At the same campus, when Jewish students organised a Middle East peace rally, they were physically attacked by a pro-Palestinian mob, who shouted "go back to Russia" and "we’ll kill you," as well as other threats and slurs.

Unfortunately, extreme and violent anti-Israelism that often slips into outright antisemitism is back in vogue on college campuses around the world. According to the European Union of Jewish Students, (EUJS) there have been numerous incidents where Jewish students have been physically attacked on campus. "People are afraid to wear their kippot or Magen Davids on campus," says EUJS chairman Julian Voloj. The EUJS office in France was recently fire-bombed.

In Australia, Jewish students who were watching a pro-Palestinian rally at La Trobe University on April 10 were subjected to racist taunts, including "Kill the Jews", and physical intimidation. At the University of Canberra the following day, reports from witnesses say the University’s Catholic Chaplain not only said that Jews control America, referred to Jews as "Nazis" and Ariel Sharon as "Hitler," but he went on to describe Israel as "Satan." At Victoria University, unsigned posters were put up recently advertising a lecture on: "How did the Nazi Victims of 50 Years ago become the Nazi War Criminals of Today?" Meanwhile, anti-terror posters put up by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students were torn down all over the country within hours of their being posted.

These are grim times, folks.

Academic Un-Freedom: Speaking of violent and extreme anti-Israel sentiments on campus, the proposal to organise an academic boycott of all contacts with Israel and Israelis certainly falls into that category. The individuals based at Australian universities who are calling for a boycott of research and cultural links with Israel reflect a jaundiced and distorted view of the Palestinian assault on Israel’s very right to exist. Even more disturbing is the fact they are perpetrating a frontal attack on the very nature of academic freedom in an open society, evoking echoes of totalitarian intolerance, closed societies and racism and bigotry. Their approach is totally inconsistent with academic values of unfettered pursuit of truth and knowledge.

AIJAC hopes that all academics who care about academic freedom and peace in the Middle East will sign the counter-petition on http://www.geocities.com/academic_freedom_aus/.

Fisk’s Unwanted Friends: Robert Fisk, the professional Israel-bashing journalist from London’s Independent and a frequent commentator on the ABC, has such sympathy for oppressed peoples of the Middle East that when an Afghan mob badly beat him in December, he expressed his understanding, writing "if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah ... I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."

Fisk would probably be very uncomfortable with the support he is now receiving from some people who are probably less to his liking than the Afghans who beat him. His visceral anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism has made him the preferred Middle East analyst of some on the racist right. For instance, David Duke, the American White Supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader, in a recent article used Fisk, whom he describes as "the world-renowned British journalist" as one authority for his thesis, "The real reason we have suffered the terrorism of the WTC attack is shockingly simple. Too many American politicians have treasonously betrayed the American people by blindly supporting the leading terrorist nation on earth: Israel." Duke then goes on to claim that Jews control the US Government and mass media, and carried out the World Trade Centre attack.

Australia’s own home-grown veteran racist organisation, The League of Rights, also fancies Fisk. League stalwart and veteran conspiracy theorist Jeremy Lee praised Fisk in the March edition of the League’s New Times Survey newsletter, calling him a "brave dissenter" adding "Robert Fisk is already a byword among those with an inkling of events in the Middle East." The newsletter then reproduced one of his Independent columns, arguing essentially US pro-Israel policy is to blame for Sept. 11.

Fisk would doubtless be horrified by the resonance he has with the far right. But he is closer to the views of these people than he realises, especially with his frequent implications about a worldwide cover-up of the "truth" about Israel.

Meanwhile, Fisk has proven far less forgiving of an American actor who joked about wanting to kill him than of the Afghans, who, by his own account, actually tried to. On May 6, the actor John Malkovich was attending a debate at Cambridge Union, and was asked who he would like to fight to the death. He replied, that after reading the British press, he would choose Robert Fisk and George Galloway, a Scottish MP who had called for Scots to boycott Israeli goods. And he added, "I’d rather just shoot them."

This comment led to a rather self-pitying column (May 13) entitled, "Hate and Star Power: Why Does Malkovich Want to Kill Me?" in which Fisk called for Malkovich to "be refused any further visas to Britain until he explains or apologises for his vile remarks," and denounces the fact that Malkovich "was not even questioned by police." Fisk also put on his best melodramatic tone, claiming martyrdom; "How, I ask myself, did it come to this? Slowly but surely, the hate has turned to incitement, the incitement into death threats, the walls of propriety and legality gradually pulled down so that a reporter can be abused, his family defamed... his life cheapened and made vulnerable by an actor who–without even saying why–says he wants to kill me."