Pearls and Irritations

Observe the formula carefully. On the public broadcaster SBS, Jillian Segal, still fresh in her role as antisemitism envoy, made a suggestion in the wake of the December 6 attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne. Australian “cities should not be utilised” for protests held in solidarity with Palestinians affected by the ongoing Hamas-Israel War. As with all contemptuous of any right to protest, Segal proposed that those wishing to gather for such a purpose be parcelled and segregated, preferably away from city environs. “There should be places designated away from where the Jewish community might venture, where people can demonstrate.”

Given that the Jewish community would, and should be able to venture anywhere, any such specific limits are abjectly ludicrous. Segal gives us a greater insight into this by claiming that her proposal should not be taken as an “attack” on the right of free expression “but at some point, [holding protests] every single week becomes intimidatory in the city.”

What latitude of protest does Segal have in mind? She advocates “the sort of criticism you would level at any other country” while taking issue with criticism about “the existence of the state of Israel and campaigning for its destruction”. Pro-Palestinian protests had become “something more sinister”, having “morphed into attacking the Jewish community.” Her evidence of this is flimsy, including the cheap ploy of pointing to the brandishing of “flags from a terrorist organisation” at the rallies and the expression of “anti-Jewish sentiments”.

Amnesty International Australia’s occupied Palestinian spokesperson Mohamed Duar thought such views “misleading” and even “dangerous.” Such labelling delegitimised “the voices of those calling for justice in Gaza and beyond”.

Speaking at the 62^nd consecutive weekly pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney on December 15, Professor Peter Slezak, himself the offspring of an Auschwitz death camp survivor, diagnosed the condition. “There is now a campaign to distract us from the obscenities of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the increasing brutalities on the West Bank, which are not getting enough attention.” This campaign featured “a historical campaign to combat the supposed threat of antisemitism.”

This distracting condition is certainly catching, encouraged by the demagogic inanities of the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Being himself of a police background, the Coalition leader is no fan of protesters, preferring the docile breed of consumer-citizen. Conveniently, he has found antisemitic protests growing on trees, going so far as to see a seamless link between Australia’s softening position in the United Nations towards the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, the frequency of pro-Palestinian protests, and the firebombing of the Ripponlea synagogue.

On a visit to South Australia he made this shiny offering of intolerance: “If you allow these lunatics to continue their protests at university campuses and you allow them to spew their hatred and affiliate with a listed terrorist organisation, and there [is] no consequence, of course we’ll see the sort of outcomes we have seen – which most recently has culminated in the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne”.

In Victoria, the Premier Jacinta Allan has decided to clip the wings of protestors by promising to impose yet another layer of legislation already in place at the Commonwealth level, and more besides. (The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023 was passed in December last year, makes it an offence to publicly display and trade in prohibited symbols, along with the Nazi salute, while also defining such symbols as those of “a prohibited terrorist organisation symbol.”) “Antisemitism,” she declared, “thrives in extreme and radical environments, and we are giving police more powers to control protest and making it harder for agents of violence and hate to hide.”

Instruments and manifestations of protest are clearly the object of concern here. Face masks and balaclavas, for instance, will be banned, as will glue, rope, chains, locks “and other dangerous attachment devise that protestors use to cause maximum disruption and endanger others.”

When governments wish to be heavier handed than usual, the general is always used as cloaking and cover for the specific. In Allan’s case, it begins with a government promise “to Jewish people and to everyone of every background, whoever you are and whoever you pray to, you deserve to be safe and welcome here in this state.”

Here, the specific is self-evident, buried as it is in the general: We will protect people of all religions, an implied government duty in any case, with a clearly marked priority on which religion deserves most attention. She states, accordingly, that it “Doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Jewish Muslim, Sikh, Hindu – you all deserve the right to simply be who we are”, but then confirms “that Jewish people increasingly feel the promise of a modern and multicultural Victoria is being denied them.”

These measures are hard to square with any liberties or rights to assembly, anaemic as they are at the Commonwealth and State level.  As the Australian Human Rights Commission puts it, “Freedom of association and peaceful assembly are not generally protected in Australian law.” Victoria’s own Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities offers a weak provision protecting the rights of people to gather for a common purpose or to pursue common goals, though this has been shown to be woefully inadequate in the face of executive fiat.

In truth, the state, despite having an undeserved reputation among News Corpers of being a hive of seditious, disruptive dissent, boasts a report card hostile to protests. Be it prohibitive pandemic lockdowns, severely limiting rallies against the arms trade at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, or, it would seem, marches against the humanitarian catastrophe afflicting Palestinians, Victoria’s governments will trample on them when deemed necessary. In the absence of a federal charter or bill of human rights, this will always be the form.

The song sheet being supplied by Dutton and the pro-Israel publicity machine, not just to Victoria but other states, reads clearly enough. Israel is above reproach in policy and practice, and if you march against its policies, however murderous and crushing they are, you are an antisemite deserving of opprobrium and prohibition.

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