Steve Price: Planned pro-Palestine rally on October 7 should sicken every right-thinking Victorian
Holding a pro-Palestine rally on the first anniversary of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust should sicken every right-thinking Victorian. Jacinta Allan and Anthony Albanese have failed the state.
Opinion
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Monday marks the grim anniversary of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
October 7 saw the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas cross the border into Israel and the slaughter of 1200 men, women and children and the seizing of hostages. Many of those hostages are either dead or haven’t been seen since.
It should be a day of sober reflection for everyone here in Melbourne, but the fanatics have a different view. Israel-hating pro-Palestine groups are sending out invites on social media to attend a rally which will march through the CBD to Parliament House. Disgracefully what will happen next should sicken every right-thinking Victorian.
Rally organisers are planning a 12-hour memorial on the steps of your parliament starting at 8.30pm and ending with the raising of the Palestinian flag.
What an obscene provocative act of bastardry that is.
This is Melbourne 2024, and you must ask the question: why do these people hate this country so much?
The 12-hour vigil is no accident. The closing hours of that vigil will mark exactly a year to the minute that bloodthirsty terrorists left Gaza to hunt down innocent Jewish people, some attending a music festival.
At least one female victim was raped then murdered and her near naked body paraded through the streets of Gaza. Babies were killed in their cots and innocent residents on a nearby kibbutz were gunned down in their living rooms. Again, the biggest slaughter of Jews in one day since the holocaust.
How is it that any right-thinking government – federal or state – allows this event to take place? And please don’t throw the free speech argument at me or the idea that it is somehow your right to protest, because the people who mount those arguments are pathetic.
NSW police sensibly went to court to stop any protest and forced organisers to rethink this madness and promises have been made not to turn out Monday. We will see.
As usual, the hard left Labor government that runs Victoria is on the wrong page when it comes to Palestine and all the protests we have endured for the past year, including the Hezbollah-loving crowd that turned out last weekend. More of that shortly.
Unlike NSW, Victoria does not have a protest permit system that requires organisers to apply for any rally or protest march to take place.
Predictably Premier Allan has no intention of introducing that system in this State and argues Victoria Police have all the powers they need. What rubbish.
That legislation then allows the NSW police commissioner to go to court – as she did last Tuesday night – and apply to have the permit cancelled. In fact, every state except Victoria has a protest permit system.
In March this year our Police Commissioner Shane Patton formally requested Police Minister Anthony Carbines to consider introducing the permit system here. The usual suspects including the Human Rights Law Centre urged the state government to “reject” any permit proposal, arguing it would “undermine democracy” and take away the right to protest peacefully.
Remember, Monday October 7 marks a bloody terrorist attack on innocent people and as Jewish groups have pointed out, let them protest any day they want, but leave October 7 alone.
And surprise, when Victoria Police asked for permit powers in this state, Premier Jacinta Allan rejected the idea outright and said such a system “runs the risk of being a very lengthy, unwieldy, time-consuming process for both the police and the court system”.
What a load of left-wing political garbage. Her refusal was all about giving radical misfits a free hand to disrupt central Melbourne at will and meant any chance of stopping the divisive 12-hour memorial to a terrorist slaughter disappeared.
Not surprisingly the Melbourne City Council – unlike some other councils – has no permit system either (a tip to potential Lord Mayoral candidates in the upcoming elections: put that on your promise list).
Of course, come Monday we will again see Hezbollah flags and framed pictures of dead terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah in the crowd, something pro-Palestinian rally organisers try to shrug off as a minority group. Really! Australians must speak out loudly about how disgraceful this is and ponder what sort of people we have allowed into our country.
Nasrallah — the hero of these people — ordered rocket attacks on October 8 last year in support of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel. He ordered his troops into Syria in 2012 where half a million Sunni civilians died. In 2020 – 2750 tonnes of ammonia nitrate in the Hezbollah controlled Beirut harbour exploded leaving 300,000 people homeless and 218 dead.
Nasrallah through his career praised holocaust deniers, called Jews “miserly cowards” and worse in April 1983 planned the suicide bombing of the US embassy in Beirut. That explosion killed 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans and 14 innocent visitors at the embassy. I could go on but how can we allow people to wander our streets celebrating this butcher?
Clearly, our federal hate laws are useless and need to be redrawn and beefed up to allow police to arrest anyone carrying such emblems and photographs, even if our state government doesn’t have an appetite to do that.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of course can’t bring himself to come out and call for a ban on these gatherings planned for Sunday and Monday. He said they shouldn’t go ahead and called them “incredibly provocative” and “not advance any cause”. Hardly steely leadership — what he should be doing is encouraging the Australian Federal Police and their state counterparts to arrest and fine anyone carrying the flag of an Australian declared terror group or photographs of Nasrallah.
As for the Allan state Labor government — which is doing nothing — can I remind the premier what she, as a cabinet minister back on September 18, 2021, did to prevent a protest rally taking place.
Almost exactly three years ago Victoria Police asked then Premier Daniel Andrews for permission to shut down the public transport system for six hours between 8am and 2pm in and out of the CBD.
Police also closed roads leading into central Melbourne. The protest was planned against Victoria’s Covid lockdowns and mandatory Covid vaccination rules especially on building sites.
On September 21 those same police in riot gear used pepper spray and rubber bullets on construction workers and the government shut building sites for two weeks.
Three years on, nothing – weakly turning over Melbourne to a 12-hour pro- Palestine rally timed to the minute to coincide with the slaughter of 1200 innocent Jews.
Make sense of that if you can.
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