18 February – Rally against militarism and the Australian military establishment
Wednesday 18th of February at 4:30 Outside the Hyatt hotel
Australian nuclear-related news this week
AUSTRALIA.
- Aussie Flotilla Team to Gaza Announced.
- Herzog’s Visit to Australia: Just Who Is Being Comforted, and at What Cost?
- NSW Police’s attacks on protesters in Sydney likely to lead to lawsuits – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OyqPfZvsC8&t=361s Herzog protests- Medics attacked too, lawyers question police violence. This was planned- And Chris Minns owns it. In Australia The Police Beat You UpFor Opposing Genocide.
- Selective context: Why Isaac Herzog’s visit deepens Australia’s moral failure. Albanese v Albanese.
- “Beyond the Pale” – Protesters Slam Albanese for Hosting “War Criminal” | DRM News | AC1F – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URQnfpUbtds The Siege Within: How Clarity Died in the Aftermath of Bondi. Bondi’s Blood, Herzog’s Shield: How Australia’s Grief was Hijacked for Geopolitics. Sheikh who led prayer at Sydney protest against Herzog says police were ‘unhinged and aggressive’- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VhPsj4NZcc
- Why The Economics of War in Australia Matter.
This was planned. And Chris Minns owns it.
by Andrew Brown | Feb 10, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/this-was-planned-and-chris-minns-owns-it/
NSW Police have assaulted dozens of peace protestors who gathered to protest the visit by Israeli president Isaac Herzog to Australia. Andrew Brown was there.
I was there. Not watching from a distance. Not reconstructing events from police statements. I was on the steps of Sydney Town Hall, with organisers and MPs, looking out over a vast peaceful crowd and then watching the state choose violence.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived in Sydney for a tightly secured visit. That context matters, because what unfolded was not crowd management. It was a demonstration of power. A message. A deliberate assertion of authority.
An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people gathered peacefully at Town Hall to protest Herzog’s presence. Thousands more were turned away by police cordons. Had the crowd been allowed to assemble freely, numbers would almost certainly have reached 30,000 or more. Families. Elderly people. Students. Health workers. Jews and Muslims standing together. Calm. Disciplined. Focused.
“There was no riot energy. No vandalism. No threat.“
I stood on the steps with protest organisers and elected representatives, looking out over a crowd that never surged, never damaged property, never turned violent. Beside me were Stephen Lawrence MLC, Sue Higginson MLC, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Cameron Murphy MLC, and other Greens MPs and MLCs.
At least five sitting members of the Minns government were present. They were not hovering at the edges. They were chanting with the crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder with constituents. Watching events unfold in real time.
This was not fringe politics. This was Parliament in the street.
Dr Muhammad Mustafa, known widely as Dr Mo, did not address the crowd. He spoke quietly to me. Online, he goes by the handle Dr Mo the Beast from the Middle East, a name that reads like bravado until you understand what forged it.
He told me about operating on children without anaesthetic. About hospitals without power. About performing surgery by torchlight while bombs fell nearby. About the dozens of his own relatives who have been murdered in Gaza.
He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. People who have lived through that kind of loss do not perform outrage. They carry it.
“That was the moral gravity of the gathering.“
And while tens of thousands of Australians stood in the open air exercising democratic rights, Premier Chris Minns was not there.
He was dining.
Dining with a war criminal
Inside the International Convention Centre, Minns broke bread with Herzog as the Israeli president spoke about social cohesion.
This is the same Isaac Herzog who once declared there were no innocent civilians in Palestine. The same Herzog who autographed artillery shells later dropped on Gaza. His government now stands before international courts, its conduct under legal scrutiny.Minns knew exactly what this moment represented.
Last year, more than 300,000 people marched across the Harbour Bridge in support of Palestine.
“Minns tried to stop it. He failed.“
He lost in court. He lost the argument. He lost control. That march exposed the limits of his authority and the strength of public opposition.
This was his chance to correct that.
Herzog was in town. The optics were international. Minns was not going to lose again.
Peace, then the violence
The rally ended peacefully. Speakers finished. People began to leave.
That should have been the end of the day.
Instead, it was the beginning of a deliberate escalation.
New South Wales Police blocked exits and sealed movement south toward Circular Quay. People trying to go home were trapped without explanation. There were no clear lawful directions. No safety rationale. Just containment.
Bottlenecks were deliberately created. Confusion was manufactured. Then force was applied to the disorder police themselves had caused.
This was not crowd control. It was crowd engineering.
Police brutality
I watched police push into a dispersing crowd.
I watched elderly people panic.
I watched bodies hit the ground.
I helped a young girl who had been pepper sprayed in the face and collapsed into a seizure on the pavement. She was convulsing, incapacitated. As she lay there on the ground, police sprayed her again in the face. Again.
Attacks on the elderly
Nearby, I helped a 71-year-old woman whose eyes and face were burned red from pepper spray. She was blinded, sobbing, asking what she had done wrong. She had done nothing.
“My own family was not spared.“
My mother is 84 years old. She was attempting to leave peacefully. She was pushed by police, knocked to the ground, and suffered a fractured arm.
My sister lives with Parkinson’s disease. She was shoved and thrust by police during the same operation.
As the evening wore on, the brutality escalated. Dozens upon dozens were arrested. Protesters were dragged across pavement, punched, kicked, restrained. This was not reactive policing. It was proactive force.
“Attacks on people praying“
Later, I witnessed a line crossed that should alarm anyone who believes Australia still respects basic freedoms. Sheikh Wesam Charkawi was praying peacefully with followers, prostrate on the ground. Silent. Non-confrontational. Police moved in anyway.
People were brutalised while in the act of prayer. Shoved. Dragged. Hauled up by force.
This was no longer just an attack on protest. It was an attack on worship.
There were roughly 500 police deployed at Town Hall and an estimated 3,000 across the CBD. This scale was not accidental. It was a show of force. Police created the disorder they later claimed to suppress. This tactic is known. It is taught. It is deliberate.
And it is political.
“Minns owns this”
Chris Minns owns this operation from top to bottom. He cannot hide behind operational reviews or police statements. His own MPs were there. Chanting. Watching. Warning. They knew instantly this was wrong.
Minns wanted to prove he was in charge. He wanted to assert authority while hosting a foreign leader accused of mass atrocities. He chose force as his language.
A Premier who dines with a leader accused of genocide, who has signed the very bombs dropped on civilians, while his police break the arm of an 84-year-old woman, assault a woman with Parkinson’s disease, spray a seizing child in the face, and brutalise people at prayer has forfeited all moral authority to govern.
This was not a mistake.
“It was a tactic.“
Chris Minns may still occupy the office. “Thank you friends,” he told the pro-Israel crowd at the Convention Centre to a warm round of applause.
But tonight, in the streets of Sydney, while he clinked glasses with Isaac Herzog, he lost the right to lead this state.
And I watched it happen.
Herzog protests. Medics attacked too, lawyers question police violence
by Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos | Feb 11, 2026 https://michaelwest.com.au/herzog-protests-medics-attacked-too-lawyers-question-police-violence/
Monday’s police actions against anti-genocide protestors in Sydney represent a significant escalation of unwarranted violence. Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos report.
Editor’s note: An earlier version included unconfirmed claims that the police used tear gas (in addition to pepper spray, which was used).
NSW Police are on the defensive. Following the spate of attacks on pro-Palestine protestors on Monday night, and amid rising criticism of their brutality, the Police are refusing to answer questions as to the number of people arrested, the number charged, and the nature of the charges.
According to the ABC yesterday, 27 people were arrested and 9 have since been charged. That was yesterday. Today, they were not responding, apart from a motherhood statement unrelating to those arrested.
From the outset of the protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, police had set up clear lines around every exit from the Town Hall area to contain the protest within Town Hall Square.
“Police were seen giving contradictory instructions to protestors – both instructing them to disperse from the square and demanding that they stop attempting to leave the square.“
“Aerial video clearly shows NSW police kettling protesters and causing a crowd crush.
“Incontrovertible evidence of the police hemming in protesters, preventing them from leaving(kettling) and attacking them.”
“They started this from before the speeches had even ended. The police commissioner is proud of this. He needs to resign with Minns. pic.twitter.com/ERU7K3Tn9f“
— The Longford Slasher (@Longfordslasher) February 10, 2026
Aggressive police behaviour
Activist Larissa Payne was near a group of Muslim demonstrators who had begun evening prayers in a corner of Town Hall Square. Payne, her family members and other members of the public linked arms to form a barrier between the praying group and riot police.
“It was a deliberate expression of non-violence, it was an expression of love and solidarity,” Payne said.
Footage of the scene shows officers moving in and violently grabbing members of the prayer group.
Payne was restrained using a wrist hold and dragged down steps, leaving her with sprained wrists.
Payne’s 78-year-old father, Ian Payne was with her. When he put his arm out to protect her, police forced his arm behind his back, causing a deep wound to his elbow.
“When he instinctively put his arm out to protect me, they grabbed his arm and put it right up behind his back. They tore open his elbow so he had skin and blood hanging everywhere. It was just awful.”
Payne’s partner, former Senator Scott Ludlam, was knocked to the ground, leaving him with a possible fractured rib. He was handcuffed and arrested before being released.
Payne said a lack of accountability for the police brutality on Monday would lead to police impunity becoming “normalised”, telling MWM:
“If we don’t do something collectively to hold them to account, if the police get impunity, this violence is going to become normalised.“
“The police violence is a symptom of something larger. If you look at the global context, we’re moving towards more extreme right wing politics. The fact that this was done under the leadership of a Labor Premier speaks to how Labor is being dragged to the right,” Payne said.
Another protester, Ali Al-lami says he was pushed to the ground and called a “brown c*nt”. Police proceeded to punch Al-lami and handcuff him while pressing his head to the ground.
“It was like how an IDF soldier would put a Palestinian to the ground and brutalise them. That’s exactly what they did to me,” Al-lami said. He was arrested but subsequently released without charge.
“They released me without any charges because they know what they did was wrong. They didn’t have any legal basis to arrest me. I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t resisting, I didn’t attack anyone,” he said.
Jordan, who asked that his surname be withheld, was also injured during the police operation.
“I saw police knock someone next to me to the ground and punch them,” he said. “When I tried to help the victim on the ground, I was knocked down.”
He said officers removed his safety goggles, threw them aside and restrained him. “I was cuffed tightly and left with injuries on my face, hand and wrist,” he said.
He was charged with inciting violence, breaching the peace and resisting arrest.
“There’s photographic evidence that shows I didn’t resist arrest in any way,” Jordan said.
“I knew it was state-sanctioned violence but I was surprised at how openly and proudly they were all doing it. Many of the officers were literally grinning as they were hitting us – they were loving life.”
Medics under attack
Volunteer street medics, who operate independently of PAG, were in attendance on Monday evening and treated dozens of protestors who had been indiscriminately attacked with pepper spray.
Omaim Al-Baghdadi was one of the medics at the scene. She told MWM that police officers attacked and pepper-sprayed medics who were assisting injured protesters.
“We were in the middle of treating people. We told them we were medics, but it didn’t matter to them. They grabbed us and shoved us and told us to move on.”
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Monday’s police actions against anti-genocide protestors in Sydney represent a significant escalation of unwarranted violence. Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos report.
Editor’s note: An earlier version included unconfirmed claims that the police used tear gas (in addition to pepper spray, which was used).
NSW Police are on the defensive. Following the spate of attacks on pro-Palestine protestors on Monday night, and amid rising criticism of their brutality, the Police are refusing to answer questions as to the number of people arrested, the number charged, and the nature of the charges.
According to the ABC yesterday, 27 people were arrested and 9 have since been charged. That was yesterday. Today, they were not responding, apart from a motherhood statement unrelating to those arrested.
From the outset of the protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, police had set up clear lines around every exit from the Town Hall area to contain the protest within Town Hall Square.
Police were seen giving contradictory instructions to protestors – both instructing them to disperse from the square and demanding that they stop attempting to leave the square.
Aerial video clearly shows NSW police kettling protesters and causing a crowd crush.
Incontrovertible evidence of the police hemming in protesters, preventing them from leaving(kettling) and attacking them.
They started this from before the speeches had even ended. The police commissioner is proud of this. He needs to resign with Minns. pic.twitter.com/ERU7K3Tn9f
— The Longford Slasher (@Longfordslasher) February 10, 2026
Aggressive police behaviour
Activist Larissa Payne was near a group of Muslim demonstrators who had begun evening prayers in a corner of Town Hall Square. Payne, her family members and other members of the public linked arms to form a barrier between the praying group and riot police.
“It was a deliberate expression of non-violence, it was an expression of love and solidarity,” Payne said.
Footage of the scene shows officers moving in and violently grabbing members of the prayer group.
Payne was restrained using a wrist hold and dragged down steps, leaving her with sprained wrists.
Ian Payne
Payne’s 78-year-old father, Ian Payne was with her. When he put his arm out to protect her, police forced his arm behind his back, causing a deep wound to his elbow.
“When he instinctively put his arm out to protect me, they grabbed his arm and put it right up behind his back. They tore open his elbow so he had skin and blood hanging everywhere. It was just awful.”
Larissa Payne
Payne’s partner, former Senator Scott Ludlam, was knocked to the ground, leaving him with a possible fractured rib. He was handcuffed and arrested before being released.
Payne said a lack of accountability for the police brutality on Monday would lead to police impunity becoming “normalised”, telling MWM:
If we don’t do something collectively to hold them to account, if the police get impunity, this violence is going to become normalised.
“The police violence is a symptom of something larger. If you look at the global context, we’re moving towards more extreme right wing politics. The fact that this was done under the leadership of a Labor Premier speaks to how Labor is being dragged to the right,” Payne said.
Another protester, Ali Al-lami says he was pushed to the ground and called a “brown c*nt”. Police proceeded to punch Al-lami and handcuff him while pressing his head to the ground.
“It was like how an IDF soldier would put a Palestinian to the ground and brutalise them. That’s exactly what they did to me,” Al-lami said. He was arrested but subsequently released without charge.
“They released me without any charges because they know what they did was wrong. They didn’t have any legal basis to arrest me. I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t resisting, I didn’t attack anyone,” he said.
Jordan, who asked that his surname be withheld, was also injured during the police operation.
“I saw police knock someone next to me to the ground and punch them,” he said. “When I tried to help the victim on the ground, I was knocked down.”
He said officers removed his safety goggles, threw them aside and restrained him. “I was cuffed tightly and left with injuries on my face, hand and wrist,” he said.
He was charged with inciting violence, breaching the peace and resisting arrest.
“There’s photographic evidence that shows I didn’t resist arrest in any way,” Jordan said.
“I knew it was state-sanctioned violence but I was surprised at how openly and proudly they were all doing it. Many of the officers were literally grinning as they were hitting us – they were loving life.”
Medics under attack
Volunteer street medics, who operate independently of PAG, were in attendance on Monday evening and treated dozens of protestors who had been indiscriminately attacked with pepper spray.
Omaim Al-Baghdadi was one of the medics at the scene. She told MWM that police officers attacked and pepper-sprayed medics who were assisting injured protesters.
“We were in the middle of treating people. We told them we were medics, but it didn’t matter to them. They grabbed us and shoved us and told us to move on.”
“Many families and elderly people were caught in the crowd as tear gas* was deployed by police.“
Another volunteer medic, who asked not to be named, was caught in the middle of the crowd as police simultaneously crushed, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed* families.
“I saw a lot of horrible things at the protest, but what really stuck with me was the fear and panic I saw in the eyes of children and their parents as this was all unfolding. It was really distressing to me, even as someone who has personally witnessed and experienced a lot of police violence,” they said.
“We were being crushed in as the police kettled us, and then everyone around me began to cough violently. I think it took longer to hit me than others because I had an N95 mask and goggles on, but when it did eventually hit, it was awful. I felt like I was being choked and began to wretch and shake. It has been nearly 24 hours since the protest, and I still have ongoing nausea and wretching.”
Excessive police powers
In the wake of the Bondi attack in December 2025, NSW parliament rushed through the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, which gave police powers to effectively ban protests and other public assemblies for up to three months following a ‘declared terrorist incident’.
In addition to the rushed “anti-terror” legislation, the Minns Labor government made a “Major Event Declaration” to facilitate the Herzog visit. This legislation gives police additional powers, including the ability to significantly increase officer numbers, enact warrantless searches and block the public from a “declared area”.
On Monday afternoon, the NSW Supreme Court dismissed PAG’s challenge to the major event declaration, leaving the public vulnerable to these broad powers.
The major event declaration not only extended police powers further, but also gave them relative immunity for their brutality. Perhaps most concerningly, the Major event declaration diminishes the right for protestors to receive compensation for violence inflicted by the State.
Specifically, section 62 of the Major Events Act 2009 details the exemption from paying compensation. According to the legislation, the State, local Councils and officers, employees or agents of the State or local council cannot be compelled to provide compensation regarding “an act or omission that is a major event-related matter, or that arises (directly or indirectly) from a major event related-matter.”
Criminal lawyer and investigative journalist Nick Hanna noted that this could
“significantly limit the claims for protestors injured by police.“
“This is one of the egregious examples of wanton police violence we’ve seen in a long time. There are countless people who would ordinarily have a strong basis to sue the police for assault, unlawful arrest and/or false imprisonment, but may now effectively be precluded from doing so as a result of the major event declaration,” Hanna said.
Hanna represented Palestine Action Group in their Supreme Court challenge against the major event declaration.
“Had the Supreme Court granted our application on behalf of PAG to declare the major event declaration invalid, these restrictions on the ability to recover damages from the police for their tortious conduct wouldn’t apply,” he said.
If PAG successfully appeals the Supreme Court’s decision, protesters may have more legal avenues.
“If PAG appeals the decision and is successful, this may have the effect of lifting the restrictions on people suing the state for the violence inflicted by the police,” Hanna said.
NSW Police response
MWM put the following questions to NSW Police:
- How many people were arrested at the protest? Of those, how many have been released and how many have been charged, and with what offences?
- There are numerous reports that NSW Police used excessive violence in response to the protest, including video footage of police officers assaulting individuals who were on the ground in prayer. How does NSW Police respond to these allegations?
- Aerial footage appears to show police forming multiple lines and barriers along George Street and surrounding exits, which protesters say prevented them from leaving the area (a tactic often described as “kettling”). What was the operational rationale underpinning this policing decision?
A NSW Police spokesperson provided the response below:
“NSW Police will review all officially reported complaints from the Town Hall event. If a complaint is made through official channels police will investigate appropriately. During the event at Town Hall on Monday (9 February 2026), police gave multiple opportunities for attendees to leave the area safely. Police deployed multiple crowd management techniques during the event to maintain public security. Attendees were at no point forced to remain in the area and were always afforded the opportunity to leave the event.”
Our Leaders Couldn’t Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don’t Want To)
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 11, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/our-leaders-couldnt-fix-our-problems?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187582757&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.
Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.
These people are not capable of curing our civilization of its dysfunction. They don’t have the necessary skills or attributes. Even if they weren’t a bunch of evil sociopaths who are only in the positions they’re in because of their willingness to collaborate with the agendas of oligarchy, war, militarism, imperialism, ecocide, exploitation, oppression and planetary domination, they don’t even have the personal characteristics necessary to do things like end poverty, rescue our biosphere, bring about world peace or give rise to human thriving. They’d have no idea where to star
I say this because as I watch Americans and Australians falling all over themselves to justify the recent police brutality in our respective nations, I am struck by how many people still believe our society is run by leaders who more or less know what they are doing and will guide us to more or less where we need to be. They view their government as a wise and beneficent father who knows what’s best for all of us, and they believe anyone who disagrees with Daddy is being naughty.
That’s really all it is. They’ll make up all sorts of justifications and excuses, but ultimately their police apologia arises from an infantile worldview which believes the authorities are right for no other reason than because they are in authority. They begin with their tongue on the boot of power, and then they make up reasons for why their tongue needs to be there.
That’s the worldview that gets a lot of people through their day. Believing our society is basically just and decent, and that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the world’s problems because we’ve got highly qualified leaders working hard at fixing them.
Believing our society is just and decent allows one to relax under the assumption that they deserve all the comforts they have in life and that the system will never turn against them. If someone is killed by police, or is impoverished or imprisoned or homeless, then it’s because they did something wrong and immoral, and all you need to do to avoid the same fate is follow the rules and make ethical choices. Under a just and decent system, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, so all you need to do is be good and you’ll be fine, and if things are going badly for you it’s because you deserve it.
Believing we’ve got highly qualified leaders working on our world’s problems allows one to relax under the assumption that everything’s taken care of. There’s no need to concern ourselves with all the information which tells us we’re plunging deeper and deeper into tyrannical dystopia on a collision course with environmental catastrophe under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood, because Daddy’s got it all taken care of.
Really these are just juvenile fairy tales designed to help us psychologically compartmentalize away from uncomfortable realities; no grown adult has any business believing them. But a lot of people would do anything to avoid internal discomfort. Entire psychological universes are constructed around the unconscious agenda of not feeling unpleasant feelings.
Daddy’s not gonna save us, kiddos. Daddy’s a serial killer with dead bodies in the attic, and many important parts of his brain are missing. Our problems aren’t going to get fixed until we get rid of Daddy. Getting rid of Daddy means forcibly getting rid of the entire system under which we live and replacing it with something that serves the interests of ordinary human beings.
Bootlickers hate revolutionary politics, because it is diametrically opposed to their infantile worldview of paternalistic government deities. But things aren’t going to get better until we find a way to get the steering wheel of our world out of the hands of the people who are currently in charge. Until then, everything’s just going to keep getting worse.
The complex, long-form writers – but is anybody listening?
11 February 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/the-complex-long-form-writers-but-is-anybody-listening/
I sympathise with readers who have a short attention span. I myself am one of those. And nowadays, well – that’s pretty much everybody.
And yet, people keep writing long, and very long, articles. Are they wasting their time? Who actually reads these articles?
I used to think that long articles were indeed a waste of time. And in a certain sense, I was right. I came from the angle of an antinuclear activist, and for a long time, the “nuclear debate” was run by highly – informed people, who made sure to use the absolutely correct technical language – no weak slips into ordinary talk. The anti-nuclear experts generally showed their opponents that they were right up there with the jargon that only experts understood. So the ordinary peasant, the general public, including many well-educated people, “dazzled by science” couldn’t really understand the long arguments. The result was that most people were intimidated, felt they could not understand it all. which was exactly the situation that the nuclear lobby wanted.
Then along came Dr Helen Caldicott, and mucked it all up. She understood all the technical stuff, and could write about that. But she also used ordinary, understandable language. And worse – heaven forfend – she sometimes was emotional. God, she even described some nuclear propagandists as “wicked”. Personally, I thought that the term was accurate. Anyway, Dr Caldicott copped a lot of flak, including even from the anti-nuclear lobby, with their obsession about being “respectable”. How dare she be so “hysterical”. But then she couldn’t help it, having the disability of being female.
But, Dr Caldicott, with her many books, public speaking, meeting world leaders, even influencing Ronald Reagan, got her message through to people, and the “debate, has never been the same since.
So, I rejoiced at this development, which did help journalists to loosen up, and cover nuclear issues in a more readable and human way. And in shorter articles.
But now the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of being short and easily digestible, especially with the communications monster of social media. It is a sad thing that probably only old people have the time and the inclination to read long articles.
And people are missing out, because often the full story on a subject is really covered only in long articles. I have a collection of these, on a variety of topics, and I had planned to reference a number of them here. Some are very densely written, full of facts, dates, events – and therefore really informative – but still a bit of hard work to read. And some show how very complex a situation can be – how there are two sides, and maybe more than two, to a story.
So, here are examples of very informative ones:
Planet Plastic: How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades, by Tim Dickinson.
US military action in Iran risks igniting a regional and global nuclear cascade, by Farah N. Jan.
Cumulative effects of radioactivity from Fukushima on the abundance and biodiversity of birds, by Timothy A Mousseau
Securing the nuclear nation, by Kate Brown
Very interesting are the articles which cover something in depth, showing contradictory sides, and how very complex a subject can be:
Some examples-
Betrayed: How Liberals Supported Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and Turned Against the Progressive Shah, by SL Kanthan,
The Long History Of Zionist Proposals To Ethnically Cleanse The Gaza Strip, by Mouin Rabbani.
And these can often be personal articles, about human conditions, character and integrity, leaving politics aside:
The heroes who saved the world from Chernobyl Two, by By Serhii Plokhy – also at The heroes who saved the world from Chernobyl Two.
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule, by Ronan Farrow. Also at Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule, nuclear-news.
I hope that some people are reading long articles. Well, they must be, because some excellent movie documentaries and TV series often come up, and are derived from the written word. And perhaps many people are thus getting their longform stories in a different form. And perhaps some longform articles have a profound effect, even if it’s only on a relatively few readers.
The Siege Within: How Clarity Died in the Aftermath of Bondi
13 Feb 26, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/02/11/the-siege-within-how-clarity-died-in-the-aftermath-of-bondi/
The summer evening of December 14, 2025, began in the soft, amber glow of Hanukkah candles at Archer Park. It ended in the staccato rattle of rifle fire and the scent of sea spray mixed with shotgun powder. Fifteen lives were extinguished by Sajid and Naveed Akram; a night that exposed not only the fragility of security, but the deeper frailty of Australia’s political imagination.
In the wake of that horror, the Albanese and Minns governments promised resolve. What they delivered instead was the familiar choreography of risk-aversion: the committees, the taskforces, the talking-points, and finally, a version of the old dingo fence. What began as an act of collective grief has metastasised into a tinpot tyranny, a prison guard or police patrol’s vision of order.
From Public Grief to Private Fear
By February, that perimeter has hardened into a siege. Sydney’s once open streets have become the staging ground of a security politics that no one voted for. The images from Town Hall; men dragged from prayer mats, Greens MP Abigail Boyd coughing through pepper spray—belong to a country that has quietly rewritten its own story of tolerance. A pluralist democracy does not kneel beneath its police lines for long without losing something essential.
The truth is simpler and harder: we have allowed fear, dressed in the high-vis vest of “public order,” to set the terms of our morality, proscribe our speech, define the living sinews of our commonwealth.
The Invisible, Myopic Pragmatists
Who, then, is running this show? Increasingly it seems to be the invisible, myopic pragmatists; those faceless avatars of modern Labor who mistake managerial caution for moral intelligence. This is the small-target governance of realpolitik, the gutless risk-avoidance that flatters itself as prudence. Yet it turns out to be a type of costly false economy; in the refusal to confront or even name the deeper moral crises beneath Australian politics; it proves a costly wrong, right turn.
Labor still governs as if haunted by ghosts: of Murdoch’s tabloids, of Trump’s shadow, of talkback nationalism. So fearful of offending the pro-Israel lobby or a resurgent Washington, they have allowed Australia’s political stage to be colonised by a foreign narrative. It is one thing to host Isaac Herzog on a “healing tour.” It is another to pretend that such theatre constitutes diplomacy while Gaza still smoulders and UN inquiries speak of mass dispossession.
Under the banner of “social cohesion,” the government has transformed mourning into a managed event and dissent into security risk.
The Ritual of Control
January’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act is the latest iteration of this logic; a law that inflates “incitement” until speech itself becomes suspect. Under the euphemism of protection, dissent becomes pathology. This is governance as theatre: motion without moral movement, legislative vigour masking ethical paralysis.
Paul Keating warned of the “instant band-aid”—politics mistaking activity for achievement. The current government has perfected the art. It calls Parliament to ban protest chants overnight, but remains paralysed before the “recreational hunting” loopholes that armed the Akrams. You can now go to prison for carrying a certain flag, but not for stockpiling a .308 rifle under the name of sport.
The Day of Kettling
And so came February 9, the day that Albanese and Minns kettled not only citizens, but independence of mind itself. In those 24 hours, freedom of expression was pinned beneath riot shields, freedom of association shoved into police vans, and the rights of conscience, democracy, and common decency were trampled into the wet asphalt of George Street.
Australia has always prided itself on a kind of decent moderation; the belief that even in our disputes, there existed a shared moral floor. What unfolded yesterday suggests that floor has given way. The government’s instinctive use of force against non-violence didn’t merely reveal insecurity—it revealed contempt. For protest, for plurality, and for the ordinary intelligence of the public.
History will not remember this as a day of security. It will remember it as a day of surrender; the moment when a Labor government, raised on the language of solidarity, chose the comfort of coercion over the courage of care.
The Moral Reckoning
We are witnessing the normalisation of the riot shield as a symbol of civic order, a transformation as swift as it is insidious. When a government greets a vigil with chemicals and batons, it is not protecting its people. It is protecting itself.
True cohesion is never policed; it is nurtured. It grows when governments address inequality rather than manage optics, when they embrace dissent as a sign of health, not heresy. It exists in the old Australian compact between decency and fairness; an agreement far older than Parliament and infinitely more fragile.
Labor, if it still remembers, must left heel; breaking from the intellectual, moral and spiritual shipwreck of the Shoppies bloc and return to its real heritage: the workers and communities who built a nation out of solidarity, common care, and the stubborn conviction that a free people stand tallest when they stand together.
Until then, we remain a country barricaded from itself.
In Australia The Police Beat You Up For Opposing Genocide.
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 10, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/in-australia-the-police-beat-you?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187467234&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Australian authorities were fully aware that inviting Israel’s president for a visit was going to ignite unrest and furious opposition. They invited him anyway, and sent in the police to assault the protesters.
I saw a video of two cops pinning a kid in a keffiyeh face down on the ground and proceeding to punch him over and over again long after he’d been subdued.
I saw another video of police repeatedly punching a middle-aged man who was holding his hands in the air until he fell to the ground.
I saw another video of police repeatedly pepper spraying a demonstrator directly in the face as he was visibly complying with their demands to move and providing no resistance whatsoever.
I saw another video of police manhandling Muslim men who were literally on their knees praying, presenting no possible threat of any kind.
That’s right kids, welcome to Australia, where the government invites the head of a genocidal apartheid state for a happy cuddle party and then beats the shit out of anyone who opposes this.
It’s a testament to the courage and vitality of the pro-Palestine movement in Australia that people keep showing up to anti-genocide protests even as authorities do everything they can to create a chilling effect on them.
After all, this happens as the state of Queensland moves to make it illegal to utter the pro-Palestine phrases “from the river to the sea” or “globalise the intifada”, with violations punishable by two years in prison. This is easily the single most bat shit insane speech suppression legislation in Australian history, and that’s an extremely high bar.
To be clear, not one person sincerely believes that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a genocidal or antisemitic statement. This is one of those many, many instances in which Israel supporters are pretending to believe something they do not actually believe in order to further outlaw criticism of Israel.
They’re trying to make it so that nobody feels comfortable opposing Israel’s abuses without first consulting with a lawyer about what exactly they are legally permitted to say in that moment, thereby throwing a chilling effect on pro-Palestine activism throughout the nation.
This comes weeks after the Australian government passed frightening new “hate speech” laws in the name of “combatting antisemitism” which will make it much easier to designate activist groups as “hate groups”. Australian officials have conspicuously refused to say that the new laws will not be used to ban groups for speech that is critical of Israel, which tells you all you need to know about the real intentions at work here.
This also comes as the state of New South Wales cracks down on protests with extreme aggression, banning protests in certain areas and seeking to outlaw the use of the phrase “globalise the intifada” to appease Australia’s obscenely powerful Israel lobby. Premier Chris Minns is presently defending the actions of the police he sent in to crack skulls at the Herzog protests on Monday.
Just two months ago a prominent member of the Australian Israel lobby publicly announced that he wants a total ban on pro-Palestine protests throughout the nation, and said it is criticism of Israel that is the problem, not just hatred toward Jews. Joel Burnie, Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), explicitly said that what he wants is “No more protests! No more protests!” in Australia.
“I for one as a Jewish leader will no long talk about antisemitism in isolation from Israel, because it’s the rhetoric and language on Israel that motivates the people to come and kill us,” Burnie said during a video conference, later adding that “ language on Israel invading all of our social spaces in Australia have made this country a very unsafe space and place for Jews.”
Increment by increment, Joel Burnie and his ilk have been getting their wish ever since. Australian civil rights are indeed being disintegrated to protect the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Sheikh who led prayer at Sydney protest against Herzog says police were ‘unhinged and aggressive’
Ben Doherty and Jordyn Beazley, 10 Feb 26, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/10/sheikh-who-led-prayer-at-sydney-protest-against-herzog-says-police-were-unhinged-and-aggressive-ntwnfb
Any officers who acted unlawfully should face prosecution for actions, Muslim groups say
New South Wales police who grabbed men kneeling in prayer during a protest in Sydney against Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit should face prosecution, a coalition of Muslim organisations has said.
The joint statement demanded an apology from the state premier and called for the resignation of the NSW police commissioner after the incident on Monday night, with the man leading the prayer calling the police response “unhinged” and “aggressive”.
Video shot at a protest in Sydney on Monday night showed about a dozen men, led by Sheikh Wesam Charkawi, kneeling in prayer in two straight lines in the forecourt of Sydney Town Hall. The men did not appear to be blocking a road or marching, which is effectively banned in designated areas under a NSW law passed after the Bondi antisemitic terror attack.
New South Wales police who grabbed men kneeling in prayer during a protest in Sydney against Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit should face prosecution, a coalition of Muslim organisations has said.
The joint statement demanded an apology from the state premier and called for the resignation of the NSW police commissioner after the incident on Monday night, with the man leading the prayer calling the police response “unhinged” and “aggressive”.
Video shot at a protest in Sydney on Monday night showed about a dozen men, led by Sheikh Wesam Charkawi, kneeling in prayer in two straight lines in the forecourt of Sydney Town Hall. The men did not appear to be blocking a road or marching, which is effectively banned in designated areas under a NSW law passed after the Bondi antisemitic terror attack.
Video showed that, as the men prayed, police officers descended on the group, grabbing those at the edge of the prayer group and dragging them along the ground.
The men in prayer did not respond and continued to pray. Other protesters yelled at police “Leave them” and “They’re fucking praying”.
Charkawi said police had used violence at an otherwise peaceful protest.
“[Police were] so unhinged, so aggressive and so violent and had zero regard for anyone and anything in their way, even peaceful worshippers who were not in anyone’s way.”
Charkawi said he and his fellow worshippers were about 15 minutes behind schedule to hold sunset prayer towards the end of the demonstration.
He said as he prayed, “we could obviously hear a big ruckus behind us. And I saw people … being flung off on my right, flung off on my left.”
In the footage, Charkawi can be seen continuing to kneel in prayer.
“When you’re in prayer, you’re not allowed to break it for any reason. There’s got to be a catastrophe, or some type of emergency that is happening, for us to do that,” he said.
As he was pulled by police, he said he felt like his shoulder was nearly ripped out of its socket.
“We weren’t disobeying any police commands. We were simply making our prayers and we had our back turned,” he said. “What an unacceptable thing that they have done.”
Charkawi, a support officer at Granville Boys high school, was last year ordered to work from home after posting a video in response to the Bankstown hospital nurses footage, in which he criticised “selective outrage”.
In his video, Charkawi said the nurses’ comments were “never meant to be literal or intended to be a threat to patient care” and criticised people who had spoken out about them but remained silent on Israel’s actions.
The NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd said she was punched in the head and shoulder by police officers, and then saw Muslim men who were on their knees praying being dragged away by police.
“[Police] then went in and grabbed those who were praying – you can’t get anything more peaceful than prayer – picking them up and just throwing them on the ground again.
“People were just treated so incredibly poorly. That is not social cohesion. This was a peaceful protest, standing for people who were protesting a genocide on the other side of the world, but had made it explicit that we were inclusive of Jewish people. We are against antisemitism.”
Muslim groups urge police to apologise
At least 38 Muslim and legal organisations across Australia have demanded the resignation of the NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, with the group saying his “leadership bears responsibility for a policing culture in which such conduct was permitted to occur”. Lanyon has spent nearly 40 years in the NSW police force and has been commissioner for five months.
The group said the NSW premier, Chris Minns, should apologise for the police “abuse of power”.
The coalition of Muslim organisations said the use of force against worshippers during a lawful and peaceful protest was unacceptable.
“Police officers knowingly intervened in a moment of religious observance, forcibly interrupted prayer and used physical force against individuals who posed no threat to public safety. Some worshippers were dragged away and thrown to the ground,” the group said in a statement.
“This was an abuse of power and a serious failure of judgment.”
The group argued no other faith community would be expected to accept sacred practices being forcibly disrupted by police.
“Muslims should not be held to a different standard, nor should our religious expression be treated as a problem to be managed or suppressed,” the statement said.
The group called for an independent inquiry into the incident, and accountability – including potentially criminal charges – for individual officers found to have acted unlawfully.
The Australian National Imams Council said it was outraged by the police’s “heavy-handed” and unprovoked physicality.
“Police are entrusted to protect the community, uphold public safety and de-escalate tensions, not to interfere with religious worship or inflame an already sensitive situation.”
Lanyon defended his officers’ actions, saying they showed “remarkable restraint”.
“Speakers were inciting the crowd to march. We had made it clear throughout the week [that a] march through the CBD was not acceptable.
“We wanted a respectful and responsible protest. That’s not what we got last night. Our police took action to disperse that protest.”
Minns said while he understood there had been criticisms of the police, officers needed to keep protesters separated from more than 7,000 people who were at an event with Herzog at Darling Harbour, mourning the Bondi beach attacks.
Police “were caught in an impossible situation,” the premier said.
“They did their job by keeping those groups separate, and we want to thank them for their service to the people of NSW.”
Minns insisted police had a “strong and cooperative relationship” with Sydney’s Muslim community.
“I want to make it clear there is no suggestion, under any circumstances, that police would have wanted to prevent people praying or get in the way of people lawfully exercising their religion.
“But context is important here, and the circumstances facing NSW police was incredibly difficult. It was, in effect, in the middle of a riot. Police have to make critical early decisions in those circumstances. It wasn’t designed to pick on or target a particular community.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, raised the issue of police action against praying protesters in parliament, saying he would “allow police to do their job” in investigating. He said many in Australia “will want to know all of the circumstances around that”.
Bondi’s Blood, Herzog’s Shield: How Australia’s Grief was Hijacked for Geopolitics
The invitation of Isaac Herzog to Australia was not an act of solidarity. It was an act of political calculation; a cynical attempt to fold the grief of Bondi’s victims into a diplomatic script that served the government’s interests, not theirs.
The emergence of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), a progressive body representing a significant segment of the Jewish community, disrupted the government’s assumptions. The JCA warned that using Jewish grief as a diplomatic backdrop risked entrenching the dangerous conflation between Jewish identity and the Israeli state, a conflation that has already fuelled antisemitism around the world. Their warning went unheeded.
10 February 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/bondis-blood-herzogs-shield-how-australias-grief-was-hijacked-for-geopolitics/
The Massacre as a Mirror
The Bondi massacre was not an aberration. It was a reflection, a brutal, unfiltered image of the fractures in Australia’s legal frameworks, the cynicism of its political class, and the ease with which communal grief can be repurposed for geopolitical theatre. On 14 December 2025, Sajid Akram and his son Naveed opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, killing fifteen people and wounding over forty. It was the deadliest mass shooting since Port Arthur, the worst antisemitic attack in Australian history, and a tragedy that exposed not one or two failures, but a cascade of systemic neglect.
This violence did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the latest eruption in a long, unbroken line of homegrown brutality. The 1928 Coniston massacre, where state-sanctioned militias slaughtered Indigenous Australians under the guise of frontier justice. The 1978 Hilton bombing, which shattered the illusion of domestic immunity. The 2019 Christchurch killings, where an Australian radical exported terror across the Tasman. Each of these events was nurtured in the cracks of our own institutions, yet each was swiftly repackaged as something else: a foreign threat, a diplomatic opportunity, or a moment to reassert the myth of Australian exceptionalism.
The Albanese government’s response to Bondi followed this script to the letter. Within weeks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog was invited to stand at the centre of Australia’s mourning, a man whose own words and actions have been cited in allegations of incitement to genocide by the International Court of Justice. The message was clear: in the face of domestic horror, Australia would default to the familiar playbook of alliance politics, even if it meant suspending its own commitments to international law and the right to dissent.
Policy Failure #1: The Firearms Regime’s Fatal Loopholes
The weapons used at Bondi were all legally acquired. Straight-pull rifles, designed to mimic the rapidity of banned pump-action firearms while slipping through the 1996 National Firearms Agreement’s (NFA) mechanism-based categories, sat comfortably in the least restrictive licensing tiers. This was not an accident. It was the inevitable result of a firearms regime that has been systematically weakened by lobbying, political inertia, and a cultural reluctance to confront the reality of gun violence in Australia.
The NFA was never the ironclad solution it was sold as. From the outset, it was a compromise; a patchwork of state-level regulations stitched together under the pressure of public outrage after Port Arthur. Over the years, the seams have frayed. Successive governments, both Labor and Coalition, have bowed to the gun lobby’s demands, carving out exemptions for farmers, sport shooters, and collectors. The result? A licensing system so riddled with loopholes that a man investigated by ASIO for ISIS-linked associations could arm himself with lethal rapid-fire weapons without raising a single red flag.
The National Cabinet’s post-massacre reforms, announced with the usual fanfare of “never again,” arrived only after the familiar ritual of hindsight. But the real question is not whether these reforms will work; it’s why they weren’t implemented decades ago. The answer lies in the quiet, persistent influence of groups like the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia (SSAA), which has spent years lobbying against even the most modest restrictions. The SSAA’s success is a testament to the power of organised interests over public safety; a dynamic that has played out in everything from climate policy to industrial relations.
If Australia is serious about preventing another Bondi, it must confront this reality head-on. That means closing the loopholes in the NFA, ending the revolving door between gun lobbyists and political advisors, and treating firearms regulation as a matter of national security; not a bargaining chip for rural votes.
Policy Failure #2: Intelligence – Blind Spots and Misplaced Priorities
ASIO had investigated Naveed Akram for ISIS-linked associations. Yet, somehow, the licensing system never flagged the Akram household. This was not a failure of intelligence gathering. It was a failure of intelligence prioritisation; one that reflects a broader pattern in Australia’s approach to counterterrorism.
Since 9/11, Australia’s security apparatus has been obsessed with the spectre of foreign terrorism. Billions of dollars have been poured into surveillance, border security, and counter-radicalisation programs, all aimed at keeping the “external threat” at bay. Yet, time and again, the real danger comes from within. The Christchurch killer was an Australian. The Bondi killers were Australian. The Hilton bombers were Australian. In each case, the warning signs were ignored or dismissed until it was too late.
The problem is not a lack of resources. It’s a lack of focus. ASIO’s mandate is vast, encompassing everything from cybersecurity to foreign interference. But when it comes to monitoring domestic extremism, particularly the kind that doesn’t fit the “Islamist terrorist” stereotype, the agency has repeatedly dropped the ball. The Lindt Café siege, the Melbourne Bourke Street attack, and now Bondi: all cases where individuals known to authorities slipped through the cracks.
This is not just a bureaucratic failing. It’s a cultural one. Australia’s security establishment remains fixated on the idea of terrorism as an imported phenomenon, something that can be kept out with enough border controls and surveillance. The result is a blind spot the size of a continent; one that allows homegrown radicals to arm themselves, plan their attacks, and strike with devastating effect.
If we are to learn anything from Bondi, it must be this: the greatest threat to Australia’s security is not some shadowy foreign network. It’s the failures of our own systems; the gaps in our laws, the biases in our intelligence agencies, and the political cowardice that prevents us from addressing them.
Policy Failure #3: The Geopolitical Exploitation of Grief
The invitation of Isaac Herzog to Australia was not an act of solidarity. It was an act of political calculation; a cynical attempt to fold the grief of Bondi’s victims into a diplomatic script that served the government’s interests, not theirs.
Above all, Herzog’s presence in Australia is fraught with legal and moral contradictions. The International Court of Justice has found the allegation of genocide against Israel “plausible” and ordered the state to prevent genocidal acts. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded in 2024 that Herzog himself engaged in “direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” citing his statement that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” These are not fringe allegations. They are serious, internationally recognised findings, and they attach to the man Australia chose to place at the centre of its national mourning.
The political logic behind the invitation is clear. After the deadliest antisemitic attack in the country’s history, the Albanese government sought to reassure a frightened Jewish community while maintaining alignment with the United States. In moments of crisis, governments default to familiar interlocutors. The problem is that, in this case, the familiar interlocutor was a figure facing credible allegations of war crimes.
The emergence of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), a progressive body representing a significant segment of the Jewish community, disrupted the government’s assumptions. The JCA warned that using Jewish grief as a diplomatic backdrop risked entrenching the dangerous conflation between Jewish identity and the Israeli state, a conflation that has already fuelled antisemitism around the world. Their warning went unheeded.
Instead, the government doubled down. Herzog’s visit was declared a “major event” under the NSW Major Events Act 2009, granting police extraordinary powers; warrantless searches, exclusion zones, and the ability to restrict public assemblies for months. Three thousand officers were deployed, with snipers stationed on rooftops. Sydney was transformed into a security theatre, where the right to protest was suspended to shield a foreign head of state from public criticism.
The scale of dissent was far larger than mainstream broadcasters acknowledge. While the ABC described “hundreds” of protesters in Melbourne, independent footage and on-the-ground reporting suggested the turnout was in the thousands. In Sydney, thousands gathered at Town Hall, only to be met with capsicum spray and arrests when they attempted to march. The message was unmistakable: in the name of “solidarity,” the Australian state was willing to suspend the democratic rights of its own citizens.
The Deeper Contradiction: Gaza and the Rule of Law
The irony of this crackdown was not lost on those who noted the stark contrast with Australia’s response to the ongoing violence in Gaza. Despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreed to in October 2025, the killing has not stopped. Since that agreement, over 500 Palestinians have been killed, and hundreds more have been retrieved from the rubble. The death toll now exceeds 72,000. Herzog, as the titular head of the Israeli state, presides over a government that continues to restrict life-saving aid even as it claims to participate in a truce.
Australia’s signature on the Genocide Convention carries a positive duty to prevent genocide and to refrain from complicity. This obligation is non-derogable. It cannot be set aside, even in times of crisis. Yet, by centring Herzog in its response to Bondi, the Australian government did precisely that. It offered a form of diplomatic indemnification to a leader facing credible allegations of incitement, while simultaneously suppressing domestic dissent in his name.
This is not solidarity. It is complicity. And it raises a fundamental question: if Australia is willing to suspend its commitment to international law in the name of “comforting” one community, what does that say about its commitment to justice for all?
A Path Forward: Truth, Accountability, and Policy
The lessons of Bondi are not just about what went wrong. They are about what must change.
Firearms Reform: Close the loopholes in the NFA. Ban straight-pull rifles and any other weapons designed to circumvent the spirit of the law. End the influence of the gun lobby in political decision-making.
Intelligence Overhaul: Reorient ASIO’s priorities to focus on domestic extremism, regardless of ideology. Invest in community-based counter-radicalisation programs that address the root causes of violence, rather than just the symptoms.
Diplomatic Integrity: Australia’s foreign policy must be consistent with its legal obligations. Inviting leaders accused of war crimes to stand as symbols of national mourning is not just hypocritical; it is a violation of our duties under international law.
Protest Rights: The Major Events Act and other laws used to suppress dissent during Herzog’s visit must be repealed or radically reformed. The right to protest is not a privilege to be revoked at the government’s convenience. It is the bedrock of democracy.
Bondi’s grief does not need a geopolitical interpreter. It needs truth, accountability, and a government capable of upholding the law, even when-and especially when- it is uncomfortable. The real tribute to the victims of Bondi is not a photo op with a foreign leader. It is a commitment to ensuring that the failures that enabled their deaths are never repeated.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Selective context: Why Isaac Herzog’s visit deepens Australia’s moral failure
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
By Sue Wareham | 9 February 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/selective-context-why-isaac-herzogs-visit-deepens-australias-moral-failure,20660
Calls to ‘consider the context’ of President Herzog’s visit obscure Israel’s ban on dozens of NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank, writes Dr Sue Wareham.
AHEAD OF TODAY’S VISIT to Australia by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the anticipated large protests against it, Foreign Minister Penny Wong asked us to ‘consider the context’ of the visit.
Part of that context is the horrific massacre of 15 Jewish Australians at Bondi in December and the deep sense of grief felt throughout Jewish communities and beyond.
However, the context also includes the destruction by Israel of practically every aspect of civilian society in Gaza, with over ten per cent of the population directly killed or injured since October 2023 and barely a soul alive who has not been traumatised in multiple ways, including bereavement, displacement, and deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation, shelter and other essentials.
Herzog is not an innocent bystander, as Israel’s breaches of international law in Gaza and the West Bank have become so commonplace as to be almost normalised. In September 2025, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory accused him of inciting genocide, citing his statement that “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”, made soon after Hamas’ brutal attacks of 7 October 2023. The entire Palestinian population has been punished ever since.
That collective punishment has deeply affected very many Palestinian Australians, as they grieve the loss of loved ones in Gaza, and have watched helplessly as remaining loved ones have faced deprivation, multiple displacements and a dire humanitarian situation.
Despite the “ceasefire” that began in early October 2025 (a ceasefire which appears to mean fewer bombs rather than no bombs), the collective punishment continues.
Israeli authorities have now de-registered and are effectively banning 37 international humanitarian organisations (INGOs) from operating in Gaza and the West Bank. Unless the organisations comply with Israeli demands to provide personal data on all their staff – in a context where over 500 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – they will have to withdraw from all the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the start of March.
This poses an impossible choice for INGOs — to either compromise staff safety or to abandon people who are in desperate need. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), as one of the affected agencies, has made the extremely painful decision that it will not comply with Israeli demands for staff information. MSF’s statement of 30 January said that ‘despite repeated efforts, it became evident in recent days that we were unable to build engagement with Israeli authorities on the concrete assurances [regarding staff safety] required’.
MSF states that if the agency is expelled from Gaza and the West Bank, ‘it would have a devastating impact, as Palestinians face a brutal winter amidst destroyed homes and urgent humanitarian needs’ with basic services including food, water, shelter, healthcare, fuel and livelihoods largely destroyed, and a health system that is ‘nearly non-functional’.
Oxfam’s assessment of 3 January is similar, stating that ‘Despite the ceasefire, humanitarian needs remain extreme’. The removal of these services would ‘close health facilities, halt food distributions, collapse shelter pipelines and cut off life-saving care’.
Oxfam noted that INGOs already operate according to strict compliance and due diligence standards.
Setting aside any moral imperative to provide aid for fellow humans who are suffering, Israel’s actions in banning INGO access violate the nation’s legal obligations, as the occupying force, to ensure the health and welfare of the civilian population.
They also violate the January 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel ‘must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip’.
Far from complying with the law, Israel continues to actively block the delivery of essential aid to a population in urgent need, and is now enforcing INGO registration conditions that exceed routine oversight and undermine humanitarian neutrality and independence.
For the many Palestinian Australians and their loved ones in Gaza, Israel’s actions have devastating consequences. And yet their grief and distress are not part of Minister Wong’s selective “context” for the visit of President Herzog.
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
Australia’s stance could have been very different. Apart from choosing our guests more sensitively and avoiding those accused of the most grievous crimes, Australia should long since have applied meaningful sanctions against Israeli individuals and the State of Israel itself.
Foreign Minister Wong has the power to determine that Israel’s ongoing deliberate obstruction of aid and its collective punishment of the Palestinian people meet the threshold of “serious violation or abuse” under Australia’s sanctions regime. She has chosen instead to insulate Israel from accountability, thus undermining the universality of international law and eroding Australia’s credibility as an independent nation.
The people of Palestine and their loved ones here pay a heavy price for Australia’s failure to act.
Sanctions against Israel are not likely to be announced in the coming days, but the need for them is only growing.
If You Think Our Rulers Do Bad Things In Secret, Wait Til You See What They Do Out In The Open
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 09, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-you-think-our-rulers-do-bad-things?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187345674&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world.
They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world.
They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world.
They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world.
They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world.
They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world.
They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.
They’re circling the globe with hundreds of military bases to secure planetary domination in full view of the entire world.
They engage in nuclear brinkmanship and wave around armageddon weapons like pistols in full view of the entire world.
People go homeless and die of exposure while billionaires buy private islands and choose the next president in full view of the entire world.
Weapons manufacturers lobby for wars and then profit from the death and destruction they cause in full view of the entire world.
The president of the United States has repeatedly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli in full view of the entire world.
The US Treasury Secretary has been repeatedly admitting that the US deliberately sparked the violence and unrest in Iran by methodically immiserating the population via economic warfare, in full view of the entire world.
I keep seeing people freaking out and asking how it’s possible that the individuals in the Epstein files haven’t been arrested for their secret nefarious behavior. And I always want to ask them, mate, have you seen the nefarious behavior they’re engaging in right out in the open?
Pay attention to the Epstein files. Pay attention to what little we can learn about how these freaks conduct themselves behind closed doors. By all means, pay close attention to these things.
But don’t forget to also pay attention to the far greater evils they are inflicting in full view of the entire world.
US congressional report explores option of not delivering any Aukus nuclear submarines to Australia.
COMMENT – What a typical USA plan?
They reneg on delivering the “goods” sold, but keep the $368 billion!
the Congressional Research report describes an alternative “military division of labour”, under which the US would not sell any Virginia-class submarines to Australia.
Report offers alternative of the US navy retaining boats and operating them out of Australian bases
Ben Doherty, Guardian, 6 Feb 26
A new United States congressional report openly contemplates not selling any nuclear submarines to Australia – as promised under the Aukus agreement – because America wants to retain control of the submarines for a potential conflict with China over Taiwan.
The report by the US Congressional Research Service, Congress’s policy research arm, posits an alternative “military division of labour” under which the submarines earmarked for sale to Australia are instead retained under US command to be sailed out of Australian bases.
One of the arguments made against the US selling submarines to Australia is that Australia has refused to commit to supporting America in a conflict with China over Taiwan. Boats under US command could be deployed into that conflict.
The report, released on 26 January, cites statements from the Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, and the chief of navy that Australia would make “no promises … that Australia would support the United States” in the event of war with China over Taiwan.
“Selling three to five Virginia-class SSNs [nuclear-powered general-purpose attack submarines] to Australia would thus convert those SSNs from boats that would be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict into boats that might not be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict,” the report argues.
“This could weaken rather than strengthen deterrence and warfighting capability in connection with a US-China crisis or conflict.”
Under the existing Aukus “optimal pathway’, Australia will first buy between three and five Virginia-class nuclear-powered conventionally armed submarines, the first in 2032.
Following that, the first of eight Australian-built Aukus submarines, based on a UK design, is slated to be in the water “in the early 2040s”.
But the Congressional Research report describes an alternative “military division of labour”, under which the US would not sell any Virginia-class submarines to Australia.
The boats not sold to Australia “would instead be retained in US Navy service and operated out of Australia” alongside US and UK attack submarines already planned to rotate through Australian bases.
The report speculated Australia could use the money saved to invest on other defence capabilities, even using those capabilities as a subordinate force in support of US missions.
“Australia, instead of using funds to purchase, build, operate, and maintain its own SSNs, would instead invest those funds in other military capabilities – such as … long-range anti-ship missiles, drones, loitering munitions, B-21 long-range bombers … or systems for defending Australia against attack … so as to create an Australian capacity for performing other missions, including non-SSN military missions for both Australia and the United States.”
The report also raises cybersecurity concerns, noting that “hackers linked to China” are “highly active” in attempting to penetrate Australian government and contractors’ computers.
It argues that sharing nuclear submarine technology with another country “would increase the attack surface, meaning the number of potential digital and physical entry points that China, Russia, or some other country could attempt to penetrate to gain access to that technology”.
The debate over whether the US should sell boats to Australia is also grounded in ongoing concern over low rates of shipbuilding in the US: the country’s shipyards are failing to build enough submarines to supply America’s own navy, let alone build boats for Australia.
For the past 15 years, the US Navy has ordered boats at a rate of two a year, but its shipyards have never met that build rate “and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built”.
The US fleet currently has only three-quarters of the submarines it needs (49 boats of a force-level goal of 66). Shipyards need to build Virginia-class submarines at a rate of two a year to meet America’s own needs, and to lift that to 2.33 boats a year in order to be able to supply submarines to Australia.
Legislation passed by the US Congress prohibits the sale of any submarine to Australia if the US needs it for its own fleet. The US commander-in-chief – the president of the day – must certify that America relinquishing a submarine “will not degrade the United States undersea capabilities”.
The report argues that Australia’s strict nuclear non-proliferation laws could also weaken US submarine force projection under the current Aukus plan.
Australian officials have consistently told US counterparts that, in adherence to Australia’s commitments as a non-nuclear weapon state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Australia’s attack submarines can only ever be armed with conventional weapons.
“Selling three to five Virginia-class SSNs to Australia would thus convert those SSNs from boats that could in the future be armed with the US nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile with an aim of enhancing deterrence,” the report states……………………………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/not-delivering-any-aukus-nuclear-submarines-to-australia-explored-as-option-in-us-congressional-report
Albanese v Albanese
Then there is the damning evidence of Anthony Albanese’s Italian namesake, Francesca Albanese, by now an expert and fearless forensic rapporteur on Gaza, genocide and Israel.
She bows to no president or prime minister and wears the onslaught of their wrath as a badge of honour.
A United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Albanese’s courageous reports have become a reliable touchstone for historians, academics, students, journalists, so-called ‘ordinary people’ humanitarians, intelligence personnel and key actors of all involved in the Gaza ‘Crime Scene.’
10 February 2026, Tess Lawrence, https://theaimn.net/albanese-v-albanese/
ALBANESE v ALBANESE
HERZOG, GENOCIDAL TERRORIST?
The Australian Government has rolled out the red carpet for Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, a carpet sodden in the blood of more than 71,000 people murdered in Gaza since the Hamas led terrorist invasion of October 7, 2023.
That audacious Hamas massacre and hostage taking of mostly civilians attending the Nova Festival, was a precision operation that easily penetrated Israel’s so-called invincible ‘iron dome’ in what was indisputably a monumental military embarrassment and collective security fail by all of Israel’s lauded security tiers as well as by self lauded ‘Mr Security’ himself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted on criminal charges in his own country and cited as a genocidal criminal, outside of it.
In an untidy and hasty attempt to assuage volatile community anger, unrest and widespread political dissent caused by Australia’s own security fail, the Bondi Beach Islamic State inspired terrorist attack on December 14, that also targeted Jews and others celebrating the festival – Hanukkah – Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thought it wise to capitulate to a babel of political, religious and public dialects and invite a racist man of war to Australia, rather than a person of peace.
The notion that a visit by the rabid war mongering Herzog will help ameliorate swelling anti-semitism is preposterous. He may well bring comfort to some Australian jews and those who support Netanyahu’s fascist Far Reich but the reality is that not all Australian jews want this avowed genocidal terrorist to visit Australia or indeed for him to be deemed as representative of all jewish Australians, let alone jews in Israel. The constants protests and marches against Netanyahu in Israel atest to the latter.
Netanyahu’s Take On Nazism
Typically, jewish dissenters do not receive as much attention in both mainstream and indie media and endure all manner of toxic insult, including being branded by jewish Netanyahu supporters in the diaspora, as Hamas stooges, jewish traitors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hurled epithets of being ‘self-loathing jews’ have long worn thin as a horrified world – including horrified jews – are confronted with the ugly reality of Netanyahu’s latter day take on nazism and industrial strength ethnic cleansing.
Last month, a number of groups, the majority of them representing jewish organisations, wrote to Governor-General Sam Mostyn and Prime Minister Albanese, asking that Herzog’s invitation to visit Australia, be retracted:
Her Excellency the Honourable Ms Sam Mostyn AC
Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia
Government House
Dunrossil Drive
YARRALUMLA ACT 2600The Hon Anthony Albanese MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600Monday, 5 January 2026
Dear Governor-General and Prime Minister,
We write to urgently ask for the retraction of the Australian Government’s invitation to President Isaac Herzog of Israel.
This invitation risks violating Australia’s international obligations and exacerbating racism and antisemitism during an incredibly fragile moment.
President Herzog is not a neutral or ceremonial head of state. The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded in September 2025 that Israeli President Isaac Herzog had “incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement.”
In October 2023, he publicly attributed collective responsibility to the civilian population of Gaza, stating: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not being involved – it’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up… And we will fight until we break their backbone.”
Herzog’s comments have been cited by international legal scholars and human rights organisations as normalising collective punishment, prohibited under international humanitarian law, and form part of the evidentiary context before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide are clear. Article 1 imposes an obligation to prevent genocide that arises once a State becomes aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of a serious risk that genocide may be committed. Article III further prohibits not only genocide itself but also complicity, including conduct that knowingly aids, abets, or legitimises the commission or incitement of genocidal acts. The International Court of Justice’s provisional measures in South Africa v Israel place all States Parties on notice of a plausible risk of acts falling within the scope of the Convention. In these circumstances, proceeding with an official visit by President Isaac Herzog would expose Australia to credible claims that it has engaged in conduct inconsistent with its obligations under international law.
Herzog has been fully implicated in Israel’s military aggression. In December 2023 he was witnessed signing an artillery shell bound for Gaza and in 2024 he falsely denied Israeli responsibility for the illegal attacks using pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, killing twelve people, including children, and wounding three thousand.
Facilitating this visit does nothing to support the healing of Jewish communities in Australia, following the horrific massacre in Bondi. Hosting a figure publicly associated with the continuation of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and the ongoing occupation and displacement within Palestinian territories, risks further deepening divisions within a community already grappling with the harmful conflation of Zionism (a political ideology), Judaism (a religion), and Jewish identity and will further alienate our own community while increasing the risk of antisemitism. Publicly hosting this head of state risks exacerbating antisemitism by implicitly associating Jewish Australians with alleged war crimes over which they have no control.
Jewish communities are not united. Some, both religious and secular, are not Zionist or identify as anti-Zionist. Many fundamentally disagree with Israel’s brutal occupation and apartheid regime and are outspoken about the Gaza genocide and Australia’s complicity in it.
Mass protests must be expected if President Herzog arrives in Australia. Protests will include a very large contingent of Jewish participants, reflecting moral opposition to ongoing atrocities.
Official engagement in the face of such demonstrable community opposition would risk inflaming tensions, fracturing social cohesion, and undermining public safety. It would further undermine Australia’s credibility as a defender of international law and inflame anti-Palestinian racism by further dehumanising Palestinians. These consequences are foreseeable, preventable, and incompatible with Australia’s legal and moral responsibilities.
A principled decision to retract the invitation would affirm the Australian Government’s commitment to ethical values, international law and the protection of all communities from racism and antisemitism.
Yours sincerely,
Jewish Council of Australia
Jews for Palestine (WA)
Loud Jew Collective
Jews Against the Occupation ’48
Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney
Coalition of Women for Justice and Peace
Jewish Advocates for Understanding Antisemitism
Jews for Justice
Anti-Zionism Australia
Jews for a Free Palestine
Jewish Women 4 Peace Action Ready Group
Jews Who Do Not Support Netanyahu And Who Do Support
Two State Solution Don’t Get Equal Media Time
Typically, in mainstream and even indie media at times, the views of jews who support a two state solution for Palestine and Israel and who do NOT support Netanyahu, Herzog et al or their murderous genocidal implementation of a final solution to annihilate Palestine and Palestinians in this Holocaust 2, perpetrated by the Netanyahu Government, simply don’t get equal media time.
“Inviting a foreign head of state who is implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state. This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.” Sarah Schwartz, Executive Officer of the Jewish Council of Australia.
The Jewish Council of Australia
DIGNITY. EQUALITY. FREEDOM. FOR ALL.
‘The Jewish Council of Australia is an organisation of Jewish people in Australia who are committed to the Jewish values of tikkun olam (repairing the world), calling out injustice, challenging assumptions and promoting debate. We work towards ending antisemitism and all forms of racism and we support Palestinian freedom and justice.’
On January 28th, the Jewish Council of Australia issued a second statement condemning Herzog’s visit:
Read more: Albanese v AlbaneseJewish Council calls on Albanese to rescind Herzog invitation
28 January, 2026 / Media Release
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has confirmed today that he will visit Australia from 8 to 12 February and will meet with members of the Australian Jewish community.
The Jewish Council of Australia as expressed outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protests.
President Isaac Herzog is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. He has made public statements, including that an “entire nation is responsible” for October 7, which have been cited by the International Court of Justice and other international bodies examining breaches of the Genocide Convention.
This should be a moment for collective mourning, reflection and care. It is not a moment to host the head of a state which has been found to have committed a genocide in Gaza.
“By inviting Herzog to visit, Albanese is using Jewish grief as a political prop and diplomatic backdrop,” said Sarah Schwartz, Executive Officer of the Jewish Council of Australia.
“Inviting a foreign head of state who is implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state. This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.”
Instead of proceeding with this visit, the Jewish Council urges the Government to pursue concrete actions, supported by over 60,000 Australians who have signed the Jewish Council’s petition, that address the root causes of violence, racism and impunity, and that uphold international law.
“Our safety will not come from aligning with Netanyahu or Trump,” said Schwartz. “It will come from dismantling racism, rejecting collective punishment, and standing consistently for human rights and justice for all.”
“Growing numbers of Jews in Australia and globally oppose the actions of the Israeli government and reject its attempts to speak in our name. We refuse to be ignored or silenced.”
“Conflating Judaism with the policies of a state accused of genocide and crimes against humanity erases our voice and fuels antisemitism rather than combating it.”
The last time I visited their website, 63,885 people had signed the JCA petition for Australians to unite against attempts to divide the community.
From the website:
”… Pitting Jewish safety against Palestinians, Muslims and migrant communities, and eroding all of our civil liberties, doesn’t make Jews safer. It makes the real fight against antisemitism harder… “
On January 30th, Medianet published a press release by The Jewish Council of Australia, the Australian National Imams Council and The Hind Rajab Foundation announcing that esteemed barrister Robert Richter KC had filed a formal legal complaint sent to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) alleging that “Herzog has incited genocide and aided and abetted war crimes, rendering him unfit to enter the country under Australian law.”
The 30 page submission warns that the visit of President Herzog is “highly infammatory.”
From the press release:
The groups are calling on the AFP to initiate a criminal investigation of Herzog under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
The urgent request details a “sustained pattern of incitement and hate speech” by the President, specifically citing:
- The “Entire Nation” Declaration: Herzog’s October 2023 statement that there are no “uninvolved” civilians in Gaza, which the groups argue stripped 2.3 million people of their protected status under international humanitarian law and urged the IDF to treat the entire population as a military target.
- Famine Denial: Herzog’s August 2025 claims that images of starving Gazan children were “staged – a statement made while famine was setting in and which the brief describes as a “conscious effort to obscure war crimes.”
- Endorsement of Military Operations Involving War Crimes: A December 2023 visit to the Nahal Oz military base where Herzog reportedly “encouraged” troops 48 hours before the “wanton destruction” and “flattening” of the Palestinian town of Khuza’a.
The submission rejects any claim that Herzog has diplomatic immunity, citing the Nuremberg Principles and international law to argue that heads of state have no shield against charges of genocide or war crimes. The groups warn that if the government fails to act, it would signal “acquiescence to genocidal rhetoric.”
“If the Prime Minister of Israel is not permitted to visit Australia, the President should not be allowed to act as his surrogate,” the complaint states, referencing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Bilal Rauf, Senior Advisor, Australian National Imams Council (ANIC):
“In recent times, Australia’s social cohesion has been under threat. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon all of us, particularly our political leaders, to seek to protect our social cohesion as a country and society and ensure that individuals who may inflame the situation by their very presence, are not permitted into our country. The proposed visit by the Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a highly controversial foreign head of state accused of serious international crimes, risks inflaming social tensions, undermining Australia’s hate-speech protections, and placing Australian communities at risk. ANIC calls on the Government, which has hurriedly passed laws in the name of social cohesion, to refuse or cancel any visa held by President Herzog. In pursuing this, among other outcomes, ANIC joins with the Jewish Council of Australia and the Hind Rajab Foundation, in pursuing the complaint.”
Dyab Abou Jahjah, Hind Rajab:
“When a head of state publicly denies civilian protection, dismisses famine, and encourages military operations marked by widespread civilian harm and destruction, those acts carry legal consequences everywhere. No country – including Australia – should become a safe haven for individuals credibly accused of inciting genocide or aiding and abetting war crimes. Australia has a duty to uphold the rule of law and protect its communities from such threats.”
Ohad Kozminsky, Executive Member, Jewish Council of Australia:
“President Herzog represents a state found to be committing genocide in Gaza. His presence in Australia would identify this state with Australian Jews, which risks exacerbating social division and endangering Australian Jewish communities. We stand firmly against all forms of racism, and President Herzog’s statements attributing collective guilt to an entire people are a textbook manifestation of anti-Palestinian racism and Israel’s ongoing campaign of dehumanisation.”
Francesca Albanese
Then there is the damning evidence of Anthony Albanese’s Italian namesake, Francesca Albanese, by now an expert and fearless forensic rapporteur on Gaza, genocide and Israel.
She bows to no president or prime minister and wears the onslaught of their wrath as a badge of honour.
A United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Albanese’s courageous reports have become a reliable touchstone for historians, academics, students, journalists, so-called ‘ordinary people’ humanitarians, intelligence personnel and key actors of all involved in the Gaza ‘Crime Scene.’
AIMN will publish some of her work in full, so readers can learn from the source herself, without filters and without selective reduction by we journalists.
You will come to understand why she is feared by both the Hamas led terrorist cohort in Gaza and Netanyahu and his Far Reich.
She exposes the atrocities of these murderous thugs without fear or favour and goes to war against genocide and perpetrators, weaponless and without flak jacket, armed only with her brief to bear witness for the world. For us. For them. For the least of us.
1 This month
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