University of Sydney (USyd) management is, again, attempting to silence the Palestine movement on campus by adopting a new definition of antisemitism. This new definition, which has been condemned as “dangerous” and “repressive” by Amnesty International, is part of a coordinated attack on the Palestine movement from the heads of every university in the country.
All 39 Australian universities have agreed to adopt this new definition of antisemitism, modelled on the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. Many universities have rejected this definition in the past in the name of academic freedom and free speech. The Group of Eight Chief Executive Vicki Thomson, who helped draft the new definition, describes it as “an Australian version of IHRA”.
According to the new definition, “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic … when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel.” There is, however, a longstanding anti-Zionist current, both among Jews and Palestinians, that argues for the end of Israel as an ethnic-supremacist state that denies Palestinians equal rights. Israel’s basic law, the equivalent of a constitution, defines it as “the national home of the Jewish people” exclusively.
As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explained, this means “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”, discriminating against the Palestinian minority inside its borders. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel practices what Amnesty International and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have condemned as an “apartheid system of institutional violence against Palestinians.” As non-citizens, Palestinians here cannot vote and are subject to military law. Yet, Israeli settlers are governed under separate civilian Israeli law.
As Naama Blatman, an academic at UNSW and member of the Jewish Council of Australia, puts it, “to call for the end of such a discriminatory political arrangement in Israel, or debate whether Israel should exist in the form that it does, is not antisemitic”.
Israel has killed over 61,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the last seventeen months, while systematically ethnically cleansing the West Bank. This is the reality of Israeli apartheid. Executives, like USyd’s Vice Chancellor Mark Scott, are complicit in these atrocities when they try to silence criticism of Israel on campus.
This new definition of antisemitism will be used against students who dare to condemn USyd’s ties with Israel. It is part of a series of repressive measures rolled out in the wake of the Gaza solidarity encampment last year. Under the Campus Access Policy (CAP), *Luna, a transgender asylum seeker, was recently threatened with suspension and “exclusion” for writing pro-Palestine slogans on a whiteboard. These outcomes would have placed her visa in jeopardy and exposed her to the risk of immigration detention. It was only after Luna went public about this that management backed down.
In the face of such repression, the Palestine movement must not give an inch. We will need to openly defy these rules and restrictions if we are to force USyd to cut ties with Israel. Students Against War (SAW) held an unauthorised protest-forum on March 6 outside F23, despite the warnings of campus security. When we disobey en masse, it is much harder for the university to discipline us. For this reason, I encourage everyone to help build and organise mass actions to reject these repressive new policies and definitions, including actions like the March 26 National Day of Action for Palestine. The time has come to openly reject this new antisemitism definition and be unafraid to call for a one-state solution and the downfall of Israel.
We must take inspiration from last year’s victories. At the Student General Meeting (SGM) 800 students voted to support a single, secular, and democratic state of Palestine, from the river to the sea. Under the new definition, all these students could be labelled antisemitic because they called for the “elimination of the State of Israel”.
Recent BDS campaign victories at USyd have proven that when we fight, we can win. Despite threats of repression, students and staff recently forced USyd to cut its exchange program with the Israeli university, Bezalel, and repeal some of the more egregious rules from the CAP. These breakthroughs help us chart a path forward for the movement. They are the beginning of the process of cutting ties, not the end. 2025 must be the year we fight back against the corporatized, militarized university, inspired by our hope for a one-state solution, and the liberation of Palestine.
*False name for safety.
