Meet Australia’s pro-Hezbollah protesters

The death of a theocratic tyrant and leader of a terror group wouldn’t normally be an occasion for mourning in Australia. Yet ‘pro-Palestine’ marchers were out on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne at the weekend after news broke that Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, had been killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Judging from the footage, these rallies could easily be mistaken for a recruitment drive for Hezbollah or a memorial service for its late leader.

Large signs of Nasrallah, alongside flags bearing the black rifle of Hezbollah, were brandished by men, women and children on Sunday’s marches. Hezbollah, let’s not forget, began bombing northern Israel on 8 October in solidarity with Hamas’s pogrom. Prior to the IDF’s invasion of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s bombing led to the displacement of 60,000 Israeli civilians and killed 12 children in July, when one of its rockets landed on a football pitch.

The usual anti-Semitism was on full display at the protests, too. One man, who tried to video a group of men waving Hezbollah flags in Sydney, was reportedly called a ‘fucking Zionist faggot’. According to the Age newspaper, a group of men at the Melbourne protest chanted a classic anti-Semitic slogan in Arabic: ‘Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.’ This is not the first time this murderous call has been heard on the streets of Melbourne. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to hear this at an event where a sizable chunk of attendees appeared to be grieving the death of a man who led an Islamist militia committed to the destruction of the Jewish State.

Australia’s major political parties were at least united in their condemnation of the rallies. But their responses also struck a bum note. Victoria’s Labor premier, Jacinta Allan, called for police to charge anyone seen waving a Hezbollah flag. Federal opposition leader Peter Dutton called for protesters to be deported, and for stronger laws against the public support of terror leaders (even though the law already criminalises the display of symbols related to terror groups). The fact that there are people living in Australia publicly giving succour to an anti-Semitic terror group like Hezbollah is certainly alarming. But censoring such views, as abhorrent as they may be, doesn’t actually confront the underlying problem. It only pushes this bigotry underground – out of sight, out of mind, allowing it to fester unchallenged.

There has also been a lot of confected shock from politicians in response to this weekend’s rallies. In truth, no one who has followed the anti-Israel protest movement should have been surprised that it contains its fair share of Islamists and anti-Semites. After all, ‘Gas the Jews’ was chanted outside the Sydney Opera House just days after 7 October. Protest organisers have repeatedly failed to condemn Hamas. Jewish students and Israeli academics have been harassed with relative impunity at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities. ‘Pro-Palestine’ protesters were charged for allegedly defacing the office of Jewish, pro-Israel Labor MP Josh Burns back in June. Vandals are accused of lighting fires and spray-painting red horns on an image of Burns’s face – aping Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as the devil. The constituency office of Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, has been graffitied with the red triangle of Hamas.

The sinister undercurrents of the anti-Israel marches have been clear from the outset, for anyone who cared to look. While it may make us uncomfortable to acknowledge the pockets of support for Islamist extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, Australians are far better off knowing the uncensored truth, rather than having it swept under the rug.

Hugo Timms is an intern at spiked.