A New South Wales government plan to restrict protests in the wake of the Bondi beach terrorist attack has been condemned by two Jewish groups who are vocal supporters of the Palestine movement, with one warning against “allowing culture wars to distract and divide responses to Sunday’s antisemitic mass shooting”.
The state premier, Chris Minns, announced on Wednesday that Labor would move to effectively ban protests when there was a “terrorism designation” – which gives police expanded “special powers”. Minns also vowed to strengthen gun laws.
The protest crackdown would mean people couldn’t lodge a so-called form 1 to hold an authorised protest during terrorism designations. That would mean protesters could be charged under the Summary Offences Act if they marched down the road and blocked traffic, for example.
Minns said on Wednesday: “I’m firmly of the view, having spoken with many community members, not just from the Jewish community, but right across Sydney, that protests right now in Sydney would be incredibly terrible for our community, in fact, they would rip apart our community. Particularly, protests about international events.”
The premier added: “I’m not aware of any [planned] protests at the moment.”
While there have been weekly pro-Palestine protests against the war in Gaza over the past few years, there have only been two major events after a ceasefire was announced in mid-October. Organisers also said there were no protests planned.
‘The protests had nothing to do with the attacks’
Max Kaiser, the executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, said his group was concerned culture wars could divide communities and distract from the need for a unified response to antisemitism.
Minns said that the proposed change was not directed at any one group, but Kaiser feared it was directed at the pro-Palestine movement, after some people criticised it in the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting.
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“We have been inundated with support from our Palestinian allies and the wider movement, who are appalled at this antisemitic attack and stand against all forms of racism,” Kaiser said.
“It’s disturbing that the media and politicians are maligning this movement when there exists very real sources of antisemitism on the far right, including neo-Nazis and the proliferation of extreme antisemitic propaganda on social media.”
Jesse McNicoll, who is part of the group Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney, said it was “outrageous” that the pain of his community could be used to shut down a movement “opposing genocide”.
“The protests had nothing to do with the attacks,” he said.
Police have alleged the Bondi beach gunmen, 24-year-old Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid Akram, 50, were “inspired by Isis”. Fifteen people were killed when a Hanukah festival event at Archer park was targeted.
Asio and police confirmed they had some knowledge of Naveed, with the prime minister saying an investigation ran for six months from October 2019.
“[Naveed Akram] was examined on the basis of being associated with others,” Anthony Albanese said this week. “The assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence.”
The federal government’s antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, said on Monday: “This did not come without warning. In Australia, it began on 9 October 2023 at the Sydney Opera House. We then watched a march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge waving terrorist flags and glorifying extremist leaders. Now death has reached Bondi beach.”
Segal said on Tuesday there was no “silver bullet” and combating antisemitism required a “multi-factorial, multifaceted approach”.
On Thursday, Albanese was asked about Minns’ plan to restrict protests, and if he thought protests contributed to Sunday’s attack, or whether he had concerns about future demonstrations.
“Hatred starts with language, and then moves to action and vilification, and then can lead to an escalation of it,” the prime minister told reporters.
“The day of the Opera House demonstration. I thought it was completely reprehensible. I called for it to not go ahead. That does nothing to advance any cause.
“We need to be able to have political discourse in this country, which is respectful, and to respectfully disagree, but a line has been crossed over and over again in the way that some of this debate has been conducted.”
On 9 October 2023, a Palestine Action Group rally walked from town hall to the Sydney Opera House where the Israeli flag was to be projected after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October. A fringe group then joined and chanted antisemitic slogans.
David Ossip, the president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, said on Monday that “for two years, people have paraded in our streets and universities calling for the intifada to be globalised, a catchphrase which means kill Jews wherever you find them”.
“Last night, the intifada was globalised and came to Bondi. What we’ve seen has been the logical progression. Demonising Jews with rhetoric, which slowly builds up to acts of violence and then acts of violence which last night took life.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sky News this week: “This is the worst fears of the Jewish community. It’s been bubbling under the surface for a long time and now it’s actually happened.”
The former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is Jewish, on Wednesday demanded the government ban pro-Palestinian protests he claimed had become “incubators of hate”.
Josh Lees, a spokesperson for the Palestine Action Group, said he had received death threats since Sunday’s mass shooting. He said the inflammatory comments about protests had turbocharged vitriol against a movement that opposed both genocide and antisemitism. He stressed the group had no protests planned.
“This movement, which has always rejected antisemitism and all other forms of racism, has been a shining example of unity and a rejection of racist division,” he said.
‘Eroding our democratic freedoms’
Minns said he wanted to restrict protests during terrorist designations on the basis rallies could “both stretch police resources and secondly, add to community disharmony and, as a result, a combustible situation in the state”.
The premier acknowledged he couldn’t promise protests would not take place because it was not within his or the police commissioner’s power to do so. But Minns said: “We can promise the streets won’t be taken over with a mass demonstration that can lead to community disharmony and divisions. We need a summer of calm and togetherness, not division.”
The premier said the government was “looking at the timescales” regarding how long a terror designation would last, “to ensure that it’s consistent with, obviously, our obligations under the Australian constitution [and] the implied freedom of political communication”.
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has opposed the proposed changes to protest laws.
Timothy Roberts, the council’s president, said: “We cannot have a ‘summer of calm’ and ‘togetherness’ with a government eroding our democratic freedoms.”
“Connecting the horrific events of the Bondi attack in any way with recent protests continues the harmful trend of conflating criticism of the actions of the government of Israel with antisemitism,” Roberts said.
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