic messages were graffitied around synagogues and Jewish communities across Sydney and cars and businesses firebombed.
But there is no evidence the movement for Palestine has contributed to the attacks in any way. Antisemitism has never been welcome at the protests and most rallies have included Jewish speakers or contingents.
Jewish groups in Melbourne recently held a 400-strong anti-Zionist rally to declare their solidarity with Palestine and reject the idea that the Palestine movement is responsible for the rise in antisemitism.
In fact, NSW police have admitted that ten of the 11 people arrested over these attacks had no ideological motivation at all but the attacks were instead “being orchestrated in some manner”.
Those involved were “paid local criminals”, according to Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw. An 11th person arrested, also a longtime petty criminal, may be a Nazi.
The discovery of a caravan filled with explosives along with a list of Jewish targets was initially described as a potential “mass casualty event”.
But according to the Sydney Morning Herald the explosives were up to 40 years old. Organised crime figures had offered to reveal details about the caravan to police weeks before its discovery in the hope of reduced prison terms.
This has not stopped bosses and the government from organising a wider crackdown against Palestine supporters.
Unsafe
Absurdly, cricket journalist Peter Lalor was fired from SEN Radio for supposed antisemitism after he retweeted an article by Israeli newspaper Haaretz whose headline read: “There’s no Auschwitz in Gaza. But it’s still genocide.”
Lalor says he was told that because he tweeted in opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza, “the sound of my voice made people feel unsafe” and so he “could not cover the cricket anymore”.
The argument that speaking out to support Palestine makes Jewish staff and students feel “unsafe” is also being used on university campuses to attack the right to protest.
Antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal claims that university campuses have become a “cauldron” of antisemitism because of the Gaza solidarity encampments and student general meetings condemning Israel’s crimes of genocide and apartheid.
The Herald Sun ridiculously asserted that a Victoria University tutor emailing students to invite them to a pro-Palestine rally was an act of antisemitism because it made Jewish students feel “great distress”.
But as the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network rightly states, “subjective feelings of discomfort or unease” at pro-Palestine protests are “being wrongly equated with objective threats to physical safety, often leading to false accusations of antisemitism”.
Sarah Schwartz, executive officer of the anti-Zionist Jewish Council of Australia, has pointed out that “political discomfort is something that is a fact of life in a democracy”.
Sydney University is proposing some of the most repressive anti-protest and anti-free speech rules nationwide to further repress Palestine activism on campus.
It wants a ban on lecture announcements before the beginning of classes, a provision allowing the university to remove funding from clubs and even the Student Representative Council (the student union) if it deems students have infringed their rules, and a ban on hanging banners from footbridges.
Zionism
There is also an effort to conflate anti-Zionism—calling for the dismantling of the apartheid state of Israel—with antisemitism.
Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor Bruce Dowton has accused Palestinian-Australian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah of antisemitism for tweeting just before the New Year, “May 2025 be the end of Israel.”
But opposing Israel’s existence is not antisemitic.
Israel is an apartheid state that operates a system of racist laws that discriminate against Palestinians, especially in the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Israel was created by Western imperialism collaborating with Zionists, a political movement for a separate Jewish state. There have always been Jewish people who opposed the Israeli ethno-state.
The alternative to Israel is a state where Palestinians, Jews and all people have equal rights.
There is nothing antisemitic about opposing the Israeli apartheid state and condemning its blatant war crimes.
By Luke Ottavi
