Calls to strip Grace Tame of her Australian of the Year award over her protest speech highlight a troubling slide towards political punishment and selective free speech.

The 2021 Australian of the Year winner Grace Tame attended a rally in Sydney on Monday and chanted, “From Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada”. Tame was exercising her right to freedom of speech and what she said, to reasonable minds, is of no moment.

But Tame, a lived experience sexual abuse campaigner, has been abused by the hardliners in the Israel lobby, the Murdoch media, the populist One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and the one time self-made champion of free speech, Liberal front bencher Tim Wilson.

Tame, say some of them, should be stripped of her Australian of the Year award.

But before we deal with the calls for her to be ‘punished’, which by the way is the latest in an increasingly McCarthyist climate when it comes to criticism of Israel, why is it that what she said is so offensive to a few?

The point of freedom of speech is, of course, that it does offend, and make some uncomfortable. The great American jurist William O Douglas got it right when he said in 1949 that “a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging.”

This was true 77 years ago and so it is today.

Peter Beinart, a Jewish writer and academic based in New York, summarised the absurdity of chastising people like Grace Time who use the phrase ‘globalise the intifada’. In a Substack piece late last year Beinart said that “it’s simply a grave violation of people’s basic, fundamental rights to say that you can’t use the phrase globalize the intifada”, because “Intifada is an Arabic word that means uprising.”

It is not people or nation specific, as Beinart points out. Intifada can be non violent or violent. And importantly says Beinart, “we allow people to call for violence on the streets all the time. Threatening violence against one individual person is one thing, but saying you support violence in general in some kind of political context is not at all,” he argues.

Beinart is right. Grace Tame did not call for violence against a person or even group of persons. She did what protestors do all the time – call for struggle against an oppressor.

If the Murdoch media, politicians and the Zionist lobby were not simply partisans who think Israel is entitled to commit genocide in Gaza and destroy Palestinian lives on the West Bank, then they would understand their hypocrisy.

All of them support the right of Ukrainian supporters to protest against Russian aggression by advocating for the use of force. Ditto the people of Cuba or the Iranians.

What makes the hostility towards Grace Tame more sinister is the call by some of her enemies for her to be stripped of her Australian of the Year award.

On what basis? She has not been convicted of a serious criminal offence? Has she been fined for a civil offence such as a tax offence? Did she provide false information in the nomination process? No to all. The only basis some misguided or vengeful person or group could use to argue Grace Tame could be stripped of her award by the National Australia Day Council is to have it find that ‘the Recipient has behaved or acted in a manner that has brought the Australian of the Year Awards into disrepute.’

No rational person could possibly view chanting words about the need for the intifada is in that category.

But that won’t stop the enemies of Palestinian groups and individual supporters.

We are living in an age of McCarthyism, except this time its not communists who are being harassed and shamed but those who dare oppose Israel’s criminal policies, and the leaders such as President Herzog who are the architects and enablers of them.

Recently, The Australian ‘went after’ one of Australia’s finest criminal lawyers Philip Boulten who was appointed to the New South Wales Supreme Court. Social media comments Justice Boulten had made about the Gaza conflict were published by The Australian along with calls for him not to be appointed.

Then last week a nasty piece from the same newspaper about one of the counsel assisting the royal commission established after the Bondi massacre. Because his daughter is a pro Palestinian activist this apparently means he cannot be objective in his role.

The anti-Palestinian McCarthyism is being practiced by politicians who are captives of the Zionist lobby. The deeply authoritarian New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, South Australian Attorney-General Kyam Maher, Queensland hard right Premier David Crisafulli and others want to ban words and phrases. Once you start banning words and phrases in a democracy at the behest of a lobby group and media then you are abandoning fundamental freedoms.

Grace Tame should be congratulated on using her privileged position in the community to support Palestinians.

Finally, for the record I attended an anti-Herzog rally in Melbourne on Monday and chanted “From the River to the Sea.” And I will again.