Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Australian university magazine editor fired for writing ‘death to Israel’

A student union said an editor’s behavior could be “construed to support actions that could threaten the welfare of students.”

(JTA) — The student union at the University of Adelaide fired an editor of its campus student magazine after she called for “death to Israel” in an article last month.

In a statement on Tuesday, the board of YouX, the university’s student body, said that Habibah Jaghoori’s “recent public conduct would reasonably be perceived by any fair-minded person to be threatening the welfare of students at our University.”

Jaghoori, an editor of On Dit, the campus student magazine, concluded an article on Aug. 4 with the phrase “Death to Israel.” The article was prompted by the three-day conflict last month between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. The conflict killed close to 50 Palestinian civilians.

The YouX statement said it was not the article that prompted the firing of Jaghoori. Her removal was “specifically related to her conduct and behaviour since the article’s publication,” it said.

“Despite numerous opportunities to clarify her position and dispel any misinterpretation, she has continued to use language in public forums that can be clearly construed to support actions that could threaten the welfare of students,” the student board said.

It was not clear what public forums YouX was referring to, but the pro-Israel blogger Israelly Cool posted a video of a student union meeting at which Jaghoori repeatedly said “death to Israel” and giggled while saying it when challenged by Jewish students who said they found it threatening.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students praised the decision. “Calling for violence and death rather than peace, dialogue and constructive criticism of Israel, rightly has no place on university campus,” it said.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.