Beneath the anti-Zionist Big Banana

Our political leaders keep making tone-deaf, overbearing laws, then watch them get almost immediately wrecked by the courts, writes Tom Tanuki.

SOMEONE WROTE SOMETHING TERRIBLE on the Jewel of Coffs Harbour, the famed Big Banana. I found out this had happened, but not specifically what it was they’d said.

‘____ Israel’, said the photo.

Here it is:

Like you, I could easily picture what came before "Israel". But I was not allowed to see it. And, I was made to understand, under no circumstances should I share it around if I did see the verboten image.

Or I might go to gaol.

Speaking to ABC Coffs Coast radio, local NSW Police Superintendent Joanne Schultz said that the banana “at the lowest level” is graffiti, but “at the worst, it could be considered hate speech”.

Superintendent Schultz admitted that this sliding scale was not about the gravity of the crime so much as the broadness of the new laws:

“It’s something in the context of the legislation; it is quite broad legislation, so I would encourage people not to post that information, those images.”

She refers to NSW Government laws, introduced and then bolstered by the NSW State Government in the wake of the Bondi massacre, that threaten up to two years imprisonment for anything that occurs “in public” that is used to “intentionally incite hatred”.

NSW Police Minister, Yasmin Catley, also lined up to express horror:

“The graffiti in Coffs Harbour is appalling and police are investigating ... Antisemitism is a stain on our community and it will not be tolerated.”

What was the first word, placed just before Israel? The collective interest of a nation piqued, thrilled by the allure of the verboten.

To meet the NSW Police Minister’s definition of "antisemitic", the graffiti on the Big Banana surely far exceeded in gravity the stunt by defunct neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network, who lined up with a banner saying, ‘Abolish the Jewish lobby’ outside the NSW Parliament in November of last year.

At that stunt, former NSN member and child-marriage advocate Joel Davis conducted a speech in which he said, among many other things, that “The Jews do not want to be criticised”. That banner, and the speech spoke of Jews, not the foreign state of Israel.  It was the rank and overt antisemitism expected of the militant neo-Nazi, and it fell well in line with that group’s stated political aspirations, which included deporting all people of Jewish descent.

But the NSW Police found, incredibly, that the NSN’s banner and speeches did not ‘incite racial hatred’.

So we have all these new draconian laws we never asked for, and there’s no readily apparent way to apply them. Or, like NSW’s anti-protest laws, they’re implemented for just long enough to permit their police to beat up protesters before being speedily overturned by the courts.

So what did the Banana say?

Local Coffs Coast Instagram page, Shire Bosses, tipped me off. They located the footage that had been blurred out by every mainstream news source, and they shared it, presumably bracing themselves against the wrath of the NSW Police Force.

Get ready.

‘Fuk Israel.

That’s it? Fuk Israel? Not even the entire word? Like a kid might write it?

I don’t know about you, but when I saw it, I literally burst out in laughter. Then I felt like crying a bit. Then I laughed more.

There you have it, audience. The NSW Police Minister’s ultimate expression of antisemitism, ranking even above coordinated militant neo-Nazi actions, is the words, ‘Fuk Israel’.

Recent polling data out of the U.S., the strongest pillar of Israel’s continued existence, shows that a clear majority of Americans now view the occupation state unfavourably. 

Greater even than last year:

'Sixty per cent of U.S. adults have an unfavourable view of Israel, up from 53 per cent last year. ... In both political parties, majorities of adults under the age of 50 now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively.'

Deepcut News has shared YouGov polling, which suggests that in Australia, the population feels much the same way.

Even Shire Bosses, the abovementioned Coffs Coast Instagram page, that shared the "offending" video, conducted a little polling of their own:

There’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the general public’s dim view of Israel’s genocide and the slavish support for it exhibited by our political and media class. I have always viewed the cause for this as largely owing to effective long-term lobbying and relationship-making. That is to say, the general public isn’t shipped off on all-expenses-paid "study trips" to Israel, before then being directly subjected to individual lobbyist influence, like Australian politicians and journalists are. 

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and other Zionist groups like them aren’t wasting their time on us plebs. They court power where it matters.

That’s why our political leaders keep making tone-deaf, overbearing laws that are overwhelmingly unpopular with the public — before watching those laws get almost immediately wrecked by the courts. It’s why they don’t seem to hear how loudly they’re being jeered as their various state police forces, forced to follow their lead, attempt to implement phrase bans, watermelon arrests and, now, Big Banana bans.

A good gauge of how dimly the public views the prospects for these laws to survive was the recent arrest of a man outside Boeing’s headquarters in Brisbane. Jim Dowling was protesting Boeing’s ongoing supply to the Israeli Air Force. He had a placard which said:

'From the river to the sea, Brisbane will be free of Boeing.’

I can’t and won’t speak to Jim’s motivations. But I strongly suspect that activists are now at the stage of using these stupid, dodgy, draconian laws to promote their cause. Why not? What else are they good for?

Jim Dowling told the media that he intends to plead insanity because he thinks the charge is insane.

I feel insane, too. I cannot abide by the level of ridiculousness we’ve reached.

I think "Fuk Israel" should be an ongoing feature on the Big Banana. Either by being subjected to routine defacement or, ideally, by permanently approving it as part of the design. It’s the most thrilling thing that’s ever happened to the Banana. The Coffs Coast ought to embrace it.

I demand to be able to say "fuk Israel" without going to gaol for two years. I simply insist on this.

We all know that if I do say that, I mean the genocidal, colonial wartime nation-state of Israel and its political leadership, and the bloody grip it has upon occupied Palestine.

I do not demand to discriminate against individuals, nor to have another genocide occur on top of the one Israel is already enacting.

They simply cannot delude me, nor, for that matter, the general public, out of this very simple and intuitive anti-Zionist political stance.

Well may they try, our tone-deaf leaders and their stupid coppers. But in the end, if they try it with enough of us, they won’t have anyone left standing with them. We’ll all be together, arm-in-arm, beneath the anti-Zionist Big Banana.

Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.