Joy at murders condemned
Pro-Palestinian groups staged a demonstration in Melbourne on Tuesday, with hundreds gathering in front of the State Library of Victoria, as police patrolled the area.
Zionism Victoria president Yossi Goldfarb has condemned Australian supporters of murderous acts by Hamas in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as the Israeli death toll climbed above 1000.
Pro-Palestinian groups staged a demonstration in Melbourne on Tuesday, with hundreds gathering in front of the State Library of Victoria, as police patrolled the area.
Melbourne demonstrators tried to distance themselves from incendiary antisemitic chants and slogans chanted at a Sydney demonstration in front of the Opera House on Monday, including a chorus in which demonstrators shouted, “F**k the Jews!”
At an earlier demonstration in southwest Sydney, the reaction of a pro-Palestinian demonstrator to the deaths of hundreds of Israelis was filmed, with the man shouting, “I’m smiling, I’m happy, I’m elated.”
Free Palestine Melbourne organiser Bella Beiraghi told The Herald Sun, “We wholeheartedly stand on the side of Palestinians” but added. “Those [Sydney] chants were not anything that we support.”
Goldfarb said the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are “defending the indefensible”. He told The AJN, “As we learn of babies being slaughtered at the hands of terrorists, now is the time to stand with Israel and its people and renounce terror in all its forms, not celebrate it. These are not Australian values.”
Josh Burns, chair of the Foreign Affairs and Aid committee, and MP for Macnamara, interviewed on Sky News, said the chants at the Sydney demonstration were disgusting, and emphasised that under Australian law Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed terrorist organisations.
He endorsed comments by Victorian Senator James Paterson that pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Tuesday’s Melbourne rally needed to be mindful that paraphernalia at that rally, in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, could violate Australian law.
“Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed terrorist organisations under Australian law. So it is illegal to affiliate to support to publicly display their paraphernalia in a way that is glorifying those organisations,” said Burns.
On the joy expressed by some Palestinian supporters in Australia, Burns added, “It makes absolutely no sense to me that someone would claim that it brings them joy to see innocent people killed.”
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