On the frontlines of the Occupied Territories of Bondi Beach

A popular public beach becomes a flashpoint, as a peaceful pro-Palestine commemorative event led by Jewish peace activists is met with a furious and aggressive Zionist response. Thea Henstrom reports.

Last Sunday at Bondi Beach, a sparkling Spring fathers’ day, the vociferous defenders of Israel were out in force. They had congregated en masse to assert their belligerent territorialism.

Theirs was a counterprotest to a rally organised and led by a Jewish group – Jews Against the Occupation ’48 – and its equally-extremist pro-Palestine allies, including the Hope Uniting Church and Surfers for Palestine.

At these groups’ invitation, a diverse gathering of a couple of hundred people – many Jewish, some Palestinian, others just citizens sickened by Israel’s relentless campaign to annihilate Palestine – had come together on the sand to peacefully honour the countless fathers killed, remember their starved and dying children, and show our solidarity for the Gaza Sumud humanitarian flotilla as it seeks to shine a light on Israel’s forced starvation of an entire people.

Those opposing the rally had pulled out all the stops in the run up to the event, ladling on ugly, inflammatory and delusional rhetoric to exhort their followers to mobilise against what they called “intimidation, harassment and intentional provocation” by those who would be part of “a protest that supports terror and hate”. “We will not stay silent” the likes of StandWithUs thundered. “Not in our backyard”.

Whose backyard?

As it happened, the only intimidation, harassment and provocation on the day emanated from those draped in Israeli and Australian flags. Arrayed in a crush on the raised concrete concourse above us, barely held back by a line of police, they veritably oscillated with indignant rage and entitlement as we stood quietly for the most part on the sand, facing them with our banners and signs pleading for a free Palestine and an end to Israel’s war.

And no, they did not “stay silent”. Mistaking a public beach for occupied Israeli territory, they hurled a stream of vitriol and racist abuse: “off the beach”, “terrorists”, "stick your Palestine up your hole” and that reliable old classic “go back to Lakemba”. Special mention to the counterprotestor who captured the prevailing world view so succinctly: “This is OUR land, we don’t come to Lakemba, don’t come to Bondi”.

The contingent also stepped up their signage game on the day. Some trouble had been taken to print up corflutes featuring a breathtaking misappropriation of the wording originated by Australian Indigenous peoples to assert their inalienable rights to their land. “Israel, Land of Its Indigenous Jews. Always Was, Always Will Be.” said the placards.

Is there nothing that is not for the taking?

In the phalanx assembled on the promenade above us, young IDF-looking types stood shoulder to shoulder with white supremacists and nationalists brandishing the Australian flag. Their vocal and musical accompaniment came direct from the recent March for Australia anti-immigrant rallies, via the playlist of the 2005 Cronulla race riots, the familiar strains of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi’ and Land Down Under punctuating the imprecations of the rest of the crowd.

In short, the vibe was off, verging on hateful, laced with incipient violence. I did not feel safe.

An older Jewish woman, one of the organisers, stood with her hand in a peace sign in front of a young male counterprotestor. He said, charmingly, “I see you have two fingers, I bet you use them”. She related this to us to illustrate the tone, which she implored us not to emulate.

I stood on the front line for a time with a brave young Jewish woman from the group Tzedek Collective. Her banner said “Justice Justice You Shall Pursue. Jews for a Free Palestine”. We made peace signs. A man in a group opposite us holding up an Israeli flag shouted at her kapo!, a particularly egregious insult comparing her to the prisoners, many of them Jewish, who carried out the orders of the SS in the Nazi extermination camps, reviled as collaborators and perpetrators. Shocked, she asked me to film him, but it was too late. She told me she was once a Zionist, but had recovered. “Zionism is upsidedown world”, she said.

Bondi was no anomaly. What we saw was a microcosm of a much broader pattern.

I met a friend who is struggling with how or whether to discuss her abhorrence of Israel’s actions with her Jewish friends whose families were impacted historically by the Holocaust, and who are silent on the current situation, defensive of their attachment to Israel or uncomfortable with dissent. To come out as a supporter of Palestine or critic of Israeli atrocities to these friends – to dare, for example, to cite the conclusion confirmed by, amongst many other authorities, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, that Israel is committing a genocide live, in real time, streamed into our homes as we watch with ever-mounting horror – is to risk condemnation as antisemitic and to potentially fracture decades-long relationships.

The tendentious conflation of legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions and antisemitism is all-pervasive, systematically silencing voices who advocate for peace and justice in personal and family circles, at work and in the political sphere. This false equivalence is weaponised in campaigns that marginalise and seek to ruin the careers and livelihoods of those who speak out: broadcasters Antoinette Lattouf and Mary Kostakidis, pianist Jayson Gillham, artists Khaled Sabsabi and Mike Parr, academics Dr Nick Reimer and Professor John Keane, Palestinian-Egyptian scholar and author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, cardiologist Professor Peter Macdonald, Senator Fatima Payman. Jewish public intellectuals who have taken a principled stance, like Antony Lowenstein, Louise Adler and the Jewish Council of Australia, are vilified.

Yet many Jewish leaders calling for an end to the genocide have said that it is precisely their Jewishness and their collective legacy of Holocaust trauma that morally obliges them to vocally repudiate Zionism as a political ideology and denounce Israel’s grotesque war crimes: not in my name; and never again, for anyone.

Moreover, they say, the aggressive tactics of the pro-Israel lobby foment the very antisemitism they claim to combat. Jewish academic Louise Katz put it eloquently in her open letter to the Jewish Board of Deputies. The latter successfully pressured a local venue in her tiny suburb to shut down a community meeting she had co-organised on ways to help alleviate the suffering in Gaza. She wrote: “I believe that members of the ‘pro-Israel’ lobby are effectively doing the opposite to what they intend; that is, inculcating ‘anti-Israel’ sentiment, while also hardening people’s hearts globally against Jews. Uncritical acceptance of any atrocity committed in the name of Jews or of Israel’s ‘safety’ are gutting the spirit of social justice still so central to many Jewish people. This does incalculable harm to all.”

Those of us gathered on the beach that day laid a trail of origami boats down to the water. Sea shanties in solidarity with the flotilla were collectively sung:

“Each soul strives for salvation, till all of us are free, stand up and stand together, so no one stands alone, when we go rolling home, when we go rolling home”.

After the rally, following the directions of the police, we peacefully moved down the beach, away from the crowd on the promenade, and dispersed. A friend and I wandered along a nearby street to get a drink. As we sat outside a cafe, a couple in athleisure wear passed us. “Terrorists”, they called out, and racewalked away up Bondi Road.