LGBTI+ Jewish students claim that they are being pushed out of their own spaces for expressing their opinion – but university Queer Officers disagree.
Jewish students at the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Sydney say they’re experiencing a culture of intolerance in university queer collectives.
26-year-old UTS student Zehava says her personal political views resulted in her feeling ‘unwelcome’ in the queer collective at her university.
“I felt uncomfortable introducing myself as Israeli at UTS’s queer collective,” she told The Feed.
“If I voiced any support of the state of Israel, any concern about antisemitism on campus, or expressed any views that could be deemed as ‘Zionist’ I would be shut down.”
Zehava also says she has been called a ‘random zionist’ by former officers of the queer collective at the University of Sydney.
She also claims private comments she made in a closed queer collective Facebook group as well as messages exchanged in a private chat were shared publicly without her permission.
“It was a breach of my privacy. I asked them to take it down. I’ve got a tough skin but this outraged me a bit.
Her comments were made in reference to a student newspaper article about Israeli pinkwashing, in which she questioned the sources of the piece.
Read the article on LGBTI+ issue and watch the video about free speech on university campuses on The Feed on SBS.