Sunday’s Gaza protest a glaring example of tone-deaf intransigence

The streets of Melbourne fell victim on Sunday to a glaring example of tone-deaf intransigence.

As they have done regularly for the past almost two years, protesters marched and chanted along the thoroughfares of Melbourne to register their disgust at the war in Gaza. They wore keffiyehs and chanted slogans. Many chanted “Death to the IDF” and some held placards with the same message, or others such as “Glory to the martyrs”.

Yesterday, of all days, they should have paused. No actions are taken in isolation. There is always context.

Hundreds of protesters marched in Melbourne’s CBD on Sunday, two days after an attack on a synagogue and an Israeli restaurant.Credit: Chris Hopkins

On Friday night in Melbourne, three attacks occurred against Jewish people. To march two days later shows an appalling lack of judgment by protesters and organisers. Instead of thinking, “What is the consequence of our actions in light of what happened on Friday?” they went, blinkered, onto the streets.

There is no parallel here with events in Gaza. While many feel a deep sense of despair over the mounting death toll in that conflict and are desperate to see it end, no sensible Melburnian wants to see the tragic and deadly Israel-Gaza conflict imported and played out on our streets with violence and animosity.

Yet, to our dismay, that is what appears to be happening.

On Friday, East Melbourne Synagogue, which was founded in 1857, only six years after Victoria, was targeted in a firebombing attack. On the same night, about 20 people raided the Israeli restaurant Miznon in Hardware Lane in the CBD, yelling, grappling with staff and knocking over tables, chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Miznon out of Melbourne”. Diners, understandably, were in fear. In Greensborough, three cars were set alight and the wall of Lovitt Technologies Australia, a weapons company with links to Israel, was graffitied.

No one was physically injured in the attacks. A Sydney man appeared before court yesterday over the synagogue incident, charged with reckless conduct endangering life, reckless conduct endangering serious injury, criminal damage by fire, and possession of a controlled weapon.

Daniel Aghion, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says: “This is not just an attack upon Jews or the Jewish community. It is an attack upon our way of life.”

A woman holds a sign calling for death to the Israel Defence Forces. Credit: Alexander Darling

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said yesterday that it was not “simply an [alleged] arson attack; what matters here is there is an attack on Australia, an attack on Australian values. There’s been some reporting that no one was physically injured – that doesn’t mean no one was harmed. The community here was harmed. The Jewish community in Australia was harmed, and we were harmed as a nation.”

The Age makes no argument against the right to protest. Mass demonstrations of people through history have brought about change, called governments and leaders to account. Protest is a pillar of democracy. Last Friday night, however, was not an act of protest. It was thuggery. It will achieve nothing but spreading fear among innocent people and raising tension in this country.

The latest attacks follow numerous acts of intimidation and violence against Jewish institutions in Melbourne and Sydney. In December, the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea was set alight and gutted. Last month, a synagogue in South Yarra was targeted.

Governments have responded. In Victoria, legislation has passed cracking down on hate speech and vilification and making illegal the Nazi salute, but other moves to ban face masks and carrying flags of banned terrorist organisations, and restrictions on where protests can be held, are still to be enacted. These laws can only be deemed successful if they diminish the frequency of antisemitic actions.

History cannot be placed in a box and tied neatly with a piece of string. It is a tapestry of light and dark strands, ravelling and unravelling. Events in the Middle East, such as the Hamas massacre of October 7, the following war in Gaza, the deaths of thousands and the destruction of cities, are such strands. How we view them, and act on them, is a matter of conscience.

Meanwhile, on Melbourne streets on Sunday, a march was held without any good conscience as to its effects on others after Friday’s attacks. It was an exercise not of protest but of deafening dissonance.

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