Sydney Harbour Bridge: Australia’s Moral Decline
As we commemorate the 9th of the month of Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar where Jews remember the tragedies in Jewish history including destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians and second temple by the Romans in Jerusalem as well as expulsions from England and Spain, the Holocaust and now the attacks of October 7, 2023. For us in Australia, I morn for the Australia that we have lost.
Justice Belinda Rigg approved on Saturday the protest set to shut down the Sydney Harbour Bridge, one of Australia’s busiest routes. Organized by the Palestine Action Group Sydney, the “march for humanity” aims to highlight the “widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease” in Gaza.
NSW Police and Premier Chris Minns opposed the protest, citing safety and disruption concerns. But Justice Rigg ruled that disruption alone is not grounds to ban a peaceful protest, writing, “It is in the nature of peaceful protests to cause disruption.”
The decision means participants are protected under NSW protest laws; without it, they could have faced charges for obstructing traffic or access.
Palestine Action Group spokesperson Josh Lees said outside the courthouse:
“This will go down, I think, as one of those moments in history when the people of the world — and in our case, the people of Sydney and NSW — stood up to be on the right side of history.”
Their hypocrisy is staggering and shocking.
On October 9, 2023 — two days after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages — the Sydney Opera House was illuminated in blue and white in solidarity with Israel. That same night, pro-Palestinian demonstrators took over the forecourt, where documented chants of “Gas the Jews” and “F*** the Jews” shocked the nation and drew international condemnation.
Is this the “right side of history” Josh Lees — aligned with Socialist Alternative, a revolutionary Marxist organization in Australia — is referring to? After all, Germans also claimed to be on the “right side of history” in the 1930s. If Lees was such a humanitarian, he would have criticized the October 7 attacks where mass rapes, murder and dismemberment of corpses occurred.
Such incidents have left many questioning whether Sunday’s event will similarly provide a platform for antisemitism. Is this the kind of ‘peaceful protest’ the courts are protecting? If history is any guide, hate speech is not free speech.
Since October 7, 2023, accusations of starvation and humanitarian collapse in Gaza have dominated international headlines.
Suddenly, because recent media coverage featured malnourished children in Gaza, the narrative is that Israel is starving Gazans. The New York Times faced backlash this week for featuring a malnourished child on its front page as evidence of famine in Gaza — only to later acknowledge the child had a severe pre-existing condition unrelated to the conflict. Critics branded the coverage “journalistic malpractice.”
A leaked internal email from a BBC executive editor also revealed that the corporation issued prescriptive instructions to staff on how to cover the humanitarian situation in Gaza. What happened to journalism being about reporting facts — not spreading blood libel? This is all straight out the Nazi propaganda playbook. Goebbels would be proud.
Claims of mass starvation are baseless and ignore key facts. More than 1.4 million metric tonnes of food have entered Gaza since the start of the conflict — roughly 1 kilogram per person per day, according to Israeli authorities. There is mounting evidence that Hamas seizes and resells aid at inflated prices to fund its operations.
Reports also suggest food is used as a weapon — with families allegedly receiving aid in exchange for handing over children to militant factions, and even greater rewards if the child dies a “martyr.” After all, martyrdom is the highest honor in jihadist ideology. We saw it during the various Intifadas, when Palestinians boarded buses and entered public spaces wearing suicide vests and blew themselves up.
This is the “pay for slay” program — using funds donated by the international community. The greater the number of Israelis killed, the greater the pension for the jihadist’s family.
Meanwhile, Israeli hostages held by Hamas describe being starved, beaten, and denied basic care. Eli Sharabi, who was held for 16 months and lost his wife and daughters in the October 7 attack, reportedly lost 40% of his body weight during captivity. Other hostages, when paraded by Hamas during prisoner exchanges, were barely recognizable to their families. In Hamas’s latest video this week, Israeli hostage Evyatar David is shown digging what he says in the video “the grave here I think I’m going to be buried in”. In black and white, that photo resembles holocaust survivors in 1945. He is a shell of himself. That is starvation and malnutrition.
Even Gaza’s own Hamas-run Ministry of Health has reported 127 deaths due to hunger or malnutrition since the start of the conflict — including 85 children. WHO figures for July 2025 alone show 63 malnutrition-related deaths, among them 25 children.
In response to the July figures, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an increase in aid deliveries — a move many say contradicts the claim that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war.
As tragic as these deaths are, war is never pleasant.
So why does Gaza receive such disproportionate global focus compared to other humanitarian crises?
- Bosnia: 11,000 malnutrition-related deaths during the 1990s war
- Somalia: 250,000
- Sudan: Over 500,000
- Democratic Republic of Congo: More than 4 million
Why the silence on Somalia, Sudan, or the Congo? Why does Gaza dominate the headlines? Because anti-Zionism has become the new socially acceptable form of antisemitism — dressed up as humanitarian concern, or whatever narrative suits the day.
For many, the issue isn’t just humanitarian. It’s political. It’s ideological.
Greens senators have previously said that Australian Jews “should be made to feel uncomfortable.” The party’s vocal anti-Israel stance long predates the current war.
Meanwhile, activists continue to share images of healthy-looking Palestinians or emotionally charged scenes that lack full context — further fueling tensions.
By contrast, the true image of starvation lies in history: the skeletal frames of Jews in Nazi concentration camps, where victims survived on stale bread and watery soup made from potato skins. Many died even after liberation — their bodies too weak to digest food.
From the chants at the Opera House to whatever may be heard on the Harbour Bridge this Sunday, the concern is not about protest itself — but about what is being protested, how it’s being expressed, and at whose expense.
A more productive demand protestors could make: call on Hamas to surrender and release the remaining 50 hostages — a move many believe would bring the war to an end. Even several Arab governments are now calling for that. Stop funding them, pressure Hamas, ensure they have no oxygen left to fight. Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese – you are the problem. You appeased, encouraged and emboldened Hamas so much that they now declare they will “continue until Jerusalem is liberated”. That goes hand in hand with “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free [of Jews]”. On X, one wrote “rid Australia of Zionists”. Yet again, this is not about Israel but Jews.
Then again, the antisemitic chants on October 9, 2023, began nearly three weeks before a single Israeli soldier set foot in Gaza.
Socialists won’t advocate for morality. They are guided by ideology — a Marxist one at that. And sadly, Australia is losing itself to these ideologies, whose followers now appear able to say and do as they please without consequence.
As the allies did nothing to stop the trains headed to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen, I see the world is letting us burn again.
Frankly, I am not expecting anything to change because even after the bile spilled at the Sydney Opera House, I never imagined we’d end up here.
