Condemnation is our best weapon against vile hate speech directed at Jews

In a free society, we must tolerate the intolerant. But incitement to violence is the bright line where free speech stops because if we tolerate those who incite violence, we won’t stay free for long.

A wicked celebration of this evil happened on Monday night at the Sydney Opera House, our most iconic building, writes Janet Albrechtsen. Picture: Getty Images

Forty babies murdered, some beheaded by Hamas terrorists who stormed a kibbutz. Two young new parents cowering in a corner, covering their tiny twin babies from the terror, were slaughtered. Young people at a music festival mown down. Grandmothers hunted and murdered. Young boys taken from their mothers and fathers. Ordinary Jews – not soldiers – dragged from homes, taken hostage. There is no banality to this evil. None.

On the other side of the world, a wicked celebration of this evil happened on Monday night at the Sydney Opera House, our most iconic building. Pro-Palestinian protesters knew the media would capture their joy, beaming images of their support for Hamas terrorists around the world. Video clips show many in the crowd chanting “Gas the Jews” and “F..k the Jews”.

Some set off flares and firecrackers, to cheers. Cowards in this crowd covered their faces. None was arrested. A local Jewish man was arrested, then released, for holding an Israeli flag. Hamas must be thanking its supporters in Australia for the free publicity.

Mark Spiro was arrestedat a pro-Palestine rally. Picture: Adam Yip

On Sunday night local imam Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun told a raucous crowd at Lakemba after the vile attacks on Jews in Israel last Saturday that he was elated by those Hamas terrorists. “My brothers, my sisters, I’m smiling, I’m smiling, and I’m happy, I’m elated,” he said. “It’s a day of courage, it’s a day of happiness, it’s a day of pride, it’s a day of victory.”

This hatred and incitement to violence directed at Australian Jews is an assault on us all, on our society. These Muslims imbued with jihadi fanaticism celebrating the Hamas terrorists should be roundly, firmly, swiftly condemned by all.

It’s all very well to say one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But when is it morally acceptable to celebrate freedom fighters who slaughter babies? No level of Palestinian frustration about historical grievances justifies the terrorism in southern Israel last weekend, or the celebration of that terrorism in Australia. When will Palestinians accept that their own leaders have failed them?

That makes it only more odious that some of our own politicians, including federal Labor ministers Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, from electorates with many Muslim Australians, failed swiftly and roundly to condemn the appalling pro-Palestinian merriment on a night meant to honour murdered Jews.

If a group of neo-Nazis took to the streets chanting “Gas the Jews”, what would Labor politicians say? Even those absurd Greens MPs who have engaged in moral equivalence would be quick to condemnation.

How did it come to this?

John Howard was right to say: “You can have strong views, you can argue about the Middle East, but for people to invoke the memory of the most appalling crime in humanity, the extermination of six million Jews in gas chambers, is terrible. It’s totally beyond the pale … it is a catastrophic descent from civility that I never thought I’d see.”

But he doesn’t locate the source of failure. Neither do others who point the finger at the moral equivocators in the left.

The harder truth is that both major political parties in the most populous state of the country have failed us.

The Liberals, in government for many years in NSW, dithered about confronting the scourge of anti-Semitic behaviour and, worse, incitement to violence against Jews. Not because they have a deep-seated belief in free speech but because they simply couldn’t muster the courage to confront the Muslim community with the uncomfortable fact that some among them incite violence against Jews.

It is a sign of the times that the Liberal Party has a deeper attachment to laws that catch people for causing offence, and over-regulating so many other parts of our lives, than laws that hold people to account for inciting violence.

The Labor government, under Chris Minns, got off to a dreadful start with Attorney-General Michael Daley telling the Sydney Jewish community to stay home for their own safety from the tribute to Jews murdered by terrorists. As a first step, the apology from Minns on Wednesday is welcome – and classy. But it’s not enough.

Before we go to the heart of the issue, let’s deal with the confusion. It is not true that people need a police permit to protest. That would be crazy in a free society.

If a group seeks and receives authorisation from police, or a court, that does not render the protest legal. Authorisation simply provides immunity from some potential summary offences that otherwise may apply, such as obstructing roads.

Another bit of nonsense is the suggestion police could have stopped this protest. How? By arresting hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters? A government cannot stop a protest either. Neither should we allow that. If we allow the apparatus of state power to stop protests, it won’t be long before all kinds of protests are stopped.

The NSW Premier added to the confusion later in the week vowing that pro-Palestinian protests planned for Sydney on Sunday wouldn’t go ahead, while NSW Police Force acting commissioner David Hudson said, “We don’t have the powers to stop people from convening.”

The fact is that free speech can be ugly. Even people with views we detest have the right to vent those views publicly. In free society we should draw the boundaries of free speech widely because if we don’t the law will be used to shut down views that some people simply find offensive.

Our best weapon against offensive speech is condemnation. We, meaning government and the people, should condemn those Muslims who went to the Opera House on Monday night to celebrate the actions of Hamas terrorists against Israel.

This was a night for Australians to pay their respects to Jews who were murdered. But the vile celebration of evil by some Muslims was not illegal. In a free society, we must tolerate the intolerant. None of that should be in dispute.

We don’t need government or police to protect our feelings from offensive words. We might argue over the need for, and proper reach of, vilification laws. But we sure as heck should be able to agree on the need for laws that protect us from people who incite others to violence. Incitement to violence is the bright line where free speech stops because if we tolerate those who incite violence, we won’t stay free for long.

This week, NSW Liberal opposition leader Mark Speakman blamed the NSW Labor government “for the ugly scenes; the anti-Semitic slogans, the hate speech, the burning of a flag, the lighting of flames”.

“None of that should have been allowed to happen,” he said.

Speakman said there had been “multiple failures” by the NSW government in allowing the protests, and singled out Police Minister Yasmin Catley for being “asleep at the wheel”. He accused her of being a serial non-performer and said she should “reflect on her position”.

Politics really is a hideously hypocritical business. Speakman has been in parliament, and in a Liberal government, long enough to know that his own side dithered over cracking down on racial vilification or even incitement to violence. If NSW has become a powder keg of dangerous anti-Semitic behaviour, it’s because of a lack of political will across many years by government, including many years of Liberal governments.

Up until five years ago, there was a single criminal provision in the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act – section 20D – that prohibited racial vilification. Across decades and despite egregious examples of racial vilification, not a single prosecution was launched under that provision. Not one.

There was no prosecution of extremist imam Ismail al-Wahwah, head of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia, when he called for “jihad against Jews” in 2015 during a sermon at a mosque in Lakemba. Nor when he described Jews as a “cancerous tumour – it must be uprooted and thrown back to where it came from”. Instead, that incitement to violence and other videos equally wicked were freely distributed online.

Even before that, in 2012 there was a parliamentary inquiry into the ineffectiveness of NSW’s incitement laws, then a report a year later, then no action – for more than five years.

Only in June 2018 did the Liberal government introduce a new section in the Crimes Act – section 93Z – that made it illegal for people to incite violence against others. The maximum penalty is three years in jail and $11,000 fine.

To his credit, this happened when Speakman was attorney-general in the Berejiklian government. But section 93Z has never been used.

Monday evening is a test for law enforcement in NSW. Those Muslim protesters who yelled “Gas the Jews” or other words that incited violence need to be identified and prosecuted. If others incite violence in coming days and weeks, they need to be prosecuted and jailed to demonstrate that we take incitement seriously. An apology from the Premier is not enough.