A reality will soon confront Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism. You cannot harass Jews for being Zionist. A US private university, Cooper Union, found that out today causing it to settle a federal case brought against it for antisemitism resulting in false imprisonment and endangerment.

On October 25 2023, just weeks after Hamas attacked Israel and killed more Jews since the Holocaust in a single day, a mob of pro-Palestinian thugs chased 10 Jewish students into the Cooper Union library. They had no escape. Jake Novak, formerly of the Israeli Consulate in New York, posted on X that “Police have been called for 40 min and are afraid to get involved.” Fox News reported that university security instead “locked” the students in place because , “they are worried they cannot protect the Jews.”

Vita Fellig of Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) covered today’s contrite settlement by the science and art university situated in Manhattan’s East Village near Cooper Square (the relevance of which will soon become apparent). In addition to unspecified damages and an apology, the agreement set three public precedents for the West including Australia:

1. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism

“[The university will] Appoint a dedicated Title VI coordinator to oversee the school’s compliance with the 1964 law and to address complaints involving Jew-hatred and anti-Zionist discrimination or harassment.” This law under the US Civil Rights Act prohibits antisemitic harassment based on Jewish identity and beliefs such as Zionism. Replace the “Civil Rights Act” with anti-discrimination and racial discrimination laws existing in other countries and the effect is the same.

2. The international definition of antisemitism

“Cooper Union to apply guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, including considering the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of Jew-hatred and its appended contemporary examples when it responds to complaints.” This definition binds 35 member countries including Australia to a definition of antisemitism that just this week New York’s newly elected Mayor Mamdani revoked. Cooper Union just said no, meaning that pre-Mamdani New York lives on.

3. Protesters must be unmasked

“The university also commits to banning masks or face coverings intended to conceal identities during protests and requires participants to present a valid Cooper Union identification upon request.” Numerous countries have been looking for ways to unmask their protestors. This policy identifies protestors too.

JNS quoted Ziporah Reich, director of litigation at Lawfare Project who brought the legal action against Cooper:

“[In the US] You can say offensive things about Zionism because we don’t stop speech, but you cannot target Zionists, you cannot discriminate against Zionists and you cannot harass Zionists.”

“If a student is standing in a corner carrying out their First Amendment speech rights through protest and saying all kinds of offensive things about Zionism, that is their right. But if you see a Jewish person walking by that you know identifies with Zionism, and then you say, ‘How many children have you killed today,’ you’re targeting a Zionist person, and you would be considered to be violating the Title VI anti-discrimination code of Cooper Union.”

The Australian irony

As far as Australia goes Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and their Labor National Platform on Palestine are Zionist. All believe in the right of Israel to exist, the right of Israel to defend itself and in the forming of a Two-State Solution where a Palestine exists side-by-side Israel.

But their ideological biases have also obfuscated what should be a clear policy, causing a fog of propaganda that has now turned deadly.

If conducted prudently Australia’s Royal Commission, announced only this week, will discover that Albanese and Wong’s failure to publicise harmony, instead encouraged certain cohorts to pursue antisemitic incitement and anarchy in the guise of protest. They let loose Labor’s Far Left and cabinet, diehard anti-Zionist agitators, teachers, academia, unions, foreign tourists and immigrants, and electorates skewed heavily to radical Islam.

And it was this negligence that contributed to fuelling the breeding ground for the Bondi massacre, indeed in the form of the “radical perversion of Islam” as Albanese called it, resulting in what the Australian Federal Police then labelled a “terror act”.

This is why it took Albanese weeks to announce the Commission only to appoint an alleged activist jurist as its head.

It is this failure that has empowered the unrestricted radicalisation of mosques and the far right. It is this mixed messaging that has not kept the bile of Labor’s old PLO-stalwarts, artists and journalists in check.

So, yes, a precedent has been set in this settlement. It says with clarity that if you are anti-Zionist then you are antisemitic.

In Royal Commission political speak, it means that anti-Zionism is “injurious to Australia’s social cohesion”.

© 2026 Adam Parker.
JNS Article link: Cooper Union settles federal lawsuit brought on behalf of Jewish students