Enough Is Enough: Lies, Defamation, and Intimidation – What These Open Letters Really Represent
- StandWithUs
- Mar 31
- 2 min read
Sydney, Australia – 31/03/2025
StandWithUs Australia unequivocally condemns the defamatory, misleading, and ideologically driven open letters sent to Monash University, the University of Sydney, and UTS management in response to our upcoming campus events.
Let’s call these letters what they are: a coordinated smear campaign designed to intimidate universities, silence survivors of terror, and push a radical, one-sided political agenda. These are not good-faith expressions of concern. They are full of provable lies, dangerous rhetoric, and blatant hypocrisy.
What’s being attacked? Two educational programs:
‘Survived to Tell’, a powerful virtual reality experience sharing the personal testimonies of Israeli survivors of the October 7 massacre and the war in northern Israel — not propaganda, not politics, just truth.
‘Shared Stories – Interfaith Voices for a Cohesive Future’, featuring Israeli Druze, Christian, Muslim and Jewish speakers standing together for unity, coexistence and understanding — the very values universities claim to uphold.
These programs have toured more than 60 campuses around the world. They promote education, empathy, and social cohesion. And yet, staff and activist groups are demanding they be shut down. Why? Because they dare to give space to Israeli voices.
Let’s be clear:
StandWithUs Australia is an Australian organisation, working in partnership with Israeli civil society, not a “foreign propaganda arm.”
Our speakers include civilians, educators, and interfaith voices — not “genocide apologists.”
The VR experience is grounded in real testimonies and developed with the utmost sensitivity and respect for human dignity.
To say that these programs “traumatise” students is insulting — especially when Jewish students have faced relentless harassment and antisemitism on these very same campuses with no institutional response.
The language in these letters is reckless. It accuses universities of enabling war crimes and hosting “propagandists” simply for allowing an educational event to proceed. It slanders IDF veterans — some of whom lost family on October 7 — as war criminals. It equates Israeli civilians with oppressors. And it does all of this while demanding censorship in the name of “safety.”
This is not activism. It is academic bullying. It is institutional cowardice wrapped in moral grandstanding. And if university leaders continue to yield to these types of campaigns, they should expect more of the same — more silencing, more division, more threats to open discourse and academic freedom.
We urge the Vice-Chancellors of Monash, USYD, and UTS — and all university leadership — to stand up to intimidation, defend truth and facts over ideology, and reaffirm the core mission of higher education: to educate, not indoctrinate.
Links to the open letters to USYD, UTS and Monash.
UTS
Monash
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