A Jewish student was called a “baby killer” and “genocide supporter” on a prestigious Australian university campus by people taking part in the country’s longest-running university encampment in 2024.
Appearing as part of a two-week block of hearings in Melbourne for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, the student, Liat, was granted partial anonymity and was the first of a number of lived experience witnesses who will not be fully named.
Commissioner Virginia Bell said the hearings were taking place in Melbourne because it was the location of Australia’s largest Jewish population.
Liat on Monday described experiencing a “low-level hum” of antisemitism on campus before October 2023, but said that after the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, a sense of “pervasive fear” had developed. She told the royal commission she felt the need to hide her identity, to the extent of not using her real name when ordering coffee.
Living as a Jew at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra had been “exhausting”, Liat said, and passing the encampment, which was set up in the middle of the campus, was a daily ordeal.
“I felt very physically unsafe when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’,” she said.
Read more: ‘Baby killer, genocide supporter’: Jewish student describes ‘exhausting’ life on campus