Think the Sydney Opera House chant ‘Where’s the Jews?’ is inoffensive? You’re in denial

Palestine supporters rally outside the Sydney Opera House on October 09 last year. Picture: Getty Images

Remember the hundreds of Middle Eastern men who last October swarmed on the Sydney Opera House days after the mass murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas? They were exuberant and triumphant but also indignant. Not at Hamas – quite the opposite, actually – but at the NSW government’s decision to project the colours of the Israeli flag on the building as a show of support.

They expressed their anger by lighting flares, burning an Israeli flag, and chanting anti-Semitic slogans. The police response was to let them run riot and to warn members of the Jewish community to stay away to ensure their safety. In fact the only person arrested that night was a businessman carrying a rolled-up Israeli flag near a pro-Palestine Town Hall rally. His showing solidarity for Israelis constituted a potential breach of the peace, he was told.

And according to some, we did a grave injustice to those angry men waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags. It was reported at the time, and video footage seemed to confirm, that some were chanting “Gas the Jews”. But as announced last week, police dispute this. Citing what they say is an expert analysis of audio recordings, they claim there is no evidence that phrase was uttered. Instead, police stand by the audio expert’s conclusion the protesters were chanting “Where’s the Jews’.

But hang on, did not police have signed statements from several witnesses who heard the protesters say, “Gas the Jews”? Yes, said NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon. However, the witnesses could not ascribe those words to an individual. What’s more, he said, police would not be going back to the witnesses, given their expert’s “overwhelming certainty” about what was said. A case of ‘computer says no’, you could say.

Not surprisingly, the high dudgeon and hypocrisy that followed reached stratospheric levels. According to the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, this video was used to “sow discord and hate towards Palestinians and our supporters”. Claiming the subtitled video was “faked,” he called for politicians and media outlets that had relied on it “to spread hate and fear” to apologise. Theirs was a campaign “to discredit and vilify protesters,” he said.

Allow me to be the first to do so, Nasser Mashni. I apologise for discrediting and vilifying the peaceful protesters who chanted “f..k the Jews” and “Zionist pigs”. I acknowledge their chant of “Where’s the Jews” was serene and conciliatory. I concede that had any Jews made themselves known to the mob at that point, the demonstrators’ immediate reaction would have been to buy them a gelato and discuss ways of effecting a rapprochement. Heaven forbid we question your narrative that Palestinians and their supporters are the real victims here.

Police had confirmed the video had not been doctored, but that did not stop Mashni from falsely claiming otherwise. As for his condemning others for spreading hate and fear, he is one to talk. Claiming last year on radio that “the power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism,” he called for the destruction of Israel. It would be a falling domino that would “destroy Western imperialist control of the world” and make the world a “far better place”, he said.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils called for authorities to “take decisive criminal action against those “disseminating false claims” to “unfairly vilify Palestinians and Muslims”. Such behaviour, claimed AFIC president Dr Rateb Jneid, undermined the “delicate fabric of social cohesion”.

You may recall that in 2021 the AFIC invited two members of Afghanistan’s new regime to appear in a live webinar comprising a “stellar panel of speakers”. One of them was long-term Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, who at the time had not ruled out a return to stonings, public executions and forced amputations of limbs as a means of ensuring social cohesion in Afghanistan. Jneid later withdrew their invitations but only after a public backlash.

According to the Australian National Imams Council, social cohesion is also high on the list of its priorities. It too has urged authorities to “prosecute those who disseminated the video and used it as a basis to foment and pursue false allegations”. If you have any questions about the ANIC’s stance or its commitment to social cohesion, just direct them to public relations director Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun. He is the same sheik who, just hours after the October 7 atrocities began, told a pro-Palestine rally in Lakemba, Sydney, that he was not only “smiling” and “happy” but also “elated”.

“This is the day we’ve been waiting for,” he said.

Let’s also give a big shout-out to NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Lydia Shelly. Last week she criticised NSW Premier Chris Minns for having strengthened laws allowing prosecution for recklessly or intentionally inciting violence against members of religious groups and those of other classifications. He should have delayed that decision pending a parliamentary inquiry and a review of the video, she said, adding this was “another example of how due process, civil liberties and human rights can be swept aside under the guise of ‘expediency’.”

Incidentally, this is the same civil liberties council that in 2016 insisted “the present problem of vilification of Muslims in our society” was such that it demanded they be “recognised under NSW law as being members of an ethno-religious group” for the purposes of prosecuting hate speech. Why the change of heart?

As for Shelly’s maintaining that Minns should have held off on the current reforms until the video was analysed, perhaps she has a point. Let’s forget for the moment that what happened in October was the biggest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. And let’s disregard the fact there was a whopping 738 per cent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in October/November 2023 in Australia compared to the same period in 2022. Likewise let’s not remind ourselves that Middle Eastern residents of Sydney’s western suburbs were dancing in the streets last October and letting off fireworks to celebrate the massacre of Israelis. Aside from all that, what have Jewish-Australians to worry about?

Spare a thought also for the long-suffering Palestinian-Australian activist, author, lawyer and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. Having insisted from the start she could not hear “Gas the Jews” in the footage concerned, she feels vindicated but miffed, lamenting there will be no “retractions and apologises (sic) from those in the business of propaganda in service of genocide”.

The day after the Opera House protests, Abdel-Fattah tweeted effusively that “Never has such solidarity been shown to Palestinians.” Conversely, she said she was “disgusted” by the blue and white lighting on the sails of the building.

You might remember Abdel-Fattah from her appearance on all Muslim-women panel on ABC’s The Drum following the murder of 51 worshipers at two Christchurch mosques in 2019 by an Australian terrorist. “White settler societies,” she angrily declared during that appearance, were “fundamentally founded on violence”. And “violence”, she said, was “innate to these societies”.

According to her, Australia is no different. “For brown and black bodies living in this country, violence is part of our life daily,” she said. “This is part of living in a white supremacist society”. As for the Christchurch massacre, she attributed it to “media giving platforms or normalising the idea of free speech as a veneer for hate speech”.

But as for what happened at the Opera House, she says “I stand by the protest”. And as she told Sky News host Erin Molan last October, she does not see Hamas as a terrorist organisation, notwithstanding her claim that she condemns the organisation for its attacks.

A question for Dr Abdel-Fattah – what would your reaction be if, following the Christchurch atrocities, hundreds of white Australian men waving Southern Cross flags gate-crashed a candlelight vigil for the victims whilst loudly chanting “Where’s the Muslims”? And what would you say of those who supported such a demonstration?

What happened at the Opera House that evening is a foreboding reminder of the folly of trying to appease fanatics, whether religious or otherwise. You are in denial if you tell yourself that the chant of “Where’s the Jews” was innocuous or somehow less offensive than the reference to mass extermination. Wo sind die Juden?