Adam Bandt on back foot over his party's anti-Israel campaigning
The mainstream political assault against the Greens over Gaza led by Anthony Albanese and his opponent Peter Dutton is surprising only because the unity hasn’t been shown in this way earlier.
Ever since the Israel Defence Forces struck in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 atrocities last year, members of the Victorian Greens have regularly headlined the Free Palestine Melbourne rallies in the centre of the city.
Two state Greens MPs – one now a federal candidate – have spoken at the rallies in the past month and federal Greens leader Adam Bandt has addressed the crowd in the past; mostly the attendees are worried members of the Islamic community.
But anti-Semitism is easy enough to find, just as radical hardliners are.
Bandt spoke on October 22 and implored people to attend on November 5; I attended that month and was floored by the overt expressions of anti-Semitism that peppered the gathering. I kept the photographs to show my children what anti-Semitism looks like.
There were signs imploring the Star of David be thrown in the bin, false claims that “Gaza Looks Like Auschwitz” and demands that Jewish business interests be boycotted amid racist chants. You couldn’t miss it, the worst offenders hanging around the front of the crowd near the stage.
By early in the new year, prominent members of the same Palestinian movement were celebrating martyrdom in the name of their people on the streets of Melbourne.
In the early days of the revolt over the Israeli bombing campaign, Bandt acknowledged the suffering caused by Hamas, but as the months have rolled on the broader Greens position has hardened at the same time that police privately have been concerned about the behaviour of some members of the protest movement.
In many ways, the Greens have taken a giant political gamble by associating with hardline protesters and certainly speaking to crowds where anti-Semitic campaign material is visible.
Despite Bandt’s protests this week, the Greens have a national problem as they pursue the hardline activist vote in the inner cities.
There is plenty of evidence of the Greens’ poor judgment, going beyond the claimed involvement in political protests at electoral offices and MPs’ events. Bandt denies any wrongdoing and has threatened defamation against the nation’s chief law officer.
In December last year, NSW state MP Jenny Leong, the Greens member for Newtown, apologised when critics said she was drawing on an anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Jews as an octopus when she talked about tentacles and Jewish influence.
“The Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups,” Leong was reported saying. “They rock up and offer support for things like the campaign against the 18C racial discrimination laws, they offer solidarity, they rock up to every community event because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power.”
Deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi has posted on her Instagram page a photo of a young student holding a poster showing a stick figure dumping an Israeli flag into a bin with the words: “KEEP THE WORLD CLEAN.” These types of posters have been ubiquitous since October 7 at pro-Palestinian rallies attended by Greens.
The Greens in the Northern Territory this year dumped a candidate for posting on Facebook last September that Australia needed a government that wasn’t “owned” by Zionists and corporations.
In April, The Australian reported that Greens MP for Griffith Max Chandler-Mather had spoken at a rally in Brisbane where he alleged Israel was carrying out “a manufactured and engineered famine” and “genocide in Gaza”. This newspaper reported that he did not mention Iran or discuss the escalation in tension following Tehran’s launch of missiles and drones into the Jewish state. Rally attendees carried signs declaring “Iran has the right to defend itself”.
After the October 7 raids, the Greens promoted a rally by Free Palestine Melbourne, with the rally poster including a map of a so-called Palestine – all in red – that replaced Israel.
Bandt commented on the poster and said: “Join us in support of Palestine this weekend.”
Former Greens senator, now independent, Lidia Thorpe has been a high-profile opponent of Israel, backing the Block the Dock movement, which is behind port protests targeting Israeli-owned ships.
Block the Dock, a national movement, has posted photos and a version of events supporting the protesters who invaded the Carols by Candlelight event in Melbourne on December 24, where a video shows one person saying: “Racist f..king police.”
Greens-linked social media accounts also have reportedly partnered with Disrupt Wars, an activist group that promotes hardline political protests.
The anger in the mainstream political classes has intensified after anti-Israel protesters have raided political offices and focused their attentions on MPs and their staff, with the accusation that Greens have been involved or not done enough to oppose the illegal behaviour. These accusations are strongly contested by Bandt.
Victorian Labor MP Ged Kearney, a Palestine supporter, wrote to Bandt, complaining about how an event held in April had been marred by protesters, she said, including Greens.
“Aggressive and violent behaviour is legitimised if you allow Greens members to conduct themselves in the way they did on that night and it is incumbent on you to address this immediately and indeed ultimately consider their future in your party,” she wrote, complaining about a climate change event on April 30 that she hosted in her Melbourne electorate with a cabinet minister.
“As Leader of the Greens, I’m hoping you would agree that violent behaviour should be strongly condemned and ask that you make a statement acknowledging as much, reiterating that violence has no place in Australian political discourse.”
Her office was targeted on Tuesday by an unknown criminal.
Bandt, facing a wave of condemnation from mainstream politicians and the Jewish community, threatened Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus with defamation over the controversy over damage to offices.
Dreyfus had claimed that Bandt and the Greens had a case to answer for over the offices but Bandt hit back, insisting Greens MPs weren’t involved in violence at MPs’ electorate offices.
He also directly attacked Anthony Albanese.
“The Greens condemn anti-Semitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. The Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza,” Bandt said.
“We’re seeing an attempt by the Prime Minister to distract from Labor’s support for the ongoing invasion and slaughter in Gaza and Labor’s refusal to take any meaningful action to bring pressure to bear on the extreme war cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will not be lectured to about peace and non-violence from a Prime Minister and Opposition Leader who back the invasion of Gaza and continue to do so right up to this day, even as we see the tragic suffering unfolding before our eyes.”
The mainstream political assault against the Greens over Gaza led by Albanese and his opponent Peter Dutton is surprising only because the unity hasn’t been shown in this way earlier.
Both Labor and the Coalition believe the Greens have been targeting the pro-Palestinian demographic as a vote-harvesting exercise.
In a purely cynical sense, the Greens’ gamble of shooting at Israel and the Australian Jewish community may come with mixed results.
It may alienate some many older-left wing Australians who know what the Holocaust represents, and in their place the Greens have focused on hardline younger activists in inner-city seats.
They want the latter’s vote.
It is a political gamble, relying heavily on the ignorance of young Australians who have been appalled by the social media vision of the Netanyahu government’s fight back against the atrocities of October 7.
The scale of the loss of life in Gaza has, for many young people, outweighed any capital that Israel and the Jewish people have built up in Australia since the end of World War II.
For political researcher Kos Samaras, of RedBridge Group, the Greens are punting on a win-loss strategy, one where the hardline young activists are appeased but older Greens millennials – aged 28 to 43 – are challenged by the cynicism.
“They are hardline young activists and he’s (Bandt) pandering to them because he thinks that’s the Greens vote,’’ Samaras says. “But they are losing on the other end.”
Samaras says the risk for Bandt and the Greens is that the older millennial vote will peel off to Labor, which is also facing challenges in Muslim seats, including in Sydney’s west and Melbourne’s north and northwest.
Neither Albanese nor Dutton are aligned with Greens political values; the Prime Minister loathes the minor party, which is a product of street-level political combat with the minor party as it has nibbled away at Labor territory.
Albanese exploded over the issue of MPs’ offices being targeted by pro-Palestinian supporters, claiming the Greens had fuelled the vandalism enveloping parliamentarians.
“Enough is enough,’’ the Prime Minister said. “All of us have a responsibility to prevent conflict in the Middle East from being used as a platform for prejudice here at home. There is no place for anti-Semitism, prejudice of any sort, Islamaphobia, in our communities, at our universities or outside of electoral offices and online.”
Dutton added: “The Greens political party is properly and rightly condemned.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said he had been consistent in his criticism of the Greens ever since the terror attack on Israel that triggered the war.
“For the past eight months we have been calling the Greens out for their disinformation campaign, their patronage of often violent rallies and protests, and their forays into open anti-Semitism, all of which has frayed our social cohesion and endangered lives,’’ he said.
“I’m glad the government and opposition are now unified in this realisation. Unity of decent people is the best way to fight extremism.”
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler accused the Greens of misinformation.
“Ever since 7 October, the Greens’ statements and activities have encouraged the intimidation of the Australian Jewish community,” he said.
“Their actions are a danger to social cohesion. We welcome the moral clarity of Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton in calling these out.”
This, of course, leaves the Greens isolated among the grown-ups in the federal parliament.
Having been accused of playing with aspects of the extreme end of the Middle East debate, the minor party must assess whether the gamble will pay off.
That will be known only at the ballot box.
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