Pro-Palestinian protesters at Hyde Park in Sydney.Credit:Dean Sewell
While its exercise is subject to appropriate regulation to maintain public order,and cannot be exercised for an unlawful purpose,those limitations are qualifications on the fundamental right to participate in an orderly procession to demonstrate on behalf of a political cause.
The majority of Australians – and most political leaders – will have little sympathy for the pro-Palestinian protests taking place this long weekend. The fact that they have been deliberately scheduled to coincide with the first anniversary of theNova Music Festival massacreis shameful and grotesque. But that does not make them unlawful. Those of us who support Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah – and,as I have made clear in columns in this masthead,nobody supports Israel’s positionmore strongly than I do – must not let our distaste for the protesters’ cause,or our disgust at their timing,overcome our commitment to the rights that all citizens enjoy,in a liberal democracy,to speak freely and to associate peacefully.
Voltaire may or may not have actually uttered the words often attributed to him — “I disapprove of what you say,but I would fight to the death for your right to say it” — but the sentiment is a wise one. If we truly believe in free societies,we must respect the freedom of others:those with whom we profoundly differ just as much as those whose views and values we share. And that applies to everyone,including those (like so many of the pro-Palestinian protesters) who do not extend reciprocal respect to the rights of those who disagree with them. As the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed,“a constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views”. To be a free society is to be a tolerant one. It is one of the paradoxes of freedom that this can mean tolerating the intolerant.
That liberal spirit of tolerance is not a natural instinct. As Sir Robert Menzies said in one of hisForgotten People broadcasts in 1942:“[T]he whole essence of freedom is that it is freedom for others as well as for ourselves:freedom for people who disagree with us as well as for our supporters;freedom for minorities as well as for majorities. Here,we have a conception which is not born with us but which we must painfully acquire. Most of us have no instinct at all to preserve the right of the other fellow to think what he likes about our beliefs and say what he likes about our opinions. The more primitive the community,the less freedom of thought and expression it is likely to concede.”
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The rhetoric of pro-Palestinian activists is as contemptible as it is dishonest. One egregious instance is the incessantly repeated claim that Israel is guilty of genocide. The 1948 Genocide Convention defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy,in whole or in part,a national,ethnical[sic.],racial or religious group”. A defensive war against terrorist entities,undertaken for the purpose of eliminating an existential threat to the Israeli state,is not genocide. The only participants in this war which are committed to genocide – whose declared and explicit objective is the elimination of the nation of Israel – are Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet this weekend,Hamas and Hezbollah apologists accuse Israel of the very crime of which it is the intended victim.
Nevertheless,unless they cross the legal line of actually displaying terrorist symbols,or engage in violent or disorderly conduct,this weekend’s protesters will be breaking no law. Idiocy,ignorance and dishonesty are not grounds to prohibit the expression of political opinions.