SYDNEY – Sydney police deployed pepper spray and scuffled with protesters yesterday as a rally against a visit to Australia by Israel’s president Isaac Herzog turned violent. 

Herzog’s tightly secured, four-day visit was aimed at consoling Australia’s Jewish community in the wake of the December shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah festival.

But he was met with protests in Australia’s two largest cities on Monday evening, with a Sydney rally turning violent as police hit protesters and members of the media, including AFP, with pepper spray. An AFP journalist said they saw at least 15 protesters being arrested and scuffling with police.
Crowds also gathered in the centre of Melbourne demanding an end to Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian territories.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese had urged people to be respectful of the reason for Herzog’s visit, saying he would join the president to meet with the families of those killed at Bondi Beach.
The New South Wales state government invoked new powers giving police greater powers to control demonstrations.

And an attempt by protesters to overturn those powers in the state’s Supreme Court failed just before the rally began, local media said.

Earlier, the Israeli head of state paid homage to the victims in the rain and grey skies as he laid a wreath outside the beachside Bondi Pavilion. “The bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence, and hatred,” he said. “We shall overcome this evil together.”

Herzog said he laid two stones from Jerusalem at Bondi Beach “in sacred memory of the victims”. The Israeli president also told reporters that he shared people’s frustrations about a rise in antisemitism all over the world.

Many Jewish Australians have welcomed Herzog’s trip.  “His visit will lift the spirits of a pained community,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the community’s peak body. 

But some in the community disagreed, with the progressive Jewish Council of Australia saying he was not welcome because of his alleged role in the “ongoing destruction of Gaza.”  The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry found last year that Herzog was liable for prosecution for inciting genocide after he said all Palestinians, “an entire nation,” were responsible for the Hamas attack on Israel. – Nampa/AFP