By Sherryn Groch and Chris Vedelago
Victoria Police told universities there is a strong likelihood of violence if they don’t break up pro-Palestine student encampments on their campuses, warning that agitators who are not students are inflaming tensions.
Police are investigating pro-Israel supporters who have harassed the Monash University camp in recent days and an altercation with protesters at the Deakin camp. Deakin University is also investigating a staff member heard threatening to burn down a student camp and pro-Palestine protesters “observed using threatening behaviour and hate speech”.
Police attended the University of Melbourne when pro-Israel supporters marched through to confront the pro-Palestine camp last week.Credit: Darrian Traynor
Police are being called daily to incidents at the University of Melbourne, RMIT, Monash, Deakin and Latrobe, where student camps have sprung up demanding universities cut ties with weapons manufacturers – but universities have told officers they do not want them on campuses.
Victoria Police told The Age that Deputy Commissioner Neil Paterson wrote to university chancellors on Thursday with a warning.
“Police believe there is a strong likelihood of violence occurring between protest and counter-protest groups, as well as other criminal offences occurring such as property damage if the encampments continue to grow in size,” police said Paterson wrote.
“Police are also concerned about the number of protesters who are not students inflaming the situation.”
Melbourne University student Dana Alshaer speaks at a staff rally in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protest camp on Thursday.Credit: Jason South
Paterson asked universities “to carefully consider the risks and whether to allow such encampments to be established or to continue as an ongoing presence on campus”.
Vice-chancellors at the universities refused requests for interviews.
While Australia’s protest camps have been relatively peaceful so far compared with violent clashes at student tent cities in the US, isolated cases of organisers appearing to praise Hamas have alarmed Jewish organisations, and non-student agitators have been spotted among both pro-Palestine camps and pro-Israel counter-protests.
A human rights activist, Mohammad Sharab, charged with kidnapping and assault was seen at the Monash camp on Wednesday, while far-right agitator Avi Yemini posted footage from a tense standoff between the University of Melbourne camp and pro-Israel groups last week, showing his security guard wrestling a female pro-Palestine protester to the ground when she grabbed Yemini’s microphone.
US universities have called in riot police to break up their own student camps, leading to ugly clashes. Despite urging by the federal Coalition, Australian campuses have made no moves to clear students out here – though they have warned that violence, racism or property damage will not be tolerated.
The federal government has dismissed university requests for legal advice on how to respond, including on whether they can move protest camps off Commonwealth land, or act on the use of contested phrases such as “intifada” and “from the river to the sea”.
Student organisers at the Monash camp said the university told them on Thursday that any student using the two phrases could face disciplinary action, while the University of Sydney has urged students camping in solidarity with Palestine to reconsider using the phrases, but stopped short of threatening consequences.
Senior police have been working with university leaders in new critical incident response teams in Sydney and Melbourne, and Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told ABC radio on Thursday that universities were keeping police informed of incidents.
But he warned that if local protests escalated in the same way they have in America, where students have occupied buildings, then policing them will be increasingly difficult. He warned of antisemitism but did not denounce specific phrases, noting they could be interpreted in multiple ways.
Some Jewish groups have called on universities to clear out the camps or risk creating no-go zones for Jewish students and fomenting antisemitism.
Monash University, which is also investigating students on both sides of recent protests for misconduct, said it had provided CCTV footage to police and stressed it would not tolerate any racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.
A Latrobe spokeswoman said, while police had been out to its campus, the university hadn’t called them as the protests had been peaceful so far, without incident.
University of Melbourne student Dana Alshaer was born on the West Bank and knows well the names of weapons companies whose bombs and drones are now raining down on Gaza. In November, she and fellow students started a group protesting university funding ties to many of those companies, such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, that has since morphed into the camp, with more than 50 tents now dotted across the university’s south lawn.
Jaan Schild helps run Students for Palestine in Victoria, now home to the most student protest camps in the country.Credit: Jason South
“This was something we could do,” she said, but she added that security concerns had been high at the camp since Yemini and other pro-Israel groups marched up to the lawn last week. “We don’t engage,” she said. “But we’ve had pro-Israel guys walking through the camp, harassing us. We’ve been sent threats someone will poison [our donated food].”
Alshaer said non-Palestinians at the protests who had made inflammatory comments so far should not be seen as speaking for the community. “Of course we stand against antisemitism,” she said. “But there is also a genocide going on. We stand against that.”
The Melbourne University camp, unlike other camps which are run in part by national group Students For Palestine, is not affiliated to groups off campus.
Jaan Schild, a Jewish student helping organise the other Victorian camps through Students for Palestine, said the protests had received a surge of support from the community. “But I haven’t seen anyone coming in with antisemitic intentions,” he said. “This is a coming together of all people horrified by what they’re seeing in their Instagram feeds – live from Gaza.”
With Robyn Grace
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