Anthony Loewenstein

I fear accepting a narrative that the atmosphere in the years before the Bondi attack and after October 7 created an inevitability

of a massacre against Jews because, so this logic goes, people, Jews, non-Jews, Muslims, Christians, whoever, were protesting and angry against Israeli actions.

If the outcome of the Royal Commission basically is turn the temperature down, like in the UK, for example, in the last weeks, there is now open conversations to say we should, the UK, ban protests every week for Palestine.

Because why?

Because it creates apparently an atmosphere of hatred against Jews, even though many Jews are involved in that.

Now, is that even legal to do that?

I would argue not.

And I suspect if they try to push that through in the UK, it'll be overturned in the courts.

And I suspect similarly here too, as many of the proposals by the New South Wales government in the last months have been overturned on constitutional grounds.

So the fear I have is that if an outcome is simply either kumbaya or

Or to say, we need to spend more money on security at Jewish institutions.

That doesn't really solve anything.

It's a Band-Aid solution to the broader question of, what does it mean to be a safe and secure minority in Australia, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise?

And what does it say about the relationship to public protest?

Do we as Australians have a right

to protest against a foreign country, which I would argue we absolutely do, whether it's Israel or Myanmar, whoever it may be, we have a right to do that peacefully.

I mean, that to me is an undeniable democratic right of a country.

And I fear that many, many advocates for Israel who are very close to the Royal Commission are arguing, in fact, the opposite.

They've said this for a long time.

There should be no weekly protests or regular protests for Palestine or in support of whoever it may be,