Grace Tame Has Dishonoured Australia

Grace Tame must be stripped of her Australian of the Year award, at the very least.

After all, others have been stripped of their AOY awards over things as simple as a speeding fine or being accused, but never convicted, of sexual harassment. What, then, should be done to an AOY recipient who openly and flagrantly incites anti-Semitic violence?

Pro-Palestine protesters screamed vile slogans in three capital cities on Monday night during ugly ­rallies against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog just 57 days after Sydney’s Jewish community was devastated by the Bondi terror ­attack in which 15 people died.

Despite imminent moves to outlaw incendiary chants of ­“globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea”, demonstrators nationwide repeated the anti-Israel slogans.

And who was leading them?

Premier Chris Minns says former Australian of the Year Grace Tame leading a chant of ‘globalise the intifada’ at Sydney’s Town Hall on Monday night was “distressing” and “terrible”.

“I thought that was a distressing scene,” Mr Minns said.

So, do something about it: refer her to the National Australia Day Council (NADC). If Steve Irwin could be removed from the award simply for being filmed feeding a crocodile while holding his baby son, surely openly inciting violence and hate against Jews is a no-brainer for stripping the gong?

Or is Minns just going to do what he’s consistently done for over two years: nothing. Minns should have acted decisively on the night of 9 October, 2023, when a Muslim mob stormed the Sydney Opera House chanting ‘Gas the Jews’. But, he did worse than nothing: the only arrest that night was a Jewish man trying to attend the vigil the Muslims were disrupting. The message was clear: anti-Semitism had a free hand in Sydney.

Two years later, dozens of Jewish Australians were gunned down on Bondi Beach.

Just weeks later, here’s the odious Tame screaming incitement for more violence against Jews.

Doing nothing, yet again, will only send an even clearer message to violent anti-Semites.

And their useful idiots.

After videos emerged of former Australian of the year Grace Tame, leading chants of “Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada”, [Teal ‘independent’ Zali Steggall] said she did not accept claims from the Jewish community that incendiary chants had fuelled antisemitism and laid the groundwork for the Bondi massacre.

“I don’t… We have freedom of speech in Australia. She is entitled to express her views,” she said.

As an MP, Steggall should at the very least have a working knowledge of the Australian Constitution – which is absolutely silent on freedom of speech. Australians do not, and have never had, free speech. Like it or not, this is a simple fact. So, there’s no excusing Tame’s hate speech on that grounds.

And, even if we did have freedom of speech, incitement has never been covered by free speech rights. Tame’s actions are textbook incitement.

Denying the obvious – that two years of escalating anti-Semitic rhetoric from the left-Islam alliance culminated in Bondi – only makes Steggall’s mealy mouthed defence of incitement even more disgusting.

At least this time, NSW Police weren’t going to sit by while Islamic anti-Semites tried to take over Sydney’s streets yet again.

Muslim worshippers were interrupted and pulled to their feet during a prayer session at Monday’s protest against the state visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, footage shows.

Sheikh Wesam Charkawi led a contingent of men in prayer beside Sydney Town Hall after violence erupted between police and protesters. They were flanked by a barrier of demonstrators and protest organisers volunteering for the Palestine Action Group.

This is the same extremist sheikh who was – unfortunately, only briefly – barred from working in schools over his support for two Muslim nurses who openly threatened to kill Jewish patients. The same sheikh who flatly denies the Islamic motivations of the 90 per cent of terrorists and would-be terrorists in Australia who ‘just happen’ to be Muslims.

Now, he’s leading a mob of Muslims in an illegal act of protest, refusing to move on when lawfully instructed to by police and then crying victim when the police do their job.

There’s that ‘peaceful Muslim majority’ at it again.