A year of student activism for Palestine
This year has experienced the largest campus mobilisations for Palestine in Australian history. Thousands of students have marched, walked out of class, organised occupations and taken part in mass meetings to demand an end to the horrors we’re witnessing in Gaza.
We attend classes at universities with direct links to companies profiting from genocide. At times this fact confronts us starkly, for instance University of Queensland students who might, between classes, wander past the Boeing Research and Technology Centre—run by one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers and a major supplier to Israel. Elsewhere, complicity comes in the form of hidden partnerships and investment portfolios. All of this has sparked justified outrage.
The first major student actions were nationwide walkouts, organised by Students for Palestine. These started in November last year when thousands of high school and university students ditched class to rally in the city. More than 1,000 students occupied Melbourne Central mall, raising Palestinian flags and chanting to demand that the government drop its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The strikes continued this year in every major city in Australia. Why should students attend class as usual when every school and university in Gaza has been shut down?
The right-wing media and politicians campaigned vitriolically against us. After the first student strikes, the Daily Telegraph wheeled out a psychologist to tell us that we couldn’t possibly understand what was happening in Gaza: “Young people’s brains aren’t fully developed yet”. The Victorian and NSW premiers told students that if they wanted to understand and change the world, they should stay in school. We didn’t listen.
Next came the wave of Gaza solidarity encampments. Brave students at Columbia University in New York fought the Biden administration, university management and the police to maintain their encampment. Students for Palestine activists at Sydney University followed suit, pitching tents and sparking a movement that spread across the country. This movement was about the crimes of the Israeli government. But it was also about the crimes of universities that produce the research for weapons companies that arm Israel’s genocide and partner with the Israeli institutions that produce the propaganda required to generate support for it.
On every campus where an encampment sprung up, there was an outpouring of community support. Fresh meals, snacks and toiletries were never in short supply. But support didn’t come just in the form of provisions. It was also made visible by the many people who mobilised when our camps were under attack. At Monash University, a dozen pro-Israel thugs attacked the camp on the first night. When they returned the next week, 70 supporters turned out to defend the encampment. At Sydney University, a planned pro-Israel rally of 200 right-wingers was met with a Palestine solidarity demonstration of more than 500 people.
At Deakin University, management demanded that students leave under threat of disciplinary action after only six days. Students held out and kept their encampment going strong until the end of the trimester. At ANU, management called the police on students, who were then surrounded by a human chain of security guards and threatened with mass arrests if they refused to pack up the encampment. Students held an impromptu meeting, deciding to defend their camp and calling out for community support. Solidarity won out—after a long stand-off, the police were forced to retreat.
The camps sprung up across the world. In Sydney, we woke one morning to find a video of a young boy holding a sign, hand-painted on a piece of cardboard, reading: “Thank you for the students of University of Sydney. Your voice have reached Gaza”.
More university students got involved in the movement for Palestine in semester two, as student general meetings swept the country. Everywhere they happened, hundreds of students turned out to call on their universities to cut ties with weapons companies and Israeli institutions.
The University of Queensland kicked things off. On the night of the meeting, the registration line stretched across the campus, and by the time the vote was called students had filled two huge lecture theatres. More than 1,500 students voted to support Palestine and demand the university cut ties with the major arms dealer Boeing. When the meeting finished, students marched to the chancellery in what was probably the biggest ever campus demonstration for Palestine.
Other campuses followed suit. More than 800 students mobilised at Sydney University, and 300 at the University of Western Australia. Two hundred attended at the University of Adelaide despite the right-wing student union’s attempt to stop the meeting altogether. A similarly obstructionist student union leadership couldn’t prevent 600 students from showing up at Melbourne University. On many campuses, students had to defy management’s attempts to stifle organising attempts. At Queensland University of Technology, university administrators called the police, who told activists they would remove from campus anyone who didn’t fit into the official meeting rooms.
The huge numbers at these meetings demonstrated that support for Palestine has grown rapidly over the past year. But we still have a major fight on our hands.
Universities have cracked down hard on pro-Palestine activism—dozens of students have faced university disciplinary proceedings due to their activism this year. Now, under pressure from the Australian government and Zionist organisations, vice-chancellors are introducing harsh new rules like the campus access policies at Melbourne and Sydney University. These limit free speech on campus by restricting students’ right to organise protests. We now have less freedom of expression at university than we have in the streets. At Sydney University, the recent Hodgkinson External Review, commissioned to determine how to better repress dissent, recommends banning lecture announcements, the displaying of banners and protesting inside.
The past year has proved that students won’t give up easily. Gaza has shown us the lengths our government and universities will go to shut down opposition to their support for Israel during a genocide. That they feel compelled to repress the student movement shows us that we are having an impact. We won’t stop fighting for Palestine.
