University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott appeared before Senate estimates on September 20 last year to discuss the Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024.
He was asked by Liberal Party senator Sarah Henderson if he had failed Jewish students on his campus. Scott replied: “Yes, I have failed them and the university has failed them, and that is why we’ve made significant changes to our policy settings.”
Move forward eight months. On May 31, Natasha Bita reported in The Australian that “a $150,000 pay rise for the University of Sydney’s vice-chancellor Mark Scott pushed his salary above $1.32m last year”. Which suggests that at Sydney University there are those who fail but still receive first-class honours with respect to what, in business circles, is called remuneration.
Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali discusses a Colorado man who has been charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and hate crimes targeting Jewish supporters holding a peaceful protest regarding the hostages in Gaza. “I think it’s important for us to know that the Free Palestine movement is made up of a mish-mash of Marxists, Maoists and Islamist elements,” Ms Hirsi Ali told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Their wish is to eliminate the state of Israel. “It is definitely not just in America … this Free Palestine movement is in Europe. “What should Australians do? It is to infiltrate this organisation to stop this movement and to treat it as a terrorist organisation because ultimately that’s what it is.”
In the university’s Annual Report 2024, published this week, chancellor David Thodey and Scott acknowledged “we did not get everything right as we responded to widespread protests triggered by the events of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath, and there are clearly differing views on our responses to certain events, particularly the encampment on our Quadrangle Lawns”. The duo went on to say they were committed to learning from those hugely challenging and complex events.
Thodey became chancellor in July 2024 when anti-Semitism was already rife on the Sydney campus. Scott became vice-chancellor in July 2021. Thodey’s background is in business. On the other hand, Scott has worked as a teacher, a journalist, a managing editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, a managing director of the ABC and head of the NSW Department of Education. This background should have equipped Scott with an experience in how to handle students and left-wing activists. But he did virtually nothing when militants, many from outside the campus, set up encampments from early April to late June 2024.
Joanna Panagopoulos revealed in The Australian on June 5 that a report by a SafeWork NSW inspector into anti-Semitism at the university found a “high-risk psychosocial hazardous workplace” was endured for almost a year because of “the inactions of the university to eliminate” hate. It is understood the SafeWork NSW report author is not Jewish and has no connection with the university.
Sydney University is not the only campus to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism following Hamas’s barbaric attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. And it was not the birthplace of the outburst. That occurred on October 9 when a mob of left-wing activists took an unlawful march through Sydney to the Opera House when many chanted what sounded like “Gas the Jews” but some heard as “Where’s the Jews”. An anti-Semitic war cry, whatever was heard. This was before Israel retaliated by invading Gaza.
Perhaps the most notable apparent act of anti-Semitism (I write “apparent” because some individuals have been charged but a court has yet to make a finding) occurred with the arson attack of the Adass Israel Synagogue of Melbourne in Ripponlea.
In a sense, non-violent anti-Semitism has been fashionable among sections of Australia that are in no sense Islamist. For example, Margin Call in this paper has reported on influencer Grace Tame’s ignorant comments about Jews and Israel. As Yoni Bashan has pointed out, Tame appears to be of the view that all Israelis are Jews. This is hopelessly wrong.
Writing in The Saturday Paper on May 10, Michael Gawenda (a former editor-in-chief of The Age) commented on the “under-reporting at the ABC and in the Nine newspapers of the increased hostility towards Jews in Australia”. He added that “there is a view that any increased hostility to Jews must be a reasonable response to the deaths of Palestinians in the current conflict in Gaza”.
In recent months in the US there has been some evidence that the calls of pro-Hamas supporters to move the intifada to outside Israel is beginning to take place.
In mid-April the official residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was firebombed. A suspect who called 911 made reference to “Free Palestine”. On May 21, in Washington, two young Israeli embassy staff members were shot and killed outside a Jewish museum where they had been attending a function. The attacker called out “Free Palestine”. And then last weekend in Boulder, Colorado, an unlawful immigrant from Egypt shouted “Free Palestine” before throwing some kind of firebomb at a group of senior citizens rallying peacefully for the release of the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas.
Appearing on Sky News’ Credlin on June 3, Ayaan Hirsi Ali described the Free Palestine movement as a “mishmash of Marxists, Maoists and Islamist elements”. She said they all wished “to eliminate the state of Israel … and then, on the Islamist wing, they want to kill all Jews”.
It is understandable why citizens of Western democracies, young and old alike, are disturbed by the killings and the depravations taking place in the Israel-Hamas war. A conflict that Hamas started when it broke a ceasefire on October 7, 2023, and slaughtered and kidnapped civilians in the process.
But it should be remembered that all wars are horrific. Hamas can end the war by surrendering (with its surviving leaders going into exile) and returning the hostages. Eventually, that’s what Germany did in 1945. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30 and the German forces in Berlin surrendered two days later. In Japan on August 15 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan would surrender – it did so formally on September 2 of that year.
Before that literally thousands of civilians were killed in the bombing raids on German cities by the Royal Air Force and by the US air and naval forces in parts of Europe and Japan. And there was the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 30,000 French civilians died in Operation Overlord in the D-Day campaign of June 1944.
Supporters of the Gazan cause would be well-advised to call on Hamas to surrender and return the hostages rather than verbally attacking Jews on university campuses and elsewhere.