It does not belong in our country

While well-managed by police, the thousands of protesters who turned out on Sunday to celebrate terrorism were disturbing evidence that a section of the community despises the values on which our nation is based. The veneration of images of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and the castigation of the Jewish state for genocide revealed an ugly underside of our society that must be confronted. The crowds were a mix of devoted Islamists intent on the “death of the Zionist regime”, as their signs proclaimed, and pig-ignorant dunces lauding Hamas for “breaking out of the world’s biggest open-air prison a year ago” to take on the “oppressor”. Both groups exuded anti-Semitic hatred. Their lionising of Khamenei can indicate only that they have no respect for democracy and agree with his evil-spirited sermon during Friday prayers in Tehran when he declared the massacre of 1200 Jews was “legitimate” and “justified”. That view was tantamount to supporting the depraved philosophy behind the Holocaust. The inclusion of primary school-aged children in Sunday’s protests was a disgrace, setting the foundations for yet another generation of anti-Semitism.

Following warnings from police not to display Hamas and Hezbollah flags, protesters made a mockery of the decades-long fight by Australia and its allies against terror. They brandished flags in green and gold, similar to the Hezbollah flag with a Ned Kelly lookalike waving a gun in the air, similar to the hand on the Hezbollah flag. Many wore the terror group’s colours. While flaunting Hezbollah’s symbols is illegal under section 80.2 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, the mob was determined to support the terror group while staying on the right side of the law – just.

While the mobs on the streets bellowed about “genocide”, they are unable or unwilling to grasp the fact responsibility for the tragic deaths of 40,000 Gazans killed in Israeli-terrorist crossfire during the past year and civilians dying in Lebanon rests squarely with Hamas and Hezbollah, the groups the marchers were honouring. In describing Melbourne’s rally of 6000 as a movement of love, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni unwittingly revealed how much adherents to his cause have changed our nation for the worse.

After raising their garrulous voices and supporting Iran’s cruel theocracy on Sunday, the demonstrators should have the grace to stay home on Monday as Jews commemorate the first anniversary of the darkest day in their lives since the end of World War II. The Monash University Islamic Society’s fundraising dinner for Palestine on Monday evening, in the banquet hall of a university named after Australia’s greatest military leader, a Jew, is insensitive and provocative.

For the past year the Albanese government has failed to show the moral, social and strategic leadership that was needed in the wake of the October 7 massacre in which 1200 innocent Jews died in Israel and 250 were captured, to face intense torture and suffering. But at least in a statement to mark the first anniversary of the attack Anthony Albanese acknowledged that Jewish Australians “have felt the cold shadows of anti-Semitism reaching into the present day – and as a nation we say never again”. The day carries terrible pain, as the Prime Minister says, recalling brutality inflicted with cold calculation: “innocent lives taken at a music festival; women, men and children taken in their homes, and hostages whose lives remain suspended in the fear and isolation of captivity”. Sunday’s protests become all the more problematic in light of those realities.