Anti-Semitism Inquiry Told Pro-Palestinian Encampments Were Not Threatening

An organiser told the Anti-Semitism Commission that the campus encampment movement in 2024 was about standing up for free speech and justice.

Student activists set up a protest camp site for Palestine at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia, on May 3, 2024. Ayush Kumar/AFP via Getty Images

An organiser of pro-Palestinian university campus encampments has told the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion that she believed Jewish students should not have viewed the gatherings as threatening, but rather as “standing up for justice.”

The commission had earlier heard evidence from anonymous students that they felt unsafe on campus because of pro-Palestinian activity.

One Jewish student said she was afraid to use her real name at university, citing what she alleged was anti-Semitic behaviour by people involved in the campus encampment movement.

Yasmine Johnson is the national co-convenor of Students for Palestine and an education officer with the National Union of Students.

Her group decided to establish encampments at several universities across Australia after Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza in 2024.

Johnson told the Commission that the campus encampment movement was about standing up for free speech and should not be viewed as threatening.

“I have a view that the universities have been curtailing free speech and actually stand up to what is happening and speak about the genocide that’s going on in Gaza, which has been denied repeatedly,” she said.

“And I think that’s a fundamental part of our free speech. And so I don’t think that that’s threatening. I think it’s standing up for justice.”

When presented with the earlier evidence of Jewish students, she said the pro-Palestine movement could not be held responsible for anyone else’s safety.

Counsel assisting the Commission, Zelie Heger, then put to her some specific phrases which Jewish students had said they found confronting.

In response, Johnson said phrases and words like intifada, which literally means “uprising” or “shaking off” in Arabic, represented another option for people in Gaza.

“The thing we’re chanting about in that situation is to say there is one solution, one option for people as an alternative to Israel’s oppression as an alternative to the situations I’ve described in Gaza and the West Bank and so on that there is one way forward, and it’s through resistance, civil disobedience, protests,” she said.

“That’s what we are talking about when we use this phrase.

“Whether we [say] intifada or resistance, those things are turned into controversial words and phrases by people who oppose our movement for justice.”

Johnson also said she did not think that “the legitimacy of social justice movements rests on them never offending anyone.”

At the same time, she told the commission the encampments had been subjected to violence, including homemade firecrackers being thrown onto tents on two occasions at the University of Adelaide and a group wearing balaclavas arriving at Deakin University to intimidate participants.

Earlier in its hearings, the Commission heard other lived-experience testimony, including from a man wounded in the Bondi attack who said it had led to a “tsunami of Jew hate“ directed at him, and a Jewish musician who said ”anti-Zionism” was being used as an excuse to target Jewish Australians.”