In June, I became the first and only Victorian university student suspended for leading a Gaza solidarity encampment. In the last week of August, after months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures and a fightback against the university, that suspension was overturned. 
Our solidarity encampment was four days old when Deakin University charged me with misconduct. We set up tents in the centre of campus, establishing a peaceful protest expressing opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and joining the global solidarity movement with the Palestinians. We also wanted to pressure the university to break partnerships with weapons manufacturers.
Deakin aspires to be Australia’s “most progressive university”. However, it was one of the most authoritarian universities in the country in terms of handling the encampment. Management taped off 200 metres of the campus walkway to block students from getting close to the tents. 
Security guards asked any student walking through, even those on their way to class, to show their identification card. The university repeatedly deleted emails about the camp from staff inboxes, issued misconduct warnings to every student identified as having slept at the camp, and initiated lengthy discipline processes against two students. 
The university trampled on the right to free speech, the right to peacefully protest, even the right to a fair trial. 
The chair of the misconduct committee that suspended me recused herself from the hearing of another student immediately after being accused of political bias. 
I was not provided with any complaints made against me before or during the hearing. After much campaigning—by me, other students and staff—and with the help of the Human Rights Legal Centre and the Jewish Council of Australia, who wrote to Deakin on my behalf, the decision was declared a mistrial. 
I won the right to another hearing with an entirely new committee, which overturned my suspension. 
This is a huge win for the right to protest on campus. The encampment at Deakin was one of nine encampments established around the country, all of which faced backlashes from university managers and supporters of Israel. 
In Victoria, more than 30 students were threatened with discipline. Now, all of us have won and can continue standing up for Palestinian justice and for an end to the horrific bombing of Gaza. 
It’s appalling that Deakin dragged me and other students through months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures for protesting against genocide. But I know that we’re on the right side of history. 
Every university in the Gaza Strip has been bombed. Students like me have a responsibility to stand up for the students there who are being denied a voice—or their lives. 
Renee Nayef is a member of Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative.

Renee Nayef 

How Deakin University tried to trample on students’ rights—and failed

Students at Melbourne’s Deakin University held a special general meeting on 28 August to express solidarity with Palestine, despite their student association trying to stop them. More than 250 students gathered to consider four motions, including one calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza and another demanding the university cut ties with weapons companies and divest from Israel. 
Alec Ferguson and Lara Jarrar, both members of Deakin Students for Palestine, moved and seconded the motion against Israel’s genocide. Ferguson described the horror in Palestine: “Nothing has been spared. Every piece of vital infrastructure, water facilities, schools, hospitals, medical facilities—nothing has escaped Israel’s bombing campaign”. 
Five students attended the meeting carrying an Israeli flag and photos of hostages. One spoke against the motion, arguing that Israel is not guilty of apartheid because “In all the big industries you will see a whole lot of people of Arab descent” and that genocide is not happening because “Israel does not have genocidal intent”. 
In response, another member of Deakin Students for Palestine quoted various Israeli ministers and an army reservist and veteran, Ezra Yachin, about the goal of the Gaza offensive: “Yachin, in an effort to boost soldier morale in October last year, was recorded saying, ‘Be triumphant and finish them off. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live’”. Jackson also noted that in the view of the International Court of Justice (“World Court), Israel’s actions likely constitute genocide. 
When the motion was put to a vote, hundreds voted in favour and only a handful against. 
The divestment motion, along with two others about supporting refugees and the right to protest, also passed by a very large majority. 
The special general meeting was called by Deakin Students for Palestine, after the Deakin University Student Association refused to, in defiance of its own constitution. The association is controlled by students aligned with the Australian Labor Party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. 
According to the student association’s constitution, if 250 members sign a petition to request a special general meeting, then the meeting must take place and any motions passed become official association policy. Pro-Palestine students at Deakin collected more than 700 signatures, yet the association refused to organise the meeting, claiming that “It would not be appropriate ... to adopt a position in relation to the conflict”. 
University management also tried to sabotage the meeting by cancelling the room booking, threatening to discipline sympathetic staff and getting security to tear down posters promoting the meeting. Jasmine Duff, who chaired the meeting, told Red Flag, “To have 250 students show up and vote to adopt the demands of the Gaza solidarity encampment was a significant vindication of the encampment. Even better, it happened just one day after the university was forced to overturn the suspension of Renee Nayef, one of the leaders of the camp. The university has been trying to discredit pro-Palestine activism, but hasn’t succeeded.”
The students who attended made a moral stand, not just against Israel’s atrocities, but also against the university administration and student representatives who support or are silent in the face of genocide.

Heather Maltby

Deakin students support Palestine despite official sabotage

At least 250 students crammed into the La Trobe University’s Agora cinema on 27 August to show their support for Palestine. The special general meeting was called after more than 700 students signed a petition demanding one. It was the biggest pro-Palestine meeting in La Trobe’s history, and the largest in-person general meeting in a decade.
The meeting considered three motions. One called for an immediate and just end to the war on Gaza, the second for La Trobe to cut ties with companies aiding Israel’s genocide and the third for the dismissal of the vice-chancellor for his role in inhibiting pro-Palestine activism on campus.
Socialist activist and Students for Palestine member Leanna Nguyen opened the meeting, declaring Israel’s attack on Gaza to be “the greatest crime of our generation, and every institution, including our university, has told us to keep our heads down and look away as thousands of Palestinians are murdered. Let’s make it clear today, that even if university management wants to maintain their ties to apartheid and genocide, La Trobe University students are, and always will, be pro-Palestine”.
La Trobe has ties with weapons company Honeywell and surveillance company CISCO, both of which operate on the Bundoora campus. Honeywell produces the engines for MQ-9 Reaper drones, used for reconnaissance in southern Gaza as recently as last November, while CISCO has been a part of integrating settlements in the occupied West Bank into Israel’s technology networks. 
La Trobe’s vice-chancellor, Theo Farrell, is the face of La Trobe’s support for Israel’s genocide. Before coming to La Trobe, Farrell advised the UK government about its invasion of Afghanistan and helped set up the Ramsay Institute of Western Civilisation at Wollongong University. He has published numerous articles about defence and war, including the ethics of artificial intelligence in warfare, and until recently had the X handle “@warprof”.
He has made no public statement opposing Israel’s war on Gaza and has threatened discipline against students who were involved with the Gaza solidarity encampment earlier in the year. For many students, he represents everything that is wrong with the corporate university. 
In the early 1970s, La Trobe students passed a similar vote of no confidence in their vice-chancellor, Archibald Glenn, for his involvement with chemical weapons used in the war on Vietnam. “There must be something in the water here at La Trobe”, said Students for Palestine activist Rory Gee, “because here we are again. Our new vice-chancellor is a warmonger too”.
All three motions passed almost unanimously, with only one vote against. The university has until the 27 September to release a statement in support of an immediate and just ceasefire.

Bronwyn Murphy

Alicia Griffiths

La Trobe students vote for Palestine

The following is a media release issued by Mohamed Zwahre, a member of the Popular Committees in the West Bank. The attacks detailed below in the village of Wadi Rahal came before Israel launched a major attack on several villages in the West Bank, reported as the “largest assault in twenty years”, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/28/israel-launched-a-massive-assault-on-the-west-bank-why-and-why-now">killing at least ten Palestinians</a>.
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In an unprecedented armed attack on Wadi Rahal, settlers from the Efrat colony killed one Palestinian and injured two with assault rifles.
Last night, on August 26, shortly before 10pm, about five settler colonists from the Efrat settlement colony that surrounds Bethlehem and Jerusalem invaded the village of Wadi Rahal in the south of Bethlehem and attacked a house, throwing stones and attempting to break in. Neighbours immediately came to the family’s defence and prevented the settlers from setting fire to the house, while the family and their two young daughters managed to escape through a back door.
When faced with the community’s defence, the settlers fired a gun into the air and, within minutes, a second group of about seven settlers, according to witnesses, arrived and began shooting what appeared to be automatic M16 assault rifles that are said to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, over distances of 500m-800m, directly at the community. 
During the incessant shooting, the colonists shot Khalil Ziyadeh, who had come to the family’s defence, from a distance of what witnesses describe as roughly 20m. Khalil was shot in the back, with the bullet exiting his chest. While they tried to help Khalil, two others were shot and injured, while the soldiers blocked the road to other villages and held up ambulances, even shooting tear gas at them.
According to witnesses, it took roughly 30 minutes to get Khalil to the nearby clinic in Jurat al Shama’, which is, under normal circumstances, only minutes away. Altogether, it took almost two hours for Khalil to reach the al Husseini hospital in Bethlehem, usually a 25-minute distance away, by which time he had died of his injuries.
Wadi Rahal is a small village of about 1,000 inhabitants, and it’s the first of altogether nine intertwined farming villages that form one community south of Bethlehem. Altogether, around 3,500 dunums [350 hectares] of the villages’ lands have been illegally annexed by Israel to build the Efrat settlement colony and the Apartheid Wall. The communities have organised popular resistance and demonstrations against this ongoing ethnic cleansing for decades.
In spite of this, however, the village of Wadi Rahal has lived in an enforced co-existence with the neighbouring colonisers, with many residents labouring as day workers for Israeli employers. Until last night, they did not know the neighbouring colonists to attack them directly, let alone using assault rifles. 
Last night, this changed. “They came to kill us, as many as possible”, witnesses said.
Initially, the community thought the attack came from the recent outpost in Khallet al Nahla, which was founded by more hardline colonists one to two years ago. Since the Israeli regime declared it legal three months ago, the community have observed it growing in size and colonial ambition.
The attack on Wadi Rahal is, however, the first direct, armed attack from the Efrat settlement colony on any of the nine villages in the past decades, and the community views this serious escalation as a direct result of the current regime’s escalating genocidal policies, its widescale and inciting distribution of assault rifles to settler-colonists in tandem with the international community’s complicity with it.
Witnesses identified the empty cartridges that were found in Wadi Rahal today as US-made.
Since the escalated road closures on October 7, Wadi Rahal and the neighbouring village of Jurat al Shama have become the only routes for Palestinians from the south of Bethlehem and the Hebron area to access Bethlehem, Ramallah or the north of the West Bank.
The location of the attack, which still bears cartridges, bullet holes and other damage to infrastructure, is very close to the villages’ school, which is due to resume classes next week.

Jewish settlers attack West Bank village, killing Palestinian

Reem Yunis conducted the following interview with Dr Bushra Othman, who recently volunteered in Gaza.
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Tell us a bit about yourself and your background
I am a Palestinian Australian who migrated with my family to Melbourne at the age of six in 1992 after the first Gulf War. We came here from Kuwait, where I was born and where my family had initially resided, just like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had to flee Palestine due to the occupation and reside in one Arab country or another, becoming known as the Palestinian diaspora. After completing all my schooling and an undergraduate degree in Melbourne, I studied postgraduate medicine in South Australia. I undertook surgical training in regional Victoria and Melbourne and then obtained my qualifications/fellowship in general surgery. 
What is PANZMA? When was it founded and how? And how did you hear about it?
PANZMA stands for Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association. This organisation was founded in 2020 by a group of Palestinian healthcare professionals who are volunteers. Its aim is to provide immediate medical relief to Palestinians living in Gaza (which has been under lengthy siege by the occupation since 2007) and those living in the occupied West Bank. The aim of PANZMA is to establish and support programs, education and training that foster the future of Palestinian health care. 
I was first introduced to PANZMA by a local Melbourne doctor via word of mouth. I had been aware of their fantastic efforts over the last few years in organising educational events and fundraising to buy medical supplies for hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank. More recently, I became aware of a call out for interested healthcare workers to volunteer for a medical mission in Gaza, given the ongoing conflict. 
It took many months and lots of hard work by PANZMA volunteers to make their first medical mission a reality. We were initially going to be a team of nine to ten people. However, we were limited to five after the Rafah border was closed by Israel. Also, only two surgeons (Dr Jamal Merei and I) were allowed to enter on the planned start date (13 June). The reasoning given to us was that one did not qualify, while the other two Australian members were denied entry because they held a Palestinian Identity document, despite declaring it at the border. Later on, two other members were able to join our mission, as a last-minute addition, and so they entered Gaza on 20 June. One is a general surgeon from Jordan, and the other is an engineer from Sydney.
What motivated you to join the medical team volunteering for Gaza, despite the apparent danger involved?
I believe a surgeon’s role extends beyond the four walls of an operating theatre, or even beyond those in my own local community. I, like many others over the last nine months, have been watching daily the sheer destruction of Gaza, the obliteration of its healthcare system, and the targeting of healthcare workers and facilities. I have watched doctors and nurses be completely burnt out from the physical, psychological and emotional tolls of working in a system with dwindling resources on a background of fearing for their safety or being displaced multiple times or being sieged in hospitals. I have spent years cultivating my surgical skills, and I felt a strong sense of moral duty to try and reach Gaza to offer some firsthand help in the hospitals there. As a Palestinian, I also felt as if it were my own family members who were suffering there. I kept feeling helpless that I’m not physically there in Gaza with them to lend them a hand. 
Talk to us a bit about the general situation in Gaza that you witnessed
Although I have never been to Gaza before, I was told many stories by my new friends and colleagues about how beautiful a place it used to be before this war. How friends would go and catch the sunset at the beach while sitting at a nice café drinking tea (with lots of sugar!). How the markets would be filled with delicious fresh fruit, and other produce such as nuts and dates, all locally produced in Gaza. How the Al-Shifa Hospital was the pride and joy of the Gaza community, a healthcare facility that rivalled those in the Western world. Now, however, all these places exist only in memories and in photos or videos on people’s phones. 
Every single person I met—whether an adult or a child or a patient or a relative—has lost at least one member of their family or even multiple. If your home still exists, then it is basically a miracle. Many people have been displaced twice, three times, even up to seven or nine times. Many people live in tents, and I use that term loosely. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a sturdy tent; some have makeshift tents using blankets and aid package wrapping, or whatever spare cloth they can find. 
There is no electricity, so no one goes out past sunset as there are no lights. They have been creative in utilising solar panels and converting that energy into electricity (via the use of a controller and inverter) so they can charge their phones. They have had to use vegetable oil mixed with a little bit of fuel to enable them to drive around, but there are few cars on the roads. For almost nine months, Gazans haven’t had access to chicken or meat or eggs. Shampoo and soap were very difficult to find in the markets. Yet even if these products had entered Gaza, they would be exceptionally expensive. Many people would have to walk a few hours every single day to access (filtered) water for drinking or spend a few hours going to obtain bread or food. All of this is against the backdrop of knowing that there is no safe zone in Gaza, and at any moment, you may have to flee, running for your life. 
Talk to us about the health situation from your experience as a doctor in there
The PANZMA medical mission team was based at Shuhada Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah for three weeks. We were fortunate that there were limited attacks around this area during our time in Gaza. Unlike what we have seen in the last couple of weeks, where constant massacres have been occurring, forcing a large number of dead and injured to present to the few remaining hospitals in the south—causing them to be overwhelmed. 
In addition, the European hospital was evacuated two weeks ago, causing further strain on Al Aqsa and Nasser hospitals (in the south of Gaza). Medical and surgical supplies are exceptionally low, and Israel is preventing medical aid from entering via Karem Shalom. The hospital’s infrastructure is run on two backup generators, which often cause the electricity or water to turn off for short periods. 
Sterility is not always possible, and this leads to high rates of wound infections, which can sometimes be life-threatening. On our fourth or fifth day, the hospital ran out of sterile surgical gowns and abdominal packs (used in cases of major bleeding or haemorrhage). There are limited options for sutures and wound dressings. There is not enough appropriate pain relief for patients. Patients often sleep on broken beds, or they may find no mattresses, and so they are primarily cared for by their families due to the very limited nursing staff for this tragic influx of patients. 
Are there any other points you want to bring up?
There is only so much pain and heartache and destruction that a soul, a community, a land can endure—and Gaza and its people are beyond their limit of endurance. 
They do not wish to be heroes or to be resilient in the face of unspeakable crimes. They wish to live a life that holds security, safety, education and access to basic human rights—something that we all deserve.

A doctor’s account of the situation in Gaza

The Democratic National Convention ended on 22 August, launching the newly minted Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket into a two-month-plus race to election day on 5 November. What did we learn from it?
1. The Democrats didn’t let genocide spoil their party 
The most contentious issue surrounding the convention, as well as the main motivator for protests outside of it, was the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel’s campaign of mass murder and destruction of all elements of a functioning society in Gaza. 
Thirty “uncommitted” delegates, chosen to represent a protest vote of 740,000 votes in the Democratic primaries, tried to win the party’s support for an arms embargo against Israel—a measure the United Nations <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/arms-exports-israel-must-stop-immediately-un-experts">called for six months ago</a>. Harris made clear that the current administration opposes an embargo and that, if elected, her administration would, too. 
The uncommitted delegates then proposed something that should have been uncontroversial: that party leaders allow a Palestinian speaker—who would endorse Harris while calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance to Gaza—to address the convention. A proposed speaker, Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/dnc-speech-uncommitted-movement-harris-walz-ruwan-romman/">submitted for DNC approval a short speech that read in part:</a> 
“Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars.”
The party leaders’ answer, delivered by phone on the second to last night of the convention, was “no”. Out of options, some uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in the car park outside of the convention. After months of negotiations that looked more like a concerted effort to string the uncommitted delegates along than a serious attempt by party leaders to address their concerns, the uncommitted movement left Chicago empty-handed. 
At this point, it’s unclear what impact the Democrats’ dismissal of Gaza will have on voters, even in the crucial swing state of Michigan. But the group Muslim Women for Harris, one of the Zoom-based rallying organisations like Black Women for Harris or White Dudes for Harris, announced that it was dissolving and withdrawing its support for the vice president’s White House campaign.
The Democrats’ swap of Harris for Biden generated hope among some uncommitted delegates—and among many rank-and-file Democrats opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza—that a Harris administration would adopt a less one-sided pro-Israel position on the war. Harris encouraged those hopes in a press conference after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 25 July. 
“To everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you”, Harris said at the time. Even during her nomination acceptance speech at the convention, she expressed a desire that “the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination”. 
But Harris’s approach to Gaza amounts only to a change of rhetoric for public relations purposes, <a href="https://internationalsocialism.net/killer-kamala-sending-bombs-killing-children-and-their-moms/">not a change in policy.</a> She has done nothing to break from the administration she still serves as vice president. The positions on a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance she has reiterated are the same ones <a href="https://twitter.com/1RobGunther/status/1826848501562581435">Biden has been promoting since May</a>. It should also be noted that “her people” were running the convention.
A commitment to arming Israel and providing it impunity to violate international law is a bipartisan pillar of US foreign policy. On that, Harris is and will be no different from her predecessors. But many ordinary Democrats and activists—including many on the protest marches outside the convention centre—will be encouraged to believe otherwise. And many who are completely clear-eyed about what Harris represents will still vote for her as a lesser evil to Trump. 
Even Abbas Alawieh, the main spokesperson for the Uncommitted National Movement, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2024/08/21/abbas-alawieh-delegate-gaza-dnc/">told the Washington Post</a>: “I know that the choice in November is a binary choice, and if I’m in the ballot box and it’s a choice between Trump and Harris, of course I’ll vote for Harris”. 
2. Democrats are courting conservatives 
It wasn’t just the “USA! USA!” chants and the sea of US flags filling the arena at strategic moments. Or that convention planners made room on the program for several conservative Republicans, but not one Palestinian speaker. Or the deployment of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz as archetypical Midwestern white guy/military veteran/Second Amendment supporter/football coach to balance the ticket with a biracial woman from “ultra-liberal” Berkeley/Oakland, California.
It was about what this stagecraft was meant to communicate. Some of it no doubt reflects a Democratic Party version of <a href="https://jacobin.com/2017/10/popular-front-communist-party-democrats">what used to be called Popular Front politics</a>, where everyone from “never-Trump” Republicans to “socialists” like Bernie Sanders is considered part of the anti-MAGA coalition. Another part of it is the Democrats’ obsession, since at least the Bill Clinton administration of 1993-2001, with inhabiting an imagined “centre” in US politics. In 1996, <a href="https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/clinton-and-obama-gave-us-trump">Republican candidate Bob Dole complained</a> that he lacked a unique platform to campaign on because President Clinton had adopted so much of the Republican agenda.
In 2024, “capturing the centre” means reviving the <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/08/barack-obama-dnc-speech">“technocratic liberalism”</a> that Barack Obama’s administration practised. Harris spent the first couple of weeks after she declared her candidacy repudiating her previous (and brief) support for free universal health care for all, pro-immigration policies, and Black Lives Matter demands for fundamental criminal justice reform. As she sketches out her positions, she touts an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/behind-harriss-new-mantra-the-opportunity-economy-ac179e74">“opportunity economy”</a> perfectly aligned with the capitalist ideology of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. She doesn’t talk about making health care or childcare a “right”, but “affordable”. Meanwhile, she and surrogates like former CIA Director Leon Panetta champion the US armed forces’ lethality and their intention to challenge China.
Democrats made a big play on the concept of “freedom”, tied to promises to pass federal guarantees of reproductive rights and voting rights. If Harris/Walz win the election, they will have to overpower stiff Republican, conservative and even Supreme Court resistance to keep these promises. Will Harris/Walz be up to it? Or will they end up like Obama did, reaching for an unattainable compromise that squanders whatever hope anyone put in them? With millions still reeling from the wreckage of the Great Recession, that hopelessness opened the door for a Trump victory in 2016.
3. Bernie Sanders and the Squad are deep inside the tent 
Given Harris’s plans to run to the “centre” (aka, to the right), the Democrats will lean on some time-tested strategies to keep their more liberal base from getting discouraged. One way is their deployment of a type of identity politics to associate any criticism of Harris from the left with Trump’s racist and misogynist attacks. 
Another is to deploy as surrogates people who have progressive bone fides. That’s where people like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) really show how they fit inside the Democrats’ big tent. Sanders and AOC both endorsed Harris at the convention. After slamming the “billionaire class” and Big Pharma and calling for the US to make health care a right, Sanders said: “I look forward to working with Kamala and Tim to pass this agenda”. There’s no indication that Harris and Walz are interested in such an agenda. 
AOC’s praise for Harris for “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home” was even more cringeworthy. As AOC left the stage, delegates chanting her name, the national press started <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/23/aoc-mainstream-democrat-dnc-00175955">churning out articles on her newfound comfort as a “rising star”</a> in the Democrat “mainstream”.
<a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/08/online-left-democrats-occupy-sanders">Jacobin editor Matt Karp lamented</a> that a generation of people younger than “the original Berniecrats” see themselves as Democratic partisans rather than scrappy fighters against the Democratic Party establishment. Karp worries that “some of our best young people have been bought cheap”. He and his colleagues, who have spent years as virtual PR reps for Sanders’ and AOC’s promotion of the Democratic Party as a vehicle for social change—even “socialism”— should ask themselves if they also allowed themselves to be “bought cheap”.
4. Immigrant feel-good stories are a cover for anti-immigrant policies 
Vice President Harris’s story as a daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica was key for the biographical documentaries and endorsement speeches at the convention. Harris wove her mother’s life into a patriotic riff about how “only in America”, the “greatest nation on earth”, could such a story be written.
Yet while immigrants served as talking points in many convention speeches, the Democrats were selling themselves as the party of “border security”. Responding to the anti-immigration core of Trump’s appeal, they presented themselves as the only party serious about cracking down on the southern border. 
“As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that [Trump] killed, and I will sign it into law”, Harris pledged. That bill, which failed to pass Congress this year, contained <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/analysis-senate-border-bill">provisions to make it more difficult for people to seek safety in the US</a> and allow for faster removals of asylum seekers. 
The previous three Democratic conventions featured undocumented speakers describing their plight. And the 2020 virtual convention featured special condemnation of Trump’s policy of “family separation” at the southern border. This year’s proceedings could not have been more different. 
The sheriff of Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas, spoke. Senior Latino politicians like Representative Pete Aguilar and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto vouched for Harris’s “toughness” on border policy and transnational trafficking. And all speakers who mentioned legislation touted Democrat support for the “toughest border bill” in decades, <a href="https://internationalsocialism.net/both-major-parties-push-racist-immigration-policies/">which conservatives largely wrote</a>. 
Unlike their counterparts at the Republican convention, Democratic delegates didn’t brandish “Mass Deportations Now” placards on the convention floor. But they’ve clearly decided to “counter” Trump by trying to steal his thunder.

Lance Selfa

What we learned from the Democratic National Convention

The battlelines on campuses have been drawn. On one side is the enormous institutional support for the military-industrial complex and the highly militarised state of Israel in particular. This takes the form of research deals between university administrations and companies like British Aerospace Engineering, Elbit Systems and Boeing, along with all sorts of direct partnerships with Israeli universities and institutions. These are reinforced by right-wing, pro-Israel student groups organised around the Australian Union of Jewish Students, as well as Liberal and Labor clubs that almost all back Israel.
On the other side is a movement of students and staff desperate to show solidarity with the people of Palestine, as they endure an unprecedented genocidal onslaught from Israel. These activists have organised a range of actions since 7 October. 
At the University of Sydney, a historic motion calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was endorsed by a mass meeting of 346 staff. Students for Palestine has organised more than a dozen
student strikes in cities across the country, with thousands of university students walking out of classes to show their opposition to the war. Their actions inspired high-school students to join their movement, which together resulted in the biggest student anti-war actions since the invasion of Iraq.
“The university and school strikes galvanised the movement and made headlines because we proved that young people were not going to sit by and watch while a population was being annihilated”, said Bella Beiraghi, a convener of Students for Palestine in Melbourne. 
Many of the activists who spoke to Red Flag
emphasised the diversity of the attendees and how they brought together activists from inner city and outer suburban areas and from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. “We were really inspired by the numbers of Arab and Muslim youth from the outer suburbs who joined our actions and stood up to the racism they are subject to, but there were also students from so many diverse backgrounds, it was really an amazing show of unity and solidarity”, explained Deaglan Godwin, the vice-president of Sydney University’s Student Representative Council. 
All this activity peaked in the student encampments late last semester, which established around a dozen camps on campuses across the country. The first and longest lasting was at Sydney University, which quickly inspired similar actions around the country. 
While each camp had its own characteristics, they all tapped into the growing support for Palestine among students and staff. For a month, the students dominated media headlines and raised awareness about the myriad links between Australian universities and Israel’s war and occupation.
But as the semester came to an end, the camps eventually wrapped up. While some universities made mealy-mouthed noises about acceding to some of the students’ demands regarding transparency in their dealings with weapons companies, mostly this was intended to deflect student and staff anger rather than change anything. A much more concerted campaign would be needed to force administrations to cut ties with weapons companies and Israel. The camps had played their part, now the struggle would have to continue in a new form. 
At this moment of uncertainty, student activists at the University of Queensland showed the way forward. Students there had the brilliant idea of calling a student general meeting to pass motions to condemn their university’s role in facilitating Israel’s war crimes and demand it cut ties with companies and institutions complicit in the occupation. 
Student general meetings are provided for in the constitutions of most Australian student unions. Although relatively rare these days, in more radical times they were regularly held both to determine the views of the student body and to direct democratically the activities and decide the policies of the student unions. They can be called by the student union officials, or can be triggered when a certain percentage of the student body signs a petition calling for one. “They’re more democratic than a vote of some small council behind closed doors”, explains Ella Guterridge, convener of Students for Palestine at the University of Queensland. “They allow hundreds—or thousands in the case of my university—of students to engage with arguments from both sides and make a considered decision on an issue as a collective”. 
Importantly, decisions made by these meetings are binding, becoming the official position of the student union regardless of the attitudes of office-bearers or their unelected staff.
The decision to call a student general meeting at the University of Queensland came after widespread mobilisation efforts coordinated by the local Students for Palestine chapter, which had just finished organising the largest encampment in the country. After weeks of mass protests, teach-ins and an occupation of the Boeing Centre on campus, students decided to call a mass meeting to gauge the views of the student body. Two thousand students showed up and voted almost unanimously for motions in support of Palestine. “We were overwhelmed by the response”, recalls Gutteridge. “This was the largest student meeting at UQ since the 1970s.” 
News of the triumph quickly spread across the country. “When we heard about what UQ had done, we just had to try it here too”, said Jasmine Alrawi, convener of Students for Palestine at Sydney University. Holidays forced students to take a breather, before they launched their campaign in the second semester. The Sydney University meeting was organised for 7 August and had the backing of the student union, which is controlled by an alliance of Socialist Alternative and the Grassroots Left. Around 800 people showed up, including at least 600 undergraduate students, overwhelmingly to show support for Palestine. “This wonderful turnout has made history on this campus, and reflects the impact of the camp we organised last semester”, explained Alrawi. “The students have spoken: This is a pro-Palestine campus!”
There were similarly successful meetings at RMIT in Melbourne, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, and the Australian National University in Canberra. Exactly 535 students registered at the RMIT event, supported by dozens of staff and community activists, with a few dozen more turning out at the much smaller Bundoora campus the following day. At least 600 showed up to pass a similar motion at QUT, a figure that came as a shock to campus organisers. “We can’t believe it. This student general meeting is the largest student action ever to take place on this campus, around any issue”, said Isabella Foley, who moved the motions.
Elsewhere the situation has been more contested. At the University of Adelaide, Students for Palestine collected nearly double the number of signatures required to call a general meeting. But the Student Representative Council—run by right-wing careerists—refused to meet for a month, making it impossible for the petition to be officially received. Fortunately, an unusual quirk of the union’s constitution allows for a legally binding meeting to take place even without endorsement by the representative council as long as 300 signatures are collected calling for it, and 150 students show up on the day. Both these hurdles were easily cleared. More than 200 students turned up to pass the motions unanimously. “We were thrilled with the turnout, given the sabotage from our elected reps”, explained El Hall, convener of Students for Palestine on the campus. “The student body, the university and the media have acknowledged the meeting’s legitimacy, so it’s a massive win for us. But going forward, we’re going to need to kick out these conservative creeps and have a union that stands on the side of justice.” 
The bureaucrats in the University of Melbourne Student Union took a different tack in their efforts to sabotage the meeting. At first the general secretary avoided his office so as to avoid having to receive the 1,200 student signatures calling for a student general meeting. Then when a digital scan was sent, the secretary—the second in charge of a multimillion-dollar organisation—claimed to lack the skill required to open a pdf file. After this pathetic stalling failed, the union’s executive asked law firm Slater and Gordon to find a legal technicality they could use to avoid following through on their democratic obligations. The firm, which is closely tied to the Labor Party, obligingly provided advice that suggested that the motions calling on Israel to stop its genocide in Gaza were unconstitutional. A big fight ensued at the subsequent student council, where the majority refused to accept the petitions or call a student general meeting. When Students for Palestine activists insisted the meeting would go ahead regardless, a compromise was reached in which council eventually came round to endorsing a mass meeting on Palestine, albeit with no formal legal status. 
On the day of the meeting, around 800 students showed up to vote on a motion demanding the university break ties with Israel. This included a sizeable contingent of about 150 students from the Victorian College of the Arts, who had marched up Swanston Street to the main campus with typical flair. Their energy was infectious, and the crowd was buzzing in anticipation.
Bella Beiraghi, an education officer in the student union, explained what happened next: “Given that the student union had eventually, against its will, backed our meeting, we gave them the right to say a few words at the start. The president then decided to use her time to announce to everyone that the vote would not be legally binding! She was rightly booed off the microphone and never returned.” Oskar Martin, Indigenous representative for the student union, spoke after the president and explained to the crowd the ways in which the Student Union majority had tried to block the meeting from going ahead, and reminded attendees of the union’s earlier decision to abandon its support for boycott, divestment and sanctions measures against Israel. “We will continue mobilising until the union fully backs the cause of Palestinian liberation”, he declared to wild cheers. 
Subsequent speakers slammed the university and the Labor government for their complicity in Israel’s genocide. Palestinian socialist Yasmeen Atieh had seconded the motion, and spoke to condemn Albanese’s attacks on protesters. She called out the hypocrisy of his “concerns” about the welfare of parliamentarians who have never been harmed, while tens of thousands of her people have been murdered by Israeli bombs. Nobody took up the option of speaking against the motion, and it passed without dissent.
On many campuses, these meetings are by far the largest campus actions for Palestine that have ever taken place. They reflect the impact of the mass anti-war movement that has sprung up since Israel began its slaughter of the people of Gaza. 
But the students are not finished. At a number of campuses, including Deakin, La Trobe and Monash, the battle to call the meetings is still ongoing. There are also plans for further student strikes in Sydney. 
In Melbourne, Students for Palestine is working with a coalition of groups to organise a picket of the upcoming Land Forces 2024 convention, an odious military exposition hosted and funded by the Victorian Labor government. “This festival celebrating weapons of mass destruction is a natural target for student activists”, explained Jasmine Duff, a co-convener of Students for Palestine in Melbourne, and one of the organisers of the protest against the Land Forces event. “We discovered recently that RMIT—a publicly funded university—is planning to present research on hypersonic missiles at Land Forces”, she said. “What a disgrace!”
The students’ efforts show no sign of letting up. “We’re so proud of the response of students across Australia, but we still have a lot to do”, Alrawi says. “Our challenge is to turn these huge mobilisations into an ongoing movement that can finally break ties between our universities and an international military-industrial complex that profits from war and devastation. We won’t accept any half-measures.”

Omar Hassan

Students turn out in record numbers for Palestine

Queensland University of Technology students have voted overwhelmingly to demand that the university divest from arms companies and Israel.
More than 600 students attended the student guild’s 15 August special general meeting for Palestine, held at the Gardens Point campus.
QUT brags that its Centre for Robotics collaborates with the US Air Force, Boeing, Thales and Rheinmetall. The latter companies are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and profit from it.
The SGM was visibly pro-Palestine: several Palestinian flags were draped on railings, and only two students spoke against cutting ties with weapons companies. Their arguments included, “Don’t you know companies like Boeing do good research, too?”, “Sometimes the US Air Force provides aid in natural disasters” and “All companies do terrible things. Nestlé still uses a lot of slave labour”.
There wasn’t much sympathy for these arguments. Hundreds of students who have been boycotting, protesting, and donating to Palestine over the last year chanted “Free Palestine!” in response. 
The motion to cut ties with weapons companies passed with 576 for and 70 against. About 200 students subsequently marched to the Chancellery to deliver the message to millionaire Vice-Chancellor Margaret Sheil. 
While proceedings went smoothly on 15 August, the lead-up to the meeting was anything but. QUT is one of, if not the most, undemocratic university campuses in the country. The QUT Guild is ruled by a board of directors, which gives bureaucrats whose interests align with the university significant power to veto decisions made by elected student representatives. 
Students and guild-affiliated clubs are banned from putting up posters around the campus. There are severe restrictions on setting up stalls, handing out leaflets and engaging with students on campus. 
Harassment increased significantly once Students for Palestine activists collected the required number of signatures to call the meeting. The university hounded students for promoting the meeting, who were told that their leaflets and posters had been banned as “political propaganda”.
On one occasion, students wearing guild t-shirts handing out leaflets for the SGM were told to leave campus by a security supervisor. The volunteers explained that the guild was constitutionally required to inform students about the meeting. 
In response, the supervisor said, “Campus is supposed to be apolitical”. The volunteers replied that this violated their right to freedom of speech. The supervisor said that if the volunteers didn’t move, he would call the police and tell them that the students were trespassing.
The university has twice emailed staff, informing them that students were banned from making lecture announcements. The second email was sent days before our mass meeting and accused student activists of being outside agitators. 
In a meeting to arrange the SGM, a university administrator warned Students for Palestine members that the university would take chants like “QUT supports genocide” very seriously—implying that the university would consider disciplinary action against students.
University managers even called the police onto the campus twice. The first time was for a careers event that Rheinmetall had been invited to, and the second was for the SGM itself. Guild bureaucrats and university administrators threatened that once the main room and the single overflow room were full, police would remove everyone else from the campus.
QUT calls itself “the university for the real world”. It’s a fitting tagline. As in the real world, anti-genocide campaigners are hounded by the establishment. But we didn’t give in. We defied the authorities—and won.

Isabella Foley

Erin Milne

QUT students defy university to vote for Palestine

More than 600 Melbourne University students attended a mass meeting and rally on 15 August to demand that the university end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. The meeting was the largest pro-Palestine action ever held on the campus.
Oskar Martin, Students for Palestine member and Indigenous socialist, moved the meeting’s only motion. It called on the administration to “fully divest from weapons companies and cut all ties with the state of Israel, Israeli corporations and Israeli academic institutions in line with the global boycott, divestment, sanctions movement”. 
In his speech, Martin condemned the university, arguing that “what matters most to them is investments that boost their portfolios and power”. He then turned his fire on the officials in the University of Melbourne Student Union. “The student union didn’t want this meeting to happen. They previously backtracked on supporting BDS ... but we kept fighting and we won!” 
The student politicians who control the student union are mostly from factions associated with the Australian Labor Party. Despite their pretending to champion students’ rights and democracy, their approach to the special general meeting was one of sabotage. 
Students for Palestine activists gathered the signatures of 1,200 students to demand the union call a special general meeting on Palestine, as the constitution requires. In response, the union hired lawyers from Labor-aligned law firm Slater and Gordon to find a legal basis to prevent the meeting happening. 
The union has form in this regard. In 2022 the union adopted a motion in support of Palestine and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. But after legal action brought by Liberal Party-aligned student Justin Riazaty, the union abandoned its position. 
The lawsuit was settled in February this year after the union agreed, in the middle of a genocide, to <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/university-melbourne-student-union-betrays-palestine">rescind its support for Palestine</a> and pay Riazaty tens of thousands of dollars. The student union has since sought to censor pro-Palestine activity in the union, prohibiting office-bearers from using their budgets and social media to oppose Israel’s genocide. 
But their winning streak ended on Thursday afternoon. The student union officials watched, aghast, as hundreds of students descended on the amphitheatre wearing keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and holding placards inscribed on one side with “Unimelb must divest” and on the other “Students for Palestine”. 
“Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!”, the students roared. Cheers and impromptu speeches echoed around the amphitheatre as student union staff sought shelter behind a barricade they had set up to prevent Students for Palestine activists from reaching the stage.
From the stage, I opened the meeting (to the president’s horror), and the floor was ours. “Put your hand up if you’re here today to stand against Israel, to stand against our government, to stand against our university and to fight for a free Palestine!”, I asked the crowd. A sea of hands shot up in response. Chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” made the meeting feel more like an open-air rally. 
At one point the student union president tried to address the crowd to explain why the union hadn’t done more to publicly support Palestine. She was heckled, “You voted to rescind the motion!”, and quickly vacated the stage. 
Students hadn’t come to this action for mealy-mouthed words or empty platitudes. We get that from the federal Labor government every day. The crowd was electric with righteous indignation at our university’s complicity in genocide. Yasmeen Atieh, a Palestinian socialist and member of Students for Palestine, told the crowd: 
“All over the world, students and workers have stood up to their universities and governments, declaring that we will not sit silent whilst people are being killed. Estimates are now that 186,000 have likely been murdered. From opposing the war in Vietnam to fighting against South African apartheid, students have been at the forefront of movements to spark change for decades. And today we’re making history again. Every one of us is making our voices heard, telling the university that it needs to divest. We are telling our government, the Labor Party, that we will not stop and we will not rest until Palestine is free.”

Students overwhelmingly voted up the motion, followed by a victory march to the vice-chancellor's office, where we stuck our petitions to his office surrounds, warning: “We’ll be back!” 
It was a victorious day for Palestine solidarity activism, and a credit to all the activists who refused to accept the union’s cowardice on Palestine, who refused to give up and who campaigned tirelessly to make the meeting a success.

Bella Beiraghi

Melbourne University mass meeting declares support for Palestine

Left-wing groups have successfully pushed back against Melbourne City Council attempts to restrict street stalls during the regular Sunday rallies for Palestine. 
In late July, council officers backed by police began harassing stallholders at the pro-Palestine rallies, which have happened every Sunday in the city centre since October last year. The officers were attempting to enforce newly introduced restrictions on where and when stalls could be held and a ban on the use of marquees, the sale of goods and fundraising on city streets. Failure to comply with the new rules attracts heavy fines.
A horde of police traipsed behind council officers at the 3 August rally, helping them enforce the new rules. Before the protest started, 40 police surrounded a Socialist Alternative stall for half an hour. Some stallholders were intimidated into packing up, but others refused to comply with the draconian restrictions. 
Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece, a former adviser to Julia Gillard, current director of enterprise strategy at the University of Melbourne and commentator for Sky News, leads the council. 
After the 3 August rally, Students for Palestine and Free Palestine Naarm Coalition put out a statement calling for groups to defy the restrictions the following Sunday. Eight other organisations and activist collectives signed on. The following Sunday, the number of stalls grew, and the council and the police backed off and let the stalls happen without any interference or repercussions. 
The success of this defiance shows what can be achieved when people refuse to back down when confronted with attacks on civil liberties and democratic rights. If the various stallholders, which included political, religious and community organisations, had complied with the council orders, it would have given the council confidence to introduce further restrictions, and possibly a ban on stalls altogether. And it would have been a concession to the idea that the council and the police have the right to dictate who can use the streets of Melbourne and for what purpose. 
This is not the first hostile move on the part of the authorities against the pro-Palestine rallies. Police previously successfully banned organisers from bringing in the truck that carried the sound system and served as a stage, and police have used pepper spray at other pro-Palestine rallies to discipline the crowd. It’s important to defend all the democratic rights we have so as to better fight the injustices perpetrated by our government and strengthen the organisation of our side.
Street stalls have long been an important way for the left and the oppressed to organise and get their voices heard. Big business and right-wingers have huge institutional weight they can use to spread their ideas. Their representatives, like Rupert Murdoch, own and control newspapers and television channels that reach millions of people. Walking through the Melbourne CBD, it’s impossible to turn your head without seeing glitzy advertisements for billion-dollar corporations like Nike, Adidas and McDonalds. 
Walk into any city cafe and you can pick from a range of right-wing newspapers, mostly owned by people aligned with the Liberal Party or worse. Our phones, laptops and televisions are likewise full of right-wing ideology and corporate advertising. Even the most careful curation of social media can’t escape it. The ideas and propaganda of the businesses and politicians who have all the power are pervasive.
On the other hand, socialists, activists and the oppressed have to scrape together funds to produce leaflets, posters and newspapers if we are to get the word out about our actions and ideas. Street stalls are an important way of reaching potential supporters and those looking for a way to oppose injustice. They are also a democratic space where people can argue their positions, raise funds and promote events. 
Abolishing the right to hold stalls would make the city the exclusive domain of those who can pay for billboards, retail premises and advertising space—and the politicians who decide which political demonstrations are legitimate and which aren’t. Defying the council attacks is about saying the city should be for those wanting to challenge war, racism, inequality and capitalism, not just the wealthy few.

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