The Protest Against Mourning

When the President of Israel arrives in Australia to mourn the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, the Palestine action group wants to meet him with placards and slogans, predictably, to protest everything except the actual crime.

It is no longer enough for this cohort to oppose Israel’s policies. That was the claim, once. It is no longer enough for them to demonstrate against military action in Gaza. That pretence has dissolved. What remains is the will to ensure that even Jewish mourning is unacceptable. Even Jewish blood, once spilled, must not be respected.

This is not politics. This is desecration.

A man comes to honour the dead, and they come to shout him down. Not on the battlefield. Not at a diplomatic event. At a memorial. For Australian citizens murdered in cold blood.

There is no cause behind this. Only hatred in search of a pretext.

We know this because the slogans shift, but the hostility does not. We know it because the facts change, yet the chant remains. We know it because, even when Jews are murdered on Australian soil, unarmed, unprepared, unsuspecting, the instinct of these protestors is not silence, nor empathy, nor restraint. It is to gather, disrupt, and humiliate.

We are told this is activism. We are told it is protest. No serious person believes that anymore.

There is a kind of person who sees a Jewish funeral and thinks, “This is an opportunity.” An opportunity to project themselves. To impose their view. To perform. They are not joining a cause. They are joining a spectacle. A social ritual in which Jewish loss must be subordinated to their script.

And still, some will try to excuse it.

They will say it is emotional. They will say it is complicated. They will imply that Jews, even in death, are too visible. Too political. Too difficult. That those who grieve them must do so quietly, and preferably alone.

Australia cannot afford to indulge that argument. Not again.

There is no social justice in harassing mourners. No principle in protesting a President who comes only to honour the dead. This is not a national security matter. It is a test of national character.

We have reached the point where Jewish Australians cannot gather to remember the murdered without police presence. That ought to chill every serious citizen.

The question, then, is not whether protestors have the right to express themselves. They do. The question is what kind of society chooses to treat this behaviour as legitimate.

Because once a society becomes so numb that it tolerates protest at a funeral, it is not far from forgetting why it ever drew lines in the first place.

There is still time to draw them again.

The role of public leadership is not to pass commentary from the sidelines. It is to say what others fear to say, and do what others have failed to do. The moral confusion surrounding this event is not organic. It has been manufactured by people who benefit from silence and expect cowardice.

That silence must end.

The dignity of Jewish Australians should not depend on police logistics. Nor should it be treated as a provocation. It should be treated as what it is: the most basic expression of national decency.

The President of Israel will come here to mourn. Others will come to drown him out. The public will watch and take note of who speaks, who hides, and who remains unsure.

Leadership, in moments like this, is not about grand declarations. It is about quiet clarity.

So ask yourself this.

What kind of country needs riot police to protect a funeral from its own citizens?

And what kind of candidate would refuse to say why?