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Australian University Investigates Prominent Academic Over Calls to Destroy Israel, Zionism
Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. Photo: Screenshot
Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia has launched an investigation into a prominent academic and award-winning author who has regularly used social media to call for the destruction of Israel and Zionism, with Jewish leaders calling for her to be fired.
The university confirmed with The Daily Telegraph, an Australian newspaper, that it was investigating the online conduct of Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Future Fellow in the school’s Department of Sociology and one of Australia’s most prominent anti-Israel activists.
“The university is aware of comments made on social media by a member of its staff that have caused concern and distress among some members of the community,” the university told the Telegraph in a statement.
Citing its duty to address the concerns of “distressed” students and the university community more broadly, Macquarie said it has “policies and procedures in place to balance its commitments both to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all and to lawful free speech and academic freedom. Where there is found to be a breach of policy, the university will act to address the matter under its policies and procedures.”
Abdel-Fattah, 45, caused an uproar last week when she called for Israel’s destruction in what was apparently meant to be a message of hope and optimism for the new year.
“May 2025 be the end of Israel. May it be the end of the US-Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine,” Abdel-Fattah posted on X/Twitter.
“And to achieve that,” she continued, “is to snowball collective liberation because the tentacles of Western imperialism oppress and dehumanize us all. May every baby slaughtered in Zionism’s genocide haunt you who openly support or acquiesce through your gutless silence.”
The academic has also used social media to accuse “Israeli Zionists” of “murdering torturing, and, raping with zero restraint” and Israel, “the people of a Holocaust,” of “committing a holocaust” in the ongoing war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“Daily, hourly slaughter. Zionism is a Palestinian slaughter house and still there are people supporting this abomination of a regime and ideology. To hell with you all. Every last Zionist,” Abdel-Fattah posted on X last week. “May you never know a second’s peace in your sadistic miserable lives.”
Australian Jewish community leaders told the Telegraph that Abdel-Fattah, who receives an $802,000 taxpayer-funded grant for her research, that she should be fired over her online postings.
“There needs to be an end to future public grants to Ms. Abdel-Fattah and an immediate review [by Macquarie University] of her fitness to be an educator,” Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin told the paper. “She has created an unacceptable risk for the welfare and health of Jews and Israelis at the university. It is intolerable that our taxes are propping this up.”
Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory expressed similar sentiments.
“Antisemitism is surging on Australian university campuses; it’s imperative that Macquarie University disassociate itself from Randa Abdel-Fattah and the hatred she spreads,” he said to the Telegraph. “This is just the latest incident involving Randa Abdel Fattah. Macquarie University should terminate her employment.”
This is not the first time that Abdel-Fattah came under fire for her anti-Israel activity.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, in October, the New South Wales Police Force posted on social media saying it would not tolerate flags of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah or portraits of its leaders at anti-Israel protests. The message was displayed in blue and white, coincidentally the colors of the Israeli flag — a point noted by Abdel-Fattah.
“Brought to you in the colors of Israel’s flag,” the writer responded, appearing to insinuate without evidence that the Australian police force was acting on behalf of the Jewish state.
That same month, Abdel-Fattah penned an op-ed in which she accused Israel of “industrialized genocide, domicide, scholasticide, infanticide, femicide, medicide, and ecocide” in Gaza and described the Israeli state as “stolen land.” The writer also falsely accused Israel of seeking to expand its territory into Lebanon and Syria and posted messages from group chats that she was part of expressing excitement during Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The academic in April led a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” for “all ages” at Sydney University to “inspire” children to “stand up for justice and solidarity.”
Footage showed Abdel-Fattah clapping and encouraging children as they chanted slogans including “intifada,” “Israel is a terrorist,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Abdel-Fattah’s activism has come amid a surge in antisemitism across Australia since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
Earlier this month, for example, the home of Lesli Berger, former president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, was vandalized with a swastika and the misspelt German words “Jewish Gate.”
Around the same time, arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne in what the country’s prime minister called an antisemitic attack.
The attack followed the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) releasing a report showing that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.
The data included dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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