The university management at RMIT in Melbourne has introduced a policy to prevent or severely limit campus protests, meetings and political organising. 
The move comes after a year of Palestine solidarity activism, during which students demanded that the university cut economic ties with Israel and close the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre, at which research for weapons companies is conducted.
One aspect of the policy is restricting the use of classrooms. No room may be booked for “protest or protest-related activity”. Events likely to put RMIT’s “financial or repetitional” risk will have their bookings revoked. This applies to “any other events or activities as required”—an open-ended clause allowing management to shut down whatever they want.
The policy is a blatant attack against Students for Palestine and socialists, but could have wider implications.
Will pointing out RMIT’s ties to weapons companies count as causing reputational damage? What about teachers who strike or protest for better pay and working conditions—will they be denied the right to meeting spaces to discuss their demands?
Another clause in the policy bans sleeping or camping on campus—a clear response to the Gaza Solidarity Camp, which RMIT students ran for a month earlier this year. 
Students will also not be allowed to “set up or maintain a structure”. What counts as a structure is unclear, but it might even include information stalls commonly used to collect signatures on petitions and display leaflets. 
This policy has not been made official, but management has started intimidation tactics. When the Socialist Alternative Club hosted a public meeting about events in Palestine over the last year, RMIT attempted to make us pay for security.
We refused, but management still dispatched a security guard to wait for us in the meeting room. The guard claimed to be there “for our protection,” but it was a clear attempt to intimidate. A guard was also watching the lifts near the room, and two more guards stood at the stairs—they turned away a non-student who wanted to attend the meeting. 
While RMIT student activists have stood firm in the face of the intimidation, the pressure will likely mount next year. 
Attacks on student organising across Australia are part of a broader crackdown on Palestine solidarity activism. We must keep the solidarity movement alive—and we will need to build our numbers to stand against the intimidation.

Auley Ryan

Attacks on political organising spread to RMIT

The University of Technology, Sydney, has banned students from handing out leaflets displaying the word “genocide”. Our university, with ties to weapons companies and Israeli institutions, wants to hide its complicity in Israel’s crimes. 
Last week, we were told that our leaflets for a Students for Palestine forum exposing UTS ties to genocide were a form of hate speech, and anyone handing out the leaflets could be subject to disciplinary action. When we pushed back, the university administration told us that we would be permitted to put up posters, but not hand out leaflets, as being given a piece of paper could be triggering for some students. We were informed that this directive had come directly from the vice-chancellor’s office.
Why? Because apparently the word “genocide”, a term used widely in international law, is a threat to the wellbeing of those who support Israel. The International Court of Justice has declared that Israel’s assault on Gaza is a plausible case of genocide. Many people who have read the genocide convention can see that what’s going on in Gaza fits the definition. 
UTS is using the ruse of “student safety” to limit free speech. Palestine solidarity activism might hurt the feelings of Zionists committed to defending Israel’s crimes against humanity. But this is no reason to restrict anti-war activity. It’s a natural side effect of standing against injustice that those who support the status quo will oppose you. 
The genuine threat to safety and wellbeing in the world is the genocidal apartheid state of Israel, and its backers in major institutions.

Yasmine Johnson

University bans mention of Israeli genocide

There has been a renewed attack on the right to protest in NSW, led by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, in conjunction with the NSW Liberal Party and a right-wing media campaign designed to smear the Palestine solidarity movement. 
The campaign began with sections of the media hyperventilating about the presence of some Hezbollah flags at our Sydney protest on 29 September. It worked itself up into a full-blown moral panic about anyone daring to discuss the 42,000+ Palestinians killed by Israel in the past year, on the anniversary of 7 October. 
Although Israel was invading Lebanon and continuing a year-long genocidal rampage in Gaza, it was us, those protesting against the slaughter, who were labelled terrorist supporters, violent, insensitive and a threat to “social cohesion”.
For the Australian establishment, only Israelis can be mourned. According to them, there is no such thing as a Palestinian victim who deserves to have their life remembered and honoured—they are only Hamas terrorists and human shields. 
The campaign culminated in the NSW police, under orders from Minns, taking the Palestine Action Group Sydney to the Supreme Court to try to stop our protest on 6 October and a candlelight vigil on 7 October from going ahead. The arguments of the police and prosecutors were farcical and drew on long-established racist stereotypes, particularly about Lebanese people. They tried to concoct an image of violent, terrorist-sympathising mobs. 
At one point, they claimed that flower beds in planter boxes posed a safety risk. At another, they argued that a protest route, which they themselves had proposed to protest organisers at a previous meeting, went too near a Sydney synagogue. Later, they argued that the protest should be banned because all the publicity, generated by their own court challenge, meant it would be bigger than expected! In the end, the police withdrew their application to stop us from marching.
But they mobilised an obscenely large mob of police who were itching for any excuse to make arrests to justify the hysterical anti-protest panic. Hundreds of riot police were sent to surround and intimidate a candlelight vigil. Despite this, both events were massive and successful, and the police and government were left with egg on their faces at the lack of “violent terrorists” they could invent.
Chris Minns, not one to let a good law-and-order panic go to waste, then went on 2GB radio with shock jock Ben Fordham (where Minns seemingly makes most of his policy announcements) to complain about the cost—supposedly $5.4 million this year—of policing our protests. As if it were our decision to send hundreds of cops to a candlelight vigil! 
“I’m going to have a review into the resourcing that police put into these marches, and it’s my view that police should be able to be in a position to deny a request for a march due to stretched police resourcing”, he said. Minns has also appeared to endorse the idea of Liberal opposition leader Mark Speakman that a “user pays” system should be introduced, whereby protesters are forced to pay the costs of the police. Besides being a general attack on protests, this proposal would create a perverse situation in which the rich could protest but not the poor.
Minns also personally singled me out as a “serial protester”, prompting the baying bloodhounds of Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph to write an attempted <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/serial-propalestine-rally-organiser-josh-lees-received-covid-fines-after-campaigning-to-lock-down-nsw/news-story/ec8d90ca4fe038838fde4148f6c4ff65">hit piece</a> on my history of protest, presumably based on information leaked to them by NSW Police.
At our protest on 13 October, two 19-year-old women from Students for Palestine were arrested, had their bags searched, were given move-on orders to leave the protest and were told they would receive infringement notices in the mail. Their “crime”? Putting up a poster on a pole in Hyde Park to advertise a protest.
These threats to our right to protest are just the latest in a long line of authoritarian laws adopted in recent years. The Human Rights Legal Centre <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2024/07/03/protest-peril">reports</a>: “Over the past two decades, 49 laws affecting protest have been introduced in federal, state and territory parliaments. New South Wales has introduced the most anti-protest laws”.
In 2022, the NSW Liberal and Labor parties teamed up to pass the Roads and Crimes Act, which introduced two years’ jail and/or a $22,000 fine for anyone found to be disrupting bridges, tunnels, major roads, train stations, ports and public and private infrastructure. The laws targeted climate protesters but can be used against anyone. Last year, they were used to charge Palestine solidarity protesters attempting to blockade Israeli shipping company Zim at Port Botany.
It has become common police practice to impose insanely strict bail conditions on protesters, even when the alleged offence is minor and would attract only a fine if proven. These conditions often include exclusion zones around the CBD or potential protest sites like universities, bans on attending future protests, and even bans on associating with other activists. The latter powers were supposedly introduced to help NSW police deal with criminal gangs. They are now routinely used against protesters.
Every movement in history has had to contend with the repressive state apparatus, which is devoted to maintaining the “cohesion” of the current, unequal, unjust and murderous social order. The best way to fight for the right to protest is to protest, in bigger numbers than ever.
Josh Lees is an organiser with the Palestine Action Group Sydney.

Josh Lees

NSW assault on the right to protest

Students are occupying more than 70 different faculties of 30 public universities across Argentina. At least twelve faculties in Buenos Aires, the capital, are tomada (taken). The occupations stretch into remote areas in the far north and south of the country. 
The events mark a new stage in an ongoing fight against far-right President Javier Milei, elected last year promising mass privatisations and budget cuts to pay down government debt owed to the International Monetary Fund, while funnelling money to the rich through tax cuts. 
At the beginning of the year, Milei took a chainsaw to public university spending, cutting funding by 71 percent. This provoked mass protests involving 500,000 students in Buenos Aires and large numbers in the rest of the country. 
Last month, politicians voted to increase university workers’ salaries, the purchasing power of which has been undermined by rampant inflation—consumer prices have increased by more than 200 percent in twelve months. 
When Milei threatened to veto the bill, more than 1 million people marched to fight for its passage. But in early October, the president confirmed he would block it. That sparked a wave of protests and occupations by students across the country. 
Carlos Barros, a student activist at the University of Buenos Aires and a member of the Socialist Workers’ Movement, spoke to Red Flag’s Jasmine Duff about how things look on the ground.
--------------------
Why are students occupying?
Students decided to occupy universities because of the ongoing defunding of public education, which has been taking place for several years by all governments but has reached a new level with Milei’s administration. Universities don’t have sufficient funding to increase the salaries of professors and university staff (which are far behind inflation), or to improve the conditions of the buildings used by students. It could result in the eventual cutting of jobs and closure of universities altogether. 
The occupations started when Milei vetoed a bill to increase the funding for universities. The Congress approved the veto with the complicity of representatives from the Radical Civic Union [a liberal political party] and even some of the Peronists [the main political current in the country, dating from the rule of Juan Perón immediately after World War Two]. 
This enraged students all over the country and led to the calling of assemblies at universities. The first were at the faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires, where hundreds of the students voted to occupy the faculties. In the following days, the occupations spread to other faculties and to universities in the rest of the country. We are witnessing the rise of a new Argentinean student movement, which many have said has been in decline for years. 
Videos circulating online show students taking mass votes, holding debates inside their faculties, and setting up desks on public roads to hold teach-ins. What’s it like inside a faculty occupation?
Basically, an occupation means that students take control over the university. We undertake all of the tasks of the administration of the university, including cleaning, organising lessons, providing food, security, etc. For each task, there are different commissions that students can join and participate in. 
Regarding security, there are always students at the door to stop the dean and other members of the faculty administration from entering the building. The staff of the faculty are only allowed to enter to clock on, but they cannot perform their usual tasks, since they are being performed by the students. Professors cannot hold lessons inside the building, save for a few exceptions. 
Every day, a soup kitchen provides food for the students at the occupation and people who may need it in the neighbourhood. The soup kitchen is supported through donations. Every night, we do activities to entertain ourselves and strengthen our sense of community. There are film screenings, live music, karaoke, games and obviously lots of political discussion. We’re having a great time. We sleep inside classrooms with sleeping bags or mattresses. It is kind of like camping. 
All lessons that students would normally have inside the faculty building are taken outside to the street. Students bring seats and blackboards outside and block the street. We want to continue studying while also protesting and bringing more visibility to this conflict. All lessons must be held outside, save for the cases where specific elements of a classroom are needed or for exams.
Socialist organisations are prominent in the struggle, but many student unions are run by political tendencies and parties that are part of Milei’s government. What role have these student leaders played in the movement, and what debates are taking place?
We are having many debates with the bureaucratic student union leaders and the grassroots of the students movement about how to advance the struggle for our right to public education. Most student unions are led by Peronists or Radicals. They are political forces of the capitalist regime. As such they try to avoid losing control over the student movement and demobilise it while posing as critical of Milei. 
They call for few or no assemblies at all in some cases, decide things without consulting the students or, worse, negotiate with the university authorities behind the students’ backs. 
The Socialist Workers’ Movement and the left are doing our best to radicalise the student movement, and to bring more independent students to participate in their respective assemblies so they can overcome the bureaucracies. 
We are also campaigning for inter-faculty and inter-university assemblies. And we are coordinating actions with the rest of the working-class sectors so we can all agree on a unified plan of struggle to stop this attack by the government.

Jasmine Duff

Inside Argentina’s university occupations

Around 250 union members and supporters rallied on 16 October against sweeping cuts at the Australian National University, which are set to eliminate 638 full-time equivalent positions.
The university expects to save $250 million between now and 2026, $100 million of which will come from workers’ wages. According to the National Tertiary Education Union, this equals a 12 percent cut in annual salary expenditure.
The proposed changes, which the administration has dubbed “Renew ANU”, involve abolishing the College of Health and Medicine and merging its constituent schools into other colleges. 
So far, 50 college staff have been told they will not have jobs next year. But staff working in other university areas have discovered that rolling job losses are expected to continue. No one knows whether they’ll be next until they receive an email calling them into secretive meetings with senior management.
“Renew ANU” was announced in an all-staff address, which staff were only notified about 24 hours before it happened. During the address, new Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell said that the cuts would make the ANU a “smaller university”. 
According to the chief financial officer, the university’s expected 2024 deficit of $60 million has ballooned into a projected $200 million deficit. Exactly how this happened is unclear, which is why the union is demanding that the university open its books. 
ANU is the first university to announce major job cuts since the federal government introduced a cap on international student numbers at Australian universities. The indicative caps will reduce ANU’s total number of international students by 14.5 percent compared to 2019. The university has justified the cuts by stating that it can no longer expand its way out of debt by enrolling more full-fee-paying international students. 
Initially called against the proposed job cuts, the NTEU’s rally came a day after management announced that it would ask all staff to forgo their scheduled 2.5 percent pay rise in December, a move the union was not notified about. Predictably, the winding up of last year’s enterprise bargaining campaign, which involved calling off planned strike action, has emboldened management to sideline the union and unilaterally attempt to slash pay.
During the pandemic, staff at ANU narrowly voted to defer two annual pay rises on the promise that it would save jobs. Months later, the university announced that hundreds of jobs would go anyway. Now, union members are much more suspicious of management. Staff who voted yes last time have said they won’t be doing so again.
In the email notifying staff of the intention to cut their pay, Bell revealed that she would immediately reduce her salary by 10 percent. She failed to mention that this would be a reduction from $1.15 million—far more than the average university worker.
It would be hard for Bell to be a more unpopular vice-chancellor. These unprecedented cuts come after a year in which ANU called the police on student protesters, attempted to privatise on-campus childcare, declared that parking fees will nearly triple next year and announced a new draconian postering and advertising policy that may breach the enterprise agreement.
A majority will need to vote to change the enterprise agreement if the staff are to forgo their scheduled pay rise. After a resounding vote of members at the rally, the union is now gearing up to run a “vote no” campaign. A win for the union’s campaign will be an important victory—not only for ANU staff struggling with the cost of living but also because of the message it will send to any other vice-chancellor considering similar cuts.

Elliot Downes

Staff rally against ANU cuts

On a busy Friday night on 11 October, a lively crowd of 400 gathered outside South Australia’s parliament. Spilling across the pavement, protesters brandished homemade signs reading “Abortion care is healthcare”, “Hands off my body” and “Forced birth = violence”.
Young women and men, workers who had just clocked off for the day, families and trade unionists were there to rally against a new anti-abortion bill being proposed this month. If passed, these changes would force people who are more than 27 weeks and 6 days pregnant to give birth regardless of their wishes or the advice of their doctors.
The crowd was protesting to defend the hard-won right of women to control their own bodies and to decide their own futures. Loud booing and jeering followed the mention of Ben Hood, the Liberal MP introducing the private member’s bill. Hood aspires to be a culture warrior in the mould of US conservatives who spent decades chipping away at abortion rights until Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
Abortion was decriminalised in South Australia in 2021 with widespread support. According to a 2019 <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1753-6405.12997">study</a> in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 80 percent of South Australians support decriminalisation, 65 percent support widespread and readily available abortions and 63 percent support late-term abortions.
Most South Australian politicians are disinclined to attack abortion rights. So Hood’s bill is unlikely to pass either house of parliament. But the battle over abortion is far from finished.
As Prudence Flowers, Flinders University lecturer and co-convenor of the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition (SAAAC), told the crowd, a small but committed hard-right minority view undermining abortion access to organise their forces. Last month, around 1,000 anti-choice campaigners <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-25/ben-hood-abortion-bill-supporters/104397276">reported</a>ly gathered at parliament in support of Hood’s bill. This included prominent anti-abortion activist and academic Joanna Howe, who describes herself as advocating for “an Australia where abortion is <a href="https://www.drjoannahowe.com/about_dr_joanna_howe">unthinkable</a>”. For the hard-right and religious conservative wing of the Liberal Party, this is an opportunity to enthuse their base, recruit to their cause and drag their party—and the rest of society—even further to the right.
There is an important tradition of coming out onto the streets to defend abortion rights in South Australia. Rallies were held in 2021 in the lead-up to decriminalisation, and when Roe v. Wade was overturned in the US, many thousands marched in solidarity with the protests there. Friday’s rally continued this proud tradition. Those who took to the streets were united by anger, defiance and a commitment to action. Grey, a former health worker, told Red Flag: 
“I used to be a nurse, so this kind of issue is incredibly important to me. When I was a nurse, the times we went on strike were the only times things happened and people paid attention. Australians can be laid back people, but we need to get out and scream about it. People trust the government too much.”
Many placards and speeches called not just for the right to abortion, but to make it free, accessible and available without conditions. Barbara Baird, a long-time abortion activist and co-convenor of SAAAC, told the crowd “There are still access problems that haven’t been solved by decriminalisation”. These challenges particularly affect people in remote, regional and rural areas, 80 percent of whom must travel to Adelaide to access abortion care. It also involves significant costs for many women and requires them to take time off work. 
Labor has played an appalling role. Despite sixteen years in government before 2018, Labor did not decriminalise abortion. The party is expected to allow a “conscience vote” on Hood’s bill, which is an inexcusable concession to bigotry inside the party. Maddy Tapley, rally chair and convenor of the Defend Abortion Action Group told Red Flag: 
“The Liberals’ hard-right faction is attacking abortion while the Labor Party is committed to pandering to anti-women bigots inside and beyond its own ranks. A conscience vote would let Labor members vote against abortion rights with no repercussions. The real opposition won’t happen in Parliament—it’s going to happen here, in the streets.”

Harvey Bail

Nix Herriot

Abortion rights rally in Adelaide

In August of 2023, someone wrote the word “ESHAY” on a pillar in Sydney. How do I know this? And why am I telling you? Because this enigmatic incident was included in the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s “Report on Antisemitism in Australia 2023”—a report that claims to document and record trends in anti-Jewish hatred, and which is treated as a serious, even definitive, source by the mainstream media and political parties.
If you don’t want to subject yourself to a Trotskyist publication explaining what “eshay” means, look away now. We will stick to reputable sources. Wikipedia describes an eshay as a member of a subculture of young men who “wear sportswear, have mullets and engage in immature and anti-social behaviour”. An alternative definition—“dickheads whom [sic] seem to think they are top shit”—comes courtesy of an Urban Dictionary contributor writing under the nom de plume “I hate eshays”.
Was this graffiti in Sydney anti-eshay? Or was it a public assertion of eshay pride? Its author did not leave us enough evidence to make a conclusive determination of this question. Yet I think we can say that it probably didn’t have much to do with Jews. Nonetheless, this message found its way into the ECAJ’s 2023 list of antisemitic incidents in Australia, and it wasn’t the dumbest thing in there. Not by a long shot. According to the report, cited as authoritative by the entire political gamut of Australian daily news outlets, even organising a protest against neo-Nazis is an act of antisemitic hatred. But we’ll come to that later.
The ECAJ published its report at the start of 2024, a couple of months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It’s nearly 300 pages long and claims to document and analyse incidents of antisemitism in Australia. The report’s publishers got the response they were after: “An unprecedented wave of antisemitic hatred surges through Australia” was how the Murdoch press reported it, with more measured but effectively identical analysis appearing in the Nine papers, the Guardian, ABC and SBS.
This report is a scam. It downplays a very real antisemitic threat—that of a growing conspiratorial and far-right movement that has shown a real interest in violence—while using false claims and distorted definitions of antisemitism to slander left-wingers, Muslims and anyone else critical of Israel’s genocidal conduct. Its authors declare their political goals at the outset. “Antisemitism has many active sources – extremist right-wingers, extremist left-wingers, and Islamists”, they explain. “However, each of the main sources operates differently. In general: right-wing antisemitism is overt, but marginalised; left-wing antisemitism is insidious, but mainstreamed.” So don’t worry too much about actual Jew-hating Nazis and conspiracy theorists: they’re “marginalised”. Worry about the “insidious” antisemitism associated with the supporters of Palestine. And if you can’t detect or prove any antisemitism at all, that just proves how insidious it is.
And so the report proceeds. Its catalogue of antisemitic incidents is full of examples of straightforward Palestine solidarity activism, involving no hostility towards or criticism of Jewish culture or religion, and that usually takes place within, and is often motivated by, an anti-racist framework. One example cited is advocacy for boycotts of Israel or its settlement economy. “BDS mimics the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses”, the report warns. “More insidious, BDS officially preaches non-violent forms of protest.” BDS obviously involves no such racial targeting. In fact, more to the point, it mimics one of the most significant and effective anti-racist campaigns in history: that to end the apartheid regime in South Africa. 
Alongside the eshay incident, the report lists in its documentation of antisemitic incidents:
<ul><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ (anti-Israel ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’), written four times on a concrete wall, Paddington, Sydney (15 May 2023).”</li><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ in two places, Surry Hills, Sydney (17 June 2023).”</li><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’, re-written where previously removed, Surry Hills, Sydney (18 July 2023).”</li></ul>
There’s plenty more like that. And they all get counted in the statistics. Mentioning the year 1948 or the term “Nakba” is also antisemitic, according to these esteemed researchers: graffiti, stickers and posters with these words are included in the lists, and therefore also in the headline numbers.
Perhaps, on reading this, you have begun to suspect that aspects of this report might be a little misleading. Well, guess what? By thinking that, you just perpetrated an act of antisemitism. In the report’s list of forms of antisemitism, we find: “Jewish organisations being accused of concocting false accusations of antisemitism ... specially in order to stifle criticism of Israel”. (Research by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students is leaned on heavily in the report. AUJS is a pro-Israel group with the unusual distinction of having had to issue a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5219">public apology to Socialist Alternative</a> for concocting false accusations of antisemitism in order to stifle criticism of Israel.)
Maybe you’re guilty of something worse than scepticism about the report. Maybe you organised a protest against neo-Nazis and chanted about the need for anti-racist unity. Believe it or not: antisemitism. Describing a rally against a neo-Nazi base organising in the west of Melbourne, the report quotes a single chant: “Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian and white—unite, unite, unite to fight the right!” This incident is listed under the category “Omitting Jews”. So desperate are the report’s authors to slander left-wingers and Palestine supporters that they even found a way to construe an anti-Nazi rally as an act of antisemitism.
What is particularly inexcusable about all this is the way it obscures the genuine antisemitism that exists and which should be combated. Falsified reports like this, along with the meaningless statistics that emerge from them, make it much harder to understand the form real antisemitism takes today. 
The report itself documents many examples, most of which are perpetrated by the same neo-Nazi grouplets that socialists and other left-wingers have been organising against for years—with groups like ECAJ contributing nothing to the cause, only intervening to slander the anti-racists. These Nazi groups descend from a revived far-right movement that emerged from the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric that dominated public life during Tony Abbott’s government. There’s a related current of conspiratorial antisemitic sentiment attributing the proposal for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament to Jewish influence. In both cases, the genuine antisemitic incidents emerge from groups that largely espouse radicalised versions of Liberal Party talking points.
Further along the right-wing conspiratorial spectrum, the ECAJ reports various ranting voicemails and graffiti along the lines of “JEWS DID COVID” and (more mysteriously) “COVID IS JEW”. These far-right conspiracy theorists, like the neo-Nazis, may see themselves as distinct from the mainstream right wing. But they still draw their fears and hopes from a radicalised version of mainstream conservatism, whether it be hostility to immigration, resentment of Aboriginal people, opposition to public health measures that inconvenience business owners or paranoia about a progressive conspiracy to undermine national unity. This is real antisemitism. The left has always opposed it, in word and in deed, usually without the support of opportunistic pro-Israel political groups that falsely claim to act in defence of Jews. The same right-wing media outlets that fearmonger about every progressive cause, contributing to the rise of this current, are also ECAJ’s best allies in promoting the lie that Palestine solidarity is antisemitic.
It is quite possibly true that there is an increase in religiously conceived antisemitism relating to Palestine. The report documents things like pro-Palestine slogans being shouted at people wearing identifiably Jewish religious clothes. This is a terrible, but predictable, result of the occupation of Palestine being understood as a clash of religions. Yet this misunderstanding is exactly what the ECAJ promotes. ECAJ describes any attempt to understand Israel and its imperialist and expansionist policies in anti-racist political terms—as colonialism, for example, or apartheid—as forms of anti-Jewish prejudice. Its entire report is structured to suggest that the Jewish people are inseparable from the genocidal Israeli government and that any criticism of the latter can emerge only from hatred of the former. The alternative to this is to build an anti-racist pro-Palestine movement—which the anti-Zionist opponents of ECAJ, Jewish and non-Jewish, have been doing for more than a year.
The report is a joke. It is vexatious, mendacious, outrageous: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk">preposterous</a>. It should be utterly, instantaneously discrediting to the institution that published it, and to the individuals associated with it. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite. The former president of ECAJ, Jillian Segal, has been appointed Australia’s new “antisemitism envoy” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 
This report is not exceptional or an outlier. ECAJ is part of an international group of Zionist organisations, the so-called J7, that includes the Anti-Defamation League of the US, Britain’s Board of Deputies, France’s CRIF and the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Most of these produce similar reports, with similar intentions, promoting similarly misleading and unreliable statistics. ECAJ claims its 2024 report is coming out “soon”. Given the explosion of pro-Palestine activism in the last 12 months, it is absolutely certain that it will claim a horrifying rise in what it calls antisemitism. The lies of pro-Israel groups won’t help us fight real antisemitism—and nor will they stop us standing in solidarity with Palestine.

Joel Schneider

Zionist groups are falsifying antisemitism statistics and the media are playing along

Tens of thousands of Palestine supporters rallied across the country last weekend to protest one year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Forty thousand people marched in Sydney, 20,000 in Melbourne, and hundreds more in Wollongong, Canberra and Perth. 
In Sydney and Melbourne, people have rallied every Sunday for the past 52 weeks. The streets routinely become a sea of red, white, black and green as thousands of people wave the Palestinian flag. The sound of solidarity echoes through the city with the chants: “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinian” and “Free, free Palestine”. 
Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees addressed the roaring Sydney crowd: “We are here in some of the biggest numbers we have seen this year. We are just getting started”. 
Seeing the genocide play out in real time has compelled thousands of people to join the movement. Many who didn’t know much about Palestine prior to Israel’s invasion are today committed advocates for the cause. Others have been drawn into action by their outrage at the Australian government’s complicity in genocide, from parroting Israel’s lies about “self-defence” in justifying mass murder, to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/israeli-weapons-company-awarded-australian-army-contract/103519558">signing a $900 million contract</a> with an Israeli weapons company.
At the Melbourne rally, Jewish Council of Australia organiser Ohad Kozminsky criticised the Israeli government for weaponizing Jewish identity to whitewash genocide. “We are united in our opposition to Israel’s continued policies aimed at the destruction of Palestinian life. We are opposed to the vile prioritisation of the lives and rights of Jewish people over the lives and rights of Palestinian and Lebanese people.” 
Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, fired back at politician’s criticisms about our decision to hold rallies on the anniversary. “Will anyone speak of the dead (Palestinian) children, dead women and dead men? It’s shameful that we’re being asked to be respectful when we’ve had 365 October 7’s in the past year.” 
These rallies generate a sense of confidence and strength on our side. By collectively standing with thousands of people demanding an end to the slaughter, we push back against the feelings of hopelessness and apathy which can so easily take over. 
This is even more important because every major institution is stacked against us—from the mainstream media to the universities, cops, courts and politicians. 
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has heightened the stakes. As Palestinian activist and Free Palestine Melbourne member Noura Mansour said in her speech at the Melbourne protest, “We now watch the Israeli violence spill over into the entire region as it targets our brothers and sisters and families in Lebanon”. 
A year on from the invasion of Gaza and we’ve entered a new era of Israeli terror. That means we must continue to push our struggle forward.

Bella Beiraghi

Tens of thousands protest to mark a year of genocide in Gaza

More than 300 students joined a special general meeting for Palestine at the University of Western Australia (UWA) on 2 October, after Students for Palestine submitted a petition with more than 700 student signatures demanding the UWA Student Guild convene it.
Dozens of staff and others from the broader campus community joined the students. Attendance exceeded the venue’s capacity, causing some people to be turned away and forcing others to sit on the floor or in the aisles. 
Students voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motions supporting Palestine, with a small number of Israel supporters speaking and voting against. 
The meeting was one of the key events in the ongoing campaign organised by Students for Palestine to pressure the university to cut its ties with Israel and end its complicity in the Gaza genocide. 
“The ties between the university and Israel are substantial”, recently elected Guild Councillor and Socialist Alternative member Finn Penter told Red Flag. “UWA leads a project that has ‘defence applications’ with L3Harris, a weapons company which supplies over 1600 components for F-35 fighter planes used by Israel. The university also has an exchange program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—which has a campus situated on Occupied Palestinian Territory—and an incoming Chancellor who is staunchly pro-Israel. We want our university to help people, the environment and society—not to help Israel’s genocide in Palestine.” 
Students also voted to call for a free Palestine “from the river to sea” and for an end to the genocide. Before this meeting, the UWA Student Guild, which is dominated by a faction of moderate student independents called Spark, had not taken a clear stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The previous year’s Guild Council initially responded to Israel’s attacks on Gaza in late 2023 by moving a motion that simply opposed violence in the “ongoing conflict”. This was followed by another motion passed in May, which condemned “the recent military assault in Rafah” but did not name Israel as the perpetrator.
“It’s a huge shift for the position of the Guild”, Danica Rachel, who chaired a snap rally after the meeting, told Red Flag. “What the Guild has said up to this point has been mealy-mouthed and frankly pathetic. But thanks to the SGM, the Guild can finally take a clear position in favour of Palestinian liberation, with equal rights for all from the river to the sea.” 
Credit for the meeting goes to the socialists, activists and left-wing students who connected with and mobilised the considerable sympathy for Palestine and opposition to Israel among students. 
In the week leading up to the meeting, Israel began its bombing campaign in Lebanon, raising the possibility of regional war. Student activists felt it was crucial to respond to this. They moved an extra motion without notice to “condemn Israel for its drive to war in the Middle East” and to identify “Israel [as] the clear aggressor in the region”. The motion passed to roaring applause. 
In the last twelve months, student activism has exploded in solidarity with Palestine around the world and across the country. With this latest mass meeting, UWA students have decisively joined this movement.

Alevine Magila

Hundreds vote against genocide and war at the University of Western Australia

More than 100 people gathered in Phnom Penh on Thursday evening, 26 September, to express their solidarity with the people of Palestine. At this time every year, over two weeks of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-amXPJFmuF0">Pchum Ben</a>, Cambodians pay remembrance to those who have died. Pchum Ben is a fifteen-day festival in September to October during the lunar month of photrobot, the traditional period for mourning and making offerings to transfer merit to the dead, especially one’s own ancestors. Traditionally, it is believed that special attention needs to be paid to the wandering spirits of those who suffered violent or painful deaths, who need to be venerated and assuaged so that they can rest in peace.
Pchum Ben has heightened significance in Cambodia’s society today. During the 1970s civil war and Khmer Rouge genocide, more than a quarter of the population perished. Families were dispersed across the country, and bodies of those more than 2 million people who died were discarded without ceremony. Most people lost relatives and friends, but do not know where they died, and thus have never been able to perform proper funerals for them.
In 2023, as Israel’s attack on Gaza began, a solidarity ceremony was held in Phnom Penh, launching traditional offerings of rice balls, candles, flowers and incense onto the Mekong River. It is unbelievable that the carnage could have gone on relentlessly day after day until now. As Pchum Ben has come around again, Israel is extending the same horror into Lebanon.
It is in this context that a number of artists decided to stage a “Pchum Ben 4 Palestine” exhibition. Some 70 paintings, posters, photographs and other artworks were displayed, mostly offered for sale along with the traditional Cambodian black and white checked krama scarf, closely resembling the Palestinian keffiyeh. Funds raised will be given to the Palestine Children’s Defence Fund.
More than 100 people crowded into <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FTGalleryPhnomPenh">the FT Gallery</a>—Cambodians and foreign residents from many different countries, faiths and political opinions stood or sat in traditional prayer. A Buddhist monk chanted and gave a brief sermon, followed by speakers from Cambodia, India and Palestine and singers from the Messenger Band, expressing their ongoing solidarity, all noting the parallels between Cambodian and Palestinian suffering.
At the United Nations, Cambodia has voted for repeated General Assembly resolutions <a href="https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/kingdom-votes-for-un-gaza-ceasefire">demanding a ceasefire</a>. The current and former PM have spoken out clearly against the hypocrisy of Western governments preaching human rights, international law and the rule-based world order while condoning and even aiding and abetting genocide in Cambodia in 1975-1979 and again today in Palestine.
First published at <a href="https://forsea.co/">Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia</a>. Helen Jarvis is vice president of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal and a <a href="https://www.aupp.edu.kh/congratulations-dr-helen-jarvis-on-achieving-2021-lifetime-achievement-award/">life member</a> of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

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