‘israeli’ president Isaac Herzog brazenly visited his compatriot genocidal settler colonial state for four days This followed a feeling of lull in struggle as the ruling class rammed us all with the fear of intensified state repression following the Bondi shooting, and the Palestine solidarity struggle demobilised in the time of a false one-sided ‘ceasefire’.
In the week leading up to Herzog’s visit here on Thursday 12th of February, mass outrage grew online following the predictable brazen mass police violence in ‘sydney’ on Monday 9th February, following the crowd defying both cops and movement leaders. This laid coals for both explosive potential and fizzling smoke for us.
We see parallels (we’ll touch on more later), in reflections circulated online, that Palestine Action Group’s leaders failed to rise with the community sentiment to defy police pressure, and prepare to resist police who signaled long in advance they would not let the crowd march and instead attack our side (see @Sydneypalestineactions on insta for more).
On the same Monday 9th night here in ‘melbourne’, police repressed some people after an apparent flag burning at the end of the rally at parliament. Despite some staunch push back and anger at the cops as they arrested and detained people, prominent leaders split on the mic between anger at police violently arresting people and disassociating from the supposed ‘criminals’ involved, mirroring the state dividing some people into ‘bad protestors’.
A coalition of groups, Free Palestine Coalition Naarm to Socialist Alternative dominated Students for Palestine had originally called a 3PM rally at Southern Cross station for Thursday 12th, which was plugged at the Monday rally of thousands. The intel at the time was that Herzog’s Zionist community event would be at the Exhibition Centre, which the rally would then march to in some form.
During the week, police told organisers they had free reign of the CBD area, implying there was no event nearby to counter. The Exhibition Event was also later confirmed to be canceled. Organisers then decided to change to a 5pm rally rather than continue to mobilise at 3pm. This in effect demobilised the potential to mass counter the Zionist event during the afternoon / challenge people to not work in the afternoon—something we think the cops hoped to manipulate through their communications.
Our networks were caught scrambling by the change of plans and isolated with the shift to 5pm. There was nothing alternative called publicly until the day of Herzog’s visit.
Police maintaining heavy secrecy around Herzog’s itinerary on Thursday gave them a big tactical advantage. More came out the day before via the supreme court: terrorism legislation would be in place from 10am-6pm at two unknown locations.
By the night before it was obvious government house was one of the two locations because of barricades spotted in the area. But it was not till Thursday morning that cops setup barricades for the second location in southbank for a 2:30pm-4pm event—a mere 400m down the road from the exhibition centre. The cops had played everyone.
The day started off with “DEATH TO HERZOG + ISRAEL + OZ” spray painted at the university of melbourne.
It was left to the groups like Disrupt Wars, WACA and autonomous networks to try mobilise a snap action without much pre-existing organising effort to mobilise. In effect, without building a mass mobilising strategy (like the months of work behind Disrupt Land Forces), we rely on groups that may chose liberal acquiescence and tactical conservativism over confrontation under pressure.
In the video, Gaza is the compass, the Vlogger (85:43) quotes James Yaki Sayles article in Radar: “it would be as if the anarchists had said they’d build the armed front, and let the liberals build the mass front.” In quoting they make the point that radical undergound action must be paired with confrontational aboveground strategy by people with the same politics, or in effect you leave a vacuum for liberalism to sweep in. This is a problem we must confront in organising here.
Overnight into the morning, a confusing array of callouts went out privately including one to mobilise far earlier than the 10am terrorism legislation suggested was suitable. This split small networks across the day. In hindsight, more discernment and a decision to focus on one time of day could of led to more heightened activity.
In the late morning 20-30 or so people mobilised to confront Herzog visiting parliament house, but they were heavily out-numbered by cops. There was also some fun theatrical sending up of the police by people satirically dressing up as cops.
Cops used their terrorism stop and search powers on a few people at this point and not later in the day when a crowd gathered. Notably cops chose not to use the alternate designated area legislation the whole week. This legislation is currently under scrutiny in the courts and mass police stop and searching risks backfiring to escalated confrontation against the cops, like on October 19th last year after cops brazenly attacked and arrested people for wearing masks.
(pic via here)
In contrast to government house, more of a public callout was shared around for the second location on City Rd in southbank. But this was quite ad hoc at first about where people should gather in the area after midday. Many people who rocked up early were easily demoralised by seeing hundreds of cops and no crowd and went home. It took some time for a group to form at City Rd x Market St just after 2:30pm when the event began, with a callout going out specifically for that location. More planning and better comms could of allowed more people to gather.
For an hour a crowd slowly gathered at the spot. There were lively chants in front of a solid police setup including 3 cop survelliance cameras (evidence gathering team) and around the handful of fascist Lions of Zion, who had mobilised to protect Herzog’s Zionist function, attending by around 1,000 people. After 3:30pm the crowd was maybe around 100 people.
A plan was hatched to move the crowd to a better location to try disrupt Herzog’s exit at 4pm. It took some time to get the word out while at the same time making it appear to the cops we were retreating back to the Flinders St rally, to start at 5pm.
After some small verbal fracas with the Lions of Zion which meant the cops cut off one route, we made a move down the bike path and cut across a path to reach Whiteman St. This caught the police off-guard. There was a moment the police line was thin and could have been breached but we would of quickly faced a wall of cops rushing to re-position, running at us.
Some people took autonomous action and moved some bins on the road as barricades along with rubbish. While most of the crowd was keen, masked up and into forming barricades—a significant minority peace policed people’s actions. Some cleaned up rubbish that was acting as a barricade. A flyer (also see end) was circulated online the night before, pre-emptively put out to challenge these dynamics.
There was a bit of stand-off at Whiteman st, with some chanting, including off the bins. Chants were a mix between the more radical “VicPol, KKK and the IOF are all the same” to “globalise the intifada” and the more politics of appeal “arrest Hezog”. Then we saw cops make another line on our east, forming an L shape, signaling they might make an attack. At this point we soon made a retreat up Whiteman St.
( via here)
We knew from cop positions earlier, including mounted branch, that Herzog was likely to exit via Haig St around the corner. With a few large wheelie bins in tow, we made it around onto Clarendon Street and faced a police line with gaps and an opportunity to continue. Just like before though, despite catching the police by surprise, we did not have the numerical backup like the cops did to do much with this manoevre.
Cops made sure to steal a wheelie bin some of us had off us. And we fell back from this position to block the large Normanby Road x Clarendon St intersection, at the back of the Exhibition Centre around 4pm.
The cops again were on the back-foot and resorted to a desperate show of force. First, they escalated from ordinary police line to a riot police at the front. Amongst this, one chief cop made empty threats for us to disperse or else we’d risk arrest without giving any specific details.
Second, through a police inspector and ‘safety’ PORT (riot squad) officer they brought out an LRAD to use against us. It appeared to malfunction because no sound was heard except our own whistles (that were useful to signal threat on the day). So we do not know if they were using it to make a threatening announcement or to cause us hearing damage to disperse. In hindsight, we panicked a bit, resorting to some running, when we could of made a calmer retreat.
We retreated over Spencer St Bridge, with a spotter making sure there was no cops on the other side to kettle us (we heard from a passer by there were cops at southern cross station). And we continued then east along Flinders St.
At this turning point, a line of ordinary cops ran along with us like they were trying to flank us off the road. After some running by us, all they could do was keep one third of the road open.
By around 4:30pm we had retreated back to Flinders St station, half an hour before the main rally. To chants of “death to the IOF”, the contingent with other people took the intersection as police decided tactically to avoid confrontation before the rally of thousands.
In the days before there was worries VicPol would go tactically hard on protest like NSWPol, emboldened by terrorism legislation. Instead, VicPol signalled the day before they had “no public order worries” about the day.
After Monday VicPol commanders appeared to be influenced in the other direction towards ‘community policing’: wanting to avoid the bad optics and sentiment that comes with emboldened mass police repression and facilitate protest that is a pressure release valve march a to b, without uncontrolled disruption.
Cops applied their ‘strategic incapacitation’ strategy to get rid our small insurgent protest at Herzog’s Zionist function (like they did against the flag burning on the Monday). We pulled off a small protest that held a balance between some some tactical escalation and tactical retreat, with our limited numbers. Despite the lack of planning people worked well together. There were no arrests.
We needed the numbers in the thousands the later Thursday rally mobilised after Herzog left. In the aftermath of Bondi, mass march a to b rallies do provide some important symbolism people are not going to cop the ruling class’ intensified repression and demonisation of the struggle. But we need more of those numbers materially disrupting Herzog’s visit and the regular movements of colonial fascist rulers and logistics on this continent.
Our networks are creaky, burnt out and lacking coherence—shown by the on-the-fly plans and spread of energy on the day rather than a strategy in hindsight to focus just on material action around a particular time for Herzog. All that said, the state fears sparking disruptive insurgency here, shown by Herzog being here for less than 7 hours, with at least one event venue changed, and his mooted visit to a synagogue cancelled.
Em Cohen speaks about the stakes of the struggle against imperialism being bound up with building revolutionary infrastructure grounded in revolutionary commitment. We have big questions to grapple with in how to create long-term struggle in the imperial core, where we learn from past moments of insurgency and create momentum in the here and now; where mass and autonomous action are interweaved instead of separated so they combine to become some kind of material threat, instead of both poles lacking bite and fire. But from the litter of Herzog’s visit on Thursday we have experiments to learn from.
The flyer
