After Bondi Beach attack, ‘intifada’ chants face restrictions in Australia and the U.K.

LONDON — British and Australian authorities are tightening restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests in response to the Islamic State-inspired Bondi Beach massacre targeting a Jewish gathering that killed 15 people.

In New South Wales, the Australian state where the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration took place, police will be given sweeping powers to stop unauthorized protests, while tougher hate speech laws will be introduced, including a proposed ban on the slogan “globalize the Intifada.”

The move comes shortly after British police arrested two people in London for racist public order offenses for allegedly shouting slogans invoking “the Intifada” during a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The new restrictions are part of a nationwide shift in policing in response to the attack, which has sparked concern among some civil liberties and free speech advocates.

The Arabic word “Intifada” is usually translated as “uprising” and is used to describe two major Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against Israeli occupation, the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000, both characterized by periods of violence as well as non-violent mass protests.

Supporters say the term “globalizing the Intifada,” used for years during pro-Palestinian protests around the world, refers to international solidarity against Israeli occupation.

Israeli officials and some Jewish organizations, however, argue that the term conveys an inherent call for violence against Israel and functions as an incitement to anti-Semitism, a dispute that increasingly leads to police decisions.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said on Thursday that the “implications” of pro-Palestinian rallies could be seen in the Bondi attack and, after authorities labeled the shooting a terrorist event, he introduced reforms that would give his government the power to shut down unauthorized protests for three months.

“When you see people marching and showing violent and bloody images, images of death and destruction, it triggers something in our community that the protest organizers cannot contain,” he said.

Minns announced new reforms to hate speech laws Saturday that would ban the “globalize the Intifada” chant as well as other “hateful comments and statements,” as well as “terrorist symbols such as ISIS flags.”

In the United Kingdom, the London Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police announced Wednesday that their officers would arrest people holding signs and chanting the phrase “globalize the intifada.” directly citing the context of the attack. A rabbi and a Holocaust survivor were among those killed in the Sydney terror attack, which authorities say directly targeted the Jewish community.

In a joint statement after the attack, law enforcement agencies in London and Manchester said: “Violent acts have taken place, the context has changed – words have meaning and consequences. We will act decisively and make arrests.”

British police forces also referred to an attack on a synagogue in Manchester earlier this year, where two people were killed on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Hundreds of people, many of them elderly, according to UK Home Office data, have already been arrested at protests in recent months across the UK for showing support for Palestine Action, a group banned by UK terrorism laws after organizing actions targeting military installations and defense companies. The British government said, without providing evidence, that the group had shown a willingness “to use violence to advance its cause.”

While major Jewish groups have welcomed last week’s changes and proposals in the United Kingdom and Australia, some analysts and opponents of the new measures warn that governments are responding to security fears by turning political discourse into criminal behavior.

Index on Censorship, a UK-based organization that advocates for free speech, said police and prosecutors will have to demonstrate that the words “globalize the Intifada” are “harmful in themselves.”

“When the meaning is truly ambiguous, we still maintain that the criminal law must be careful,” he said in a statement Friday.

Marji Mansfield, 69, a retired financial consultant and grandmother of seven, was taken away in handcuffs by police during protests in July and November in London, and faces terrorism charges for expressing support for Palestine Action.

She said she did not hear the slogan “globalize the Intifada” chanted at the rallies, but denied that the slogan was an incitement to violence, calling it a “call for liberation” in the context of Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza.

“It seems bizarre that our government and the Australian government would seek to criminalize words that say ‘stop these illegal international crimes against humanity,'” she told NBC News.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, warned in July that some measures taken in the United Kingdom to limit pro-Palestinian protests appeared “at odds with the United Kingdom’s obligations under international human rights law.”

Free speech “has always been vital, but it has never been absolute,” said Mark Stephens, co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. “We have always put a limit on inciting violence, and so this principle must adapt to more unstable climates.”

The difficulty authorities face, Stephens told NBC News, is that they take slogans and criminalize them “on the grounds that they threaten public safety and the state has a duty to act, but that is an area on which reasonable people can and do differ.”

From a police perspective, “it becomes a bit of a game of Whac-A-Mole,” he added. “If you can’t say ‘globalize the Intifada,’ someone will invent something else that’s not illegal, and it will become the new phrase du jour.”

In Australia, additional legislation on protests has also sparked debate about how far authorities should go in policing political expression.

“For two years, people have marched through our streets and universities to call for the globalization of the Intifada, a slogan that means killing Jews wherever they are found,” David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Council of Deputies, said last week.

Some Jewish groups opposed the move. The Jewish Council of Australia, a progressive group that advocates for “Palestinian freedom”, said in a statement Thursday that “a policy that singles out universities, the protest movement and migration as the problem will only lead to further demonization.”

Australian authorities accused the surviving suspect in Bondi Beach shooting with 59 offenses on Wednesday, including terrorism and 15 counts of murder.

Naveed Akram, 24, was charged after waking up from a coma in a Sydney hospital after being shot by police. He is believed to have carried out the attack alongside his father, Sajid Akram, 50.