Monash University: a yardstick for how far Palestine solidarity has come

John Monash was the founding president of the Zionist Federation of Australia. There’s a three-metre-tall bronze statue of him, looking perplexed and unhappy, towering over the lawns of the Clayton campus of the university in Melbourne that bears his name. Monash University’s existence reflects, in part, the fact that Zionism did ultimately become the official policy of Australia’s ruling class. For those who view the success of the Jewish community as synonymous with the unassailable dominance of Zionist politics, Monash University is one of the ultimate symbols of this success.

That history is reflected in the student life of the campus. Monash University is the home of one of the biggest and most aggressive student Zionist outfits: the local branch of the Zionist campaign group, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. The Monash AUJS section has spent decades mobilising its members to influence student politics and undermine campus-based Palestine solidarity. It has shaped the politics of the student union elections, organised dozens of stooges to disrupt pro-Palestine events, filed false disciplinary complaints and used its media contacts to circulate fraudulent stories about antisemitism.

Throughout these endeavours, it has received the support of the university administration and the dominant factions in student politics. And why not? Over most of that period, it was the campus socialists who led the Palestine solidarity work, and whether you are a university manager trying to give your campus the atmosphere of a shopping centre, or a Labor student trying to win a student union election, it can be very helpful to have a credible “community group” to tell the world that your socialist opponents are antisemitic lunatics.

This convergence of interests was on display in 2014, when, after the bombing of Gaza in which 2,000 Palestinians were killed over a few weeks, the Monash Zionists were able to get the Socialist Alternative club dissolved and banned—for the antisemitic crime of organising a campus meeting titled “Why you should support the Palestinians”.

So, if there was one place you might reasonably expect a pro-Palestine student general meeting to go a little off the rails, it would be Monash.

Monash’s meeting for Palestine came late in the piece. It was scheduled for 3 September, by which time there had already been meetings of hundreds of students at universities around the country, all of which had voted overwhelmingly—often without dissent—to endorse some combination of solidarity with Palestine and a call for the university to divest from Israel.

Monash’s Students for Palestine group—mostly led by, but not solely consisting of Socialist Alternative members—had been frenetically campaigning to build on that momentum. Most students have never been to a mass meeting to pass a motion on a political question. What did they need to understand?

First, that they had a chance to vote and be part of making a decision, not just make a moral stand. Second, that their attendance would nonetheless have the moral power of a protest, in part because the size and politics of these meetings was revealing something about the sentiment of young people towards Israel and Australia’s complicity in Israel’s crimes.

Third, that meetings like this had been successful elsewhere, so Palestine supporters could have confidence and feel they are part of a broader movement. And finally, that the decision of each individual to attend would matter, in particular so the meeting could meet the threshold of 510 votes that would make the vote binding under the Monash Student Association’s constitution.

In a public debate, right-wingers have an inherent advantage over the left. Left-wing politics is about involving and encouraging the participation of the oppressed. You really have to explain things. There’s no point winning a vote from people who don’t understand what’s going on, or who have been bribed or tricked. For the left, a vote is meaningful only if it represents some genuine understanding on the part of those who cast it.

Right-wingers have it a little easier. Their politics is about the power of official institutions. It doesn’t matter if ordinary people understand what’s going on; in fact, it’s rather better if they don’t. The assumption that because official institutions are backing a position, it is legitimate, and therefore no further inquiry is needed, works to their advantage. You could see this dynamic in the Zionist publicity campaign. Here there was no patient explanation.

On the morning of 3 September, the Zionists’ posters were still up all over campus. One, stamped with the logo of “Students Supporting Israel”—no official AUJS branding, but a big Israeli flag—read: “What are you voting for, MSA? Death to all Jews. Death to democracy. Supporting terrorists”. It is a familiar debating position for Zionists to adopt: don’t talk about what we’re actually talking about, just pretend we’re talking about the Holocaust. Anyone who has any qualms about killing Palestinians is a genocidal Nazi. Keep it in mind when you hear about the rising tide of campus “antisemitism”.

Another strategy, on another poster: “No genocide in Gaza: Vote No”. Cross your fingers and hope that a few lost souls see your poster and vote the wrong way by mistake. When it is not backed by US military hardware, Zionist political strategy looks a lot less impressive.

The meeting was upstairs, indoors. Around 500 students were packed in, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Speakers were at the front. Stage left was the entrance queue, where for about half an hour after the meeting officially opened, the student union’s bureaucracy was still slowly accrediting registered attendees. Stage right was a giant glass wall looking out onto a student lounge, through which a growing crowd of spectators watched.

A few dozen Zionists came, some in Israeli flag capes, nervous but excited about a big assignment: they hugged and high-fived each other, then sat in a wedge directly in front of the speakers’ stage. But by the day of the meeting, they’d given up on winning. An official statement denounced the motions as one-sided and biased, and announced that only a small contingent would be sent to argue their point.

The 500 students then sat through—cheering, heckling and chanting—an hour-long formal debate about Zionism, Palestine and Australia’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.

It was a debate more serious than almost anything in the Australian media because the Palestine advocates were granted equal time, and were able systematically to respond to, and demolish, each argument presented by the Zionists. What about the hostages? This war isn’t about rescuing hostages: the Israeli government has killed a number of them—not to mention the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. Why does this motion denounce Israel, but not Hamas? Because the genocide of the Palestinians began decades before Hamas was founded. Why are you antisemitic? Zionism is not Judaism or Jewishness: it is a distinct racist political current.

It is unlikely that any crowd of this size at Monash has ever heard, let alone participated in, such a thorough real-time public dismantling of Zionist propaganda. The debate wound up on a speech about the need for solidarity with all the struggles of the oppressed—brought together in a socialist world view and strategy. It brought the house down.

The vote, of course, carried: 470 in favour, 50 against, with no abstentions. It was ten years, nearly to the day, since the Socialist Alternative club was deregistered for holding a Palestine solidarity meeting.

Much has changed in ten years. A decade ago, Zionist activists could count on the passivity and disengagement of the student population. Palestine solidarity was a fringe issue. A small number of socialists and Muslims would take a stand. Most of the time, others would look the other way. Not so any more.

Much has changed, but not everything. The Labor students who control the student union, politically unable to oppose the meeting openly just before a student union election, nonetheless cut off registrations just in time to stop the meeting from hitting the constitutionally binding threshold of 510 votes.

Dozens of keffiyeh-wearing students were disenfranchised, forced to cheer through the glass windows. The student union will consequently not be compelled to act on the motion that was passed.

The Zionists made no attempt to win the room over—one argued strongly for the war continuing until Hamas is eradicated—but they were not without purpose; they filmed their own speeches, and no doubt will use the record of this event to help recruit next year’s load of pro-apartheid activists.

Despite the moral victory for Palestine the meeting represented, there exist national networks of dedicated advocates and propagandists for genocide, and they retain their institutional connections.

Still. Ten years ago, you’d put on a meeting about Palestine, ten people would come, your club would be banned, and you’d say, “Okay, well, that could have gone worse”. Now, those arguments that once were so hard to make have broken through: that Zionism is racism, and that the West is complicit in genocide of the Palestinians.

The arguments that Palestine solidarity activists have spent decades publicising and perfecting have become the common sense of the left, and—in some contexts at least and on this particular day—the Zionist propaganda is being rightly drowned out with jeers, heckling and laughter.