Jewish students 'have been abandoned', ANU classmates tell rally

Liat Granot, who is a descendant of Holocaust survivors, said being a Jew on campus in 2024 was "to hear the echoes of history".

"For my great-grandparents on both sides of my family, anti-Semitism was as overt as the yellow stars sewn into their coats," Ms Granot said at the Never Again is Now rally on Monday, the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

"By the time I was born in Sydney, anti-Semitism was seemingly relegated to a distant past."

But today, she said, Jewish and Israeli students on Australian university campuses were enduring "a renewed struggle against the most ancient hatred".

"I walk through the modern and innovative university I have called my home for the past two-and-a-half years, and feel that my experience is no different to the generations of Jews before me," Ms Granot said.

"Despite the promise of inclusion, the age-old disease of anti-Semitism is suffocating; a two-headed dragon from both the left and the right. It is for Jewish people inescapable.

"The hatred we see for the state of Israel has been intertwined and amalgamated with hatred of Jews and everything related to us. From overt calls to violence and boycotting to not-so-subtle dog whistles, it seems that, on every level of campus life, there is blind and unflinching Jew hatred."

Never Again is Now is a Christian-led organisation advocating to end anti-Semitism in Australia.

The group's name is a reference to the saying "never again" declared by nations around the world after the Holocaust.

Ms Granot said students who "just want to go to university" had been called "baby killers and genocide supporters", or spat at for putting up posters of the hostages captured by Hamas.

Fellow ANU student Angus Murray, who spoke alongside Ms Granot, said to peddle anti-Semitism was "to betray our country".

"We are the same age as many of the hundreds of innocent Israelis and others murdered and stolen at the Nova music festival and elsewhere one year ago today."

He took aim at the leadership of the ANU, saying: "Our Jewish peers have been abandoned by their leaders and teachers and peers."

"The experience ours - the nation's university - is similar to that of Jewish students around the country," Mr Murray said.

"Our academics ought to facilitate debate, but also awareness. Yet, in response to hatred and vitriol directed at our Jewish peers, university communities have been silent.

"I speak today as a non Jewish student and as an Australian student. I speak to my peers across the country."

Mr Murray said the ANU, which was founded in 1946 after World War II, had been established "on the promise of an enlightened future in which hate and ignorance would crumble in the face of the power of peace".

"To students like me who can see the pain of our Jewish peers, without experiencing out ourselves, speak up," he said.

"We cannot accept a country where only those who are in the firing line call for hate to stop."

Ms Granot called on the "silent majority" of Australians who support the Jewish people to raise their voices.

"When words of hate are deafening and ubiquitous, your thoughts and prayers are no longer enough ... I ask you, from the bottom of my heart, do not stay silent."

She called for "strong leadership" and said "if that leadership doesn't want to come from the top down, it has to start with us".

"To stand against anti-Semitism, has to be an active process. You have to prove it," Ms Granot said.

"We must be vocal for five-year-old Ariel and his baby brother, who has now spent more of his life as a hostage in Gaza than a free child in Israel; for Naama Levy who was taken into Gaza with blood dripping down the back of her sweatpants," she said.

"For Hersh Goldberg-Polin who, after 11 long months in captivity, was shot in the head by Hamas terrorists just 24 hours before the IDF found him and the bodies of five other executed hostages.

"This is our request and your challenge. With words and deeds we can create ... A hope for a country and a world free from hatred and anti-Semitism."

A university spokeswoman said the ANU "is a place of respectful debate" where all staff and students "are free to express themselves in line with the university's code of conduct and Australian law".

"However, the university also takes seriously any alleged behaviour or speech that contravenes our values as a community, and which go against our codes of conduct," the spokeswoman said.

"We have high expectations that all members of our community will ensure our campus remains an inclusive and safe space by behaving in a respectful manner, even when members of our community have different views on matters such as the conflict in the Middle East.

"If any speech or actions discriminate or violate our Code of Conduct or Australian laws, we will take disciplinary action."

ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell last month told the Senate inquiry into anti-Semitism that "any form of prejudice, discrimination, or racism, is antithetical to what ANU stands and strives for."

"Anti-Semitism has no place at ANU, or in broader Australian society," Professor Bell said.