The weekend protests in Sydney and Melbourne saw all kinds of banners, flags and photographs adorned in defense of Hezbollah and Hamas.
They included photographs of slain terrorist leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Nasrallah, including posters declaring that “a nation led by martyrs will triumph.”
Hezbollah and Hamas are among the terrorist organizations. It is a crime to display symbols of such organizations.
The law is not old: the criminal code was changed less than a year ago, apparently to avoid exactly the type of scenes we witnessed in Australia’s two largest cities over the weekend.
However, the AFP issued a statement saying that simply carrying a flag of a terrorist organization or a photograph of a terrorist leader is not enough to break the law.
If that’s true, the law needs to be updated, and quickly.
Scenes like those we saw over the weekend have no place in Australia.
A protester holds a photograph of slain Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah during a pro-Palestine demonstration in Melbourne on Sunday.
Flags representing these terrorist organizations waved by young people hiding their identity behind masks, presumably in an attempt to evade police detection, cannot be justified under the banner of freedom of expression.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has called for action. Labor Finance Minister Katy Gallagher called it divisive when he did so.
Is Dutton the one who divides because he is willing to call out the bad behavior of a few? Give me a break.
The prime minister took a deep breath and said what happened over the weekend was “concerning”, refusing to name the terrorist organization in doing so.
The government announced a special envoy to “combat Islamophobia”, as if that would solve the worsening situation on our streets.
The right to protest is something that democracies value, but there are limits.
Where are the voices on the left expressing concern about what we are witnessing now?
Remember when the then opposition leader Tony Abbott addressed a rally outside parliament and as he did so posters appeared behind him saying: ‘Juliar is Bob Brown’s bitch’?
It was a demonstration against carbon taxes.
Abbott claimed not to have known the signs were there, and condemned them when confronted with the images.
Either way, the offensive nature of those banners – and they certainly were offensive – pales in comparison to the posters now calling for martyrdom on behalf of an officially listed terrorist organization.
And some federal MPs have even attended these weekend demonstrations and others like them in recent months, presumably as a show of support.
As reported yesterday, Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi was present in Sydney over the weekend.
Where is the outrage on social media that still permeates today when it comes to Abbott’s much less evil actions more than a decade ago than we are now witnessing?
The hypocrisy is off the charts.
Labour’s political timidity in the face of growing public defense of violent terrorist organizations is no doubt because it does not want to face a backlash in Muslim communities in outer metropolitan electorates ahead of a close election campaign.
Protesters at a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne earlier this year. There is no suggestion that those pictured above support Hamas or Hezbollah.
As repugnant as that reasoning is, the Greens are also looking to tap into pro-Palestinian advocacy in the inner city areas of Sydney and Melbourne.
We’ve already seen how anti-Semitic (and out of control) these protests can get on college campuses.
One wonders if some of the left’s most radical advocates – who draw partisans on a variety of issues designed to “crush capitalism” – ever stop to consider how they would live under the terrorist regimes that have been in charge in some parts. of Palestine.
In short, they probably wouldn’t live under them for long, because most leftist values on everything from sexuality to drug liberalization and many other freedoms of expression are anathema to the way in which, for For example, Hamas rules Gaza.
And that’s just for starters.
But given the luxury of protections in this country, these perennial opponents of the Western values from which they benefit choose to side with the type of organizations that would take away their rights.
Politicians must overcome this stupidity and look after the national interest. In the case of the Labor government, that means doing much more than it does now.