Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warns against ‘provocative’ pro-Palestine protests on October 7
Australia’s political leaders have warned pro-Palestine supporters against staging protests on the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel amid fears about social cohesion and the rise of anti-Semitism.
The warnings came as NSW Police charged a 19-year-old woman with publicly displaying a prohibited terrorist organisation’s symbol at a protest last Sunday.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused the Prime Minister of walking away from a bipartisan position of wholehearted support for Israel and said anti-Semitism had been allowed to take hold in Australia.
“The months and months of protests that we’ve seen at university campuses, on weekends, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, but elsewhere, that has given rise to a level of comfort for these supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah,” he said.
“It’s unacceptable and it increases the level of danger in our own community.”
Tensions have risen in the Middle East and domestically in Australia after the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Pro-Palestine protestors sparked outrage after waving Hezbollah flags and holding photos glorifying the terrorist leader during rallies in Sydney and Melbourne over the weekend.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said police needed to enforce the laws in place to stop such displays.
“The laws are there about hate symbols. The Hezbollah flag is quite clearly a hate symbol and should not be displayed here in Australia,” he said.
NSW Police are trying to stop another planned rally this coming Sunday and a vigil on Monday, the anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Mr Albanese said any gathering on Monday that appeared to celebrate the massacre of more than 1200 Israelis would be “incredibly provocative” and would cause a “great deal of distress”.
“It’s not a time to raise the temperature. It’s a time to try to make sure that social cohesion in Australia is valued,” he said.
“October 7 will be one year since the largest number of deaths and murders — call it for what it is — of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“I’ll be attending a vigil to commemorate that terrible day. And anything that looks like it’s a celebration of that, I think, would cause disharmony.”
In Victoria, where protests are also planned, police cannot seek a court injunction because there is no permit system as exists in NSW.
“Victoria Police respects the right for peaceful protest however any unlawful behaviour will not be tolerated,” a police spokesperson told The Nightly.
Mr Dutton said he hoped the Victorian authorities could crack down on the planned protests, which he said would be “a grotesque gathering to celebrate the death, the slaughter, of 1200 people”.
“That is not an anniversary that should be celebrated and people shouldn’t be triumphant,” he said.
Liberal senator Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, said he had seen last week’s protests in Melbourne “up close” and rather than having a few offensive flags on display, “it was dominated by Hezbollah flags, Hezbollah imagery, portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, chants praising Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah”.
Australia had long managed as a multicultural nation not to import foreign tensions or grievances, he said.
“Over the last 11 months, we have empirically failed in that task. We have allowed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic sentiment to get out of hand,” he said.
Mr Albanese also condemned Iran after it fired a barrage of missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.
The attack comes a day after Israel commenced a “target” ground invasion of Lebanon, vowing to dismantle Hezbollah and its ability to attack Israel and its citizens.
The escalation of the conflict has led Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who is Jewish, to cancel a planned visit to Israel to mark the anniversary of the Hamas attack.
Meanwhile, ABC managing director David Anderson said he would look into a clash between Mr Dutton and an ABC reporter during a press conference on Tuesday over questions about why Hezbollah was a listed terrorist organisation.
Mr Anderson said the national broadcaster accepted the fact the government had prescribed Hezbollah as an “absolute” and acknowledged that in its reporting.
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