ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE CAMPUS: THEN AND NOW – FREYA LEACH

Following the October 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel and the atrocities committed on the day, pro-Hamas/Palestinian demonstrations and protest about Israel has engulfed the Western world especially on university campuses. Jewish students have been attacked, vilified and made to feel unwelcome on campus. The protests have spread to affect the Jewish community at large and brought fears of age-old anti-semitism becoming a new norm. To discuss in depth this phenomenon on Australia’s university campuses, Joe Gersh – Executive Chairman of Gersh Investment Partners Ltd and President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) in 1975 – Freya Leach, Director of the Centre for Youth Policy and Professor Timothy Lynch, Professor of American Politics at the University of Melbourne came together to lead a seminar at The Sydney Institute on Monday 30 September 2024.

ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE CAMPUS: THEN AND NOW

FREYA LEACH

On 8 August, I rustled up as many pro-Israel students as I could find and headed down to the Student General Meeting at Sydney University. All eight of us sat there in utter disbelief as 800 students refused to condemn Hamas and October 7.

I got up and began reminding the auditorium, packed full of deluded lefties, what happened on October 7. The room was jeering and waving their keffiyehs in the air as I was speaking about the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. How did we get here? How did we get to a point where 800 students at one of the country’s most prestigious universities could be proudly supporting the murder, rape and kidnapping of Jews?

In August 2023 – two months before the Hamas terrorist attacks – 64 per cent of Jewish university students had experienced antisemitism on campus. Since October 7, antisemitism has gotten even worse.

To understand why anti-semitism has taken over our campuses, we need to understand how the typical university student thinks. The dominant view taught on our campus is that the world is divided between oppressors and the oppressed. Oppressors are always evil and their victims are always virtuous.

On the first page of “The Communist Manifesto”, Marx and Engels explain that, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. … Oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

Marx wrote of the terror that would ensue, as society went through “revolutionary reconstitution”. He wrote, “There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”

It turns out most workers of the twentierth century were more interested in becoming bourgeoise than overthrowing them. Marxists had to pivot from the economic revolution and turn their attention to the cultural revolution. Thus was born the cultural Marxism that is gripping our universities and allowing Jew hatred to flourish. The left’s world view of cultural Marxism says that liberation for the oppressed will only come when we throw off the shackles of capitalism and Western liberal democracy.

For a time, Jewish people were viewed as victims of oppression. They had suffered through thousands of years of persecution and pogroms, culminating in the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. The establishment of the State of Israel was necessary to protect this group of people from further victimisation.

Even many of the left-wing Marxist intellectuals supported Israel. Herbert Marcuse, whose work has informed much of the Arab decolonisation movement, believed Israel had the right to exist and supported its right to self-defence. Why? Because he was a German Jew who watched on from America as the ashes of the Holocaust floated over Europe. The Jews were still seen as victims.

But then something happened.

The 1967 War saw Israel defeat Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a spectacular military campaign. This marked the moment the Left turned against Israel because they stopped being the victims and became the victor. As the Czech-born, Jewish Australian academic Frank Knopfelmacher put it, “in losing their status as victims … the Jews will lose their status as pets of the left since in the eyes of the masochistic left” the Jews have “committed the most unpardonable of crimes: they have won”

On university campuses today, the memory of the Holocaust, the blight on human history that led even some Marxist intellectuals to support the existence of the State of Israel, has well and truly faded. A survey of 3,500 Australians commissioned by the Gandel Foundation found almost a quarter (24 per cent) of the population aged 18 years or older have little to no knowledge of the Holocaust. Among millennials, that number rises to 30 per cent, while 46 per cent of people could not correctly identify that the number of Jews murdered was approximately six million. If my university peers bring up the Holocaust at all, it’s only so they can say that the Zionists are the new Nazis and Gaza is the Holocaust. Young people’s image of the Jewish people, and Israel, is one of power, wealth and privilege.

The radical left pushes the idea that Western liberal democracy is a vehicle of oppression. Therefore, anyone who succeeds under that system is maintaining a system of oppression, making them an oppressor. The anti-semitic perception that Jews are rich business people, controlling the media and our politicians places them firmly in the category of “oppressors”. This perception of Jews is widespread among young people on our campuses. For example, a very popular left-wing Australian Youtuber with 1.34 million subscribers has made multiple videos about the “Israel Lobby” and how it controls the media by sponsoring trips for journalists to Israel. I have been on one of these trips for young political leaders. It was far from an indoctrination trip. We heard perspectives from all sides of the conflict and even visited the PLO’s presidential complex in Ramallah. Jewish people do not need to distort the facts or buy off journalists. Visiting Israel and getting an understanding of the conflict beyond 15-second TikTok videos will naturally make you sympathetic to the Jewish nation’s struggle for survival. Underlying all these videos is an antisemitic overtone, echoing Nazi propaganda, that the Jews are part of some evil Zionist plot to control the world. This, combined with the perception of Israel as an imperialist military power supported by rich white people, has made Israel the epitome of evil to young leftists.

In reality, the success of Jewish people in Western liberal democracies disproves the Marxist notion that oppressed groups can only succeed by dismantling these systems. Instead, these democracies, with their focus on individual rights and rule of law, have allowed minority groups to flourish. In contrast, Jewish people have suffered under all alternative political systems whether it be Islamic theocracies, socialist regimes, or totalitarian governments. Liberal democracy, rather than being oppressive, in fact, offers protection and opportunities for marginalised groups, undermining the entire anti-Western Marxist narrative. But I’m wasting my breath, the campus Left doesn’t care about facts.

The seeds of these ideas have been growing for over 100 years. But in recent decades, they have taken root and captured our universities.

The phenomenon of anti-semitism in universities cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the “long march through the institutions”. This strategy has been particularly evident in academic settings, where radical shifts in the underlying values and missions of universities have taken root. Over the decades, this has shifted academic focus from objective inquiry to ideological advocacy, a shift that has proven fertile ground for anti-semitism to flourish under the guise of social justice. As radical ideas became entrenched, they transformed the academic landscape, influencing curricula, hiring practices and, ultimately, the broader cultural and political discourse on campus. This long march has not only changed the face of higher education but has also set the stage for the normalisation of anti-semitism, repackaged as anti-Zionism or anti-imperialism.

The mission of the university has changed from the pursuit of truth to activism and social transformation. When Sydney University was established in 1850, its motto was “sidere mens eadem mutato” which means “the constellation is changed, the disposition is the same”. This is the essence of conservatism. Times will change but the nature of things remains. The motto was removed from the university’s coat of arms in 2010. The new motto is “Leadership for Good”. Sydney University’s motto, how it chooses to define itself, shows vividly how the university has jettisoned its centuries-old role as an institution of inquiry and has transformed into an agent of progressive social transformation.

The result of the complete ideological capture of universities is that anti-Zionism is supported by the establishment. Whereas in the past, student protesters were radical fringe activists who didn’t represent the average student, after four generations of Marxist education, they are now well entrenched in the university establishment.

For example, at Sydney University, the bureaucrat handling complaints about antisemitism on campus was a pro-Palestinian activist on social media, accusing Israel of genocide and calling for a permanent ceasefire.

Then we have the staff-elected President of Sydney University’s teacher’s union, Nick Riemer. On October 7, as thousands of Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel slaughtering, raping and kidnapping, he tweeted “Resistance is the right of occupied people… It’s simple: everyone who wants a just world must stand with Palestine…unconditional solidarity with Gazans.” On 8 October, he tweeted, “No progressive should feel the need to publicly condemn any choices by the Palestinian resistance.”

We are in unprecedented territory where the long march through the institutions has actually been successful and the establishment has become anti-Israel. The prevalence of anti-Israel hate is concentrated in disciplines most captured by the left – the Arts faculty. Of the 97 Sydney University staff who signed the “Staff for BDS” (boycott, sanctions and divestment) pledge, 86 per cent of them are in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

But what of the university staff who don’t support anti-semitism? Apart from a couple of brave Jewish staff, they have been basically silent. I don’t blame them though. All we have seen is weak leaders unwilling to confront the anti-semitism of university staff and students. The vice chancellor of Sydney University, Mark Scott, has admitted to a Senate Inquiry he has “failed Jewish students” by not taking their complaints of anti-semitism seriously and allowing the encampment to continue for five weeks, even after he knew outsiders from the radical Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir had infiltrated the encampment. Why did Scott not act on the encampment sooner? He admitted that NSW Police had offered to clear the encampment but he feared there would be violence. In other words, he didn’t want to enforce the rules because he was scared the rule breakers wouldn’t like it. This is the definition of cowardice. Even if bureaucrats acknowledge that anti-semitism is a problem, they are too weak to act in the face of a radical student body and left-wing staff.

A particular curiosity of campus anti-semitism has been the alliance formed between the leftist activists and the Muslim student groups. Three days after October 7, there was a stall set up with a sign out the front reading “Palestinians have a right to resist”. The stall was a collaboration between the Socialist Alternative group and SUMSA – the Sydney University Muslim Students Association. These groups led the encampment together. It was quite a sight to behold. On one end you had girls dressed in full black burkas and on the other side were ultra-progressive socialists. It doesn’t seem like the most natural alliance.

In reality, the radical left and the Islamist activists at Sydney University share more ideological similarities than you’d think. Both political Islam and communism prioritise the collective over the individual. Each ideology considers itself universally applicable, aiming to convert non-adherents. They are grounded in revered texts, with Muslims following the Qur’an and leftists guided by Marx’s Das Kapital. Each asserts possession of an absolute truth that purportedly leads to human salvation. They envision a just world on earth, with communists striving for a classless society and Islamists seeking a restored caliphate. Both perspectives adopt an eschatological outlook, foreseeing an inevitable ultimate conflict between good (Socialist progress or Dar al-Islam) and evil (capitalist opposition or Dar al-Harb), and sanction the use of violence to achieve their ends. In Marxism, this involves a proletariat uprising to topple the capitalist class, while some Islamists see military jihad as the path forward for Islam. Certainly, at Sydney University, where the October 7 Hamas atrocities are supported and justified as resistance, this view that violence is a justified means to revolutionary ends is a commonly held belief that unites the socialists and SUMSA.

The convergence of the radical left and political Islam has been building for decades. But for this marriage of convenience to make sense, radical Islamist organisations have had to reframe their struggle as against the great Satan of Western imperialism. They have adopted much of the language of the socialist left, allowing them to form a united front against a common enemy; the Western world.

Hezbollah is the perfect example of an Islamist terror group that has undergone a left-wing rebrand to appeal to the anti-Western, anti-capitalist left. Abdel-Halim Fadlallah, vice-president of the Hezballah-affiliated Center for Strategic Studies, said, “Hezballah succeeded in incorporating the idea of resistance as part of the international anti-globalisation movements… through our contacts with these groups, we have managed to challenge the idea that Hezbollah is a dogmatic terrorist Islamist organisation and convince part of the international left that we can be a strong partner.” It is hardly a coincidence that Hezbollah’s manifesto, published in December 2009, spends a great deal of time attacking ‘‘an economic system that only views the world as markets that have to abide by America’s own view”.

The strange alliance between political Islamism and the anti-western left has been justified by Islamist groups, including Bin Laden himself. In February 2003, as protests over the imminent war in Iraq raged across more than 60 countries, with an estimated millions of people taking to the streets, the then leader of Al Qaeda issued a statement entitled, “To the People of Iraq”:

There is no harm in such circumstances if the Muslims’ interests coincide with those of the socialists in fighting the Crusaders [i.e. the US] despite our firm conviction that they are infidels…the current fighting and the fighting that will take place in the coming days can be very much compared to the Muslims’ previous battles. There is nothing wrong with a convergence of interests here, just as the Muslims’ struggle with the Byzantium suited the Persians but did not harm the Prophet’s companions, may God be pleased with them.

On our campuses, the students participating in the anti-semitic encampments, from the left and the Muslim groups, are united by their hatred of Israel and what the nation stands for. A supporter of Hizbut-Tahrir and a student organiser at the encampment posted on social media that Muslims will “continue resisting until Israel is completely wiped off the map, from the river to the sea”. Just last week I got into a debate with a pro-Hamas socialist who said Hamas is right to resist and he hopes Israel is gone or else October 7 will have to happen a thousand more times. Both students sound very similar.

From the Islamist perspective, Israel is viewed as an artificial state that hinders the re-establishment of the Caliphate. Leftists, on the other hand, oppose Israel as they see it as an extension of US colonialism in the Middle East. Both can unite against it as an emblem of Western oppression. Palestine is considered the last stronghold to be freed from Western domination, making support for Iran and her proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, a consistent choice for those aligned with the Palestinian cause. That is why 800 students at Sydney University could declare their support for Hamas, mourn the death of Nasrallah and call for a global intifada. For the university students and staff, Israel, as the bastion of Western Imperialism, is the common enemy we must all unite to overthrow.

So where to next? We have to tackle the ideas. We’re not going to get rid of the endemic Jew hatred we see everywhere without eradicating the ideas that have been allowed to proliferate on our campuses.

We must counter the Marxist view that divides the world into oppressed and oppressors and seeks to tear down the Western world. Until we do this, no matter how many times we remind students of the Holocaust, Israel’s right to defend itself, or the October 7 atrocities, they will always view Palestinians as the noble victims and Jews as the Nazi-like oppressors. But with anti-semitism so endemic in our universities, entrenched in the Arts faculties and teachers’ unions, is this even possible? Perhaps not. But we have to try. It’s the Jews first – but, after the Saturday people, they will come for the Sunday people. Left unchecked, the endless cultural revolution of the Marxist left will tear down every vestige of Western liberalism. What will it be replaced with? If university anti-semitism is a foretaste, let’s not wait to find out.