Israel’s victory led to the capture of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip (from Egypt), the West Bank and East Jerusalem (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in April 1982 and gave autonomy to Gaza in 2005. Negotiations concerning the West Bank have continued in search of what is called a two-state solution.
The Melbourne University debate in 1967 was attended by students, academics and some others. Speakers from both the Arab and Israeli sides were heard with respect. And then a vote was taken in which Israel was supported by a large majority. It was a time when both the left and political conservatives supported the existence of a Jewish state within secure borders.
One of the speakers on the pro-Israel side was Dr Frank Knopfelmacher who held a position in the psychology department. He was best known as an informed and intellectually courageous anti-communist whose criticism of communist totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia proved to be correct.
Recently, Connor Court published Frank Knopfelmacher: Selected Writings. It contains an essay that was published in Quadrant in November-December 1967, titled “The Consequences of Israel”.
Knopfelmacher had been the star performer at the university debate with some great lines and a few telling jokes. He was much more restrained in his Quadrant piece, for he could see the problems with Israel’s victory in the field of battle. As Knopfelmacher put it: “Jews have now ceased to be victims” in that “from the ashes of six million dead” in the Holocaust “a pretty commonplace phoenix has arisen” which looks like “a tough Yankee or French hawk”.
He added, “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, and they have sent the New Emergent Forces packing”.
And so it came to pass. On October 6, 1973 – on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur – Egypt and Syria went to war with Israel. Egypt attacked from the Suez Canal and Syria attempted to break through on the Golan Heights. After some hesitation, the United States supplied Israel with military weapons while the Soviet Union supplied arms to Egypt and Syria. By the end of October 1973, Israel had prevailed.
In 1973, I had a teaching position at Melbourne’s La Trobe University. It was only half a dozen years since the Six Day War but the atmosphere on campuses in Australia had changed dramatically. If there had been a debate on the war, the outcome would have been close.
The problem for Israel now turned on the fact that it was recognised as a military superpower in the Middle East and an ally of the United States. Writing in the Daily Telegraph on August 13, the Melbourne lawyer and businessman Joe Gersh (who is a member of The Sydney Institute’s board) recalled debates about the Middle East in the Australian Union of Students in the early 1970s following the Yom Kippur War.
Gersh was president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. As he wrote, by the mid-1970s AUS motions to effectively wipe Israel off the map were defeated. But not without having been moved and gaining significant support.
Half a century later, the hostility to Israel has increased dramatically on campuses in Australia and other Western nations. Now the student bodies – with the support of many academics – are totally hostile to the Jewish state. Despite the fact that it is the only democracy in the Middle East.
On August 7, the Student Representatives Council at Sydney University passed a motion calling for a single state in what it termed Palestine. This would lead to the destruction of Israel. The meeting refused to condemn the terrorist group Hamas. Both motions were passed by about 800 to a couple of votes and only one side of the debate was heard. Moreover, the few dissenters were abused.
Soon after the event, organisers marched to the office of Sydney University Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott chanting: “We don’t want no two states; we want all of ’48.” As Bret Stephens pointed out in The New York Times on April 2, this is a demand for Israel’s demolition.
Speaking on Sky News’ The Bolt Report last Tuesday, Julian Leeser – the Liberal Party member for Berowra who is Jewish – said that Jewish students at Sydney University do not feel safe on the campus. He commented that anti-Semitism was a problem before October 7 but had “reached fever pitch since that time and the university authorities have just failed to take action”.
According to Leeser, “We’ve had Jewish students spat on, we’ve had Jewish students wearing yarmulkes … being taunted and told they are responsible for the actions of the Israel Defence Forces”. He pointed out that anti-Semitism had increased significantly with the encampment on campus.
For his part, Scott has declared that the “greatest gift” he could give “Jewish students and staff was for the encampment to go”. He is referring to a time of some eight weeks. Really. Also, part of the “gift” was to give the Sydney University Muslim Students Association – which has connections to Hizb ut-Tahrir (an organisation banned in Germany and Britain) – a right to be consulted on defence and security matters related to the university.
And then on Thursday, Sydney University announced that a professor who described the Hamas atrocities committed on October 7 as “fake news” and a hoax – including the rape of women and murder of children – would be disciplined, but refrained from stating what this might amount to. Presumably, this is another one of Scott’s “gifts”. Knopfelmacher would not have been surprised by such weakness.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
There was a time when anti-Semitism was virtually non-existent on Australian university campuses. I recall a debate at Melbourne University just after the Six Day War of June 5-10, 1967, when Israel fought – and won – a defensive war against the combined military forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.