Outlawing solidarity

IN Australia last week, a mass rally in Sydney’s Town Hall Square against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s presence in the country descended into chaos when riot police launched an unprovoked assault against peaceful protesters. The unwarranted aggression involving fists, kicks and pepper spray appeared to have been pre-planned.

A few days later, Britain’s high court pointed out the absurdity of designating Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, albeit without immediately unbanning it. The judges stopped well short of condoning PA’s activities — directed at contributors to the Israeli genocide — but argued that they could be prosecuted under existing criminal laws, and that the terrorist designation contravened rights to free speech. The fate of the nearly 2,800 people arrested since last July, mostly for holding placards saying ‘I support Palestine Action, I oppose genocide’, is yet to be determined, although police have declared they will stop detaining PA supporters (until further notice).

Canberra’s indefensible invitation to Herzog, pushed by the Zionist lobby and extended despite opposition from several Jewish groups (among others), was ostensibly intended as a comforting gesture to affected families following last December’s Bondi Beach massacre of mainly Australian Jews. Why the Israeli head of state, hardly a spiritual leader, might be seen as a source of succour remains unanswered. In his homeland, he is supposed to be above politics, yet had no qualms about encouraging genocide (as a UN commission noted last year) or signing an artillery shell intended for Gaza.

He could hardly be considered a neutral figure, and the welcome he received in Australia at the state and federal level militated against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s stated aim of reinforcing social cohesion. The societal response to the Bondi atrocities was virtually unanimous in its rage, sorrow and empathy. The tragedy, perpetrated by a pair of fanatics, was politicised by the Zionist lobby and its Israeli masters, who claimed that the Australian government’s token recognition of a Palestinian state and permission for protests against genocide promoted the antisemitism that provoked the killings.

Its collaborators are complicit in Israel’s genocide.

That’s palpable nonsense. Yet the Albanese government and its state counterparts appear determined (like much of the West) in defying the norms of international legality and morality as long as Donald Trump can be kept happy. Amusingly, Herzog failed that test when he was berated by the US president for hesitating to indemnify Benjamin Netanyahu against his multiple legal woes — a series of charges that Trump views as relatively insignificant instances of grift and graft, given his personal proclivities. The Trump regime and its predecessors have been instrumental, though, in establishing the template for criminalising resistance to genocide.

The British government may not have extended an invitation to Herzog, but in various other respects its leaders trump Australia in their devotion to a genocidal state. Whatever might follow the high court’s initial findings, there is little doubt that beleaguered PM Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will continue to do their best to extend cover — and moral and military support — to Israel. The pattern is repeated across much of the West, barring a few exceptions such as Spain, Slovenia and Ireland. Germany, ridden by a guilt complex that no longer makes much sense, has been particularly vociferous in curbing protests against Israel, ma­­ny of whose stalwarts take their cue from Nazi ant­-e­ced­­ents. France is not all that different.

Much of Euro-pe has hesitated, though, to leap onto Trump’s ridi­culous Board of Peace, essential­ly a one-man show supplemented by hangers-on. Both Israel and Pakistan will be represented at the highest level when the board meets this week, but anyone who expects any good to come from it dwells in a fool’s paradise. Even if Trump were to defy expectations by proposing anything that does not eviscerate the Palestinian survivors squeezed into 42 per cent of the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu and his cohorts will ensure it cannot be implemented. Israel is bent upon genocide and has outsourced Arab cover for its intentions.

Who can say what the future holds, but if and when an objective history of these insane years is written, Israel won’t be alone in the dock. It will be accompanied by its accomplices across the West, the Middle East and beyond. The obliteration of Palestine is proceeding apace in both Gaza and the West Bank — as well as the British Museum, which has replaced mention of an ancient entity with Zionist-preferred terms — and one can only hope that the coalition of the complicit will eventually face its comeuppance. As things stand, that might be a vain hope.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2026

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