A rite of passage? Maybe not.

Attending university in your teens or early twenties is about more than just going to lectures and preparing assignments. It’s a rite of passage where you encounter politics and causes that in some respects are as important as your studies.

That’s how it was for me, back in the late sixties. For me and my peers, the issues were the Vietnam War and France’s continuing testing of nuclear bombs at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific.

For us, the Vietnam War was a running sore. The Government had introduced conscription for (some) of those turning twenty in any given year. That ‘some’ was decided by a ballot, broadcast on TV like the selection of the Lotto numbers. Only the balls in the barrel were birthdates. If your birthdate was selected from the barrel, you were conscripted. Not too many young men danced with joy when their number came up. What a wonderful birthday present. Conscription and the birthday ballot is an informative article about what happened at that time. By the way, my birthdate came up but this ballot was exclusively male.

Vietnam was a deeply unpopular war. We the students didn’t have a stake in it, couldn’t see why we had to be there. Vietnam was a long way away, Australia was not threatened. Our government was in solidarity with the Americans, of course, something we owed them after World War II. Looking back fifty years later, and having been to Vietnam, I can justify helping the South Vietnamese. But back then, I attended the marches in support of my generation. One Two Three Four – We don’t want your bloody war.

The other cause, nuclear explosions at Mururoa, was also relevant to us. It’s an island in French Polynesia, which is a long, long way from France and not far at all from Australia and New Zealand. It was a just cause, the Pacific Islands are still feeling the effects of France’s 193 nuclear tests. The battle continues, 50 years after first test at Mururoa is a fascinating article about the testing – and the fallout.

Let’s get back to 2024 and consider what’s happening in our universities now. Climate change is a huge ’cause’ for the students. Okay, if they must. They will inherit the Earth when we shuffle off. But I do wish they would do some homework and not just swallow the simple rhetoric that EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels will save the planet.

And then there’s Gaza.

No thinking, feeling person can be unmoved by the terrible images of the bombing in Gaza. It’s awful. But there’s a tendency for those shouting ‘from the river to the sea Palestine must be free’ to forget that Hamas started this war when its terrorist butchers broke the truce and invaded Israel, torturing, raping, murdering, and taking hostage innocent civilians. And the leadership of Hamas, safe in their luxurious houses in Qatar, have pledged to carry out similar attacks.

But the absolute worst part of this is that being pro-Palestine has morphed very easily into anti-semitism. Why should Jews living in Australia be held responsible for what’s happening in the Middle East? Why should Jewish schools need security guards? Why are Jewish kids told not to wear uniforms to school? Why are Jewish scholars being prevented from presenting lectures?

For me, one of the most terrifying images I’ve seen in a while is a poster of a jackboot crushing a Star of David. It was widely circulated on social media to enlist pro-Palestinians to attend a counter-protest for a rally against anti-semitism. This is straight out of the Joseph Goebbels propaganda handbook to reduce Jewish people to objects, not human beings. The Australian’s report on this rally included this:

“One 84-year-old Jewish woman — who declined to be named out of fear for her safety — was separated from her group and repeatedly poked and called a “Zionist pig” by protesters whose faces were covered.” [source] That woman is old enough to have close relatives who were sent to the death camps in Europe.

Perhaps some of those students should go back to class and learn a bit more about Middle East politics. Perhaps ‘Queers for Palestine’ ought to find out what would happen to them if they tried to be openly gay in Gaza. Perhaps they should give some thought to the fact the Israeli Kneset (parliament) includes Christians and Muslims as well as Jews. Or perhaps wonder why Muslim countries like Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia don’t accept Palestinian refugees (unless they’re very wealthy, like Hamas’s leadership).

And the saddest thing is our ‘leaders’ defend this behaviour in the name of free speech. I’m a great believer in free speech – but not in encouraging blatant attacks on people based on their religion. Australia is a democracy which gives everyone a chance to speak up, protest peacefully, and have their voice heard. But we should never forget “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”