Rabbi pleads with Rudd in Washington to help end Melbourne’s pro-Palestinian CBD protests

Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, has been asked to convey to Canberra Jewish concerns about the impact of the weekly pro-Palestinian demonstrations in central Melbourne.

At a meeting in Washington last week with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an expert on online hate and terrorism with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the former prime minister agreed to make representations to the Australian government on whether the protests could be shifted away from the CBD streets.

Australian ambassador to the US and former prime minister Kevin Rudd.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The high-level diplomacy, held amid a series of firebomb attacks targeting Jewish communities in Melbourne and Sydney, was in response to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s decision last month to issue an “extreme caution”  travel advisory to Jews planning to visit Australia.

It came as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held a national cabinet meeting with state and territory leaders, at which Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said his officers were investigating whether young people had been radicalised online and paid by malicious overseas actors to commit antisemitic crimes in Australia.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry called for a national cabinet meeting six weeks ago, after suspected terrorists set ablaze the Adass Israel synagogue in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea. National cabinet was hastily convened on Tuesday after the latest attack, a firebombing and defacing of a childcare centre in the Sydney suburb of Maroubra.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, named after the famous Nazi hunter, is a Jewish human rights organisation dedicated to combatting antisemitism.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Rabbi Shlomo Kohn inside the Adass Israel synagogue after the December arson attack.

Cooper, who is the centre’s associate dean and director of global social action, wrote to Rudd on December 9, three days after the Adass-Israel synagogue attack, informing him of the travel advisory.

The January 14 meeting between Cooper and Rudd at the Australian embassy in Washington was confirmed by the rabbi and the embassy. Rudd did not respond to questions about his discussion with Cooper.

Speaking to this masthead from the centre’s headquarters in Los Angeles, Cooper said that while freedom of speech was sacrosanct, the regular Sunday protests in Melbourne had turned the CBD into a “no-go zone” for Jews.

“It is a tactic to bully Jews into silence and take over physical locations,” he said.

“The net result is to cede control of a specific part of the city to one group, at the exclusion of other people.”

Cooper said the antisemitic arson attacks should be investigated for potential links to global extremist groups. The fire that destroyed the Adass Israel synagogue is being investigated by Joint Counter-Terrorism Team detectives.

“If governments, federal and local, are serious about trying to curb what is going on, it is not enough to look at isolated incidents. You have to look more broadly at what is going around the world,” he said.

Cooper said Rudd agreed to pass on his concerns to the Australian government but, for now, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre would not rescind its travel advice.

Melbourne’s pro-Palestinian protests have been held every Sunday – starting outside the State Library of Victoria – since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants slaughtered 1200 people in southern Israel. That attack provoked military reprisals on Gaza that – at the time Sunday’s ceasefire came into force – were estimated by the Palestinian Health Ministry to have killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians.

While the Albanese government’s response to the war in Gaza and to rising antisemitism in Australia has emerged as a bitterly contested issue ahead of this year’s federal election, there is bipartisan support in Victorian state politics for the Melbourne protests to come to an end.

On Monday, Premier Jacinta Allan pleaded with protest organisers to lay down their placards.

“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,” she said.

On Tuesday, State Opposition Leader Brad Battin added his voice to those of Jewish and business leaders who want the Sunday protests to either cease or shift to a less disruptive site.

Victorian Liberal leader Brad Battin.Credit: Justin McManus

“I never want to silence people and their freedom of speech, but this has now gotten to a stage where the impact on businesses and the fear it creates in another community of coming into Melbourne outweighs these people’s rights,” Battin said.

“They have got to start taking responsibility for their actions and move away from where they are. It has become a joke in Melbourne.”

Greens Victoria leader Ellen Sandell maintained her support for the Sunday protest, which the party’s MPs have regularly attended and spoken at.

Sandell said it was not up to politicians to say when and where people could protest.

“This ceasefire [in Gaza] is an important step but we hope that politicians don’t use this moment to wipe their hands of Palestine, because we actually need governments to keep up the pressure for a lasting peace,” she said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion said the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s stance and the meeting between Rudd and Cooper showed the damage being done to Australia’s reputation as a safe place for Jews and other ethnic minorities.

“Whenever I speak with Jews abroad, anywhere in the world, they ask what is going on in Australia,” he said.

“The ongoing rallies create a perception overseas that the hate is continuing.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion.Credit: Simon Schluter

Aghion said the Melbourne protesters – some of whom last Sunday chanted “Zionism is terrorism” – were implacably opposed to Israel’s existence.

“What the [executive council] would like to see out of national cabinet is a permit system or alternatively, a designated protest area as we have in Victoria for abortion clinics,” he said.

The weekly protests are endorsed by a coalition of pro-Palestinian activists, unions, the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and other left-wing groups.

Australian Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni has vowed that the protests will “continue unabated” despite the ceasefire in Gaza.

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