Writings from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment

By Tamara Jacka and ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment Members

This is Part One of a six-part series of articles from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Apart from the Introduction by Emeritus Professor Tamara Jacka, all articles are written by student members of the encampment. To protect the authors against identification, we have kept them anonymous.

Introduction

Tamara Jacka

On 29 April 2024, students established a Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the centre of the Australian National University (ANU) campus. The students made the following demands:

1. That the ANU cut ties with all weapons manufacturing companies, starting with BAE systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and place a moratorium with any such ties in the future;
2. That the ANU disclose and divest from all companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza, including all companies on the BDS list;
3. That the ANU cut academic ties with Israel, including the exchange partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as any research partnerships with Israeli companies;
4. That the ANU condemns and denounces the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the apartheid Israeli state, including the destruction of all universities in Gaza and the murder of Palestinian students and academics.

As of late July, the university executive has refused to visit the encampment. Instead, it has kept the encampment under constant surveillance, directed students to vacate the encampment and taken disciplinary action against those students that it could identify through surveillance.

Early in the morning of May 27th, a directive was issued for the encampment to be dismantled and the police were brought in to enforce the directive. However, by midday that day, the tents had not been removed and some two hundred protesters – students, staff and members of the community – had assembled around the encampment. The police withdrew and the university issued a new directive, for the encampment to be removed by the following midday. Overnight, students packed up the tents and reestablished the encampment in another place on campus, a short distance from the original location.

Before and after the encampment’s relocation, the university executive has invited encampment members to a meeting only on condition that the students identify themselves. Given the risk of disciplinary action associated with identification, it is understandable that students have not complied. Instead, they asked that a team of a few staff members, including myself, act as intermediaries between the encampment and the university executive. The University executive finally responded to the staff team’s numerous requests for a meeting, and so far, has met with us twice, with another meeting planned soon.

To date, the university executive has failed to address any of the encampment’s demands. However, the Vice Chancellor has assured the staff mediation team that the exchange partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is no longer in operation and has promised to have the university website revised to make this clear. In addition, she and the University Council committed the university to a review of the so-called Socially Responsible Investment Policy and launched a consultation process. Submissions closed on July 17th.

Meanwhile, of the 12 students known to have been subjected to disciplinary measures, one has been expelled from the university. Two have had charges dropped and disciplinary measures rescinded. The rest remain banned from residing at the encampment.

As Canberra’s bitterly cold winter has progressed, the number of students staying overnight at the encampment declined from a peak of 30-50 in early May to just a handful during the semester break. But with the start of second semester, the numbers are increasing again. Throughout this almost three-month period, apart from the students staying overnight, many more have been involved in daily meetings and other activities, and numerous members of the community have continued to visit and offer support. There are no plans to dismantle the encampment.

Read the first anonymous account by a participant in the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment below:

The idealised notion of a ‘university experience’ has only been achieved in direct opposition to the University. 

In the age of the corporate university students often feel isolated, disillusioned and downtrodden. This had certainly been my experience for the past two and a half years. I had accepted that this is just how university was now. So, I was incredibly surprised when one day, after a teach-in at the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment, I found myself thinking that this is what university should be like.

Something that has become apparent since the start of the Encampment is the fact that I have never felt so supported emotionally, academically and socially before. I feel I have a community that cares about me and supports me.

I feel it in the small things like when someone asks if I want a hot water bottle. I feel it in the big things such as the nightly dinner provided by the local Palestinian community. I feel it in the fun times, like 2am karaoke or nightshift Just Dance sessions. I feel it during the challenging times, when the police are called, and the university attacks us.

In every aspect of encampment life, I can feel the intense bonds we have built together, the care, the respect, the love. It is an empowering and beautiful experience. My emotional and physical needs are being met because of this incredible community that has formed around the encampment.

Academically and mentally participating in the Encampment has provided us with invaluable opportunities. Whether it be political discussions in the main tent, teach-ins conducted by experts in their field, working on media projects for the camp or simply study sessions in the library, I am engaging in more of the study I am passionate about.

Part of being involved in a political movement is being in political spaces. This brings forth critical discussions about sociology, democracy, economics, history, arts and literature. The Encampment provides room for these conversations to occur outside the stifling structures of the ANU. When you are placed outside the systems of the university you are able to criticise it as an institution. From the outside looking in you can see that better things are possible and what is currently the system does not have to remain.

This intersection of community and education can be seen during our Arabic lessons on Mondays. We gather as friends and peers, joking, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. We come together to learn and further our understanding of the world. It is truly beautiful to be a part of. It is what university is meant to be.

The free sharing of knowledge and ideas creates an environment that all universities should aspire to. However, the only time I have ever experienced such a positive culture is when I rejected the status quo of this institution.

The idealised university experience is possible, but only outside the confines of the corporate university…

Read the rest of this series in P&I, forthcoming under the following titles:

Hollow Liars: The day ANU called ACT police on its students

Succumbing to the Zionist Lobby: higher education institutions abandon ethics and integrity

Space and domination: The ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment

The Failure of the ANU: Will a plaque commemorate the slaughter?

Art and popular resistance: Truth telling from ANU to Gaza to Sudan

https://johnmenadue.com/writings-from-the-anu-gaza-solidarity-encampment/

Zionism has become for some people a sort of ethnic superiority which denies equal claims to recognition by Palestinians. If we are unable to talk about this within the Jewish community we are doing a great disservice to both Palestinians and Israelis, writes Dennis Altman.

This article is a response to Deborah Stone’s article Lived experience, paranoia and slippery antisemitism.

Dear Deborah,

Like you I am worried about rising antisemitism, but unlike you I am unwilling to accept that criticism of Israel’s status as a defined Jewish state is itself antisemitic.

The idea of defining a state in this way—which applies equally to the Islamic Republic of Iran—marginalises the 25% of Israelis who are not Jews. And the examples given in the IHRA definition include a prohibition on calling Israel a racist state. It is ironic that in a country in which it is very frequent to hear supporters of Indigenous Australians define ours as a racist state, it is somehow improper to state this of Israel​.

My grandfather, Aaron Patkin, was a leading Australian Zionist; he died when I was six, so I only know of his views second hand. But I understand why he came to this position after the Holocaust.

Eighty years later Zionism has become for some people a sort of ethnic superiority which denies equal claims to recognition by Palestinians. If we are unable to talk about this within the Jewish community we are doing a great disservice to both Palestinians and Israelis.

It is particularly depressing to hear Israeli spokesmen deny that there is a Palestinian nation, when this was the jibe thrown at Zionists who argued for a Jewish state. Maybe the first step is to stress what the two peoples share, rather than to support a situation where one is apparently to be kept permanently under the yoke of the other.

Last week I spent a very moving few hours at the Holocaust Museum. I defy anyone who has watched the regular footage coming from Gaza not to draw parallels, a view that many of our community peak bodies would claim is antisemitic. I would counter that it is the opposite, that precisely because of our own history we should be able to feel the pain of Palestinians and face up to the reality of policies that equate a Jewish homeland with the dispossession of people with an equal claim to a homeland.

I am horrified by the apparent disinterest of Hamas in protecting its own citizens by using schools and hospitals as military bases, but I am equally horrified by reports that IDF forces will destroy civilian infrastructure with considerable loss of life in the hope of killing a small number of terrorists—and, quite likely, some of the Israeli hostages as well.

I, too, am troubled by chants of ‘From the rivers to the sea”. But let us be honest and acknowledge that this is also the intent of the Netanyahu government, which clearly is determined to maintain control of the entire area of Israel/Palestine. Life in the occupied territories of the West Bank is reminiscent of life for Jews in the old Russian Pale, from which so many of our ancestors fled.

I have no magic solution to the conflict; whatever the rights and wrongs of the argument, it is indisputable that the growth of Jewish settlements on the West Bank makes the Oslo Peace proposals no longer viable. But the idea that Israel can continue to deny recognition of the rights of seven million Palestinians is equally delusional.

In Australia, the Opposition has seized on antisemitism as a stick to beat Albanese with and is now demanding an Inquiry into antisemitism on Australian Campuses. My own campus is an outer-suburban one, probably more typical of Australian universities than either Melbourne or Sydney. We had a small pro-Palestinian encampment, but from what I can see the vast bulk of students were unaffected and not very interested. If there are clear examples of antisemitism they need be dealt with, but grandstanding by Liberal politicians will not address the root of the problem.

My own experience suggests that many students come from cultural backgrounds where a low-level antisemitism is rife, and universities need to address this, a more complex problem than wiping out offensive graffiti.

Antisemitism has multiple roots, and the current conflict has allowed hidden hatreds to surface. I am less worried by the crazy end of the Palestine supporters [in my experience often not Arab] than by the rise of neo-Nazi groups and a resurgence of Nazi-style rhetoric on the dark web.

There is clearly antisemitism being preached in some Muslim gatherings, and I hope these will be dealt with under existing Australian law. But to conflate this with attacks on Israel is to make a great mistake. Fatima Payman and Mehreen Faruqi are not our real enemies; the bands of young men, chanting Nazi-inspired slogans are.

It would be a great mistake to assume that criticism of Israel is antisemitic, even if that criticism appears offensive and exaggerated. Instead of claiming accusations of ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ are antisemitic, we need listen to them and engage with the debate. That the International Criminal Court has ruled against both Hamas and Israeli leaders should lead us to a far more critical stance towards Israel than our major community organisations are prepared to countenance.

I live in the federal electorate of Cooper, which was named after William Cooper, who led an Indigenous protest against Nazi Germany after the horrors of Kristalnacht. His ability to empathise with others who were marginalised and persecuted should be an inspiration for those Jews who want both to save the people of Israel and do so while also saving the people of Palestine.

Regards,

Dennis

Republished from The Jewish Independent, July 15, 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/crying-antisemitism-drowns-out-the-real-problem/

Any threat to the status quo within the American empire has led to the censorship, jailing and escape of the dissidents brave enough to stand against it. One may think of Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia or Julian Assange’s refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as recent examples. However, the history of dissidents fleeing American persecution runs deep. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss his new book, “Flights: Radicals on the Run,” is author and journalist Joel Whitney.

The book exemplifies this missing history of dissent in America through accounts of people such as Angela Davis, Paul Robeson, Graham Greene and Malcolm X. Also included are the accounts of Lorraine Hansberry and her mentor, W.E.B. Du Bois. Whitney refers to De Bois’ time starting an anti-nuclear peace movement and subsequently being persecuted by the U.S. government. “[Du Bois’] reputation took severe damage, so when Hansberry knew him, he could barely afford to buy groceries,” Whitney told Scheer.

“Flights” examines the stories of historic struggle of progressive thinkers and political activists who faced the onslaught of Cold War propaganda and McCarthyism, becoming refugees as a result of their political work. The book chronicles a counter-narrative of American history, where the bravest and most outspoken figures criticizing the system are crushed by it and their lives ruined.

The book title, according to Whitney, refers to “flights that are political persecution in some form or another. In a way, you could think of it as 50 or 60 years of counter revolution, massive amounts of funding to chase people … across borders, out of print and, in some cases, unfortunately, into an early grave.”

In the case of people like Graham Greene and his famous novel, “The Quiet American,” the blacklisting of himself and others for their exposure of American activities during the Vietnam War led to Americans “hav[ing] to wait about a decade or a little bit more to actually understand what carnage, what incredible, cynical violence the anti-communist Americans are overseeing in Vietnam as they’re taking it over from the French.”

SEE MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/02/scheer-intelligence-seeking-asylum-for-truth-telling/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.