From Gaza to Broadway: A USyd Production

“And I went down to the demonstration,
To get my fair share of abuse”

In the late 1960s, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards composed the immortal classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” there were many more options for participating in a lively protest than those that exist today: Paris 1968; the anti-Vietnam War marches, moratoriums and sit-ins; the Stonewell riots, etc.

Just think of the excitement of being a witness to those era-defining events, either as a participant or as a bystander! With that in mind, I recently decided to head up Broadway to the University of Sydney Campus one rainy Friday to experience the Gaza encampment, one that is generating a slew of headlines and media coverage.

I was looking forward to perhaps engaging with some of those history-making bright-eyed young idealists maintaining a selfless vigil for the poor suffering Palestinians through rain, hail or shine.

Walking up from the Footbridge, I passed the Great Hall where the 2024 Science Faculty graduation was underway. A barrier was in place at the exit to steer graduates and their families away from the protesters.

Around 30 or 40 pup tents and a dozen large standing room tents were spread across the main lawn, occupying much of the space where graduates typically gather after the ceremony to engage in the traditional practice of celebrating by tossing their mortarboard caps in the air.

University Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has rightly prioritised the rights of the lawn-squatting activists over those who have spent three or four years of hard work in earning a degree. A truly enlightened progressive.

A few lucky protestors have actually been allowed to set up base in the main entrance to the Quadrangle, with a sandstone roof over their heads and ornate steel gates behind them, locked to prevent them interfering with graduate celebrations in the Quad.

A steel sign placed on the footway in front of the main camp proclaimed this was an “Apartheid Free Zone”, an odd claim considering the presence of the barriers and gates.

Closer inspection of the encampment revealed very few in attendance, a wet week in Sydney had perhaps sent many home to their mums and dads. Most of the smaller tents were zipped tight and seemingly empty at 2pm on a Friday, although perhaps there were keen students snuggled inside and swotting for upcoming exams.

Also impossible to tell whether a tent was the property of a student protester or someone sleeping rough and keen for a change of scenery from Belmore Park. There is a suspicion that many of the tents have been put in place by the organisers purely to boost the impression of the scale of the protest.

A dozen or so bored looking activists lounged around in camp chairs in the larger tents, seemingly ambivalent to a bunch of flag-waving demonstrators gathered together a bit further down the lawn towards Fisher Library.

I wandered over there and things got a bit more interesting as an Arab in Keffiyeh and traditional robe was in the midst of delivering a lecture about the Naqba, or the Great Catastrophe, and the cause of the Palestinian diaspora.

His audience included a mix of women encased in Hijabs and swarthy bearded gentlemen who looked a bit old to be current Sociology undergrads. They stood beneath a forest of Palestinian flags and others emblazoned with Islamic scripture known as the Shahada “I bear witness that none deserves worship except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

These included flags with the Shahada as black script on a white flag, plus a number with white script on a black flag, as preferred by ISIS.

I arrived late for the speech so was unable to discern whether the speaker was an Imam or just a garden variety Muslim, although he did reveal that his father was born on 15th of May in 1948, the day that Arab League armies entered the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

As the rain pelted down, one of his supporters held up a Bunnings umbrella to protect the distinguished gentleman's beard and Keffiyeh from the elements, which added a nice bit of local colour.

Struggling to listen through the downpour I managed to make out: “We call on the Albanese Government to put their money where their mouth is … support the recognition of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations in the General Assembly.”

This proved remarkably prescient, as less than 12 hours later our delegate to the UN did just that, under instructions from Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Anyway, that excitement was all in the future, and as the presenter wrapped up his speech the male and well-bearded members of his audience delivered three loud and vigorous chants of “Allahu Akbar”, before the next speaker was introduced.

This proved to be a young male student activist who did indeed look like a Sociology undergrad, with a foppish bouffant hairdo, tortoise shell glasses and clear-shaven chin and pasty white complexion, reading from notes on his smartphone.

He began his address via megaphone in the style of a year 8 debater, and then proceeded to commit the ultimate failure to read a room.

“I was brought up a Christian, in fact a Catholic Christian …”

This was too much for one of the Arab fellows in attendance, who burst forward, thrust aside the Bunnings umbrella, as well as our young speaker, and began bellowing "La ilaha illahllah, "La ilaha illahllah, "La ilaha illahllah” which roughly translates to "There is no god but Allah.”

The Intifada was coming a bit too close for comfort, so our young activiist cowered in fear until the aggressive interloper was subdued and carried off. Being persuaded to carry on with his speech, he commenced with an appeal to Christians, Jews and Muslims to celebrate their common descent from Abraham/Ibrahim and strangely proclaimed all religions bear the same god.

I had to get back to my car before the clearway zone kicked in at 3.00pm so I don’t stick it out for more of his speech. I hope he made it out of there in one piece.

While all of this excitement had been going on, the stalwarts of the Gaza camp protest remained lolling about in their tents, seemingly much less interested in the plight of Palestinians located a few metres way in the rain than those on the other side of the world. The tent-dwellers also displayed a much less diverse mix of ethnicity than the flag-wavers, definitely more Lindfield than Lakemba.

One of their tents was decorated with a banner insisting USYD CUT TIES WITH GENOCIDE.

It was sadly unoccupied otherwise I might have queried the owners about this alleged genocide, which has been so far unsuccessful in reducing the number of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank or Israel itself.

This population has been steadily increasing since 1948, and continues to do so, which appears at odds with the traditional definition of a genocide, better exemplified by an analysis of the population of Jews in Poland before and after World War 2, which was decimated from over 3.3 million to around 300,000.

That is some maths that a person attending a university should try to comprehend, even someone who is just camping rather than actually on campus.