Peta Credlin: Landmark demonstrations display hate for our flag, culture and country
By hijacking Sydney's iconic landmarks, pro-Palestine protesters raise questions about Australia's protest laws and immigration values, writes Peta Credlin.
So, answer me this – why do we put up with people who hate our culture, our country and our flag to yet again become the symbol of Australia internationally?
Because that’s what has happened, as images of Jew-hating protesters, blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ricocheted around the world last week. All designed to blame Israel for the humanitarian disaster of Gaza but not the terrorist group that started the war and still won’t release its hostages.
It’s just wrong on so many levels.
First, blocking one of Sydney’s main transport arteries for hours mocked the authority of the democratically elected Premier who’d said (backed by the Opposition Leader) that the pro-Palestine (effectively pro-Hamas) march should not go ahead.
Second, it politicised the judiciary when a single Supreme Court judge allowed an appeal against the Police Commissioner’s refusal to grant a permit because she accepted the argument put up by the protest organiser (a self-declared anarchist) that the urgency of the “humanitarian crisis” justified extreme forms of protest.
Third, it identified one of Australia’s most iconic sites with a savage denunciation of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, engaged in an existential struggle against Iran and its Islamist terrorist proxies.
Just like Sydney’s other internationally recognised landmark, the Opera House, was hijacked two days after the October 7 atrocity by Islamist protesters, well before Israel had launched one missile in retaliation for its 1200 dead.
Fourth, given the obvious reality that many of the estimated 90,000 bridge marchers were recent migrants from the Middle East, the protest speaks to the failure of our immigration policy in promoting Australian values. And not insisting that new migrants leave old hatreds behind.
And fifth, the general weakness of an officialdom that can’t bring itself to say “no” to a noisy minority and instead allows them to tarnish us all by allowing an iconic landmark to be associated with such a protest that, until quite recently, would have been regarded as un-Australian.
Why was it ever up to a judge to make what’s clearly a political decision about the merits of a pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protest? The Premier should have immediately appealed the judge’s decision – and sought a restraining order preventing any march going ahead before the appeal was heard – and, in the event of an adverse decision, then urgently moved to change the law to establish beyond doubt that it’s elected and accountable parliaments and governments, not unelected judges, that should set any conditions on the right to protest.
It’s not as if the pro-Palestine mob haven’t made their opinions known on multiple occasions. Weeks before Israel mounted its war against Hamas, local Islamist activists were proclaiming across the airwaves their joy at the slaughter of innocents. Hardly a weekend has passed since then without mass demos in Sydney and Melbourne, often tying up city streets for hours.
The right to protest should not extend to routine disruption of ordinary life or what’s become a blatant attempt to intimidate all who disagree, especially Jewish Australians.
At last weekend’s protest in Melbourne, there was a large crowd chanting, “Peter Khalil, blood on your hands … we will not forget your crimes,” referencing the federal Labor MP, born in Melbourne to Coptic Egyptian parents, whom the mob thought had been insufficiently one-sided on Palestinian issues.
It’s noteworthy that Labor’s steady shift to a more pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli position has not satisfied the activists, who don’t really want better food distribution in Gaza nor an end to the fighting via release of the hostages, but will accept nothing less than the total destruction of Israel in a new holocaust.
It’s a strange moral universe we’re now inhabiting where numerous media outlets seized on one photo of an emaciated child (with a pre-existing medical condition) next to his apparently well-fed mother and brother to illustrate an alleged genocide by deliberate starvation but seemed unmoved when Hamas released a photo of an emaciated hostage quite possibly digging his own grave.
NSW Premier Chris Minns deserves praise for initially speaking out against the bridge protest.
But when are our authorities going to grow a spine and end the double standard of anarchist, pro-terrorism protesters being allowed to run roughshod over the rights of everyday Australians and denigrate how we are perceived overseas by hijacking our iconic landmarks.
THUMBS UP
Giggle CEO Sall Grover for appealing the court judgment that men can be women when biological reality is crystal clear, scientific and immutable.
THUMBS DOWN
The Albanese government for watering down the English-language requirements for some visas. It’s just plain dumb!
Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm
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