The violence surrounding protests against the visit of Israel’s president was not an accident of crowd control. It reflects a deeper political failure – where authority suppresses dissent rather than confronting uncomfortable truths about Gaza, protest rights and democratic responsibility.

In official explanations of violence outside Sydney Town Hall on Monday evening 9 February, it sounds as though police were only trying to maintain public safety through various professional measures taken against the thousands outraged that the President of Israel, charged with incitement to commit genocide, should be in the country.

Those explanations are false. Behind the extensive police powers to control and suppress protest lies a cancerous-like cowardice, facilitated by a cornered Prime Minister and by an Israeli sympathising, authoritarian NSW Premier.

Cowardice can be nurtured by pleasure in dominating, by fear of losing control, by being frightened to face truths, by deceits in pretending that all is well when it manifestly is not.

Restricting protests in order to stifle concern about slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, or the PM asking the Australian public to turn the temperature down so that justifiable outrage about the Bondi massacres will deflect attention from an ongoing genocide in Palestine, is a cowardly technique. And the PM is not the worst offender, even though government cowardice began when wedged by the Zionist Federation into supporting their invitation to the Israeli President. Who runs the show you might ask?

Suppression-oriented Premier Minns delegates responsibility for his anti protest laws to the chief of NSW police who is happy to oblige. In and out of uniform, cowards appear as strong men, usually men, who like to manhandle or beat up people. There’s no manliness in the police thuggery witnessed in Sydney streets on Monday.

Facile Premier Minns – or is he just naive – with no recognition of his own hypocrisy, says on Tuesday’s news ‘NSW police are not punching bags’. His holier than thou stance is shown alongside a man held down by police who are punching him repeatedly in the kidneys.

We then switch to the Prime Minister in Federal parliament describing police action in general, “what the police were trying to do was sensible.”

As if thuggery on one man is insufficient, other police punch Greens MP Abigail Boyd in the head and shoulder, knock her over and are completely indifferent to her explanations of who she was and the civil and legal reasons for her presence at a legitimate, peaceful protest.

Cameras switch to police apparently unaware that their presence increases conflict, comprehending little, annoyed, then angry at the sight Moslem citizens in prayer on public pavements. Then we witness no rationality, no civility, only the raw emotions of cowards not getting their way. The men kneeling in prayer are seen being picked up, removed and thrown aside. We’ll never know if deep seated prejudice affected police conduct, but the question should be raised.

On Tuesday, the mood of thuggery on the streets moved to the House of Representatives when a Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown inquired of the Prime Minister Minister whether the invitation to the President of Israel had undermined the unity of the country, whether the PM would condemn police violence and send Herzog home. In response, before the Prime Minister could answer, the opposition benches found a unity which had eluded them for months. United in their apparent support for Israeli slaughter in Gaza, wanting to be seen to be brave in their dislike of protest about Herzog, and apparently unable or unwilling to know much about genocide continuing during a ceasefire, one of the esteemed members of the newly reformed Coalition, was heard to advise colleagues as to how to deal with the Greens MP. “Rip her apart,” he was reported as saying. It sounds as though this was exactly what he said. Asked by the speaker to withdraw his comment, the offending MP did so.

But further support for cowardice camouflaged by thuggery was not far away. Keen to revive his image as macho man at large, former Prime Minister Tony Abbot recommended that police accused of punching protesters should receive a commendation and in future be armed with tear gas and be able fire rubber bullets.

Abbot would never regard himself as a coward but when denial of the existence of a genocide, a failure to face truths, is being multiplied by cowardice evident in acceptance of authoritarianism as the way to conduct politics, policing and even techniques for debate, there should be cross party and widespread public concern.

To meet the Prime Minister’s requests to lower the temperature, the country needs to replace the cowardice with sufficient courage to admit the truths about a genocide, the truths about the values of freedom of speech and the right to protest.

Cowardice may be disguised by violence but is demeaning. Courage is a way to speak truths. Courageous action can be mentally and physically life enhancing, encourages justice, depicts what Bertolt Brecht called ‘the bread of the people’  and in current Australian culture could infect almost everyone and lower the temperature. Try it.