A Labor government-instigated parliamentary committee inquiry last week called on universities to adopt a far-reaching definition of antisemitism that effectively prohibits criticism of Israel’s US-backed ethnic cleansing in Palestine. 

To enforce that attack on free speech and essential democratic rights, the committee’s report also recommended changes to the government’s Fair Work Act to allow university managements to discipline or dismiss employees accused of supposed anti-Jewish “hate speech.”

The report was tabled in parliament in the face of growing opposition among university staff and more broadly to the targeted victimisation by Zionist groups and the Labor government of Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a well-known pro-Palestinian academic at Sydney’s Macquarie University.

Like many other opponents in Australia and internationally of the intensifying, and now blatant Trump administration-endorsed, Israeli atrocities, Abdel-Fattah has been falsely accused of antisemitism because she has spoken out against the genocide and the Zionist state of Israel itself.

The Macquarie University Rank-and-File Committee (RFC) issued a statement on January 21 calling for a campaign to defend her and the numerous other Australian academics and journalists who have been similarly smeared and either sacked or threatened with dismissal. It has called a meeting at Macquarie University this Thursday to discuss how to defeat this offensive.

The parliamentary committee’s report went further in the witch hunting. It aggressively accused the country’s university vice-chancellors of not sufficiently suppressing the widespread anti-genocide protests by students and staff over the past 18 months.

Under the committee’s recommendations, universities should adopt “a clear definition of antisemitism that aligns closely with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance [IHRA] definition.”

This IHRA definition, which some university managements have already imposed, essentially bans criticism of the Israeli state itself, which was created in 1948 by the removal of thousands of Palestinians, accompanied by military violence and terrorism that has continued ever since.

The definition specifically nominates the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as Jewish collectivity.” Among the 11 specific examples that the definition gives of antisemitism in public life is: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

The report urged the government to consider amending the Fair Work Act to “enable disciplinary or other action to be taken in relation to an employee (or a grant recipient where the Australian Research Council Act 2001 and related legislation applies), where that person is found to have engaged in conduct which would breach Part 5.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, or section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.”

This opens the way for far-reaching sackings of university staff. The Criminal Code now incorporates “hate speech” laws rammed through parliament by Labor and the Coalition this month.

As the World Socialist Web Site warned, these far-reaching laws could see opponents of the intensifying US-Israeli onslaught on the people of Palestine—including Abdel-Fattah—framed up and convicted of offences such as “advocating” force against supporters of the Zionist state of Israel. 

The Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Act 2025 also has the potential to be used more broadly against anyone speaking out against groups that support the Albanese government’s increasing commitment to US militarism under Donald Trump.

During the committee’s hearings this month, its chair, Labor Party MP Josh Burns, demanded to know why Macquarie University had not already “removed” Abdel-Fattah. In late January, Labor’s Education Minister Jason Clare wrote to the Australian Research Council to urgently inquire into stripping Abdel-Fattah of her current research grant for a study of “Arab-Muslim Australian social justice activism.”

Burns set the tone of the inquiry report. In the foreword, he declared that his committee, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, had “witnessed brazen incidents of anti-Semitism go without consequence or leadership by some of our university vice-chancellors.”

Significantly the report, on “Antisemitism at Australian universities,” was set in motion by the Labor government. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus wrote to the committee last October to request the inquiry. 

Labor’s leading role in the operation to suppress dissent is further underscored by the membership of the committee, which consists of six Labor MPs, plus three from the Liberal-National Coalition, one Green and two independents.

University employers are already moving to implement measures in line with the report. The board of the “The Group of Eight” elite public universities said it had endorsed a definition “closely aligned” with the IHRA’s. “This process is currently underway,” a spokesperson told the media.

This threatens any criticism of the escalating Israeli violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, or the intensifying arming and support for the genocide by the Trump White House and other imperialist governments, including that of Labor’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The committee’s report did not stop there. It declared that the government should establish a full judicial inquiry into the universities if a review by the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Zionist lawyer Jillian Segal, decided that their response to the report was insufficient.

How far this suppression of dissent can go was illustrated when a prominent Zionist group, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told the committee that statements that accuse Israel of committing war crimes were antisemitic.

Without any explanation, the report brushed aside objections, such as the submission by Jews Against the Occupation ’48, which stated: “To conflate the speech and actions of people motivated by deeply held convictions on justice and universal rights with the speech and actions of people motivated by racist hatred is not only wrong but dangerous.”

Concerns expressed by civil liberties groups were also overridden. Liberty Victoria submitted that “a definition of antisemitism should not include any reference to the State of Israel or conflate criticism or even condemnation of the actions taken by Israel with antisemitism.”

An Australia Palestine Advocacy Network submission stated: “Many of those protesting against Israel’s ongoing genocide and Australia’s unwillingness to act have been smeared, demonised, silenced, excluded and discriminated against not only in mainstream media and the political arena, but in Australia’s arts and cultural spaces, workplaces, community, and critically for the purposes of this inquiry, in educational settings.”

As the Macquarie University RFC statement explained: “To call for the abolition of the Zionist state, based on ethnic discrimination and the violent dispossession of Palestinians, and an end to the Israeli regime’s US-armed atrocities is not anti-Jewish. In fact, the apartheid-style Israeli state is inimical to the interests of working-class Jews themselves. It is based on pitting them against their Arab brothers and sisters, functioning as a garrison entity for the plundering interests of US and European imperialism.” 

Burns told reporters last Thursday that the inquiry was fast-tracked to ensure some of its recommendations could be actioned in time for students’ return to campuses this month. That includes vice-chancellors meeting with Jewish students and staff on “day one” of the semester, he said, as well as changes to complaints processes to make them “easy to use.”

This suppression of dissent is driven by fears of student and staff unrest, and not just over the Palestine atrocities. Universities Australia, the employers’ group, told the committee that “university campuses are places of protest, intensively in the last 12 months, that we haven’t seen really since the Vietnam War protests.”

In the words of the Macquarie University RFC statement: “The defence of basic democratic rights, including academic freedom, is essential. As universities become increasingly enmeshed into serving the research needs of both Australian and US militarism via the Labor government’s Universities Accord, the rights of academics to speak out against imperialist war is more important than ever. 

“The defence of free speech is inseparably linked to the fight against the capitalist profit system itself, which is the root cause of military aggression, war and barbarism.”

To discuss how to take forward this campaign, the rank-and-file committee is holding a meeting at Macquarie University this Thursday, February 20, at 1pm in Room 110, 11 Wally’s Walk. All are welcome to participate in this meeting, which can also be joined via Zoom. 

Click here to register for the meeting. To send statements of support, email the committee at macquarierfc@gmail.com, or the Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the rank-and-file educators’ network, at cfpe.aus@gmail.com.