NSW police fail to ban pro-Palestine protests
NSW police tried and failed to ban a rally and vigil commemorating a year of the genocide in Gaza and protesting the new war in Lebanon. After being dragged through the NSW Supreme Court on spurious legal grounds, organisers in the Palestine Action Group have confirmed that both events will go ahead as planned after police withdrew their application to the court. They include a mass rally in Hyde Park on Sunday 6 October and a candlelight vigil on 7 October.
It’s a victory for anti-war activists that police were not able to ban the protests. But the episode shows the lengths the government and police are prepared to go to in order to clamp down on solidarity with Palestine.
In court, they threw every possible argument at the Palestine Action Group. A protest at Sydney’s Town Hall would be hazardous, police said, because of “the recent addition of over a dozen planter boxes”. As if dangerous flower beds weren’t enough, police also cited the long weekend and NRL grand final as reasons to ban the events. Apparently, democracy must be put on hold whenever people play rugby league half an hour’s drive from the city.
Police also argued that the Sunday rally should be stopped because it would be too large. NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb told the media that the size of recent rallies had triggered safety concerns. In court, Josh Lees from the Palestine Action Group was cross examined over how big he expected the rally to be given the situation. The “situation” is of course that Israel is continuing its year-long genocide while invading Lebanon. There will be huge crowds out on Sunday in response, but the police seem to believe that we only have the right to protest so long as there aren’t too many of us.
Police attempts to ban the protests were fuelled by a week of anti-Lebanese hysteria. The NSW government and media have waged a dog whistle campaign about the threats posed by Lebanese people at the protests, particularly after a few Hezbollah flags and portraits of assassinated leader Nasrallah were reported. Regardless of what you think of Hezbollah, it is an outrageous attack on free speech that the Australian government has deemed a major Lebanese political party a terrorist organisation and outlawed all its symbols and iconography. This would be like the Lebanese government banning symbols of the Australian Labor Party. Which organisations (and states) are deemed “terrorist” has little to do with the actions they carry out and everything to do with whether they are part of the US-led imperialist alliance.
Police used these arguments to stoke fear about upcoming protests. Assistant Police Commissioner Peter McKenna told the court: “Since the uptake of the Lebanese community coming into the protest with the Palestinian Action Group, we felt a different undertone within the protest group, it is described to me by the police on the ground as a more aggressive feeling at the moment and we’re very concerned by it”. Police referenced “heightened emotions” in the community that made the protests a “tinderbox”, and cited fears that terrorism supporters will “infiltrate” the rallies. Lebanese people are painted as dangerous extremists, irrationally upset by some “overseas issue”, as McKenna referred to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon with Australian government complicity.
During proceedings, police concocted yet another way to accuse Palestine protesters of antisemitism. They argued that a synagogue in Sydney, which was not on the planned march route, could be attacked by protesters. We’ve had 51 weeks of pro-Palestine protests in the city without incident, attended by Jewish anti-Zionists and in proximity to the synagogue. The media also ran with the narrative that holding a vigil on 7 October would be “provocative”, and repeatedly asked activists whether they would be mourning the lives of Israelis killed one year ago. As Lees pointed out, no one is asking pro-Israel groups whether their vigils will be commemorating the 42,000 Palestinians murdered by Israel. When Amal Naser, another Palestine Action Group activist, received the same line of questioning on Network Ten’s The Project, she pointed out that Zionist groups have been trying to ban our protests all year, they are not just concerned about the date. “We have every right to gather on October 7 and to mourn the loss of Gazan lives”, she said.
But activists remained strong in the face of the media barrage. “What happened today was that the police and government, under political pressure, tried to ban our protest, or tried to make it very hard for us to protest”, said Lees outside the Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon. “We have resisted these attempts all along. We always said these events would go ahead, regardless of the court outcome.”
As the Palestine Action Group said in its post announcing that the protest would go ahead: “They tried to silence us, make sure you get there this weekend to make our voices heard! Stop Arming Israel! Stop the Genocide in Gaza! Hands of Lebanon!”
