TheAltWorld Universities should stop acting as mouthpieces for Israel
Australia’s Group of Eight (GoE) leading research universities has drafted a new definition of anti-Semitism which is set to be adopted across all of the country’s 39 universities. Its text specifically bans calling for Israel’s elimination and conflates Judaism with Zionism to reinforce the Israeli narrative.
“For most, but not all, Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity. Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being anti-Semitic,” says the new definition.
The Jewish Council of Australia released a statement opposing the definition, noting that “calls for a single binational democratic state… could be labelled anti-Semitic.” It expressed concern that universities in Australia will be “promoting a view that a national political ideology is a core part of Judaism” and called the conflation inaccurate and dangerous.
The definition, the Jewish Council of Australia said, “risks institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism” and noted that the GoE failed to consult with Palestinian and Jewish groups that criticise Israel.
GoE Chief Executive Vicki Thompson described the anti-Semitism definition as “an Australian version of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition that can be operationalised in a university setting, while upholding academic freedom and associated obligations.”
However, that’s not entirely true. The IHRA definition guidelines include “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” as a manifestation of anti-Semitism, and this already plays into the Zionist narrative which describes Israel as a Jewish state, hence conflation between state, religion and political ideology. The Australian universities’ definition goes a step further and eliminates all subtlety of silencing free speech when it specifically integrates Zionism as “a core part” of Jewish identity for the benefit of Jewish Australians, apparently.
Universities, however, hold their own political power of silencing free speech.
This has been seen in recent years by the targeting of Palestinian academics and academics advocating for Palestinian rights and the dismantling of Israeli colonialism. Since universities in Australia are readily adopting the Zionist narrative into their academic agenda, what academic rigour, freedom, research and thinking, can universities speak of?
The genocide in Gaza should have provided universities with the perfect opportunity to take a stance against the settler-colonial policing of academic thought.
Students on campus protests against genocide led by example. University administrators led by collusion with Israel.
And since the GoE’s definition of anti-Semitism went straight to the Zionist heart of the matter – ensuring that no criticism of Israel or Zionism can escape the “anti-Semitic” label, why not ask why, in a post-colonial era, it is forbidden to call for the dismantling of the remaining apartheid, settler-colonial entity in Palestine and advocate for a “single binational democratic state”? Dismantling Israel as a settler-colonial enterprise is a process, not an aberration. It is a process that other anti-colonial struggles have managed, but one that the Palestinian people are continuously denied. From the political echelons to universities, free speech is being consistently eroded. Education is the closest one can get to the people. How long before such restrictions become a blanket ban?
The Zionist narrative is infringing on the entire world’s right to free expression. As militarily powerful as it is, Israel’s actions are unsustainable and call for decolonisation, a call that universities should be championing, not penalising. Rather than allowing universities to limit academic freedom by being mouthpieces for Israel, how about holding them accountable to the people they are supposed to be serving: the educators and the students?
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