Harbour Bridge March for the Starving of Gaza to be Challenged by NSW Police in Court

Following NSW premier Chris Minns’ refusal to permit the Palestine Action Group to lead a massive protest march calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this Sunday 3 August 2025, the NSW Police Force NSW Police Force announced late on Wednesday, 30 July 2025 that it was taking organisers to the NSW Supreme Court in an attempt to have the rally shut down. 

However, the premier’s outright denial of an action to oppose the mass starvation and slaughter being perpetrated against the Palestinians of Gaza has led to a massive cross section of civil society decrying his stance as deplorable. 

Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore has joined the chorus calling for the march across the bridge that would symbolically express the city’s opposition to the unbridled horror that Israel has unleashed upon Gaza to the entire planet. Indeed, members of the premier’s own party, NSW Labor, have also climbed on board the antigenocide protest train, insisting that their boss has overstepped the mark.

“The NSW government cannot support a protest of this scale and nature taking place on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, especially with one week’s notice,” the premier said in a statement on Monday 28 July. “We cannot let Sydney descend into chaos.” Yet, once organisers declared that they were willing to wait for a later date, Minns then revealed he wouldn’t allow a demonstration on the bridge at all.

But the fallout from the NSW premier’s refusal to allow the protest across the bridge and the raucous outcry against it, has revealed that the moral panic about speaking out against the mass murder apartheid Israel is currently engaged in for fear of being labelled an antisemite is subsiding, as the constiuency is waking up to the fact that criticising Israeli war crimes is not antisemitic.

Palestine Action Group and the now hundreds of organisations that have thrown their support behind the March for Humanity are continuing to plan to meet on Sunday to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for Palestine. But prior to this, organisers must face off against NSW police in the Supreme Court, which is set to take place either late on Thursday or early Friday. 

A groundswell of support

“The bridge is a hugely iconic symbol, so that’s why we think it is a very important step, because we need to do everything we can to try and stop this genocide,” Palestine Action Group spokesperson Josh Lees told the Murdoch press on Monday.

A driving force behind the pro-Palestine actions on Gadigal land in Sydney over the last 22 months, Lees also led a recent court challenge against an antiprotest move-on law the Minns government recently passed that allows police to order civilians assembled “near” places of worship to move on from an area, which is said to provide the means to prevent protests anywhere right across the city.

Palestine Action Group is adamant that the march “must go ahead”, as Gazan authorities are warning that “40,000 babies are at imminent risk of death due to a lack of baby formula”, as a result of Israel having deliberately blocked all humanitarian aid entering into the Strip since early March. Although due to international outcry, Israel has let a trickle of aid trucks enter the region over recent days.

“The Palestine Action Group has been inundated with support for the march in a way that has never been seen in these past 2 years of genocide,” the group said in a statement. “The people of Australia and NSW have had enough of this atrocity and are determined to take a powerful stand to make it stop. Three hundred organisations have endorsed the March for Humanity in less than 48 hours.”

Supporting organisations include the NSW Greens, the Blak Caucus, the Arab Council of Australia, the Jewish Council of Australia, Labor Friends of Palestine, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, the Maritime Union of Australia, Leichhardt Uniting Church, Amnesty International, the Australian Centre for International Justice, Pride in Protest, the Inner City Legal Centre and the list goes on.

“We will continue to fight for our right to protest on the bridge,” Lees told ABC Radio on Tuesday. “The premier says that this will cause chaos, but just a few weeks later, there’s the Sydney Marathon running over the bridge exactly the same as we’re planning to do on Sunday, so clearly… what we are seeing here is Chris Minns doesn’t want us to protest in a way that will have a massive impact.”

Another conflation

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin has attempted to conflate an antisemitic incident that occurred at the Sydney Opera House on 9 October 2023, which involved some participants in a pro-Palestinian protest chanting, “Fuck the Jews”, with the plan to protest on the bridge, despite the political climate having changed dramatically over the two years since.

The incident at the Opera House garnered much attention in its wake, as the Australian Jewish Association distributed doctored footage of it over social media the following day, which had been edited to appear to have people chanting, “gas the Jews”, which is a highly offensive phrase referencing the Holocaust of World War II, which saw the Nazis kill over 6 million Jewish people.

Palestine Action Group and most other pro-Palestinian protest groups in NSW readily denounced the behaviour of the few people chanting in a racist manner at that demonstration that evening. They underscored that these individuals weren’t a part of organising the event, and neither was the opinion of these people shared by the vast majority of those participating.

The NSW Police Force went on to debunk the claim that people were chanting the phrase “gas the Jews” forensically, and it confirmed the video had been tampered with to make the already abhorrent “fuck the Jews” statement even more divisive.

Ryvchin has been a vocal opponent of the pro-Palestine movement since October 2023, despite its opposing the mass slaughter of the Palestinian people of Gaza, and he has this week appeared in a clip for The Australian, in which he suggests that a protest across the Sydney Harbour Bridge will produce similar outcomes to the highly derided incident at the Sydney Opera House.

“These people have been assembling in our cities on a weekly basis for almost two years now. They will do so again this weekend,” Ryvchin warned. “But to try to shut down the Harbour Bridge and to block traffic for families trying to make their way to and from North Sydney over the weekend is just unconscionable and places too great an emphasis on the so-called rights of these protesters.”

However, the idea that demonstrators might turn up to Sunday’s event with the aim of spouting antisemitic rhetoric is highly doubtful as the Australian public is now well aware that many Jewish people partake in and in fact, play a leading role in these marches, as well as it now being well understood that the movement opposes the political actions of Israel and not Jewish people.

Alex appears not to realise that any attempt to criticise Jewish people would be shut down immediately by legitimate members of the pro-Palestinian movement, which is opposed to any racial or religious prejudice, and this would be especially so at a demonstration like Sunday’s, as it is called the ‘March for Humanity’ and not the ‘Parade for Certain Parts of Humanity’.

Labor MPs support the protest

“I am extremely concerned by the premier’s statements yesterday and today on the proposed Harbour Bridge march relating to Gaza, especially by the suggestion today that mass protests relating to Gaza will not be allowed on the Harbour Bridge under ‘any circumstances’,” said Labor MLC Stephen Lawrence in a statement he posted on social media on Tuesday.

The politician, who is also a recognised Sydney barrister, explained that there are “statutory provisions that govern” when NSW police might grant immunity to protesters in respect of criminal offences related to obstructing roads, and he makes certain this legislative regime gives “no substantive role to the premier in deciding whether authorisation is given”.

Lawrence explains that he’s been warning in parliament since October 2023, that the repeated suggestions being made by ministers to prevent the passage of pro-Palestinian protests through the city are risking “violence on the streets”, and he points to the violence that ensued after the state refused to authorise the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade to proceed in 1978 as an example.

“I have felt the need to give these warnings because an environment has been created by senior political leaders, Labor and conservative, hostile to protests concerned with the rights of Palestinian people,” the Labor MLC continued.

“In a free and democratic society, with a constitutional protection on political communication, it is rarely, if ever, the role of the state to prevent mass protests.”

The lawyer further added that the NSW premier has attempted to shut down pro-Palestinian protests repeatedly in the past, and it is in the wake of these moves that his current denial of this Sunday’s event is being understood by the general public.

And it should further be noted that the premier’s decision about the planned march across the bridge are now being questioned and doubted by a much broader cross section of the NSW public than when he attempted these shutdowns in the past, and the state is now puzzled as to why Minns might want to block an action aimed at ending the now ubiquitous scenes of mass starvation in Gaza.

“I am concerned the premier has in effect made a purported decision himself to try and prevent this protest, that this will taint proper consideration of the matter by police and that violence may ensue as a consequence,” Lawerence said in summing up his opinion.

But the final assessment of this matter is set to be made by the NSW Supreme Court after state law enforcement and antigenocide protests both put their positions to it.