For professor Steven Prawer, the University of Melbourne’s campus protest against the war in Gaza became deeply personal in 2024 when 20 masked intruders occupied his office and told him he was guilty of genocide.

Appearing at the second day of Melbourne hearings for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on Tuesday, the physics professor recalled chants the group made that day, including: “‘Prawer, Prawer, you can’t hide. You’re guilty of genocide.’”

They also left behind an inverted red triangle – often used to denote terror organisation Hamas – and a message saying, “Your work will break your soul before it breaks the resistance”.

“Clearly, this was a highly personal attack,” Prawer told Commissioner Virginia Bell. “‘Break your soul’ is … not generic. It’s not a generic chant.”

Prawer said he was targeted by protesters because he had done work with the Commonwealth’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation and, separately, with a PhD program involving the Hebrew University in Israel.

However, he said these two projects had not been related, and that protesters had conflated them to target him, a visible, kippah-wearing Jewish Zionist on campus.

Most frightening, though, had been the incursion into his personal office. Walking in one day, about a year after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel which prompted Israel’s war on Gaza, he found the protesters wearing keffiyahs over their faces as makeshift masks.

“This is a classic terrorist pose,” Prawer told the commission.

“For the benefit of those who never experienced that, it’s a little bit like being in a bank and someone walking in with a balaclava over their head ... I had no idea at that stage if it was a protest or if it was a terrorist attack.”

Prawer said that, while the University of Melbourne’s response to the confrontation had initially been strong, he later became deeply disappointed with their handling of his complaints.

Months after the incursion, the university identified four students who had been involved and charged them with misconduct, however Prawer said the university did not to tell him who they were. And when two students of the four students were expelled, and two suspended for a year, he was not told.

“I didn’t hear about it because the university process is so opaque that they don’t make any announcements … But the students, or the four students, were outraged that they had been penalised, so they publicised it,” explaining how he came to learn of the action taken.

He said 150 university employees and affiliates had signed a petition saying the sit-ins were a legitimate form of protest and by punishing students, the University of Melbourne was violating academic freedom.

Several months later, the academic board overturned the student expulsions, and the two were instead suspended for a year.

“I still don’t know who they are, and I think for my protection also, I should know who these people are,” Prawer said. “Their suspensions will end in a week’s time, and I will have no idea if they’re on campus.”

The other intruders “got off scott-free,” Prawer said, and “must be having a giggle about how they’ve managed to remain here and managed to intimidate a professor without any consequences”.

In addition to the incursion, the words “Death to Israel. Death to USA. Death to Steven Prawer” were also graffitied on a noticeboard – something the professor said left him and his family in fear of their lives, and significantly bumping up their vigilance at work and at home.

Another academic, La Trobe University professor Dennis Altman, said he had been surprised by the focus on university protest, and how little talk there had been in the royal commission so far – which began on May 4 in Sydney – about neo-Nazis.

“I was surprised how little attention many of the people who talk about antisemitism have given to the rise of neo-Nazis,” Altman, a Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, told journalists on Tuesday after his appearance.

“If there’s one thing that scares me most as a Jew, it is the sight of 20 or 30 young men in black, obviously thirsting for some sort of attack,” he said.

“I think there is a real need for us to be much more aware of that, and perhaps less concerned about isolated incidents within universities.”

He also called for more discussion between sides.

“I think there are real problems in the way in which the Jewish community, which is clearly better able to work the system than Palestinian Australians ... that the Jewish community seems to be making so little attempt at outreach and discussion with Australian Palestinians and Muslims.”

Jeremy Suss, the president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, told reporters that when Jewish students organise parties on campus, there is a risk of them being disrupted by protesters.

“We’ve seen people … finding out that it’s Jewish and sneaking in to then scream at people and berate them. And people are really nervous to go to a party,” he said.

Suss was also highly critical of institutions, saying: “I think that many universities have the tools to solve a lot of these issues and I think a lot of the time we’ve seen them delay. We’ve seen them minimise … they discredit reports of incidents. Their instant incident reporting mechanisms drag on for months, if not never getting resolved … reporting of racism, reporting of harassment feels like it goes nowhere.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.

Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect via X or email.