At a Student General Meeting (SGM) on the 26 September, Students overwhelmingly endorsed three motions, ‘that UNSW disclose and divest from the $2.973 million in financial investments in weapon companies’, that ‘UNSW cuts its research partnerships with weapons companies’, and that ‘Students stand for a Free Palestine’.
This follows similar SGMs calling for a Free Palestine across multiple Australian universities including the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland, and Australian National University.
Initially planned to be held at the Webster Theatre, high turnout led to a last-minute move outside to the Globe Lawn. Attendance was somewhere between 450 and 650 individuals. The organisers of the SGM, Students for Palestine UNSW (‘SFP’) – affiliated with Socialist Alternative – announced that 518 students had registered with them.
Proceedings began at 5:30PM and were conducted by Cherish Kuehlamann, a member of Students for Palestine, who began the SGM with an impassioned pro-Palestinian speech. She was followed by the mover of the motion, Gina Elias, another member of SFP, who led the students in a roaring chant of ‘divest, divest, your many, many millions, your profits are covered in the blood of Palestinians’. Elias led with themes that would be repeated by most of the speakers advancing the motion, arguing that UNSW’s investment in weapons companies was unconscionable, and that students should take a strong stance against ‘Israel [who] has committed war crimes against international law’.
She specifically attacked UNSW’s collaboration with arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin. In 2021, UNSW and Lockheed Martin were awarded a $1.4 million grant to develop new forms of liquid hydrogen storage, and in 2022 signed a memorandum of understanding to advance space education.
Elias was followed by first-year anti-Zionist Jewish law student Milo Riggs. Riggs condemned UNSW as being ‘complicit in genocide’. He further argued that ‘groups like AUJS (the Australian Union of Jewish Students) fail to mention the rise of anti-Zionist Jewish groups, like Jewish Voices for Peace’ and said that legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic.
Kuehlmann then called for four speakers to argue for, and against, the motion. She then randomly selected volunteers from the small pro-Israel contingent at the rally, many of whom were clad in the Israeli flag.
Speaking for the motion were Associate Professor Peter Slezak, and SFP members Zac, Eva and Jamie. Slezak recounted his history of his family largely perishing in the Holocaust, and how that inspired his fight for Palestinian rights and justice. He emphatically denied that the SGM motion or Palestinian activism were antisemitic, stating that such claims were ‘bullshit’ cynically deployed to ward off criticism of Israel. Slezak commanded an audience kept in raptured silence, and was greeted with enormous cheers.
Zac, Eva, and Jamie, clad in keffiyeh, echoed similar themes to Kuehlmann and Elias, that ‘Israel was engaging in a horrific genocide in Gaza’, was now ‘bombing Lebanon’, and that ‘UNSW was complicit’, with each receiving huge cheers from the student audience. Each invoked the legacy of previous student movements such as those against Vietnam and Iraq as the logical antecedents of Palestinian activism. The final speaker was recent UNSW alumna and lawyer Amal Naser, who provided a rousing address on her status as the daughter of Palestinian refugees and the history of Palestinian dispossession.
The speakers against the motion faced a hostile crowd, clearly undeterred by Kuehlmann’s half-hearted ask to ‘hear them out’. The first speaker against, who failed to identify themselves, seemed to wander onto the stage, stating that he was ‘not affiliated with AUJS’, before embarking on a slightly confused address which veered between bold claims such as ‘war is bad’, and patronising commentary that being an ‘anti-Zionist Jews is confusing, because Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a homeland’, clearly pointed at Slezak and Riggs.
The second speaker, who also did not identify themselves, argued that ‘Jews were indigenous to the land of Israel’, that the characterisation of white Jews as colonisers was inaccurate considering ‘that two million Israelis were of Sephardi descent’, and that many in Israel were opposed to the current war. Her speech was punctuated by loud boos and heckles. When she stated that the Palestinian slogans such as ‘from the river to the sea’ called for seven million Jews to be forced out, and rhetorically asked where they should go, loud jeers of ‘go home’ could be heard from the crowd.
The third speaker, who identified himself as the President of the ‘Students Support for Israel’ club, arrived wrapped in an Israeli flag, proudly announcing that he was an Israeli citizen, which was met with deafening boos. At this point, a ‘free Palestine’ chant was started, which muffled the rest of his speech.
The final speaker was Zachary Morris, the Vice-President of the Australian Union of Jewish Students, who recently appeared at a Senate hearing into Anti-Semitism on University Campuses. Some of Morris’s speech was conciliatory, stating that he believed that SFP were willing to sit down with him so that ‘common ground’ could be reached. Morris spoke about his sadness at the suffering caused by the war, and his wish for it to end as soon as possible – but also of his fear that campus was becoming increasingly hostile to Jewish students, perpetuated by the rhetoric of groups like SFP.
Morris did go on the offensive against Naser, alleging that an associate of hers had once said ‘why was she friends with Zac Morris, he’s a Jew’, which he argued was emblematic of a purported crisis of anti-Semitism on campus. He further criticised SFP as a mere front for Socialist Alternative, contending that as the ‘SGM has no effect’ they were more concerned with their own self-interest than actual activism. After Morris had concluded in the sight of increasingly loud boos and roars from the crowd, a member of SFP grabbed the microphone and loudly shouted ‘I don’t think I can find common ground with someone who supports genocide’, which was met with enormous cheers.
Elias then exercised her right of reply, further riling up an already incensed crowd with shouts of ‘I don’t want to be lectured on terrorism by someone who supports the State of Israel’.
The meeting then proceeded to a vote, which was a public ballot carried up by holding pink slips handed to each student upon registration. A vote for the motion was called, with an overwhelming majority of hands raised. This was followed by a vote against, where the isolated branches of the small pro-Israeli contingent were individually counted. All students who did not explicitly vote ‘no’ were deemed to have voted ‘yes’, a slightly spurious electoral count which likely led to the inflation of the ‘yes’ total, but the final result was emphatic, the motions passed overwhelmingly. While the meeting was chaired by Kuehlmann, who made her sympathies obvious, and the pro-Palestine contingent functionally had nine speeches to the pro-Israeli’s crowds four, this likely had little impact on the final result. Students had made up their mind to vote for Palestine.
What’s Next?
The ARC@UNSW Constitution, its Regulations, nor the Arc @ UNSW Student Representative Council Charter contains any mechanism for initiating or conducting an SGM. Despite the overwhelming result among students who attended the SGM, it has no binding effect.
Despite this, the significant turnout and vote for a Free Palestine is historic. In such a politically muted campus, it is rare for the UNSW student body to issue such an strident political message in support of Palestine and against Israel’s conduct in the wars in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.
Kuehlmann described the SGM as ‘incredible’, stating ‘UNSW students have made history, voting… in favour of cutting ties with weapons manufacturers and for a Free Palestine’, and that the SGM has proved to the University that students who support Palestine ‘are not marginal on campus’. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for AUJS said that it was ‘deeply disappointed by some of the conduct that was permitted at the SGM last night. Yelling at Jewish students to ‘go back to Europe’ or to ‘shut the fuck up, coloniser’ is not acceptable – even in the context of a robust debate’.
The pro-Palestine contingent finished the night by marching to the Tyree Building in protest of Lockheed Martin. The pro-Israel contingent, flanked by security, marched off to the Roundhouse to have a beer.
Students Supporting Israel UNSW declined when asked to comment
