I have been asked to write about the wellbeing of Jewish students on campus in the current climate, but to simply say that we are scared or anxious sounds ridiculous. Why would one people’s right to free speech and expression make us feel any type of way at all?
To explain this, I need to contextualise the Jewish student experience.
I started university in 2020 and my first year was almost entirely online. Getting into an arts/law degree was my biggest achievement to date, and I was bursting at the seems to be able to go on campus.
On my first day on campus in 2021, as I walked to the bus park after my last class of the day, I was stopped by a friendly looking boy who asked if I knew anything about socialism. I’d been warned by other students that the socialists were virulent antisemites, but I was so excited about just being on campus, that I decided to engage.
I responded to their question truthfully, by saying that I didn’t know much about socialism, except from a visit to a kibbutz in Israel, which is a socialist commune. The next words to come out of his mouth stopped me in my tracks. “Are you Jewish?”.
My world stood still and I had a small crisis of identity in a split second. Do I lie? What if he gets violent? I’m sure that’s not a feeling I need to explain to any woman. But how could I lie when three of my grandparents survived the Holocaust so that I could be proud of my identity?
I decided to be honest – “yes, I’m Jewish”. I was quickly informed that the Socialist Alternative organisation is anti-Israel, and a girl started chanting, “we won’t stop until people like you are kicked off campus”. People joined in and began marching up and down in front of me. I pleaded with them, trying to explain that if they just talked to me, they would see that we have more in common than they realised.
They didn’t listen, and I walked away ashamed, embarrassed, and scared.
The rest of my degree followed suit. I learned to ignore people who approached me for conversation on the street and learned to expect the worst in the classroom as well.
Not once did any of these people know any of my opinions on Israel or Palestine. You cannot tell me that it’s just “anti-Zionism”.
The worst antisemitism I saw was at off campus student events, where students weren’t bound by the codes of conduct of their universities.
My first National Union of Students conference in 2022 was riddled with antisemitism. I heard a student stand up to a cheering crowd and scream, “this is why we can’t let Jews talk about the Holocaust – they use it to manipulate people’s minds!”. I sat there, shocked that so many mainstream, reasonable, educated people would embrace this so fervently, and so publicly.
A man who I’d become friendly with at the conference told me that he genuinely believed that the Jewish coming of age ceremony included the ritual killing of one non-Jew.
Students wouldn’t look at me or my Jewish friends in the lunch line, left rooms when we walked in, and stood up from tables that we sat down at. I pointed out to them in a speech I made, ‘I am not Israeli. I have nothing to do with the state of Israel. You have no idea what any of my opinions are. All you know is that I’m Jewish, and I believe in the Jewish right to self determination in our ancestral homeland, not to the exclusion of anyone else’. No one cared.
Before long, hundreds of them were chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; a chant derived from an old Arab leaders’ promise to push Jews into the sea, and which now calls for ethnic cleansing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
I yelled back to the crowd, “where else do you want us to go?” but received no discernible response.
At another student conference, my friend gave an optional talk about including Jewish students in student unions. She covered basic things like having Kosher food to ensure Jews can eat, and hosting some events outside of the Sabbath, so that Jewish students can attend. She was interrupted by groups of students who demanded to know how she – an Australian Jew with no ties to Israel’s government – personally planned to be held accountable for the actions of the State of Israel.
My story is not unique or severe. Most Jewish students have it worse than me.
It is within this context – of years of harassment, vilification, and lost opportunities – that I saw the encampments being built. The people inhabiting these encampments are the same ones who cheered when I was told that I cannot speak about the Holocaust because I use it to manipulate people’ minds, the same people who want me personally to be held accountable for the actions of a foreign government.
These encampments have tried to prevent Jewish students from accessing lawns and buildings at the universities that we pay to attend, just like everyone else. We have seen people out on bail for violent crimes which target Jews being embraced by the encampments, and asked to speak. We have heard antisemitic chants of ‘globalise the intifada’ and seen posters put up on campus saying that we are not welcome unless we reject a core tenet of our religion; the belief in our right to self determination in our ancestral homeland – Zionism.
Over the last few years, we have seen fringe, extreme antisemitism become mainstream. More terrifyingly, we have seen people in power stand idly by and let it happen. One must ask, if everything that I just described is going to be embraced, and the encampments are going to be tolerated, what is going to come next? It is this question that haunts Jewish students, and makes us feel isolated, trapped and alone on campus.