New South Wales police have pepper sprayed protesters at a Sydney rally opposing Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit, where hundreds of demonstrators attempted to march in defiance of a state law.
Thousands of people also protested in Melbourne against Herzog’s four-day visit, which began on Monday, with some clashing with police. Victoria police appeared to use pepper spray on at least one protester.
Thousands gathered near Sydney’s Town Hall on Monday evening, where Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi and former Australian of the Year Grace Tame addressed the crowd. Three NSW Labor backbenchers defied the premier to attend the protest.
But more than an hour after the protest started, organisers and police held tense conversations, with demonstrators attempting to negotiate with officers and allow protesters to march, despite NSW laws passed in the wake of the Bondi terror attack preventing protesters from doing so.
Grace Tame addresses the rally at Town Hall in the Sydney CBD. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
Protesters began beating drums and yelling “let us march”. As protesters attempted to march, police pepper sprayed the crowd. People near the front ran back, coughing and spluttering, while those who were sprayed poured water over their eyes.
Various scuffles broke out, with a number of people detained by police.
NSW Labor backbencher Anthony D’Adam alleged he saw police punching people and throwing someone to the ground, as tensions heated up at the Sydney protest.
He said initially, police were “getting good cooperation from the crowd”, but then an officer pushed his bike into a woman and “clearly hurt her”. When she got angry, another officer pushed her into the crowd and other bystanders, who fell over, were shocked and angry and started yelling.
“That then resulted in a number of other officers joining the fray,” D’Adam told Guardian Australia.
“They grabbed someone and threw them onto the ground,” he said, alleging punches were thrown.
“It just seemed totally over-the-top in terms of the police reaction.”
D’Adam said if the government, which he is a member of, had allowed the protesters to march up George Street, it wouldn’t have happened.
Comment was sought from NSW police.
Earlier, former Australian of the Year Grace Tame addressed the Town Hall crowd.
“What a backwards world is it when a so-called democracy silences and surveils academic research, art, music and sports and funds genocide,” she said.
“We have to continue to mobilise, and we have to continue to globalise. Say it with me, from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada.”
The Minns government is looking to ban that phrase when it is used to incite hatred, harassment, intimidation or violence.
The protests in Sydney and Melbourne took place as Herzog addressed a major event at the International Convention and Exhibition Centre (ICC) in Sydney honouring the victims of the Bondi massacre.
Minns attended along with former prime minister Scott Morrison.
According to Nine newspapers, Herzog told the crowd: “The hatred that triggered the shooting at Bondi is the very same scourge of antisemitism that began … generations before the state of Israel was born. This is what it means to globalise the intifada.”
Thousands of protesters also gathered in Melbourne on Monday evening, where senator Lidia Thorpe addressed the crowd.
“As I said before, I stand against violence of all forms, particularly genocide. I stand in solidarity [with] the victims in Bondi,” she said. “But I also stand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters.”
Herzog was speaking on Monday night at an Evening of Light and Solidarity event, organised by the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Jewish Board of Deputies, one of a series of planned Jewish community events around the country this week.
A portion of proceeds from the ticketed event was to be donated to the Bondi beach terror attack community relief appeal, according to its Ticketek description.
Attendees entered the venue in the hours before the event, some draped in Israeli flags, while a police helicopter hovered overhead.
Entrances to the convention centre and Darling Harbour precinct were blocked by hundreds of police, some on horseback, and others from the riot squad carrying assault rifles.
Albanese invited Herzog after the 14 December antisemitic shooting in which 15 people were killed, saying his visit was intended to foster a greater sense of unity.
A splinter group from the Sydney Town Hall protest marches down George Street to Central station. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
Some have called for Herzog’s arrest after a finding by a UN commission, which does not speak on behalf of the UN, that Herzog, along with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, “have incited the commission of genocide”.
Herzog has called the genocide case against Israel in the international court of justice a “form of blood libel” and pushed back on criticism of his 2023 statement that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible” for the 7 October attacks on Israel.
Asked what his message was to protesters, Herzog said on Monday: “It is important for me to say that I’ve come here in goodwill.
“These demonstrations, in most cases, what you hear and see comes to undermine and delegitimise our right, my nation’s right, the nation which I am the head of state of, of its mere existence.”