Increasingly, in our Universities, anti-Semitism travels under the guise of pro-Palestinian activism.

From The Australian, 11 June 2018, by Jennifer Oriel:

...Being Mein Kampf-y is back in vogue and Jews amassed in their homeland are the primary target. Islamic regimes claim the moral high ground by criticising Israel for using disproportionate force to protect state borders while they quietly bankroll illegal armies of ­jihadis. The use of non-state ­actors in the place of legitimate ­armies means Islamic regimes can fund ­illegal wars while avoiding accountability under international law, at the UN and in the media.

The UN General Assembly will convene for an emergency session this week regarding Gaza. Some Arab states object to Israel defending its borders against Hamas militants. Recent attempts to damn Israel while exculpating terrorists have failed. But they have gained support from powerful countries such as China, whose government rails against colonialism as it colonises international waters.

The Palestinian territories are so radicalised that Hamas governs Gaza. It is the foot soldiers of ­Islamist terror that you see running for Israel’s borders on the TV news at night. If the accompanying narration is anything to go by, we are supposed to be angry at Israel for gunning down the terrorists trying to invade it. What is the proposed alternative? Should the ­Israel Defence Forces lay down their arms and let the terrorists ­invade the only pluralistic democracy in the Middle East?

Israel was always going to be a risky venture. Theoretically, it ­secures a safe haven for Jews after centuries of persecution. However, their concentration in a small territory in a neighbourhood of ­Islamic states poses a significant threat.

Increasingly, anti-Semitism travels under the guise of pro-Palestinian activism. While it is possible to argue for the two-state solution and against Israeli policy without being anti-Semitic, it is dangerously naive to ignore the ­intent of Palestinian jihadis to enact the final solution by wiping Israel off the map.

Dangerously naive is the ­default position of progressive ­populists in relation to Israel. The alt-left champions jihadis while ­denouncing democracies. Many seem unaware of what they are ­defending when they criticise Israel’s national security measures.

Student activists [at the University of Sydney] have struck another blow for tyranny by celebrating a female suicide bomber who killed Israelis. 



The student women’s collective at the University of Sydney featured Hamida al-Taher on the front page of campus newspaper Honi Soit. The edition was dedicated to the struggle against “Israeli colonisation”. The collective described her as a martyr. One may reason that a young woman being used as a bomb for ­jihad is cause for condemnation, not celebration. But the sisterhood between jihadis and Western feminism is no place for reason.

See "University of Sydney Glorifies Terrorism" and "University of Sydney academics back Hamas" for further background.]

Jewish organisations have com­plained in recent months about a PhD thesis undertaken at Curtin University. 

Western Australian Sandra Nasr

Documents about the complaint were sent to me by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The president of the Jewish Community Council of Western Australia, Joan Hillman, has submitted a complaint to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency contending ­alleged

“improprieties — which collectively constitute a lack of ­integrity — in the award by Curtin University of a PhD for a thesis submitted by Sandra Nasr (now a lecturer at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle) in 2010. Please note the following: 

• crude prejudice and lack of scholarly rigour of the thesis (as now attested to by three independent academic scholars); 

• apparent conflicts of interest by the two examiners; and 

• the university’s action in covering up the matter by placing the thesis under permanent embargo in 2010, thus preventing its being reviewed and exposed until access was granted following an appeal to the Information Commissioner.”

To be clear, any assessment of the quality of Nasr’s academic work is a matter for the relevant university and regulatory bodies.

Peter Wertheim, the co-chief executive of ECAJ, said Nasr 

“first came to our attention in December 2015 when the London School of Economics published, and then removed and apologised for”, a post she had published. In the post, available as a Google cache, Nasr claims: “Zionism, the ideological project to secure a Jewish homeland, relies upon notions of separateness, superiority and entitle­ment.” Nasr contends the notions of superiority stem from religious texts and that the establishment of Israel relied on “terror tactics” to expel Palestinians, considered to be “inconvenient ‘non-people’ ”.

[See "London School of Economics removes ‘contemptible’ anti-Jewish blog posting by Western Australian academic" and "Notre Dame lecturer Sandra Nasr investigated over anti-semitic article" for further background.]

Wertheim objects to the “essen­tial contention that Judaism is an inherently racist religion” and Israel is a racist state that routinely violates international law.

Anti-Semitism is frequently presented as legitimate activism for Palestinian liberation. The next time you hear Israel’s nat­ional security measures described as disproportionate or excessive, imagine armies of jihadis storming Australian borders and how far you would go to stop them.