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

For the first month of Israel’s current war on Lebanon, Australian media and politicians were focused not on the thousands killed or the more than a million civilians displaced, but on attacking anti-war demonstrators and denouncing anti-war activists as supporters of terrorism. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton both called for the cancellation of pro-Palestine protests scheduled for 6 and 7 October and railed against the small number of demonstrators who brought Hezbollah flags to protests against Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon. 
In a <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/doorstop-interview-melbourne-9">doorstop interview, </a>Albanese said about the protests, “There’s no place for mourning a terrorist leader, and we’re very concerned about some of the terrorist symbols”. Meanwhile, Labor’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, threatened to cancel the visas of any non-citizens caught waving a Hezbollah flag, and then cancelled the visa of Khaled Beydoun, a law professor from Arizona State University. The reason for the cancellation was a 7 October speech in which Beydoun noted the rise of global solidarity with the Palestinians, saying, “Today is not fully a day of mourning. In many respects, today is also a day that marks considerable celebration, considerable progress, and in some respects, considerable privilege. The level of global literacy around what’s taking place in Palestine has exponentially risen”. Burke and the media smeared Beydoun, disingenuously asserting that he was celebrating Hamas’ 7 October attack. 
Of course, there were no words of condemnation for those cheering on Israel’s murderous attacks on civilians in Lebanon, nor the intensification of genocide taking place in Gaza. The Australian political class dutifully fell in behind Israel’s propaganda machine by crapping on about Israel’s “right to defend itself” and joining in the hysteria about protesters supporting the Lebanese political group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation has been on the Australian government’s list of “terrorist organisations” for some time. In late 2021, the listing was changed from the External Security Organisation to simply Hezbollah, meaning the entire organisation is now considered terrorist. This happened on the watch of then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, under pressure from supporters of Israel.
This decision was based on only seven submissions to the parliamentary committee responsible, five of which were from pro-Israel organisations or individuals, including the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. One of the two individual submissions was from Emmanuele Ottolenghi from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, who wrote an article last year titled “<a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/barbarians-at-the-gate/">Barbarians at the Gate</a>” in which he argued that the notion of Palestinian statehood must be destroyed. “The barbarians must be vanquished”, was his grossly racist conclusion. 
Whatever criticisms leftists can make of it, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation. It is a mass Shia political party which holds 13 seats in the Lebanese parliament, and was founded to resist the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The party functions as a second state in the south of the country and in Dahieh, a large area of Beirut. Hezbollah runs a large social welfare apparatus and has interests in numerous businesses, especially construction companies. Its armed wing is the world’s largest non-state military apparatus, and, rather than carrying out terrorist attacks, it uses standard military and guerrilla tactics.
The Australian government’s list of “terrorist acts” Hezbollah has allegedly been <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/what-australia-is-doing/terrorist-organisations/listed-terrorist-organisations/hizballah">responsible</a>
for illustrates this. There are nine, and none involve any confirmed casualties. Three are public threats made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah against US and Israeli military targets in response to violations of Lebanese airspace and the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, none of which were carried through. Two involve legal cases brought against individuals in the US, and one involves the provision of support to Palestinian groups. Only one involves an actual act of violence—the firing of a missile at an Israeli tank in September 2019 that Israel says caused no deaths or injuries. 
Even with highly motivated Israel supporters and the resources of Australian intelligence at their disposal, this is the best that Dutton and the Liberal government could come up with. But the fact that the listing was a politically motivated sham doesn’t make it any less effective at smearing, threatening and intimidating opponents of Israel’s atrocities. And it doesn’t prevent someone who is legitimately protesting the invasion of Lebanon—a sovereign country—and who also supports a mainstream Lebanese political party potentially being thrown into jail.
But while it might not be accurately described as terrorist, Hezbollah is nevertheless a reactionary organisation that should be opposed by progressives. It has been part of the neoliberal regime in Lebanon, which has made working-class people pay for the economic crisis the country is facing. It also helped sabotage the investigation into Beirut’s port explosion in 2018. Its military wing played a counter-revolutionary role in the Syrian revolution in alliance with the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and it helped to suppress mass democratic protests across Lebanon in 2019 and 2020. So there are plenty of reasons to oppose Hezbollah, but resistance against Israel is not one of them. Referring to the group as a terrorist organisation just plays into the narrative that Western governments have long attempted to create, in which Middle Eastern and Islamist politics poses a uniquely dangerous threat to those in the West.
Israel, on the other hand, is undeniably a terrorist state. Extreme violence toward, intimidation and massacres of civilians are Israel’s speciality. It has made no secret of its calculated atrocities and the intent behind them in Gaza over the last year. “Nothing happens by accident”, an Israeli military source <a href="https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/?fbclid=IwAR15qSbuTiMzn-2jLLss3na2LPYa8h942dlf6vHctnNTR8yNVaiohIHjJEA">told</a>
Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed ... Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
In September, Israel detonated thousands of bombs as part of its efforts to wipe out the entire leadership of Hezbollah, killing and injuring numerous civilians in the process. Israeli forces also assassinated Nasrallah and have killed the two main leaders of Hamas. Assassination of political leaders is against <a href="https://theconversation.com/assassination-is-always-unlawful-regardless-of-who-is-killed-and-on-whose-orders-236004">international law</a> and meets the definition of terrorism. Israel’s terrorist activities have extended to manufacturing fake Australian passports to aid in assassinations of political leaders. But no Australian government officials are threatening supporters of this terrorist regime with deportation or arrest.
Quite the opposite. Those who leave Australia to fight in the Israel Defense Forces have been <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/we-are-resilient-australian-reservists-called-up-in-israel-join-fight-20231012-p5ebn9.html">celebrated</a>
and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-fighting-with-idf-killed-in-gaza-20240102-p5eunj.html">mourned</a>
by Australian mainstream media. In December last year, the Australian Centre for International Justice <a href="https://acij.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023-12-20-Letter-to-Ausgov-regarding-Australians-in-the-IDF.pdf">quoted</a>
an estimate that 1,000 Australians have recently or are currently serving in the IDF. The government and opposition are not drumming up concern about these activities, nor warning those involved that they may face criminal charges when they return—which, if they are part of the genocide, they should. There is no outrage about them from the political class: no parliamentary tirades, doorstop speeches or livid articles in the mainstream press about what a threat these people are to social cohesion. Taking part in a genocide is acceptable activity to the Australian establishment. Waving a yellow flag is not. 
One Sydney man wrote a <a href="https://www.australianjewishnews.com/a-warriors-commitment-to-country/">piece</a>
in February for the Australian Jewish Times on the months he spent fighting for the IDF in frontline combat in Gaza, in which he claimed to have “eliminated” multiple people referred to as “threats” and “Hamas terrorists”. A photograph attached to the article pictures the man inside a child’s bedroom, kneeling among the cushions in combat gear with another Israeli soldier, both carrying guns. Not only did he kill multiple people in the course of an active genocide, but the man also provided security detail inside Gaza for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court prosecutor <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state">filed</a>
a request for an arrest warrant related to crimes against humanity. “The contrast between my recent leisure time on Bondi Beach”, he wrote, “just a few weeks prior, and the responsibility of safeguarding the Prime Minister of Israel was stark and surreal”. More thoroughly legitimate activity in the eyes of the Australian political class.
The government, opposition and mainstream media justify the threats against Hezbollah supporters on the basis that “we don’t want foreign conflicts being brought into Australia”. But it is the Australian government and its slavish support for Israel that import foreign conflicts or, more accurately, make them local conflicts. It is the Australian government’s complicity in genocide that creates the imperative for people who value human rights to raise their voices and protest.
“Not in our name!” was the rallying cry of those who marched against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The same applies today. What is happening in Gaza and Lebanon is not a “foreign” conflict. It is an illegal military campaign enabled, funded and armed by the Western powers, including Australia. We have a duty to resist it. And so long as Hezbollah continues to be the main force fighting to repel Israel from Lebanon, people will support it and anti-war activists should defend their right to do so in defiance of racist and politically motivated anti-terror laws.

Jasmine Duff

Terrorism designations are politically motivated

The United States has sent Israel at least US$17.9 billion worth of military support since October 2023, according to a <a>report</a> from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the US.
The report outlines the known arms deliveries to Israel between 7 October 2023 and September 2024. These include: 20,000 M4A1 rifles, 14,100 2,000-pound bombs, 3,000 laser-guided Hellfire missiles and over 4 million kilograms of jet fuel. This list is likely longer—many of the details of US military exports are not public.
It’s safe to assume these weapons are not sitting in warehouses gathering dust. They were provided with the full knowledge that they would be used to murder Palestinians.
This staggering amount of material support makes the 2024 fiscal year the biggest on record for US military aid to Israel.
Also noted in the report is US$20.3 billion in newly approved weapons sales, reaffirming US backing of Israel in the form of F-15 fighter jets, tank cartridges and mortar rounds.
The US is not only acting as a patron. It directly intervened in April and October to shoot down Iranian missiles bound for Israel, and since January has been striking Houthi targets in Yemen. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the US secretly expanded its intelligence sharing with Israel after 7 October.
This reality is at odds with the narrative in the mainstream media that the US is trying, or at least threatening, to hold Israel back.
On 13 October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent Israel’s defence minister and minister of strategic affairs a letter giving Israel 30 days to increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza. If Israel doesn’t comply, the letter implies that unwavering US support for the genocide may be reconsidered.
The letter was described as an “ultimatum” by the <a>ABC</a>, <a>Telegraph</a> and <a>Politico</a>. This is at best misleading, and at worst a lie.
Far from threatening a “halt to arms transfers” as the <a>Guardian</a> reported, the letter merely says that a failure on Israel’s part to improve the catastrophic conditions in Gaza “may have implications for US policy” with regard to weapons supplies. America is asking Israel to be a bit nicer while it commits genocide, and if it doesn’t comply then the US might consider not helping so much—hardly an ultimatum.
In April, <a>Reuters</a> reported on an “ultimatum” US President Joe Biden issued to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza or risk losing US support. Nineteen days later, the US Department of Defense <a>announced</a>
that Congress had signed off on US$14.1 billion of military aid to Israel, despite there being no evidence that Israel had made any provisions to avoid civilian deaths.
On 13 October, the same day that Blinken’s most recent “ultimatum” was sent to Israel, the Pentagon <a>announced</a>
that it would send a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence battery to Israel, along with almost 100 soldiers to operate it. 
The liberal media’s spin absolves the US (and its allies like Australia) of Israel’s crimes, washing clean the hands of the so-called “free world” from the blood of the Palestinians shot, bombed, incinerated and starved by Israel.
Make no mistake, the US-Israel alliance is rock solid. Israel needs American weapons, and America needs its attack dog in the Middle East. Without Israel on its side, the US would have a much harder time keeping the region—with its oil reserves and vital trade routes—under its own influence and not that of its rivals.
That the US is willing to sacrifice the lives of tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people to maintain its dominance should come as no surprise. Poverty contributes to hundreds of thousands of American deaths each year, making it the fourth biggest killer, according to a recent American Medical Association study. More than 300 lives were lost to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, after little was done to mitigate the environmental risk. The US government doesn’t care about its own civilians, let alone those on the other side of the world.
As Israel expands its campaign of terror into Lebanon and Iran, the US has very possibly realised that this is an opportune moment. It’s certainly not mad that a severe blow has been inflicted on Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia allied with Iran—a long-term US foe. Israel crushing, or at least weakening, these enemies could help to entrench US hegemony in the region.
The US is arming Israel because it is in its perverse interest to do so. The idea that Biden is pulling out all the stops to end Netanyahu’s genocide could not be further from the truth—the weapons speak for themselves.

Danica Rachel

The US is spending billions to fuel Israel’s genocide

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

Jerome Small

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

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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