NSW Police Bash and Brutalise Herzog Protesters into Submission

The New South Wales police unleashed upon tens of thousands of protesters demonstrating against the visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog in an utterly disgusting manner on the night of Monday, 9 February 2026. All protesters were a target regardless of age or disability. Community safety was no concern, and the ragingly successful protest against Herzog was demoralised and taught a lesson.

Prior to the onslaught of dumb brute force, police officers were eyeing off the crowd that was demanding to march, and what the demonstrators didn’t know, and the assembled officers were well aware of, was law enforcement was about to let its officers off the leash on Monday evening, and the pro-Palestine supporters were about to cop it.

As a cohesive force, NSW police charged civilians with their bodies and horses. Officers punched civilians unprovoked and laid into them whilst they were held down. Entire groups of people were collapsed in on themselves by police officers, who leapt upon the fallen. Lines of dozens of cops charged civilians who weren’t fighting back. The elderly and people with disabilities were fair game.

The NSW premier and senior NSW police have been saturating the media in the wake of the most brutal show of police force in recent memory, waxing lyrical about how it was justified. Their premise is all protest participants warranted a beating. This understanding was apparent in the way officers unleashed upon the crowd. NSW police, says the state’s top minister, was justified in its actions.

Underpinning the refusal to let protesters march on Monday evening, and instead, to brutalise and arrest them en masse was a blanket ban on street marches imposed under recently enacted laws. However, the authorities know how to facilitate a peaceful procession through the city. This could haven easily been done. But bashing up pro-Palestinians appeared to be on the preset dinner menu.

Applying social cohesion by force

The Palestine Action Group 5.30 pm protest was against Herzog’s official visit to Australia, which was organised so he could mourn with the Jewish families of those murdered by ISIS inspired killers in Bondi on 14 December 2025. The “PARD” law passed in the wake of this act of terrorism meant that Sydney Town Hall and the march route to NSW parliament were clocked in a ban on protest march.

Negotiations regarding protesters marching were ongoing from about 6.15 pm. PAG organisers and NSW Greens MPs negotiated with senior police, who consistently refused the procession. Some members of the crowd – certainly not the majority – marched in the direction of the QVB Building and attempted to walk through a thoroughfare created by waist-high removable metal barriers.

At this point NSW police officers barrelled down the thoroughfare, forcibly pushing civilians back. Sydney Criminal Lawyers was up the front and witnessed two senior police forcibly pushing a woman demanding to march to the ground. A standoff ensued, in which officers occasionally picked off protesters, wrestled them to the ground, piled on top, brutalised them and dragged them off.

The standoff continued for perhaps half an hour, with scuffles ongoing and police thrusting people back into public benches and bins secured to the ground. Then those at the front became aware that not only had the police blocked off George Street where Park Street crosses it, but police had formed another line to block the road behind them, kettling in this part of the crowd in front of Town Hall.

Standing on the frontline, NSW Greens MLC Jenny Leong vocally charged the police with having blocked civilians in and any injuries would be on them. However, the NSW police officers standing in front of her were already aware that this was the plan that law enforcement had announced it had devised to put in place on Monday night to disperse the crowd.

As further scuffles and arrests transpired, NSW mounted police rode its horses purposefully into the crowd, shoving it back, until lines of police officers then ran into the civilians pushing people back in on themselves. NSW police officers then forcibly shoved the crowd backwards, in a shoulder-to-shoulder mass, starting in front of Town Hall and ending at the square beside it.

As this happened, the use of OC or pepper spray, which began earlier on, picked up. Civilians were screaming at police to stop shoving them, as they couldn’t move and some people had fallen over and were at risk of being trampled. Elderly people and people with disabilities were shoved and sprayed at this point, and when others called this out, officers shoved and sprayed more rapidly.

The police had too kettled in a great mass of the crowd that had gathered at the point where Bathurst Street crosses George Street, nearby Town Hall. Some of this crowd were pushed down George and they marched towards Central Station. There is footage of packs of officers charging these protesters as far down as where Goulburn Street crosses George, right next to World Square.

Another large group was forced down Bathurst Street in the direction of Hyde Park. This is where some of the most disturbing footage was taken, as dozens upon dozens of police formed an extremely thick blue line at an intersection and after a pause, the great mass of screaming blue bodies charged at civilians, pepper spraying them in the face and tackling people onto the bitumen.

Authorities manufacturing consent

“I am not going to throw police under the bus this morning. This is a situation that is incredibly combustible, and the circumstances that weren’t shown on the news this morning or on TV last night, because they didn’t happen, is what would have happened if protesters breached police lines,” said NSW premier Chris Minns on the Today program on Tuesday morning.

This was the second time in the interview Minns made this point. To paraphrase, the NSW police excessive use of force was justified as protesters could have breached police lines. So, NSW police liberally pepper sprayed, shoved people and in many cases bashed people to prevent a breach of the lines, and the reason viewers didn’t see this justification for the violence, is because it didn’t happen.

Many pro-Palestinian demonstrators watching this interview, which too involved host Karl Stefanovic frothing about Sydneysiders having had a “gutful” of protests, would have been quite disturbed that the head of the state was justifying the unbridled use of violence by police. This is a betrayal of constituents long traumatised by the mass killing of Palestinians by Israel in order to take their land.

Karl put it to Chris whether any of the footage of the violence “that have been clipped up and used as weapons against the police” involved officers, perhaps, having “overstretched their mark”.

“Obviously, they’ll be investigated,” advised the premier, “but I am not prepared to say that. I mean context is incredibly important, and all of the circumstances where police are affecting an arrest on a protester are after protesters attempted to breach police lines twice.”

NSW police assistant commissioner Peter McKenna told the ABC on Monday night that he could “understand, one video in particular, it might even be offensive to people”, and he then insisted that some of the “small videos being put up” were “out of context of what was a rolling melee of violence and un-Australian and inappropriate behaviour tonight.”

“There’s something happening here”

The protesters wanted to march to show their opposition to the state-sponsored visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who the United Nations has found incited genocide against the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Israel has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, and the killing and starvation continues via cover of a Trump-brokered ceasefire, which is a fraud.

The footage that is doing the rounds of social media are clear that government and law enforcement are twisting the truth about what happened. There is footage of a man held face down on the ground, while one officer bashes him in the head and the other delivers a barrage of kidney punches. The most well-known clip involves two officers punching upon a middle-aged man with his hands up.

The authorities appear to have come to the opinion that antigenocide protesters are not normal NSW citizens and residents concerned and disturbed about the immoral acts of the apartheid Israeli state, which is behaviour that’s criminalised on our local law books, but rather, these constituents are instead the enemies of the NSW state.

As various NSW police officers commenced simultaneously punching upon, brutally shoving and pepper spraying random members of the public, it became apparent that they understood that they had impunity to engage in such violence, which was obviously in breach of police protocols.

Taken against the wave of authoritarianism that is sweeping western nations right now, the actions of NSW police on Monday night had a ‘shock of the new’ about them. This shift towards openly brutalising the public opposing the Gaza genocide appeared just the beginning of this new brute force from the state. And one can bet, that our Trump administration masters watched on in glee.