From Sydney courtrooms to US Congress, the Israel lobby is losing ground, and the Pro-Palestine movement is winning. Andrew Brown reports.
The pro-Palestine movement, in Australia and around the world, is winning more than its opponents want anyone to know.
Antoinette Lattouf beat the ABC in the Federal Court. The racial vilification case against Mary Kostakidis ended without a finding against her. Randa Abdel Fattah’s exclusion from Adelaide Writers’ Week brought the festival down and put an alternative in its place. Police dropped every charge they laid against me at Bondi. The NSW permit regime that threatened everyone’s right to assemble was taaken away by a court.
None of this happened in isolation. The same pattern is unfolding in Madrid, Dublin, London and Washington. Spain has imposed an arms embargo. Ireland has banned settlement goods. Forty United States senators voted to block military sales to Israel. Voters in Michigan and New York elected Israel critics.
The lobby’s best weapon has always been the belief that resistance is pointless.
That belief is collapsing both here and abroad.
The most useful thing this movement could do for its opponents is lose hope. Stop marching. Accept that speaking out brings only trouble. The record says otherwise.
Standing firm
Start with Adelaide. Premier Peter Malinauskas backed the removal of Abdel Fattah from Writers’ Week. Around 180 writers withdrew, and director Louise Adler resigned. A new board apologised and invited Abdel Fattah back for 2027. In March she and Adler shared a stage at Constellations, built from the wreckage.
Exclusion became expensive for the people who imposed it.
A Premier defied. NOT-Adelaide Writers’ Week a smashing success
Litigation, or lawfare as it is better known, is designed to wear people down, drain their money and make them give up before any judgment arrives. Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto sued Kostakidis. The case ended by consent. No costs order. No finding of wrongdoing. Kostakidis kept talking.
My shirt said, “Fuck Israel, fuck Zionism”. Police arrested me at Bondi in November 2024, called the shirt offensive and laid three charges. I told them I would take it to a higher court and defend the shirt as political communication protected by the Constitution. Their case collapsed. Police withdrew all three charges.
Bullies retreat when someone stands up to them. My view of Israel’s conduct did not change. On social media, thousands asked where they could buy the shirt.
Prosecution or persecution? Charges dropped against Bondi ‘F*** Israel tee-shirt man
Lattouf’s win went further. Justice Darryl Rangiah found the ABC sacked her unlawfully for reasons that included her opposition to Israel’s campaign in Gaza. His judgment described an organised campaign by advocates for Israel to have her removed.
The broadcaster that caved paid for caving.
Israel lobby power on the wane
The courts have held a line the lobby wants erased. Justices Desmond Fagan and Angus Stewart each rejected the claim that hostility towards Israel amounts to hatred of Jews. Palestine Action Group and Blak Caucus activists overturned NSW’s public assembly restriction scheme. The ABC and SBS refused the IHRA definition that Jillian Segal pushed on them.
The lobby’s power is shrinking here too. Groups that once dictated terms are now called out in public as agents of a foreign state. The accusation of antisemitism, once career-ending, has been thrown so often that it no longer lands. Most Australians now see through the conflation.
Accountability is reaching beyond the courtroom. Eleven Australians sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla and were seized in international waters on 18 May. Juliet Lamont came home alleging she was beaten, cable tied and raped by an Israeli soldier. After she and three other women met Penny Wong in Canberra, the Australian Federal Police opened inquiries. Lamont called it a win.
In seven decades of dealing with Israel, no Australian government has let its police examine the conduct of Israeli soldiers towards Australians. Israel’s ambassador Hillel Newman called it a mistake. It stung.
From Rome to New York – the tide is turning
Australia is not alone. Prosecutors in Rome are investigating possible kidnapping, torture and sexual assault of Italian participants. France’s anti terrorism prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into torture and war crimes against French ones.
What is happening here is happening everywhere the lobby operates. Intimidation is meeting defiance, and defiance is producing results.
Spain’s arms embargo and settlement import restrictions are law. So is Ireland’s ban on settlement goods. Britain, France and Canada are among twelve governments committing to, supporting or considering trade restrictions. Enforcement varies. The direction does not.
Objection is turning into cost. Outside the West, the argument is already over. South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice, and the Global South, almost without exception, stands behind it with a vehemence Western capitals are only beginning to register.
In the United States, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block a bulldozer sale to Israel, and 36 voted against a bomb sale. Both measures failed. A majority of Senate Democrats now vote against arming Israel. Abdul El Sayed won his Michigan primary, and Zohran Mamdani is mayor of New York. Both ran as critics of Israel.
Public opinion
Public opinion is pushing them. Pew Research found 79% of Australians view Israel unfavourably. Gallup found Americans aged 18 to 34 side with Palestinians over Israelis by 53% to 23%.
Israel has lost many American Jews too. A 2025 Washington Post poll found 61% believed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and about 40% believed it had committed genocide. Israel has reportedly allocated $US730m to public diplomacy this year.
Money buys attention. It does not buy belief.
The job is not done. There is still a mountain to climb. The greatest crime of this century is still being committed in Gaza, and Western governments, Australia among them, remain complicit through the arms they supply and the diplomatic cover they provide. No courtroom win in Sydney feeds a child in Khan Younis.
But take encouragement from what the movement has achieved. Israel’s power is being diminished, slowly and measurably, by the people who kept marching when they were told it was pointless.
Think of it as pulling down a dam. You pull out one stone, then another. For a long time the wall looks unchanged. Then enough stones are gone, and the wall gives way. Every charge withdrawn and every embargo signed is a stone out of that wall.
The people who kept marching should be proud of what they have done. Then they should go back and pull out another stone.
Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist