Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned their actions and demanded legal repercussions.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A small group of anti-Israel activists briefly took over the roof of Australia’s parliament building Thursday morning in a move condemned by the country’s prime minister as “reckless.”
“Peaceful protest has an important place in our society but this was not a peaceful protest,” Anthony Albanese told Parliament during question time following the episode, which lasted about 90 minutes.
“These actions have done absolutely nothing to advance any cause, indeed they have hurt the cause that those engaged in this reckless activity believe they are advancing,” he said.
The protestors should “face the full force of the law,” he added.
The four intruders unfurled huge banners accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, stating “No peace on stolen land” and echoing their loudly yelled chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
One also charged Canberra with “enabling war crimes” in a list of places that included “Palestine,” Iraq, and Vietnam.
In a related chant, the protestors shouted, “The whole damn government, blood on your hands,” as they accused Canberra of selling arms and weapons parts to Israel that they claimed were “used to kill, maim and dislocate tens of thousands of innocent people.”
Israel rejects such charges unequivocally, saying that it has killed 15,000 Hamas terrorists to date and that the ratio of dead civilians to combatants is approximately one-to-one, which every army in the world would deem acceptable in a war.
The protestors’ limited audience on the ground in front of Parliament House seemed to consist mostly of journalists and photographers.
After an agreement seemed to be reached with the authorities, the four rolled up their banners and turned themselves in to the police.
They were charged with Commonwealth trespass offenses and automatically banned from the Parliament building for two years.
Australian Federal Police chief Reece Kershaw told a quickly-convened Senate committee hearing on the incident that the activists had deliberately diverted the attention of police officers on site to enable them to climb to the roof.
Their actions included “holding an environmental protest inside the building where two people glued themselves to a pole,” he said.
In addition, he testified, the police responded to “some false phone calls of other protests happening at nearby areas that did not occur.”
Kershaw called these “diversionary efforts” a “criminal act.”
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle condemned the group’s actions, and demanded that lessons be drawn so that such a “major security breach” could not be repeated.
There have been many anti-Israel and antisemitic protests in Australia since the ongoing war was sparked by the October 7 Hamas invasion and massacre of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in Gazan envelope communities and a dance festival.
In one shocking incident just a few days after the slaughter, hundreds rallied in Sydney and chanted “F*** the Jews, gas the Jews.”
Jewish communal leaders and professionals have received death threats, synagogues have been targeted, and business owners have been threatened with boycotts over the last nine months in what has been called an unprecedented rise in Australian antisemitism.