The University of Sydney in Australia. Photo: Jason Tong.

A Sydney University academic is under investigation by the school for defending the badge of a former colleague that called for death to the US and Israel, and a “curse on the Jews,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Tim Anderson, a senior lecturer in economics and international politics, has defended Jay Tharappel — a former human rights tutor at the university and current PhD student — who in a photo posted online in July was seen wearing a patch with the slogan of the Islamist militant Houthi movement: “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.”

The slogan is partly based on those of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, which supports the Houthis in the ongoing Yemeni civil war.

“Curse the Jews is an openly bigoted, racist statement,” Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, told Seven News earlier this month. “The others are equally problematic.”

Yet Tharappel was defended by Anderson, who called him on Twitter last week “an Indian-Australian and a great friend of Syria.”

“He is under attack from zionists for wearing a Yemeni (Ansarallah) badge because it says ‘Death to Israel,'” said Anderson, who has previously called Israel a “colony” and advocated for its replacement with a Palestinian state.

Anderson is a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has described chemical weapons attacks that were blamed on the Syrian regime by Western governments as “false flag” operations. He has also expressed “solidarity” with North Korea in the face of US sanctions, and recently visited the socialist country with Tharappel, who predicted that his own “Stalinism will intensify” while in Pyongyang.

This is not the first time Tharappel — who last year said the flag of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah “will be raised over the Knesset” — has drawn controversy. Last April, he was investigated by the university for denouncing an Armenian journalist as “traitorous scum who desperately wants a second Armenian genocide.”

Anderson has called the Herald‘s report a “smear piece,” saying Tharappel’s badge “was from Yemen” and was worn “in support of the Yemeni resistance of the Saudi-led dirty war, in which Australia in implicated.”

“As for Israel, I agree that it is an apartheid state which must be dismantled,” he added.