Grace Tame claims she is not the story after leading chants of “from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada” before 6000 people at Sydney Town Hall, then feigning shock at the backlash.
The rally targeted Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was in Australia this week with his wife to support our Jewish community scarred by the deadly Bondi attack.
The now-viral clips show ugly moments between activists and police.
But they are the last seconds of a longer story in which organisers have, for years, praised rule breaking and curated their grievances for the camera.
That is because now in this country, vile rhetoric is nothing unless you max it out as an industrial martyr by provoking, resisting, filming, editing and milking your outrage for evermore.
It is the very definition of that old adage: an empty vessel makes the most sound.
And it is also why stripping Ms Tame of her Australian of the Year title would be a strategic blunder.
Not because her critics are wrong to object to “globalise the intifada”.
Far from it.
Australians, particularly Jewish Australians, hear in that phrase something acutely menacing and historically freighted.
They are entitled to speak out on this, no doubt.
NSW Premier Chris Minns is moving to stamp out the phrase under the state’s tightened hate-speech laws, declaring it “violent rhetoric” that has no place on our streets. Correct.
Going from understandable objection to official punishment for Ms Tame would unfortunately not alter a mindset the rest of us are absolutely sick of.
It would detonate it for this pathetic slogan brigade.
Calls from figures such as Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce to revoke Ms Tame’s 2021 honour, for her advocacy on behalf of survivors of child sexual abuse, may satisfy a desire for accountability.
Former PM Tony Abbott also voiced his objection, telling Sky News: “She should be embarrassed and ashamed.”
I do understand that because to watch that footage of Ms Tame and her followers’ response is disgusting and troubling in equal measure.
It’s easy to spew anti-Jewish slogans when you are not Jewish because they are not aimed at you or the Australian Jews killed on Bondi Beach at a gathering meant to celebrate life and love.
But in this case it would reduce a serious discussion about antisemitism and social cohesion into a drama about institutional retaliation.
It would shift the terrain from argument to identity: poor, brave woman punished for speaking her “truth”.
That space is far more comfortable and far more politically useful for Ms Tame and her ilk who are disingenuous because infamy and headlines have always been the objective here.
Ms Tame responded in an Instagram Story to criticism, arguing that “politicians and the press can deflect on me all they like but I’m not the story”.
She continued: “Yesterday at a peaceful protest against the arrival of Israeli president Isaac Herzog on our shores, nonviolent attendees acting well within their rights were met with unprovoked police brutality.
“This should terrify us all. Democracy is eroding before our very eyes.”
Following the Hamas barbarity of October 7 and amid heightened tensions, the NSW government declared President Herzog’s visit a major event.
That decision was administrative and a sober assessment of risk in a febrile environment, rather than some kind of ideological stand.
The Supreme Court declined to disturb those arrangements and so the protest was not banned. It was regulated. There is a difference but one these protest absolutists prefer to blur.
Police sought to negotiate a route and offered Hyde Park as a manageable space. But how could the protestors cause trouble if they agreed to that?
“I thought that was a distressing scene,” Mr Minns said at a press conference on Tuesday.
“You know … in the circumstances where six weeks ago we lost 15 members of the Jewish community to a hate crime, a violent terrorist uprising, that’s what the consequences of ‘globalise the intifada’ mean, a violent uprising in Sydney’s streets.
“I can only imagine what those families thought when they saw someone screaming it from the steps of Town Hall, the pain they would have gone through.”
What happened was the predictable end point of two years of protests by performance activists who assumed the law was negotiable and confrontation was the strategy.
The lesson from the police this week was different: not anymore.
Adults brought teenagers into a volatile crowd on Monday which was being ordered to disperse then expressed shock when police treated them like every other person refusing to move.
Police didn’t create this collision. They inherited it.
The harder question is not why force was used but why so many people, including children, were in a situation where force was always going to be the end point.
And don’t forget those woke allies cheering from the sideline and rushing to issue self-entitled press releases condemning police.
Amnesty International Australia’s Occupied Palestinian Territory Spokesperson, Mohamed Duar, said: “The right to protest is protected under international law. What we witnessed last night was a serious assault on those rights and a deeply troubling display of State-sanctioned violence.”
And this from Belinda Lowe, Director of Campaigns and Communications at the Grata Fund.
“Australians have watched with horror as ICE agents inflict violence against protestors in Minnesota and across the US.
“This is not something we want to see brought here by Minns and Albanese.”
Even Friends Of The Earth got in on the act.
A statement declared: “Across so-called Australia, police violence against peaceful protesters and marginalised communities has steadily increased for decades, driven by expanding anti-protest laws, police powers and weaponry.”
So-called Australia.
How patronising from a luxurious position in a safe, democratic nation such as ours.
Do not convert Ms Tame into an emblem because once the machinery of revocation begins, she is no longer a former Australian of the Year who spouted nonsense opposed by decent people in this country and globally.
She becomes the former Australian of the Year who is persecuted for speaking.
And this award premise clearly needs an overhaul if this is how it is being weaponised.
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