Published: 15 February 2021
Last updated: 25 May 2026
University campuses tend to be heavily progressive places, and progressive narratives generally sort things into black-and-white categories of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed.’ Israel is generally seen as the oppressorWhen I asked the student why this perspective seemed so common, she replied: “A pro-Palestinian outlook is quite heavily intertwined with leftist politics.” Oscar Moss, an undergraduate student at the ANU, came to a similar conclusion, reasoning that students “are siding with what they think are the oppressed minority”. It appears that oppressed-oppressor dichotomies, whether perceived or actual, strongly influence how students pick their side. Jeremy Leibler, President of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), also alluded to the link between progressive politics and support for Palestine. Leibler described to me a “worrying trend” of Jewish students being marginalised from progressive spaces if they “identified as pro-Israel”- citing a Victorian student who was expelled from an LGBTQ group for their Zionist positions. A student (who did not want to be identified) recounted her first day at a prominent eastern state university, when a confrontational classmate canvassing for a far-left activist group “pushed” her into stating her views on Israel. When she stated that even though she objected to the current Israeli government, she supported the idea of a Jewish state, he became aggravated and “told me off for ages”, declaring to her: “I’m Jewish and I think you’re wrong”. One point where the responses started to diverge from the typical narrative was in relation to the intensity of feelings about Israel. Many students indicated, right off the bat, that their peers’ attitudes were relatively indifferent on the issue. A Jewish student in Canberra, said: “people generally aren’t that interested … Israel doesn’t generate as much interest and passion on Australian university campuses as it does on UK or US ones.” Jeremy Leibler agreed, saying “Australian universities are more moderate than what we see in the US.” Ethan Cohen, from ANU, agreed with this verdict but said there is considerable variation between campuses. “[Students’] views aren’t nearly as outspoken here [at ANU] as they are on [other] campuses like the University of Sydney.” However, a similar-sized contingent observed the opposite, reporting a swirl of stereotyping, vandalism and bigotry. A former student from Western Australia, not of Jewish heritage, told me that during the 2014 Gaza conflict, “posters advertising pro-Palestine protests [were] defaced … blacked out with marker,” or “scrunched up and left on the floor.” A postgraduate student at the University of Sydney recalled an incident where an Israeli flag at a stall run by the Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) was “snatched and chucked into the bin” by a bystander at market day in 2017.
People generally aren’t that interested … Israel doesn’t generate as much interest and passion on Australian university campuses as it does on UK or US ones.Another student, who asked for their university and name to be kept anonymous due to their residency on campus, said the sentiment on her campus was “extremely pro-Palestine,” adding that “I’ve been attacked for simply saying I’m Jewish.” Alec Van Dyk, a Jewish student at the ANU, referred to similar events at his university: “Many of my Jewish friends have been called occupiers and/or colonisers” or have been “invalidated in their defence of a two-state solution and the indigeneity of the Jewish diaspora to the land.” Oscar Moss suggested that a lack of understanding of Judaism was causing students to “make comments that do border on anti-Semitism” which “lead[s] to their current views on Israel” as well as a shallow understanding on how “the history of the conflict … helped shape the current situation”. This observation, concerning a lack of access to quality information, was another issue raised recurrently, and often linked to the presumption of a pro-Palestine consensus. “Everyone seems to be rather uneducated about the matter,” according to the student, who asked to remain anonymous due to living on campus. The observer at the event for international relations students, mentioned earlier, came to a similar conclusion: “The [students] legitimately admitted that they actually didn’t know much on the subject.” I asked this student if she could guess why this was, and she responded with “the media and other international institutions depict [the conflict] in quite a biased way”, preferencing voices that condemn Israel. When it comes to the universities themselves, a more contested picture emerged about where sympathies laid. I was told about a swell of faculty complaints “when images from a Friends of Palestine protest were included in a staff exhibition” at a Western Australian university as well as “Israeli flags being placed front and centre by the student Liberal Party group during O-day (Orientation Day] fairs.”
The only points of commonality were a few uncontested and uncontroversial facts: no one seemed to disagree that students tend to be progressive and that this progressive tendency influences some of them to support Palestine.Institutional co-operation with Israeli defence initiatives was also raised as an issue. A non-Jewish student mentioned how the Vice Chancellor of Edith Cowan University spoke about “defence technologies” at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce 2018’s Annual Executive event – a Still, another Jewish student maintained that “a predisposition against Israel” existed at an institutional level, too, with a course on the History of Political “promoting the idea of Jewish terrorism” during lectures. Presented with this jumbled buffet of experiences and conclusions, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of homogeneity to them. The only points of commonality were a few uncontested and uncontroversial facts: no one seemed to disagree that students tend to be progressive and that this progressive tendency influences some of them to support Palestine. The presiding assumption that students side with Palestine appeared vindicated, but it remains uncertain as to how this allegiance manifests and whether it is encouraged or inhibited by the university institutions in which it takes place. Like the conflict at large, finding points of universal agreement proved increasingly elusive the more observers I spoke to. In the end, the only thing that was certain was the diversity of student opinion, not just on the conflict itself, but on how it was being perceived by their peers. Dominant narratives might grow from a seed of truth, but that seed often fails to capture the intricate foliage emerging from it. NOTE: I approached several student and staff organisations for comment for this article. They included AUJS, Students for Palestine Wollongong, Students for Palestine Melbourne Uni, Sydney Staff for BDS, Students for Palestine RMIT, Students for Palestine UNSW and Students for Justice in Palestine ANU. None of these responded. Illustration: Avi Katz
