Students for Palestine co-convener Yasmine Johnson lost family in the Holocaust and has defended the use of violence, combined with non-violent protest, to end Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
"I think it's hard to believe that there would be a contention that slaves did not have the right to use violence when opposing slaveholders ... that those people should have quietly and peacefully held up signs in order to do that," she told the inquiry on Monday.
Her family background meant she had to "fight for justice", which she did by organising Sydney University's 2024 pro-Palestine encampment.
At its peak, the campus had more than 100 tents set up with students sleeping in them.
"We had reached a point in 2024 where Israel had begun to systematically ethnically cleanse Palestinians, to blockade food and water, and we felt there had been no action by the Australian government to do anything about this," Ms Johnson said.
She said the Jewish identity of most people who had fronted the royal commission was tied to Zionism, which she termed a "racist project".
Other witnesses told the inquiry they had been taunted and made to feel unsafe on campus because they were Jewish.
Academic Andy Smidt described how her son was reprimanded for "gathering evidence" of children participating in pro-Palestine chants at the encampment for which Ms Johnson was an organiser.
An excursion to the camp, which involved children younger than 10, was organised by a group called Families for Palestine in 2024.
Dr Smidt said her son had recorded audio and the backs of students chanting things such as "five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state".
Photos of the 21-year-old, with his face blurred, were then posted on social media by people within the encampment, with comments suggesting he was a "Zio" and a pedophile.
Dr Smidt has since left Sydney University, having sought a SafeWork investigation into the institution over its treatment of Jewish staff.
Another woman, who works in diversity and inclusion, recounted hearing a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse from a student in a Macquarie University library, including that Adolf Hitler's ideology "made sense in today's context" and that rabbis were willing to "eat" non-Jewish babies.
She said she did not hear back from the university after lodging two complaints until she threatened to contact the media.
Another Jewish student said she had lost friends and been taunted on her university campus, including being called a "baby killer", because she identified as a Zionist.
The woman, known by the pseudonym Liat, began studying at the Australian National University in 2022.
She said she had felt scared to speak up about being a Zionist and was uncomfortable each time she walked past a pro-Palestine encampment that existed for more than 100 days in the middle of the Canberra campus.
She referred to an article in a magazine distributed by the university's student association that described Zionism as a far-right political project and the state of Israel as run by supporters of genocide.
"It plays on the very classical anti-Semitic trope that Jews are particularly murderous," Liat said.
The royal commission is probing the experiences of students and academics, and investigating university responses to anti-Semitism during hearings in Melbourne.
From Monday, the government will strengthen university governance standards, including a requirement that institutions adopt anti-racism standards with definitions on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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