Published: 20 October 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Pro-Palestinian activity has surged on Australian campuses following the attacks by Hamas, causing problems for Jewish students and mirroring similar conflicts at American and British universities.
A Jewish student who tried to take down a pro-Palestinian poster on the University of Melbourne campus found a razor blade aimed at injuring anyone who tried to remove the poster.
The razor blade was fixed to the poster with blue-tac and meant the student could have been cut when he tried to take the poster off a rubbish bin.
The student told The Jewish Independent he discovered the razor blade when he tried to take down the poster on October 10, a few days after the Hamas attacks on Israel. The student, who does not want to be named, was unhurt but reported the offence to the police anonymously.
The poster belonged to a far-left group that is not officially affiliated as a club and has been known to attach razor blades to its posters before.
Melbourne University has not responded to a request for comment.
There have been media reports of similar incidents at other Melbourne campuses. The head of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abramovich, posted online that a razor blade was hidden behind a poster at RMIT.
RMIT could not confirm a razor blade incident on its campus. "We have not received any formal complaints of antisemitism between RMIT students on campus and encourage students who have been impacted to report it to the university immediately and reach out to our student support services," Professor Sherman Young, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education, said in response to an inquiry by The Jewish Independent Media.
The razor blade reports are one of a raft of developments at Australian campuses in the wake of the Hamas attacks and Israeli response.
A branch secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union at the University of Sydney quit this week, criticising branch leaders of the National Tertiary Education Union with known Palestinian sympathies for their refusal to “publicly condemn war crimes”. The Jewish Independent Media also understands there is a debate within the Sydney University NTEU branch about whether to support a pro-Palestinian resolution.
Last week, a student at Deakin University was sent a letter by Student Services that described the conflict as follows: “We write to express our genuine concern and support during this time of destruction and significant conflict in and around Gaza.” The student complained about the misleading wording of the letter and was sent an apology by a member of the Student Services department.
When asked if it was going to issue a general apology to students, and a revised letter, a media spokesperson referred The Jewish Independent Media to a statement of support for students impacted by the war issued by the university.
There has been a wave of similar developments at American and British campuses since the Hamas attacks, around the issues of student safety and the right to voice support for different sides of the conflict.
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Photo: At Melbourne University, a supporter adds posters to a wall of pro-Palestinian material. This is a general image and does not imply that this woman or these posters are related to the razor-blade incidents (Students for Palestine)
