Janet Parker delivered the following speech on behalf of Jews for Palestine WA to the Boorloo Palestine rally on February 1.
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Today, I want to focus on four things.
First, the tragic Bondi shooting that targeted a Jewish Hannukah celebration on December 14, 2025. This shooting had nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with the Palestine solidarity movement.
The two men who fired on this event were found to be inspired by ISIS, and ISIS has never supported Palestinian national liberation. They were not known to the movement, had not attended the peaceful rallies opposing genocide; we may never know their exact motives.
Nonetheless, within hours, a chorus of right-wing voices began placing the blame on pro-Palestinian slogans and protests and policies.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the murders on Australia’s recognition of the state of Palestine;
Jillian Segal, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, claimed there was an obvious link between the Bondi attacks and the 300,000 people who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge against the genocide. NSW Premier Chris Minns insisted there was a link with pro-Palestine protests, banning protests for three months, while Victorian Labor jumped in to say it would give police special powers to do the same.
Because this is our first rally since December 14, 2025 I say here that we express our full solidarity with the victims and survivors of the horrific massacre at Bondi.
The Palestine solidarity movement, in all out rallies and events, has been and will continue to be, totally vigilant about the potential for anti-Semitism. It has consistently argued that our protest is not directed against Jews, but at the Israeli state which, since October 7, 2023, has continued to perpetuate one of the cruellest genocides in modern history.
Movement of love
Secondly, we are a movement of love not hate. The language we use and the slogans we chant call for an end to genocide, colonialism, dehumanisation, oppression and dispossession.
Two chants in particular are alleged to cause fear and distress. From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free and “Globalise the intifada”. We’ve talked before about the first, so I want to focus on the second.
A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry has, this week, recommended banning the phrase “Globalise the intifada” when it is used to incite hatred, harassment, intimidation or violence.
It should be said that “Globalise the intifada” is not a regular rally chant, although we do chant “Long Live the Intifada!”
Intifada, as I’m sure you all know, is an Arabic word meaning “a shaking off”, but in this context it means an uprising.
When we chant this slogan, we are supporting the uprisings of the Palestinian people against their oppression, against apartheid, illegal occupation and genocide.
Today Jews for Palestine WA has brought along a placard which reads: “From Warsaw to Gaza, Long Live the Intifada”.
This is a reference to the Jewish Combat Organisation — an underground military resistance that formed in Warsaw, Poland in 1942, in response to the deportation of Jews to the death camps.
This resistance built underground tunnels, used acts of sabotage, set fire to buildings, manufactured their own weapons and captured weapons from German troops to fight their oppressors.
In Arabic language texts and in the Arabic Wikipedia, the word used to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is, of course, “intifada”.
Finally, I must say, when it comes to hate speech, the real experts in this sit in the Israeli parliament.
Israeli leaders have referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, have called for a “second Nakba” and for the use of nuclear weapons on them. And while a parliamentary committee sits to examine our alleged hate speech, they issue a gilt-edged invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has famously said that all civilians in Gaza are legitimate targets as it is the “entire nation” that is responsible for the events of October 7, 2023.
The hypocrisy is galling!
Anti-Zionist Jews are rising
Thirdly, to be Jewish is not to be Zionist; they are not one and the same.
Around the globe, there is a rising tide of anti-Zionist Jews who have been among the leadership of movements in support of Palestinian liberation.
Post-Bondi, the many anti-Zionist Jewish groups around Australia have joined forces to coordinate a fight-back against Segal’s proposals that seek to deny our right to stand with Palestine or to criticise Israel.
They tell us this constitutes antisemitism. We vehemently reject this!
In July last year, the Federal Court ruled that criticism of Israel, Zionism and the Israel Defence Forces are not antisemitic and therefore do not breach the law.
The court said references to Zionism referred to a political ideology, rather than Jewish ethnicity.
So when Alexander Ryvchin, CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry claims, “You can’t eulogise Jews and demonise Zionism — we’re the same people,” we call bullshit!
We recognise Israel for what it is — a colonial-settler, apartheid, militaristic ethnostate.
We recognise that its actions, combined with the conflation of Jewishness with Zionism, represent the greatest threat to Jewish safety.
The Palestine solidarity movement’s consistent and patient explanation that its criticism is targeted at the Israeli state — not Jews as a people — is actually a bulwark against antisemitism.
Resist Segal plan
Fourthly, I want to turn to the Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism.
There was a lot of discussion about the Segal report when it emerged in July last year. Its proposals were so authoritarian and contentious, the Albanese Labor government put it on the back-burner, I think, in recognition that it would generate a massive push-back and actually fuel conflict.
Post-Bondi, Albanese has rushed to adopt it.
The recommendations are underpinned by the widely discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel with the hatred of Jews.
Segal’s plan seeks to withdraw funding from arts bodies and universities that do not comply with the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. It seeks to monitor, shape and govern media narratives and school curriculums; to give police ever-more-special powers in responding to newly-defined antisemitic incidents, regulate social media and dictate immigration laws.
We must step up our fight against this. We need an alliance between those in the education sector, arts and cultural organisations and refugee rights organisations to unite and defy these proposals to ensure they do not turn into an ICE-style witch-hunt against refugees seeking safety on these shores.
Incredibly, Segal was silent when actual antisemitism reared its ugly head. She had nothing to say when the far-right National Socialists rallied outside NSW parliament wearing swastikas, throwing Nazi salutes and reciting Hitler chants.
While we acknowledge the rise in antisemitism, we know that racism in this country is faced first and foremost by First Nations people, as well as Palestinians, Muslims and other people of colour.
Where was the outcry about racism against First Nations people when a bomb was lobbed into the Invasion Day rally earlier this week?
We consider that the most effective way to deal with antisemitism is to use anti-discrimination frameworks and policies that understand the systemic, intersectional nature of racism.
Now we have this federal Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, we support the call by the Boorloo Invasion Day organisers to broaden the terms of the commission to tackle all forms of racism and far-right extremism.
As the Israeli state, together with Donald Trump and his “Board of Peace” continue their efforts to erase the Palestinian people, we face a renewed effort to shut down our solidarity.
In response, we must renew our efforts and commit to fight on. It is fitting that at our first protest for 2026, we assert that we will not be silenced!
From Warsaw to Gaza, long live the intifada!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!