Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA by Lana Tatour

54. The racial logic of the IHRA that conflates calls for justice for Palestine with antisemitism, and the McCarthyist environment it has created, is further demonstrated in the recent responses to and the handling of student encampments on our campuses. Inspired by the global student solidarity movement for Palestinian liberation, eleven encampments have been recorded across Australia, demanding that universities divest from companies that benefit from the genocide of Palestinians and boycott Israeli universities and institutions. This immediately triggered an orchestrated right-wing campaign calling the encampments antisemitic and Nazi and labelling the students as terrorism supporters and terrorists.Footnote³⁶ Rather than focusing on the students’ demands, accusations of antisemitism dominated much of the public conversation in the media, by politicians, and in universities about the legitimacy of the encampments.