Nova Peris blasts pro-Palestinian use of Aboriginal flag

The Aboriginal flag is being misappropriated by pro-Palestinians activists, according to the former senator who led the campaign to ensure anyone can fly it for free.

Nova Peris with Julian Leeser at the Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Picture: Nikki Short

The Aboriginal flag is being misappropriated by pro-Palestinians activists at rallies around Australia, according to Indigenous former senator Nova Peris, who led the campaign to ensure anyone can fly it for free.

Ms Peris’s advocacy resulted in the Morrison government purchasing the copyright of artist Harold Thomas’s flag design in 2022, meaning it can be used without fear of infringing copyright.

However, during a visit to the Sydney Jewish Museum on Sunday, Olympic gold medallist Ms Peris, a former senator for the Northern Territory, denounced use of the Aboriginal flag by pro-Palestinian activists.

Ms Peris joined Jewish MP Julian Leeser at the museum in Darlinghurst as Aboriginal flags were flown at a Friends of Palestine rally in the centre of Perth on Sunday. In November, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni, on ABC’s Q&A program, wore a pin that joined the Aboriginal and Palestinian flags.

“I am really saddened,” Ms Peris told The Australian.

“I am really quite upset and disgusted also how the Aboriginal flag has been misappropriated.

“I led that campaign to free our flag … that’s our sacredness.”

Ms Peris said the Jewish community in Australia had fought for Indigenous Australians for decades, including to overturn the myth of terra nullius and later in the unsuccessful campaign for constitutional recognition through an Indigenous voice.

Jewish barrister Ron Castan QC devoted a decade of his life to the Mabo case that gave Indigenous people rights in law, she said.

Mr Leeser moved from Peter Dutton’s shadow cabinet to the Liberal Party backbench rather than support the No case in the voice referendum, she said. “It was the Jewish lawyers who stood with us. Julian lost his shadow ministry because he wanted to be on the right side of history.

“(And) terra nullius does no longer exist because of the Jewish lawyers that fought for our identity. So everyone who is getting around now on your social medias, you’ve got it wrong.”

Ms Peris said the Jewish community understood what it meant to be connected to country even if they did not live on it.

“We had to explain to them our connectedness to country and they fought for our recognition,” she said. “So for any Indigenous person to deny the Jewish connectedness, you need to understand history. Go and learn it.”

Mr Leeser said the relationship between the Jewish community and Indigenous Australians went back to at least 1938, when Aboriginal man William Cooper led a March to the German consulate in Melbourne.

Less than a month after Kristallnacht, when Jewish people were targeted in widespread rioting and looting across Germany, Cooper’s stand against “the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government in Germany” was unique.

Amid fears Invasion Day rallies on January 26 could become a platform for anti-Jewish sentiment, Mr Leeser said: “I just don’t think it’s what Australia Day is all about. Australia Day is a day for us to reflect on where we’ve come from and where we’re going as a country. It shouldn’t be taken over or hijacked by some other group with another agenda.”

Mr Leeser said Jewish leaders had seen the importance of standing with their Indigenous brothers and sisters as fundamental to their own contribution to Australia.

“I just want to praise Nova, Marcia Langton, Warren Mundine and others who have stood with our community in this time of a rise in anti-Semitism,” he said.

“I think our communities understand what it is to be a racial minority in this country … we also understand the importance of connection to land, whether it is connection to land in this country or as it is in our community, connection to land in Israel.”