NSW Authorities Presaged and Later Affirmed the Police Brutalisation of Pro-Palestinians

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinians gathered on Gadigal land at Sydney Town Hall on 9 February 2026, to rally against the visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog. But little did they understand that NSW ministers and senior police had predetermined that if they did exercise their right to assemble and continued to seek to march then New South Wales police could assault them with impunity.

The othering of those who have been actively opposing the now 28-month-long Gaza genocide by NSW premier Chris Minns, other state ministers, and as well, prime minister Anthony Albanese, has been ongoing since October 2023. This campaign has framed them as antisemitic in their criticisms of apartheid Israeli atrocities, which is a long-practiced deception to silence Tel Aviv’s critics.

The process of demonisation of pro-Palestinians in the public eye has been a long-term and ongoing political, social and psychological process. This demonising made it easier for NSW police officers to lay into and brutalise their fellow NSW constituents.

The NSW premier, police minister Yasmin Catley and the NSW police had all warned protesters not to rally. NSW police assistant commissioner Peter McKeena warned on Monday that 3,000 officers would be deployed and public safety was paramount. Yet, when police let loose on them with brute force and pepper spray, it became apparent pro-Palestinians were no longer a part of the NSW polity.

And in the wake of the NSW police onslaught against members of the public gathered in the city, the NSW premier, other ministers and senior police have refused to apologise for the law enforcement brutality and rather have justified it as warranted, despite no real threat from the crowd.

This means that the process of degrading and demeaning pro-Palestinians has been heightened to the point that all are now aware that this part of the community are choice people to target.

The enemy within

The Australian PM and the NSW premier have suggested that Herzog, in coming to Australia to mourn with the Jewish families of those murdered during the ISIS inspired 14 December 2025 Bondi massacre, is here to build social cohesion, which is dumb logic, as it’s doubtful a leader just charged by the UN with incitement to genocide can wield anything but division.

The proof of this was the prolonged NSW police operation that was unleashed upon a crowd tens of thousands strong last Monday night, as officers set upon the public with their fists, they tackled innocent people to the ground, they pepper sprayed the elderly and people with disabilities repeatedly and they tore an older man’s skin open by yanking at his arm too hard.

The public safety that the premier, police minister and top cops had held aloft as the ultimate goal for those policing the Monday night Herzog rally involved mass violence against a crowd of diverse civilians, comprising of the whole rainbow nation of this multicultural state, but at that point, they were targeted as the enemy within.

The similarity between ICE operations in the US state of Minnesota over recent months and the NSW police bashing on a part of the NSW constituency couldn’t be any clearer.

On Monday evening, all pro-Palestinians present warranted brutality if a police officer got hold of them. Everyone witnessed the elderly, the frail, women, children and people with disabilities casually attacked by state law enforcement officers. But perhaps the harshest part of the operation was the way in which our state’s leaders sanctified the police brutality on the following day.

Sealing the fate of pro-Palestinians

The NSW premier went on multiple morning shows the following day to put to the hosts in a reasonable way that he wouldn’t condemn the brutality because he didn’t want “to throw police under the bus”.

Minns also repeatedly explained that the public didn’t see the justification for this violence, which is what would have happened following a breach of police lines, because it never happened.

The top minister and the assistant police commissioner Alex McKenna both suggested that whilst what was shown on the television on Monday night might have appeared to mild-mannered viewers as the police force that is supposed to protect the public in fact assaulting them en masse, but this was because conveniently no civilian perpetrated violence was captured on film.

Following the cold-blooded police shooting of Renée Good by ICE agents in Minnesota on 7 January 2026, US president Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance gave absurd excuses to justify the killing. They deemed Good a domestic terrorist, along with all other anti-ICE protesters in the process, and the latter suggested the officer who her shot in her in the face was acting with impunity.

Minns told state parliament on Tuesday that the NSW police had done everything it could to avoid the violence, and NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong suggested this was “factually incorrect”. Leong was in the crowd when the NSW police had kettled in the great mass of demonstrators on either side, prior to officers rushing their horses and then their blue bodies straight into the crowd that was trapped.

“For the past seven days,” Minns continued after Leong’s rude interjection, “NSW police were urging the protest organisers to use Hyde Park and College Street rather than Town Hall”, which appears to suggest that gathering at Town Hall did warrant a bashing. He further suggested that “police lines had to be held to prevent protesters clashing with mourners on the streets of Sydney”.

This is perhaps the most outlandish assertion of all about the pro-Palestinian Sydneysiders. The premier suggested these regular constituents wanted to have a skirmish with Jewish mourners, despite them having been actively campaigning against a genocide for the past two years.

Indeed, the only one really itching for a fight that night was the NSW police.

Things have shifted

The NSW Police Force kettled in tens of thousands of pro-Palestinians, representing a diverse snapshot of the NSW public. The operation went on for a couple of hours. All officers appeared aware that they were able to smash people. Officers pushed and shoved pro-Palestinians all the way down George Street to Central Station like they were scum deserving a beating or a cripple.

As all and sundry present on Monday night understood, as packs of officers chased pro-Palestinians down the street, this was no aberration, as this is the new level of force that locals should be wary of when deciding upon which social issues to favour. At present, the easiest way in which to guarantee one’s own safety is to support the mass killing in Gaza and call detractors antisemites.

This new attitude again was on display on Tuesday afternoon, when another rally was organised for out the front of Surry Hills police station, in respect of the people arrested on Monday night. The NSW police denied the group their right to assemble close by the station and as they held the rally in adjacent Harmony Park, the police presence was formidable.

Multiple people have reported getting arrested and roughed up and then released without charge on Monday night.

Other signs of this new unbridled attitude included the manner in which an officer shoved NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd in the face, right after she’d mentioned to him that she is a member of parliament, which was then followed by a second officer punching the social justice-minded politician in the face.

Boyd later remarked that prior to that moment she hadn’t realised she lived in a state where police could do that.

The assault upon Boyd occurred as she’d been standing close by a group of Muslim men who had started praying at the back of the square beside Town Hall. Despite Today host Karl Stefanovic’s assertion to the premier on air the next morning that this might have been to affect, Muslim people regularly pray at rallies if it is that time of day, as Muslims pray five times a day.

However, on spotting these men kneeling on the ground and bending their forehead to it, nearby NSW police officers started picking them off the hard concrete ground and proceeded to toss them back down into it, as law enforcement actively sowed the seeds of social cohesion, and in turn, protected the entire community.

The NSW premier, the NSW police minister and senior NSW police were well aware of this incident when they signed off on what transpired the following day.