Steven Miles egg-thrower targeted singer Deborah Conway earlier
A pro-Palestinian activist arrested and fined for trying to egg Queensland Premier Steven Miles at a Labour Day march has been revealed as the same woman who targeted Jewish singer Deborah Conway.
A pro-Palestinian activist arrested and fined for trying to egg Queensland Premier Steven Miles at a Labour Day march has been revealed as the same woman who targeted Jewish singer Deborah Conway at a book event in April.
Footage obtained by The Australian shows the woman who was fined $1392 on Monday after throwing eggs towards Mr Miles and senior members of his cabinet pounding on the shopfront glass of Brisbane’s Little Bird Bookshop chanting “Palestine will be free”, with a sign reading “stop the bloodshed”.
The woman, 25, joined the protest of about a dozen people on April 13, where “from the river to the sea” was chanted and anti-Israel signs were brandished, including one placard featuring the Star of David painted over in red with the slogan “F..K ZIONISM”.
Inside the store, the ARIA award-winning Conway, who has been cancelled from a number events and faced online abuse as a result of her pro-Israel views, was hosting an event to promote her recent memoir, Book of Life, to an audience of about 30 people.
When Conway arrived at the suburban bookstore at Paddington, in Brisbane’s inner west, the protesters were waiting.
“As we got out of the car and rounded the corner, the protesters were ready. They were very confrontational, shouting accusations at me of supporting genocide, of being indifferent to Palestinian children’s suffering”, Conway told The Australian.
“I said something to the effect of ‘You are being anti-Semitic, this is not what I think, you are completely wrong, you don’t know what I think’. But they shouted over me.
“When we got into the bookshop, they proceeded to hold up signs, which were very graphic.
“There was a lot of pounding on the glass, a lot of chanting and screaming.”
The event was an “author’s talk” on Conway’s memoir, and had nothing to do with the Middle East, the songwriter said. “They were relentless in their attempts to intimidate me and anyone who trying to go in or out of the store.
“It was 45 minutes of being called a genocidal maniac; the absurdity, the utter detachment from reality, the refusal to engage, made it all the more distressing. It felt medieval.”
Another Jewish woman at the event, who did not wish to be identified, described the protest as “hate-filled”.
“I felt very unsafe, I felt threatened, I felt bullied and I felt very frustrated that there were numerous police there who did nothing, and allowed the protesters to bang on the windows, to basically harass anyone who wanted to come,” she said.
A Queensland police spokesman said officers were called to the protest and remained to “keep the peace”. He confirmed police “took no action”, with protesters dispersing after Conway left.
Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies president Jason Steinberg said some of the event’s attendees were descendants of Holocaust survivors “and they’ve reported to us that they were distraught, distressed, crying. I think this is a clear escalation of what we’re seeing, not only now on the streets of Brisbane but also across Australia and globally,” he said.
“Now more than ever, we need political leadership to stand up and say ‘No, this isn’t the society we want in Queensland or Australia, and it must stop’.”
The Australian tried to contact the woman and organisers of the bookstore protest.
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