Greens MP defends term ‘globalise the intifada’ and urges protesters to question police directions to move on

A NSW Greens MP speaking at an anti-Israel rally in Sydney says “globalise the intifada” is an acceptable phrase — with Australia’s peak Jewish body describing it as a problem of anti-Semitism on the left of politics.

Despite its associations with suicide bombings in Israel, Sue Higginson said the slogan “globalise the intifada” was in fact a call for freedom, contradicting NSW Premier Chris Minns’ assertion it’s a call to violence that played a part in the Bondi Beach massacre.

“’Globalise the intifada’ is literally about resisting oppression and it is the words to indicate the desire for freedom — freedom from oppression, shake it off, stand up, rise up against oppression,” she told The Nightly on Friday afternoon hours out from the demonstration set for Town Hall against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia.

“Nowhere does it impute or imply or suggest or interpret as any form of violence or hatred.

“People like me, I know what freedom and liberty is and I want other people to be able to feel and live and understand that too so, if standing with others, who are of that same mindset, and we mobilise around a term ‘globalise the intifada’ because that’s what it means.”

A State parliamentary committee is examining the phrase “globalise the intifada” with a vote to be held next month on which phrases should be criminalised, with UK police last year arresting protesters chanting those words.

“I know, as a lawyer, that words and phrases must be analysed in the context of the circumstances, and the intent in which the words are used and at the moment, ‘globalise the intifada’ I do not believe has the meaning that the Premier keeps imputing,” Ms Higginson said.

“I have spoken to many people who do not think that the sign or the words or that phrase has the same meaning that others have imputed to it.”

But Peter Wertheim, the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the term was clearly anti-Semitic, given the Second Intifada described a series of suicide bombings in Israel targeting Jewish civilians from 2000 to 2005.

This included the 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15-year-old Australian girl Malki Roth in an attack that also took the lives of 15 other people, including seven children.

“It’s disingenuous and it just reinforces a very widespread perception in the Jewish community that the Greens have a serious problem with anti-Semitism,” Mr Wertheim told The Nightly.

“It has an historical meaning targeting Jewish civilians. It is anti-Semitic.”

Dvir Abramovich, who chairs the Anti-Defamation Commission, said “intifada” was a word that put terror into the hearts of Jewish people.

“When I hear a Greens MP defend the chant ‘globalise the intifada’ as a call for freedom, I feel a chill I can’t shake,” he told The Nightly.

“If you are a Jewish Australian, you hear it as a memory of buses blown apart, restaurants ripped open, nightclubs turned into morgues.

“The Palestinians intifadas were campaigns of terror. Suicide bombings. Stabbings. Shootings. Ordinary people targeted for being Jewish, for being Israeli, for being present.

“You can stand for Palestinian rights without importing the language of past massacres. You can demand justice without invoking slogans that have already written their meaning in blood. Words have consequences. Especially after Bondi.”

Protest laws

Ms Higginson, a former lawyer in the State’s upper house, is also calling on activists demonstrating on Friday night at Town Hall to query any police orders to disband, after new laws were passed before Christmas.

“I do always believe in the power of a citizen to question police respectfully when they are expressing that they are exercising a police power,” she said.

“There is no absolute, unfettered right for police to move people on from a public place or a public gathering.

“We are in terribly uncharted territory. If police are going to mess with this power today, or the police are going to invoke the exercise of that power today, I would say they’re the ones testing this power.”

An omnibus bill passed NSW Parliament late last year, with support from the Labor Government and the Liberal Party Opposition, giving Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon the power to ban marching protests, in two-week blocks, for three months after a terrorist attack.

Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna on Thursday indicated riot squad officers would take action if inflammatory phrases were shouted.

“If people start chanting things that is deemed to be an offence under the hate law legislation, then action will be taken,” he told reporters.

“We would respond by legal advice whether it’s an offence to chant whatever they chant and we do that now, we do that every time so I know there’s other legislation going through Parliament at the moment — we can only work with the legislation that is in place right now.”

Police now have the power to make protesters move on if they are blocking a footpath or a roadway, under the ban on marching protests.

“I know it’s not the most clear-cut legislation. We work with the legislation we’re given,” Mr McKenna said.

Mr Minns on December 22 said “globalise the intifada” was a call to violence.

“It’s used in common parlance, in demonstrations both here and around the world, are a call to a global Intifada — not in the Middle East, not in Israel or Gaza but here in Sydney, in our streets,” he told reporters.

“In those circumstances, I do believe it leads to a culture and an environment of heightened disunity and an invitation to violence.”