These pro-Palestinian street protests have incubated extremism and will likely lead to terrorism

Make no mistake: these street protests incubate extremism. That leads to terrorism. . Picture: NewsWire/Nadir Kinani

It shouldn’t have happened this way. In 12 months of political ineptitude and strategic blindness, the Albanese government let domestic sympathy for terrorist groups grow to the point that Australia risks violence and breaking our social fabric. Such stupidity from our nation’s leaders is unforgivable.

After decades of working in national security I can think of no other time a government has so determinedly looked the other way while a terror threat openly grows.

Make no mistake: these street protests incubate extremism. That leads to terrorism. This is Hezbollah’s business model, exporting Iranian-backed, trained and funded terrorism globally from Lebanon since the 1990s.

The end point of this group radicalisation on our streets is that we will have a terror attack in an Australian city. Looking back after that it will be easy to see how it was caused by tolerating increasingly violent behaviour of angry mobs; allowing a core group to organise, build networks, recruit young helpers, taunt police and bask in the publicity.

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It is excellent that the Australian Federal Police is investigating reports of people carrying “prohibited symbols” and making “prohibited chants” in support of the proscribed terrorist group Hezbollah. On Wednesday a 19-year-old woman was charged with “cause public display of prohibited terrorist organisation symbol”.

The more important need is to expose the people planning these events and recruiting young and stupid flag-bearers. How farcical it is that a law about flags and slogans is what finally gets a police response beyond gentle crowd management. This, after a year of increasingly angry and aggressive marches, of relentlessly threatening Jews, bystanders and media, of closing city streets and university campuses, of defacing war memorials and politicians’ offices.

The current soft-handed policing approach is directed from the top. Frontline police are unhappy to be put in the position of ignoring the law and acting instead as concierges to thugs. I have heard this first hand from an individual – Jewish, of course – whose business regularly has been picketed and graffitied by protesters. NSW frontline police would have been happy months ago to apply a firmer approach.

We have seen two models of policing crowds in the past couple of years. A much tougher approach was meted out to groups protesting against Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccination measures.

Those protesters covered a lot of different issues but they did not attack Jews, Israel, the US or indeed the historical and cultural foundations of modern Australia. I’m not aware of any accusations of terrorist ideology against anti-vaccination protesters.

And, as we know, in several cases these protesters where absolutely thumped. Policing involved regular and direct use of physical force and pepper spray along with arrests and charges being laid. There has been similar heavy policing directed against tiny groups of Nazi numbskulls.

No one should feel sympathy over the treatment handed to the Nazis but policing the Covid-19 protesters was heavy-handed, to say the least. What this shows is that the style of policing applied to the Gaza (Hamas) and now Lebanon (Hezbollah) protesters is the product of choice, not an accident.

Why was the softly softly approach mandated? Australians should know who, at federal and state levels, directed this behaviour – a practice applied from the first protest at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 last year right up to now.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas massacres, the Albanese government is awkwardly trying to harden its approach to the protest marches.

Perhaps Labor focus groups are showing that a year of tolerating protest extremism is poisonous to voters. It also may be that the government is getting an intimation from intelligence sources that the core of the protest group is planning more violence.

I propose six elements to build a tougher national response to Australia’s growing extremism threat, ranging from firmer policing to changing our foreign policy.

First, protests should no longer be allowed to shut down traffic and pedestrian movement in Sydney and Melbourne. Police should constrain gatherings to a single location, making it clear that access and exit to that location and the site itself will be under video surveillance. Tougher policing will be needed to ensure protesters stay in designated locations.

That’s a different approach to escorting protest marches, but one that still allows people to express their views, all on film. The key point is that CBDs must not be closed and bystanders must not be intimidated.

NSW Police and the state government appeared to make an unnecessary capitulation in allowing protests this weekend before the anniversary of the Hamas atrocities. There is nothing inherent in freedom of speech that says protesters can march where they want. If as seems likely these protests lead to violence and ugly scenes, the decision to give in to protester demands will look very stupid in retrospect.

For the clueless outer ring of keffiyeh-wearing young radicals, their experience of the past 12 months has been a cost-free romp at public expense. Many of these Che Guevaras will exit stage left if they think a police record might compromise their university grant and job prospects.

Second, by all means charge 19-year-olds, but it’s more important to go after the movement’s organisational heart. Police and ASIO need to act on the picture they already will have assembled of key ringleaders. These firebrands need a visit from our police and security agencies to be told they are under the closest observation. They must be reminded that there are limits to the public nastiness that any reasonable society can tolerate.

A message should be delivered: Living in Australia is a privilege that comes with personal responsibility to obey the law. Any protesters on visas who break laws will have their visas cancelled.

Third, the government needs desperately to open a private discussion with Islamic communities.

We have been waiting in vain to hear the voice of so-called moderate Islam in Australia, providing full support for the idea of community harmony, a rejection of Jew hatred and a willingness to walk away from Middle East sectarian hatreds – the thing that prompted migration to this country. If Muslim communities will not step forward to self-manage extremist ideation among their youth, we have seen the end of successful multiculturalism in Australia.

Government needs to take that message to Muslim Australian citizens. We are standing at an absolute cliff edge, risking lasting damage to community harmony.

The fourth step would be to do an urgent intelligence analysis of international links between Hamas and Hezbollah operatives and possible Australian connections. Make no mistake: there will be links. We saw deep ties involving radicalisation, grooming, recruiting and funding between ethnic diasporas in Australia and al-Qa’ida and, later, Islamic State.

Similar ties will absolutely exist in the current circumstance and probably help to explain why a number of the Hamas tourist visas were cancelled when ASIO finally was put on the case in March, six months after the Hamas attack.

Hezbollah in particular has an international strategy designed to build support in Shia diaspora communities. If European, African and North American experience is a guide, it is more than likely that undeclared Iranian intelligence operatives and Hezbollah agents will be facilitating, or trying to facilitate, connections between diaspora communities in Australia and the terror group.

The definitive book on the subject by American scholar Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, details the terrorist organisation’s networks, plotting and terror attacks in numerous countries.

In Australia we have been lulled by the myth that terrorism is usually the product of individual radicalisation – so-called lone wolves. But terrorism isn’t just about kids in bedrooms looking at computer screens.

Protest activity since last October 7 does not look like it springs from that lone-wolf context. It is too organised, too large, too distributed and too persistent.

The protesters are media-savvy and know how to manage a body of people seeking to disrupt our cities. That means money, training and centralised thinking.

Step five would be to open discussion between our Five Eyes intelligence partners, especially the US and Britain, and Israeli intelligence (if they are prepared to talk with us).

Too much of Australia’s approach to this issue has been driven by our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the enthusiastic enablers of Penny Wong’s fantasy foreign policy quest to spring a fully formed Palestinian state into existence. Wong should explain who, between Hamas or Fatah in the West Bank, will represent the new Palestine at the UN.

Before that implausible moment Australian policy should focus more urgently on what’s driving Iran and its terrorist proxies. What is the possibility that Hezbollah’s next move is to launch another international wave of terror strikes as it has done in past decades? The risk of exposure for Australia will be much higher than 12 months ago.

What this means is that we need to rethink our intelligence policy settings. The unfocused campaign against politically motivated violence – no mention of Islamist extremism – is no longer the right approach for ASIO even though this was announced just a few months ago.

Finally, step six: The government needs to close the Iranian embassy, expel the ambassador – not least for his flagrant anti-Jewish comments – and get rid of identified Iranian intelligence opera­tives. Before doing that, we would bring home our representation in Tehran. DFAT will protest this will lose a vital point of communication with the Iranian regime. Well, what good has that link done us since the mullahs came to power?

Australia should be leading a push among the developed democracies to impose harder sanctions on Iran, not just because of its nuclear weapons ambitions but because Tehran is the principal author of the strategy to strangle Israel that led to October 7, Hezbollah’s rockets and the Houthi attacks from Yemen on shipping in the Red Sea.

Instead of endlessly calling on Israel to cease fire – an action that hands victory to terrorists – the Albanese government should apply its laser-like policy gaze to combating the lead source of Middle East instability, Tehran.

Will any of this happen? Readers already know the answer to that question.

Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-12).