The following article was written by the ECAJ’s Research Officer Julie Nathan, who is the author of the ECAJ Annual Report on Antisemitism in Australia. The original version, published on J‑Wire, can be found here.

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Decem­ber 18, 2017

Sydney protest calls for intifada

Julie Nathan

Once again, Syd­ney Town Hall was the scene of flags embla­zoned with images of guns, chants call­ing for an upris­ing and eth­nic cleans­ing, and hate-filled war-cries in the name of Allah. NSW state politi­cians, Labor’s Shao­quett Mosel­mane and the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi, were among those who addressed the crowd of approx­i­mate­ly 800 Mus­lim pro­test­ers, most of them wear­ing Islam­ic and Mid­dle East­ern dress, and a small assort­ment of social­ists and oth­ers.

The event on Sun­day was to protest the recog­ni­tion by the US Pres­i­dent of Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Israel. Trump’s dec­la­ra­tion was mere­ly a recog­ni­tion of the fact that Jerusalem has been the seat of gov­ern­ment in Israel since 1948; it did not pre-empt any out­come in Israeli-Pales­tin­ian nego­ti­a­tions. The protest in Syd­ney was one of sev­er­al across Aus­tralia.

Shao­quett Mosel­mane assert­ed that “Jerusalem is, always was and always will be, the cap­i­tal of Pales­tine” – but could not give even one exam­ple from his­to­ry when this was the case. He con­demned Don­ald Trump, and con­demned the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion (which sup­port­ed a nation­al home for the Jew­ish peo­ple in Pales­tine). Mosel­mane denounced the “70 year occu­pa­tion” of Pales­tine, mean­ing that he con­sid­ers the State of Israel itself to be “occu­pied Pales­tine” with no right to exist. Moselmane’s words deny the right of self-deter­mi­na­tion for the Jew­ish peo­ple in their nation­al home­land.
Mehreen Faruqi revert­ed to name-call­ing, invok­ing the mind­less mantra that des­ig­nates Israel as a “set­tler colo­nial apartheid state”. She demand­ed the “return of refugees” (and their descen­dants ad infini­tum) to Israel, rather than to a Pales­tin­ian state. Such a demand, if imple­ment­ed, would turn Israel into anoth­er major­i­ty Arab state, thus destroy­ing Israel as the world’s only Jew­ish major­i­ty state. She then stat­ed that “the Greens will con­tin­ue to stand” in sup­port of Pales­tine.
One Pales­tin­ian speak­er, Jamil, an old­er man, said he would speak in Ara­bic, as what he want­ed to say was “not good to say in Eng­lish”. He then pro­ceed­ed into an angry tirade in Ara­bic with fly­ing fist, elic­it­ing wild cheers from the crowd. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great) burst forth from the agi­tat­ed crowd.
Dur­ing the speech­es out­side Town Hall and the march to the US Con­sulate in Mar­tin Place, the pro­test­ers bel­lowed three main chants: “From the riv­er to the sea, Pales­tine will be free”; “Resis­tance is jus­ti­fied, while Pales­tine is occu­pied”; and “Intifa­da, intifa­da”. These chants deny Israel’s right to exist, and call for the destruc­tion of Israel, and its Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, through armed vio­lence.
The most egre­gious plac­ard was one refer­ring to Jews as pigs and mon­keys through the use of images of the ani­mals and Stars of David. This char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Jews derives from sev­er­al vers­es in the Quran (2:65, 5:60, and 7:166) which refer to Jews as the descen­dants of apes and pigs. In addi­tion, the plac­ard had an image of lions, refer­ring to Pales­tini­ans, with the word “Tar­get” between them and the Jews, thus con­vey­ing the mes­sage that Pales­tini­ans are to hunt and tar­get Jews.
Anoth­er plac­ard read: “The only response to Trump’s deci­sion is a Third Intifa­da”. Oth­er plac­ards read: “Jerusalem is the eter­nal cap­i­tal of Pales­tine”, “Stop Israeli apartheid and geno­cide of Pales­tini­ans”, and “The Cap­i­tal of Israel is Hell”. A man sell­ing badges had one which bore the words: “Go to hell fuck­ing Zion­ist”.
There were many Pales­tin­ian flags present. There were also the flags of armed Pales­tin­ian mili­tias includ­ing Fatah, the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (PFLP) (which car­ried out a series of plane hijack­ings in the 1960s and 1970s), and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (DFLP) (which per­pe­trat­ed the Ma’alot mas­sacre in 1974 in which 25 school­child­ren and teach­ers were killed). There were sev­er­al Hezbol­lah flags fly­ing, some were draped around peo­ple. Hezbollah’s Exter­nal Secu­ri­ty Organ­i­sa­tion is pro­scribed as a ter­ror­ist enti­ty by the EU, US, Arab League, Aus­tralia, and oth­er coun­tries.
Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty aca­d­e­m­ic, Dr. Tim Ander­son, proud­ly held a Hezbol­lah flag in the form of a fringed ban­ner. Ander­son has been a vocal sup­port­er of Syr­i­an dic­ta­tor, Bashar al-Assad, and has defend­ed Assad against accu­sa­tions that his forces have used chem­i­cal weapons against Syr­i­an civil­ians. Hezbol­lah is a Lebanese Shite Islamist group which aims at the destruc­tion of Israel. Hezbol­lah has a his­to­ry of pro­mot­ing anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, Holo­caust denial, and ter­ror­ist acts against Jews. It is wide­ly held to have been respon­si­ble for the bomb­ing of the AMIA Jew­ish cen­tre in Argenti­na in 1994 killing 85 peo­ple.
To protest about the pro­nounce­ments of a for­eign leader is part of our demo­c­ra­t­ic way of life. How­ev­er, when such protests wave the flags of pro­scribed ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing flags bear­ing assault rifles and oth­er weapons, when plac­ards call Jews apes and pigs, when pro­test­ers chant call­ing for an upris­ing and eth­nic cleans­ing, and when politi­cians deny to the Jew­ish peo­ple their right to nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion, then the protest has crossed the line into vil­i­fi­ca­tion and incite­ment. This is unac­cept­able in a soci­ety that pur­ports to oppose racism and incite­ment to vio­lence.

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