The Australian Union of Students' 1974-75 Israel-Palestine debates revisited

In 1974 and 1975, the radical Left Australian Union of Students (AUS) presented extreme anti-Israel motions which were soundly defeated by a national student vote. As with the contemporary Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the AUS attempted to cloak their hardline agenda to destroy the existing state of Israel via the disingenuous use of moderate terms such as secular and democratic falsely implying a commitment to equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. But in practice, the AUS campaign set in train a systematic hatred for all Jewish supporters of Israel’s existence, irrespective of their specific political or ideological views on conflict resolution, which has flowed through to all subsequent Australian debates on Israel and Palestine.