NSW inquiry chair says ‘globalise the intifada’ should be banned while Jewish groups want other phrases prohibited | New South Wales politics

The chair of a New South Wales inquiry investigating whether to criminalise the phrase “globalise the intifada” says his draft report will recommend the controversial slogan be banned, as leading Jewish groups also demand “from the river to the sea” and “death to the IDF” be prohibited.

Labor MP Edmond Atalla said the state parliamentary inquiry into “measures to prohibit slogans that incite hatred” would not publish individual submissions. The inquiry closed to public submissions last week and will not hold any public hearings.

The NSW opposition has accused the government of holding a “rushed” inquiry without public transparency after the Bondi beach terror attack in mid-December.

The law and safety committee was asked to review hate speech with a specific requirement to consider the phrase “globalise the intifada”.

Intifada, an Arabic word for uprising or “shaking off”, is used by pro-Palestine supporters in reference to uprisings against Israel in 1987 and 2000. Members of the Jewish community have said it is a call to violence against Jews.

Atalla said his personal view was that banning the phrase was “not unreasonable”. He said as chair he would recommend the phrase be proscribed in his draft report.

The Labor-majority committee could then decide whether to amend the report before it was tabled at the end of the month.

“I speak Arabic and I know exactly what the word [intifada] means and its historical significance,” Atalla, who was born to Coptic Christian parents of Egyptian heritage, said.

“I have no doubt in my mind that the Bondi massacre was an act of intifada … by two [alleged] terrorists against the Jews.”

Atalla told Guardian Australia only expert and organisational submissions would be published on the committee’s website. About 150 submissions have been uploaded to date, with six marked confidential and inaccessible.

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The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, in its submission, recommended a new hate speech offence be created for phrases including “globalise the intifada”, “from the river to the sea” and “death to the IDF”. The board said the phrases were “so inherently hateful in that they call for violence, ethnic cleansing or death”.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) endorsed the board’s recommendation, which would allow a defendant to argue that they had a “reasonable excuse” for using or displaying a “hateful phrase”.

The University of Sydney constitutional law expert, Prof Anne Twomey, said the proposal to ban particular political chants gave rise to “difficult legal issues in areas of the jurisprudence which have not yet been fully developed”.

Twomey advised the NSW government to stick with “content-neutral laws that are closely tied to preventing particular, serious harm to the community”.

In its submission, the Palestine Action Group said it had not led the chant “globalise the intifada” at rallies organised after October 2023. The group rejected “the suggestion that this chant, or any associated chant, is threatening in any way”.

The progressive Jewish Council of Australia said the term “intifada” had been “associated with violent actions in some historical contexts”, but this was “one interpretation of the term, not its inherent or exclusive meaning”. It said the phrase “from the river to the sea” was “also often erroneously invoked as hateful”.

Atalla said individual submissions included many “pro forma” responses. Asked if these were mostly against banning the phrase “globalise the intifada” he said “a lot of the individual submissions that I’ve mentioned are opposed to banning any form of slogans”.

The NSW opposition’s legal affairs spokesperson, Damien Tudehope, told the ABC last week the inquiry “runs the risk of being a law-making exercise”, and that he had “grave doubts” about the government’s ability to outlaw the phrase without a constitutional challenge.

Tudehope told Guardian Australia that Atalla’s comments suggested the inquiry had a “predetermined outcome”. He called for all submissions to be published and for Labor to engage in “a genuine process of well-thought-out reform”.

Atalla denied the committee had already formed a view, stating that proscribing “globalise the intifada” was “my position, not the committee’s position”.

“I will put that position to that committee and it’s then up to the committee to accept that position or have a different position,” he said.

The Australian National Imams Council, in its submission, argued measures to ban specific phrases would disproportionately affect Arab and Muslim Australians, and that the word intifada had different meanings in different contexts.

Atalla said: “I don’t accept that this affects the Islamic community, because ‘globalise the intifada’ is a direct attack on the Jewish community. It’s not an attack on the Islamic community.”

The committee comprises four Labor members, two crossbenchers and one National MP. It is expected to hand a final report to the government by 31 January in time for legislation to be voted on when parliament returns in February.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has repeatedly called for the phrase “globalise the intifada” to be banned after the Bondi beach attack.

The state Greens justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, who made a submission to the inquiry, said international legal precedent showed that pro-Palestine phrases were not “inherently antisemitic”.

“If government MPs on this committee bothered to have a single public hearing, any constitutional lawyer would tell them their quest to outlaw political slogans will fall down in the courts and act as a shameless political distraction from evidence-based solutions to tackle antisemitism and racism at its root,” Higginson said.