Until NSW Police suddenly turned aggressive, the protests across Australia against Israel’s President Isaac Herzog were peaceful. Andrew Gardiner reports.
We were told protesters against Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit were “haters” who would “disrupt a moment of post-Bondi solace”. On the ground, nothing of the sort was evident.
They were multicultural (with lots of middle class white folks), non-violent, and – unless I missed something – without an ISIS or Hamas flag to be found. That was the demeanour of protesters which had been labelled “demented”, “hysterical” and – in a screed that can only have come from social media – “apologists for murderous Hamas rapists” by Zionist and right-wing influencers.
There’s nothing like being there – on the ground, or more precisely in my case the steps of Parliament House, Adelaide – to get a first hand look at the chasm between reality and the warped rendering offered by the information gatekeepers of the right wing commentariat.
Chanting “arrest Herzog”
Among the 28 anti-Herzog protests held last night, “tens of thousands” were estimated to have braved a heavy police presence and harsh new “terror symbols” and “hate speech” laws in Sydney, with at least 10,000 bursting out of Flinders Street Station “up Swanston Street and down St Kilda Road” in Melbourne, while around 2,000 (the author included) chanted “arrest Herzog” in sweltering Adelaide.
Why did they brave a phalanx of police, defy a cacophony of commentators demonising the event, and, in Sydney, the actual partitioning of a city?
The short answer, judging by those I spoke with, is a collective sense of outrage over what’s going on in Gaza and the West Bank, and the powerful but ultimately pointless attempt by both politicians and press to spin, play down and – on occasion – to flat out deny the carnage.
“We see what’s going on there, and there’s no way you can explain away dead mothers and infants”, Ann, a suburban mother of three, said. “Pick up a copy of the (Adelaide) Advertiser and it was wall-to-wall Charlie Kirk (a right wing activist, assassinated last September) but you’d be hard pressed to find anything on Gaza before page 20”, Mark, a student at nearby University of Adelaide, added.
A few late incidents in Sydney – some seemingly instigated by police who forcibly removed a group of Muslims at prayer and blocked groups of protesters from joining the main rally – will likely be seized upon by the usual suspects at Sky News and 2GB. “Mass protests to stir up the hate. How many more Bondi killings until the haters stop?” asked the inimitable Andrew Bolt.
Editor: Stephanie Tran, reporting late from the Sydney protest said the situation turned violent later in the evening as police assaulted protestors without apparent provocation, even attacking Muslims at prayer and other protestors who tried to protect them.
“They literally barricaded us in for 3 hours – people were trapped and had nowhere to go”. As crowds grew, the Police had stopped more people from entering the Town Hall precinct.
As of late last night news came through of multiple arrests from the Sydney protests.
Story on NSW police reaction to protests to come.
In Adelaide, I saw nothing of the sort.
Adelaide protests. Image: Dr Pallave Dasari, X
Why the protests?
For 28 months now, Israel has inflicted mass starvation, death tolls estimated at anything between 70,000 and 680,000, and the reduction of Gaza to something resembling a demolition site (above).
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) calls it “genocide”, and in a world of fairness and accuracy that heinous label would form the framework for most commentary and coverage.
Yet none of Australia’s foreign policy ‘principals’: PM Albanese, Foreign Minister Wong and their opposite numbers, Sussan Ley and Michaelia Cash – will come within a mile of calling it “genocide”, their mentions of Gaza tepid, rare or non-existent.
Instead, political commentary and corporate media coverage is typically framed in the context of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. That awful onslaught lasted just a few days, with loss of life estimated at two per cent (at most) of Gaza’s current death toll, but politicians were more than happy to hold forth, calling October 7 an “indiscriminate and abhorrent” act perpetrated by a “death cult”.
Amplifying the narrative, newspapers carried headlines such as “Israel’s 9/11” and “We are at war”.
Cognitive dissonance
This cognitive dissonance seems to have carried through to commentary and coverage around last night’s protests, framed in this instance by the need to “build social cohesion” following December’s Bondi Beach mass shooting. Herzog’s visit was designed to foster “a greater sense of unity” and “provide support for Jewish Australians and the Australian Jewish community”, Albanese said.
There was little or no mention among the major parties of why last night’s protesters were dead against Herzog’s visit. “It is deeply disappointing that some Labor and union activists are planning protests aimed at shouting down” the visit, said Cash, who was more interested in assigning blame and making it partisan.
Meanwhile the conservative commentariat had a field day. 3AW’s Tom Elliott lambasted protesters’ selective outrage over Gaza when compared to other causes, while Andrew Bolt lamented that Bondi Beach hadn’t “taught us the price of telling vicious lies … about Israel (as an) “apartheid regime” committing “genocide”, “targeting children” and deliberately causing “famine”.
On Bolt’s assertions, it should be noted that last month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Israeli policies “resemble the kind of apartheid system we have seen before,” and that a UN inquiry concluded some acts have been deliberately aimed at Gaza’s children. The country’s PM and former defence minister face International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants over alleged “genocide”, specifically around triggering “famine”.
It seems Bolt is the one who needs to check his facts. As for Elliott, he too is regularly accused of “selective outrage”.
UN report: Israel practising racial segregation and apartheid
On the need for “social cohesion”, rally organisers and a select few commentators say Herzog’s visit is achieving the reverse. “This (visit) has really raised the issue of Israeli actions (in Gaza, which) may have escalated the tensions that we ended up seeing in Bondi”, the ABC’s Laura Tingle pointed out.
If the crowds at Monday night’s protests are any guide, it seems rolling out the red carpet for Herzog – a man not above the politics of division, who represents a pariah state – achieved anything but Albanese’s intended effect.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog signs bombs destined for Gaza. Photo: Australian Centre for International Justice
The pundits of Israel propaganda
While Peter Hartcher of SMH says Herzog’s role around Gaza is “mostly symbolic”, those among last night’s crowds say he’s neck deep in it. In September, a UN Human Rights Council inquiry found Herzog (pictured above, autographing a bomb destined for Gaza) had engaged in “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”, in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The finding was based on Herzog’s claim the “entire (Palestinian) nation … is responsible (for attacks on Israel, including those of October 7, 2023)” and his dismissing “rhetoric (that Gazan) civilians were not aware or not involved (in the attacks)” as “absolutely not true”. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) says member countries like Australia have an obligation to prevent and punish genocide and related offences.
With that firmly in mind, notables from UN Commissioner Chris Sidoti to barrister Robert Richter KC have called or applied for Herzog’s arrest, with moves also afoot to extradite him from Australia to Malaysia, a Tel Aviv antagonist.
And the Epstein Files
Herzog – currently the subject of intense speculation around the Epstein Files – does not face ICJ arrest warrants like Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
But a member of his entourage, retired General Doron Almog, came within moments of arrest at London’s Heathrow airport in 2005 after a warrant was issued over allegations such as the wilful murder of three teenage boys and of a pregnant woman during home demolitions in Gaza and (separately) of 14 people during an airstrike on densely populated Rafah.
Almog fled the UK, basically by refusing to deplane from his El Al flight, staying onboard and going home of the return flight to Israel. Albanese and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have no intention of arresting Almog, much less Herzog.
One wonders how large the crowds last night may have been had more Australians been given the facts and not been “gaslit” on Herzog (as one Adelaide protester put it) by high minded talk of “social cohesion” and “making amends”. It takes a powerful pressure group, some pusillanimous politicians and a malleable media to achieve such illusion.
Island visits. Herzog backlash crushes Albo’s ‘social cohesion’
An Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy, I was an editor who covered current affairs, local government and sports for various publications before deciding on a change-of-vocation in 2002.