AUJS requests VC meeting
"The motion explicitly removes any student with a connection to Israel, including Jewish students, from the SRC's definition of the recognised student body..."
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has requested a meeting with University of Sydney (USYD) vice chancellor Mark Scott following last week’s adoption of a motion supporting the Sydney Festival boycott by the university’s Students’ Representative Council (SRC).
The motion, passed on February 2, called the Sydney Festival’s decision to accept funding from the Israeli Embassy as “art-washing of apartheid, plain and simple”.
“Israel is an apartheid state founded on the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” it continued.
Describing the motion as “deeply offensive” and “flatly denying Jewish connection to Israel”, AUJS president Natalie Gunn noted that it also stated “any corporation that sides with Israel is no friend of students”.
“The motion explicitly removes any student with a connection to Israel, including Jewish students, from the SRC’s definition of the recognised student body,” she said.
“Additionally, when the motion was put to a vote, Jewish students felt too intimidated to speak out against this motion.”
Gunn said a university should be a safe space for all Jewish students to voice their opinions, “as their democratic right”.
“It is vital, as the representative body for Jewish students, that AUJS affirms the right of Jewish students to feel safe to express their connection to Israel and to speak out against antisemitism in all its forms,” she said.
Gunn noted that in 2018 the SRC adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
“It appears that the SRC is no longer committed to IHRA, which is extremely disheartening to Jewish students, whose inherent connection to Israel is negated by the appalling SRC motion,” she said.
“We hope that the University of Sydney will take action against this concerning situation in order to reassure its Jewish students – who have a long history on the campus – that it continues to be a safe space for them.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim said, “The SRC’s lack of knowledge of history, including its own, highlights the importance of the university itself adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a matter of urgency.”
AUJS USYD president Nathan Rogut and vice president (politics) Julia Jacobson said numerous members had reached out to inform them that they feel less safe, describing it as “very disheartening”.
“Our executive is disappointed by the SRC’s simplification of a complex geopolitical conflict into a binary choice of either ‘siding’ with or against Israel,” they said.
“It excludes dissenting Israeli and Jewish voices and anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist but does not support the actions of Israeli governments.”
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