For three years, during the genocide in Gaza, Justice for Palestine Magan-djin has walked a fine line. Unlike demonstrations in other centres, including Sydney and Melbourne, the Palestinian movement in Brisbane has largely managed to avoid sustained police repression.

It has done so through careful organisation and the use of Queensland’s Peaceful Assembly Act 1992, which provides a legal framework for public demonstrations.

Queensland’s democratic rights movement

It is not the first time that Queensland has found itself at the forefront of popular mobilisation against state repression.

During the late 1970s, the Bjelke-Petersen government attempted to suppress political opposition by effectively banning street marches. Although the anti-uranium movement was central to the confrontation, the struggle for democratic rights was much broader.

It brought together people campaigning against uranium mining and export, for women’s rights, black rights against the Acts, gay rights, public education, environmental protection, trade union rights and the right to organise and demonstrate without police interference.

The result was a mass democratic rights movement, thousands of arrests over several years, and a sustained confrontation between demonstrators and the police.

On 22 October 1977 alone, 418 people were arrested in Brisbane for defying the government’s restrictions on street marches.

This was not simply a struggle for individual civil liberties. It was a collective struggle by diverse social movements defending their democratic right to organise, assemble and challenge the political and economic policies of the state.

The struggle continued into the 1980s, particularly during the 1985 SEQEB dispute, when the Bjelke-Petersen government sacked more than a thousand electricity workers and used the powers of the state to confront organised labour.

Yet the achievements of the anti-uranium movement were followed by what many of us regarded as a sell-out by a neoliberale Labor government. In 1984, the Hawke government adopted its three-mine uranium policy, allowing uranium mining and exports to continue despite the opposition that had helped build the mass anti-nuclear movement.

The struggle for democratic rights and the right to organise were stymied by Labor silence on the secondary boycott legislation introduced by the Liberal National government.

There are disturbing parallels today.

Labor government support for Israel

This time, Labor governments have maintained political and diplomatic support for Israel while remaining silent on the genocide, something that many rank and file Labor members could not stomach and have resigned from the party.

In the aftermath of the Bondi attack, and amid controversy surrounding the reported attack on independent MP Helen Haines in Victoria, questions have arisen about the way political violence is being attributed to Palestine solidarity by government officials and corporate media. The New South Wales labour government even supports the LNP government repression here in Queensland by opposing repressive legislation by the High Court challenge by Justice for Palestine Magan-djin.

But responsibility for criminal attacks must rest with those who commit them. It cannot simply be transferred to people who demonstrate against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

The danger is that the struggle to defend democratic rights against police repression may become separated from the political causes that brought people onto the streets in the first place. There are opportunists who would like to divert the Palestinian struggle to their own political projects like the anti-Hanson campaign.

The challenge facing Justice for Palestine Magan-djin is not simply to defend the right to demonstrate, important though that is. It is to ensure that the struggle against state repression remains connected to the broader political purpose of the movement: ending the genocide in Gaza, giving voice to Palestinians, opposing their dispossession and securing Justice for Palestine.

The lesson of Queensland’s democratic rights movement is that the right to protest cannot be separated from the collective struggles that give that right its meaning.

On only one occasion during the genocide has Justice for Palestine adopted an organised strategy of non-violent civil disobedience. That was when the Queensland government laid down the gauntlet, adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and introducing restrictions on political expression that protesters regarded as an attack on their right to criticise Israel and oppose the genocide.

The adoption of the IHRA definition seeks make criticism of Israel a reason for sacking, a basis for condemnation, the blanket banning of books and films, and ultimately a criminal offence. All of these have come to pass.  Its political use, alongside new restrictions on protest, raise serious concerns about the criminalisation of Palestinian solidarity.

Only then did Justice for Palestine declare its hand and embark upon a strategy of non-violent civil disobedience, attempting to keep arrests to a minimum.

The police, of course, moved into action. Around 35 or 36 people have now been charged.

But there are limits to what an organisation such as Justice for Palestine Magan-djin can undertake. To embark upon a broader campaign of civil disobedience would require a fundamental change in political direction. It would risk diverting attention and organisational resources away from the central issue: the continuing genocide in Gaza and the accelerating destruction of Palestinian life and the annexation of the West Bank.

There, terrorist settlers and Israeli forces have intensified their murders and attacks on Palestinian communities. Olive groves have been burned or destroyed, the Palestinian economy undermined, villages and towns subjected to forced displacement, and ever more territory brought under effective Israeli control.

What is taking place amounts to a process of ethnic cleansing and annexation of the West Bank into what Israeli expansionists envisage as Greater Israel.

The Israeli government contains openly racist and extreme nationalist elements whose ministers have advocated mass displacement and devastating violence against Palestinians. The consequences are visible in Hebron, Jenin and throughout the towns and cities of Gaza.

These developments have consequences far beyond Palestine.

In the United States, Israel’s war on Gaza became an important issue in the 2024 presidential election. Kamala Harris was soundly defeated by Donald Trump, and opposition to the Biden administration’s support for Israel contributed to disillusionment among sections of the Democratic Party’s traditional electoral base.

It would be an exaggeration to attribute Harris’s defeat solely to Palestine. Nevertheless, the issue exposed the Israel lobby control of the Democrats and demonstrated the political cost of unconditional support for Israel.

Both major American parties have long maintained close relationships with Israel, supported by powerful pro-Israel lobbying organisations and substantial political and military commitments.

Whether the same issue will contribute to Donald Trump’s political defeat remains to be seen.

With the wider regional war brought on by  Israel against Iran and with full support by the United States, initiated by Trump and Netanyahu pursuing increasingly confrontational policies, the consequences may be far greater than those witnessed during the last presidential election.

Across the Western world, regimes that describe themselves as democratic have reached a moment of political isolation.

Large sections of their populations oppose the genocide in Gaza, yet the elite and governments they control have continued to provide Israel with diplomatic protection, military cooperation and, most importantly, weapons.

Rather than respond to public opposition, western governments have doubled down on their support for Israel while placing increasing restrictions on the movements protesting against it.

There are signs of resistance within the organised working class.

In Italy, France and even the United States, trade unionists and workers have challenged the export and transportation of weapons to Israel. Dockworkers, transport workers and other union activists have raised the possibility of using their industrial power to obstruct the machinery of war.

In Australia, comparable industrial action has been limited, despite widespread public demonstrations and opposition to the genocide.

This raises an important question for the Palestine solidarity movement.

The strength of the movement cannot be measured simply by the number of people arrested, nor by the willingness of demonstrators to confront police.

Its real strength lies in its capacity to mobilise public opposition, sustain solidarity with Palestinians and, ultimately, bring political and economic pressure to bear on the governments and corporations that sustain Israel’s war.

For Justice for Palestine Magan-djin, the challenge remains to defend the right to demonstrate without allowing the struggle against police repression to displace the central purpose of the movement: ending the genocide, opposing the dispossession of Palestinians and securing justice for Palestine.

Ian Curr

3 November 2026