Pro-Palestine activists snub Premier Jacinta Allan, pledge to continue CBD protests
Two major pro-Palestine groups behind weekly marches through Melbourne’s city centre have defied calls from Premier Jacinta Allan to call off their actions following a ceasefire in Gaza.
Victoria
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Pro-Palestine groups have pledged to continue to march through Melbourne’s city centre, defying calls from Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan to end the “disruption to our streets”.
The act of defiance comes as a leading US anti-Semitism organisation said it had called on Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, to lobby the federal government to do more to crack down on the weekly gatherings in major cities such as Melbourne and Sydney.
It also follows Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holding a national cabinet meeting to address anti-Semitism following shocking attacks including a firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne and an attack on a childcare centre in Sydney.
A ceasefire struck in Gaza prompted high-level pleas to call off the weekly marches.
Those calls have fallen on deaf ears with two major pro-Palestine groups active in Melbourne saying they will continue to gather.
Australia Palestine Advoacy Network president Nasser Mashni told the Herald Sun his organisation’s weekly marches would continue “until Palestine is free”.
“Our protests, which take many forms, continue unabated, because this ceasefire is not the end – it is a pause in Israel’s ongoing genocidal violence, doing nothing to change the lived reality for Palestinians who continue to live under illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid,” he said.
“We have a lot of work ahead to hold our own government accountable.”
A Free Palestine Coalition Melbourne spokesperson accused Ms Allan of “micromanaging” their organisation’s “solidarity efforts” as the group vowed to plough ahead with its so far 67-consecutive weeks of protests.
“Jacinta Allan and Australian politicians should be doing their role of applying pressure to ensure the ceasefire is enforced, not micromanaging our solidarity efforts,” the spokesperson said.
“Free Palestine rallies are taking place in every international city, it is the Vietnam of our generation with clear popular support and our politicians should recognise this.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper from US Jewish organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Center met with Mr Rudd last week, telling him while the organisation supported freedom of speech, the weekly protests in Melbourne were turning the CBD into a “no go zone” for Jews.
“We’re not attacking the right of individuals or organisations or communities to protest,” he told the Herald Sun on Wednesday.
“Let them do so, but not in a way in which everyone else, in this case specifically Jewish (communities), are barred from their own downtown.
“It’s up to each democracy, each city, community to figure out at what point do you cross the line from freedom of speech to incitement.”
Rabbi Cooper said Mr Rudd had pledged to pass his concerns on to the federal government.
He also welcomed Ms Allan’s call for the protests to stop.
“I welcome the fact that an important official has officially said ‘stop this right now’,” he said.
The meeting with Mr Rudd came a month after the centre issued a travel advisory for Australia following the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.
“We are not convinced that Jews are safe as the authorities have failed to take necessary measures to protect Jewish communities from increasingly belligerent and violent targeting by Islamists and other extremists,” a letter issued by the organisation said at the time.
Ms Allan this week publicly called for an end to the weekly protests in Melbourne, condemning their “disruption to our streets”.
“There is hurt on both sides here,” she said.
“What does not heal that hurt, what does not do the work to mend our social cohesion, is continuing to bring that sort of disruption to our streets.
“If they can find a space for a ceasefire in the Middle East, surely we can find a space for these protests to come to an end in Melbourne.
“If the guns can be silenced in Gaza, then surely we can have peace brought to the streets in Melbourne, in Sydney, right around the country.”
Both Ms Allan and Opposition Leader Brad Battin have rejected calls to introduce a permit system for protests in Victoria.
But Mr Battin called for move on laws to be toughened to assist police in stopping protesters blocking roads and businesses.
Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns — whose electoral office in St Kilda was vandalised with anti-Zionism graffiti last year — has also called for the weekly protests to be stopped.
“The sooner we can get back to this not being a feature of every day in Australia, I think it’s a really positive thing,” he told ABC radio on Wednesday.
“Clearly there’s been incidents of anti-Semitism at the protests, and some of the behaviour of some people have clearly crossed the line into anti-Semitism, but in saying that people have a right to protest.
“There is a point to be made around being respectful of other people in the spaces of our city, I do think that a lot of businesses have been affected by this, and the people in the city are a little bit frustrated by the fact that this has been every single week.
“I don’t think that they’ve been effective in bringing forward peace.”
The national cabinet meeting on Tuesday resulted in an agreement to create a national database to track anti-Semitic incidents for a more co-ordinated response.
It was also revealed that the federal police is set to investigate if overseas actors have been paying local criminals to commit crimes against the country’s Jewish community.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has not withdrawn its travel advice for Australia.
Originally published as Pro-Palestine activists snub Premier Jacinta Allan, pledge to continue CBD protests
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