Students’ Shabbat message of moderation

NAOMI LEVIN

PRO-ISRAEL students staged a mock Shabbat dinner in public last Friday to counter a rally urging the Australian Government to cut ties with the Jewish State.

Around 300 anti-Israel protestors had gathered at the State Library of Victoria following a panel discussion organised by Students for Palestine focussing on “apartheid Israel”.

Speakers at the event included Damien Ridgewell, the secretary of Swinburne University’s student union, and Tasmin Sammak, a representative of the Federation of Muslim Students and Youth.

While the protestors assembled to march on Federation Square, members of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), held their Friday night dinner on the library lawns.

About 35 students set up a picnic rug, replete with snacks of challah and dips and invited protesters and onlookers to “chat over Shabbat dinner”.

“It worked very well,” AUJS chairman Liam Getreu said of the tactic, which garnered support from Young Liberals and members of Student Unity — a right aligned student faction.

People — ranging from university students to passing tourists — stopped for a bite to eat and to ask what the fuss was about.

“We told them we are here to provide a moderate point of view,” Getreu said. “If they want to have a discussion, they can sit down, eat dinner and talk about it.”

He said the quiet stunt, with Israeli and Australian flags as a backdrop, provided a contrast to the noisy anti-Israel rally.

“They [the protesters] kept referring to us in the speeches, they were saying things like ‘the Zionists over there’,” the chairman said. “It meant we were getting attention … it showed the wider community there was another point of view.”

Meanwhile, Getreu admitted life for Jewish students is confronting at the moment — with more anti-Israel posters and campaigns than usual appearing on Australian campuses.

To deal with the matters, a group of Jewish academics have been meeting informally to strategise on how to deal with the vitriol.

“Academics are very important … they’re on the ground and can give us insight,” the Deakin University student said.

According to Getreu,¬† since the Gaza war at the beginning of 2008, anti-Israel students have decided that “tantrums do work” and, as a result, have been vocally building their profile.