An Australian pro-Palestine activist has been charged with allegedly using ‘insulting words in public’ under Section 17(1) of Victoria’s Summary Offences Act – which prohibits ‘profane, indecent or obscene language’ – for reportedly saying ‘ALL ZIONISTS ARE TERRORISTS’ at a rally last May. The Australian notes that this marks ‘possibly the first time comments considered political speech are the subject of a criminal charge under certain state laws’.

Listing ‘insulting words in public’ as a criminal charge with a jail sentence is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who cares about freedom of speech should be worried. This sets a dangerous precedent that may be used as a blasphemy law.

One can sympathise with the satisfaction in enforcement finally ‘achieving’ this charge, after many months of unchecked and intimidating protests. With so much blatant support for internationally recognised terror organisations on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne (with PFLP, Hezbollah and Hamas flags and insignia often paraded) it is frustrating that a charge like this has been resorted to. I can hear it already – ‘the Zionist entity is controlling the police and crushing free speech’ etc. Those individuals who praise terrorist violence and proudly support terror groups and/or Islamist hate preachers should be charged with terrorism, support of terror organisations, or inciting violence. Political violence needs to be prosecuted aggressively. Charging people with endorsing and promoting proscribed terrorist groups will have Australia-wide support. Terror victimises all Australians; Jews and Muslims especially. The bigger legal and political question is: what has been obstructing this?

Activists who fall under the ‘using insulting words’ charge may be able to appeal under the constitutional right to ‘freedom of political communication’. In this way, it is my opinion that the charge will backfire and end up officially sanctioning the phrase ‘all Zionists are terrorists’ and the inversion of reality it encompasses.

Maligning Zionists and using ‘Zionist’ as a slur has unfortunately become acceptable in ‘polite’ left-wing society. An activist may be able to refute the assumption that a reasonable person would be offended. Especially as hundreds and hundreds of people chant the same phrase. Whichever way the court decides, the activist will be seen as a martyr.

Historically, hate speech laws end up being a poisoned chalice, eventually harming the most marginalised groups they are designed to protect. The dog-whistles get smarter, extremists only grow in notoriety, and society continues to fracture.

History has seen this play out before. They had very strict hate speech legislation in Weimar Germany. Many top Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher, were imprisoned for breaking the German Criminal Code. Every charge against Streicher and his virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer encouraged further admiration from his supporters, Der Stürmer’s circulation only grew and the courts ‘became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews’. History shows us: this judicial machinery was entirely ineffective at suppressing antisemitic agitators and Nazism. When Hitler rose to power, he used this existing hate-speech legislation to crush his political opponents.

With ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ being pushed by the Australian Human Rights Commission – likely to make criticising terror support (such as teachers wearing keffiyeh) racism – I think it unwise to set this precedent.

We are living in a world where academia, cultural institutions, human rights bodies and even the judiciary are stacked with political activists intent on reshaping society to fit their ideology. In this antisemitic climate, they are unlikely to be favourable to Jews. I think this is a gift to our enemies; a weapon in their hands.