05.02.2026

We will not be silenced

After Bondi, Zionists are cynically attempting to link the December 14 massacre to the pro-Palestine movement. Labor Tribune editor Marcus Strom reports from Sydney

The adoption of new hate crime laws by the government of Anthony Albanese of the Australian Labor Party, the banning of demonstrations in New South Wales by the state government, and its parliament considering the prohibition of certain phrases - all represent a dangerous attack on democracy and the right to protest.

Even before the last funerals of the victims of the horrific December 14 anti-Semitic massacre in Bondi had taken place,¹ Zionists had mobilised to cynically try to link the attack to the mass democratic movement in Australia in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

The Albanese-appointed ‘special envoy to combat anti-Semitism’, Jillian Segal, went so far as to say that the attack at Bondi “did not come without warning”. Explicitly linking the massacre to the Palestinian protests, she said: “In Australia, it began on October 9 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.”

Such a position should rule her out of having any publicly appointed role in Australia. But her views were echoed by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Stung by the mass support for Palestine and the horror at the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, Zionists in Australia have sought to turn the genuine outrage at the Bondi attacks to their political advantage.

Unfortunately, the Australian and NSW governments have fallen into line. This is to be capped off with the visit this week of Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Herzog has been cited in documents by the International Criminal Court as stating that all Palestinians in Gaza were “unequivocally” responsible for the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023.

Herzog has also signed bombs destined to be dropped on Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. His invitation to Australia is something the government should be deeply ashamed of. In ALP ranks, Labor Friends of Palestine has acted strongly and with principle to protest against the invitation, voicing members’ concerns, but this has fallen on deaf ears.

The Albanese government is attempting to face both ways. It offers soothing words to the Australian National Imams Council and other community leaders about cohesion and respect, while simultaneously welcoming the president of Israel. This is not ‘balance’: it is moral duplicity.

In Adelaide, South Australia’s capital, state premier Peter Malinauskas intervened to have a Palestinian writer excluded from the Adelaide Writers’ Week for reasons of “cultural sensitivity”. The ensuing political brouhaha blew the festival up, saw half the board and the director resign, only to have pro-Palestine writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah invited to attend next year’s event by the new board.

The legislative response of the federal government was to seek to placate Zionists with new laws that accelerate long-running efforts to weaponise accusations of anti-Semitism against the Palestine movement. Nonetheless, Albanese seemed genuinely shocked at the lack of bipartisanship on these legal changes from the conservative opposition and its supporters on the rightwing of the Zionist movement in Australia.

Let us be clear. The Bondi attack was a shocking act of violence aimed at Jewish people. But it should not be exploited to ram through laws that seek to curtail political speech, expand ministerial powers and chill dissent. To do so is not about protecting Jewish communities: it is about protecting a foreign state and its ideology from legitimate political criticism.

Lawyers

Leading constitutional experts have warned where this path leads. Writing in The Conversation, professor Anne Twomey cautioned that the breadth and vagueness of hate-speech provisions risk curbing legitimate political communication. Twomey highlighted the fact that an amendment by former Green and now independent senator Lidia Thorpe that “criticism of the practices, policies and acts of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defence Forces or Zionism is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, and not hate speech” was defeated 43 to 12. A disturbing result.

The first draft of the legislation sought to criminalise any individual engaging in hate speech that would “reasonably cause intimidation, fear of harassment or violence” in a person or group with a protected characteristic. Crucially, it was not necessary for anyone to actually experience such fear, just the acceptance that it could have that effect.

This provision was dropped after the Liberal Party and the Greens refused to support it in the Senate. Nevertheless, professor Twomey points out that “inciting racial hatred remains relevant to the other key provisions, which permit the banning of ‘prohibited hate groups’.” While the banning of groups requires a number of steps before the minister can do so, she warns such protections could be “overcome by appointing politically motivated cronies to positions” or arguing that dissent “increases the risk of politically motivated violence”.

Before the laws were tabled in parliament, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network ‘disbanded’. But, given their central role in mobilising the March for Australia rallies on January 26, it is clear the network continues underground. As NSW Labor MP Stephen Lawrence has argued of previous legislative drafts, “If the only thing that can save us from Nazis is unworkable laws banning them (that actually promotes them) then god help us.” Another Labor MP noted: “Fundamentally, you can’t ban an ideology.”

Even the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, conceded that the new laws will likely see any proscribed or disbanded groups simply move underground. Burgess told a parliamentary inquiry: “Of course, individuals don’t cease to exist: they’re still there in society; and obviously the problematic ones we will continue to watch if they continue to be problematic.”

The danger is that these laws are easily extended beyond their stated purpose, especially when combined with such heightened executive discretion and ‘national security’ rhetoric. This is clear in NSW, where the debate has descended into absurdity. Premier Chris Minns has manufactured a moral panic around the phrase, ‘Globalise the intifada’.

However, as any regular attendee of the Palestine demonstrations will know and the Palestine Action Group has pointed out, this was not a slogan used on these marches. It only entered Australian political discourse when Minns himself imported it - cut and paste - from Britain’s repressive public-order push that has banned the non-violent Palestine Action group. Even so, the slogan itself cannot be construed as anti-Semitic - it is a call to support an uprising against Zionist colonisation, not against Jews.

False equation

At the heart of this agenda is the deliberate attempt to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism - a false and politically dishonest framing. However, the flipside of this is that Zionists and the state of Israel do seek to convey the idea that they speak for all Jews.

But this is not the case. Like any community, Jews in Australia are heterogenous. While Zionism is supported by many, it is far from unanimous. And many young Jews from Zionist families are breaking from this racist ideology - appalled that a genocide is being undertaken in the name of all Jews.

Former director of the Adelaide Writers’ Week, Louise Adler, has written to supporters of the Jewish Council of Australia on this matter. She says:

We must not allow the pro-Israel lobby to speak for Jews as a whole; we must not accept the racism being fomented in the aftermath of the tragedy at Bondi. As witnesses are called to give evidence to the [royal] commission, it is essential to present an accurate picture of the Jewish community in Australia. The Australian Jewish News once devoted its entire front page to the headline, ‘One people, one voice’. You and I know that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Her voice shows that very many Jews in Australia oppose the Zionist onslaught in Palestine. Many Jews - religious and secular - are anti-Zionist, this author included. To claim otherwise is to erase Jewish dissent, while seeking to instrumentalise Jewish suffering to silence political opponents.

On the exclusion of Abdel-Fattah, she writes:

A long line of propagandists has deliberately argued that the mere Palestinian-ness of an author is a sufficient threat to the Australian Jewish community that they should not be permitted to participate in public life. They have, with great effect, convinced decision-makers that what is good for Benjamin Netanyahu and his murderous regime in Israel is good for all Jews in Australia also. They have already successfully inflected the Albanese government’s so called hate speech legislation. What next?

Unfortunately, “next” is the ongoing push by Zionists to bury the Palestinian solidarity movement in Australia.

For example, anti-Semitism ‘special envoy’ Jillian Segal has appointed the former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, Greg Craven, to prepare ‘report cards’ on all universities in Australia and how they handle anti-Semitism. Craven’s approach to this was made clear last week in an opinion article in The Australian, where he says the fight is now about “national defence”. He claims, quite outlandishly: “As a nation we are faced not by the occasional act of terrorism, but a focused, armed insurrection.”

Craven says that if you accept his framing that we are engaged in “defence of the realm”, then legislative weapons are needed that are “typically used in times of war”. He then casually says: “We are not talking about conscription, martial law or internment here, although a couple of decades’ house arrest for Louise Adler is appealing. But it is entirely right that we are looking at carefully modulated restrictions on expression of hateful ideas and the suppression of hateful organisations.” Clearly, Craven, under the auspices of a government body, will seek to silence and crush the Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and beyond.

Labor Tribune, and Marxists more broadly, are for unrestricted free speech - especially political speech. We oppose the banning of organisations. We oppose the criminalisation of ideas. We seek to overcome backward ideas through political debate, persuasion and organisation where necessary. And we reject the notion that democracy can be defended by narrowing the space in which people are allowed to speak.

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Consistent democrats oppose all forms of racism, chauvinism and indeed nationalism - ideologies that divide working people and sanctify state violence. Solidarity with Palestine is not hate: it is a democratic, internationalist demand for equality, freedom and justice. After the horror of Bondi, we will not accept a political settlement in which solidarity is policed and dissent criminalised. And we will not accept laws that outlaw critics.

We will not be silenced.

This article first appeared in Labor Tribune.

1. See ‘Heroes amidst the horror’ Weekly Worker December 18: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1566/heroes-amidst-the-horror.↩︎