The Ongoing Affirmation of the Police Brutalisation of Herzog Protesters Speaks Volumes

Two months after 3,000 New South Wales police officers set upon the participants at the 9 February 2026 protest of the official visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog with unbridled force, no apology for this violence has been forthcoming from the ministers and top cops who oversighted the response to the civilian protesters, which means that what happened at the event was right and proper.

Those present at the demonstration on Gadigal land before Sydney Town Hall were aware that a change had occurred at the point when the NSW police officers present suddenly shifted from being preoccupied with the crowd being contained within the immediate surrounds of the well-known Sydney landmark, and instead, unleashed excessive force upon those civilians.

The understanding on the ground was that police officers were suddenly applying excessive force to nonviolent civilians seeking to march, and this was intermingled with shock, as the majority of the crowd had never seen an entire police operation suddenly attack the public aggressively and without fear of official reprisals, whilst those who had experienced this before did so on a much smaller scale.

The calls for an official apology coming from crossbench politicians and commentators have been strong and repeated, since NSW police assaulted numerous pro-Palestinians. Yet, NSW premier Chris Minns, police minister Yasmin Catley and the police commissioner have all refused to admit that any wrongdoing occurred, and rather they’ve affirmed that police did as the state requested.

Those calling for an apology have persisted, as what has been expressed by refusing to say sorry for the police attack on pro-Palestinian protesters, and also an incident involving Muslim worshippers, was that the state supports the singling out of certain demographics as warranting a different type of law enforcement approach and that the state reserves the right to use such tactics into the future.

Friendly bobbies out on the beat

NSW police commissioner Mal Lanyon told the press on the day following the Herzog protest that NSW police officers had acted in the manner they did on the night, as they’d faced “a large number of people coming out to George Street at the end of the protest and march on police, not once but twice.” The top cop further suggested that this was an “angry and violent mob marching on police”.

However, footage of the crowd at the rally that started at 5.30 pm on the Monday evening shows participants gathered listening to speakers decrying the Israeli president’s official visit to Australia, which took place 28 months into his nation’s perpetration of the Gaza genocide, while the UN has charged Herzog with inciting this same genocide against the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers was on the ground at the point when the rally was coming to an end, at around 6.30 pm, and the 20,000-strong pro-Palestinian crowd was chanting “let us march”, as the rally was being denied permission to take to the streets, which was controversial as usually the demonstration would have been allowed to march as it requested to NSW state parliament.

But a new blanket ban on protest marches had been imposed on the Sydney CBD after the 14 December 2025 Bondi massacre, which saw two ISIS-inspired killers gun down 15 people at a Jewish religious event. And the newly-enacted laws allow the commissioner to impose a public assembly restriction declaration, or PARD, to prevent street marchers following a declared terrorist incident.

Those who did lead the crowd in the direction of the Queen Victoria Building with the intention to march on the night were no angry mob, however. A middle-aged man in a shirt and tie, along with a young woman, led a one-line procession towards the street, chanting “let us march”, and this contingent of protesters were notable, as they weren’t the usual suspects seen at rallies in the city.

This initial line of protesters appeared to be the type of citizen who doesn’t conceive that the state might set the police upon them, and when “they attempted to breach police lines”, all they actually did was march up a thoroughfare created by waist high metal barriers, as there was no police line to breach. And then these apparent “innocents” learnt quickly that the police weren’t their friends.

The view from the ground

The demonstrators who seemed to consider that free speech and the right to express opposition in respect of political matters was protected in this state immediately realised that this is hardly the case, when a stream of blue uniformed police officers raced down the previously empty thoroughfare and started manhandling and pushing the crowd back in on itself.

SCL witnessed two senior police officers descend upon a woman, who was being quite vocal but posing no physical threat, to push her to the ground and collapse on top of her. Then one of the riot squad officers realised that SCL was behind the police line, so the officer grabbed them and shoved them back through the wall of blue bodies to join the rest of the crowd.

At that point, NSW Greens MPs and Palestine Action Group organisers were trying to reason with senior police and have them let the nonviolent protesters march to parliament, as whilst that would be in breach of the ban, it was likely the most sensible thing to do given the numbers. And as these negotiations went on, some attendees noticed that the crowd was being kettled in on both sides.

A line of mounted police then rode their horses into the crowd in front of Town Hall steps, which was followed by officers running in from behind to start pushing and shoving the protesters, who could not disperse because they were kettled in. And this was being repeated at different parts along the strip of George Street, with various sections of the crowd being locked in by police on all sides.

From there, NSW police went completely awol. Officers punched civilians, wrestled them, pushed them into fixed outdoor furniture and held down individuals in pairs and punched on them. One older man’s skin was torn at the elbow, while an older woman ended up in hospital with a fractured spine. Pockets of the crowd were also targeted with heavy pepper spray, as they were kettled in.

However, what proved to be the most controversial incident of the night occurred when some NSW police officers decided to set upon a group of Muslims praying at the far end of the square beside Sydney Town Hall. This involved officers wrenching worshippers off the ground and throwing them back down into it, whilst onlookers who cried foul were also beaten for their troubles.

This appeared as an attack on Muslims by the state, and the subsequent refusal of the NSW premier and police minister to apologise tends to read as support for the police intervention, while the NSW police commissioner, in having said sorry for “any offence taken”, has been decried as having simply issued a non-apology.

A brave new authoritarian state

The NSW government warned protesters not to rally at Sydney Town Hall that night, but it didn’t give any indication that they might receive a beating from the state’s law enforcement arm if they did. The manner in which the police kettled in the crowd and then forcefully dispersed it was obviously planned, and in fact, one senior officer suggested as much on the night.

The temperature was also turned up because NSW premier Minns has been at loggerheads with Sydney’s large group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and those who oppose the mass slaughter of people for land, and these were the anti-Herzog protesters. The premier has also shown himself to be aligned with Israel and he’s been demonising pro-Palestinians in public for two years.

Over the period of the genocide, the premier and other politicians have been waxing lyrical about the need for social cohesion in NSW. But as Greens MP Jenny Leong told SCL this week, what these politicians really want is “the silencing of dissent from community members enraged” by Israel’s mass killing in Gaza, and they’re prepared to use “state violence to enforce this silence”.

In refusing to apologise for the police brutality, the Minns government has too signalled that the approach taken by police on the night towards those constituents who support the Palestinian cause was correct. And in mirroring the stance of the Israeli state, NSW is now threatening pro-Palestinians with the sort of rights-eroding special treatment that Tel Aviv reserves for Palestinians.

So, the ultimate message that the NSW state appears to be indicating to its constituency by refusing to apologise for the unprecedented police violence is either buy the official line or face the consequences.