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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