A sold-out International Women’s Day address by Grace Tame has been relocated to a secure venue after Murdoch coverage was followed by a surge of harassment and threats against organisers, writes Dr Rosemary Sorensen.
WHEN GRACE TAME accepted the invitation from the Women Connect group in Bendigo’s business network, Be Bendigo, it was a coup that no doubt caused much delight. Indeed, the tickets for the International Women’s Day event on 27 February sold out within two days.
Bendigo has had some negative press of late. Following the decimation of last August’s Bendigo Writers' Festival and the subsequent revelations about how La Trobe University had demanded the cancellation of Randa Abdel-Fattah, the city’s reputation has taken a battering.
And it looked like taking another hit, when the Murdoch media announced that the Australian Jewish Association had written to Be Bendigo, complaining about the appearance of Grace Tame at their IWD event. This followed her speaking out at the Sydney protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia.
The event listing disappeared from Be Bendigo’s website. The ticket page disappeared. And the organisation’s staff and board went to ground.
Was it cancelled?
The sold-out event was not cancelled, but, in response to trolling aimed at the organisation, they erased all mention from their website.
The trolling had begun even before the Sydney protest: Grace Tame’s uncompromising activism to support women’s rights upsets a rump of anti-feminist Australians, who have been emboldened in the past two years to use social media to abuse her.
When that furiously aggressive group merged with the furious aggression of the anti-Palestine lobby, the abuse appears to have turned very nasty indeed.
To protect the speaker and the audience from threatened violence, the event will be moved to a location described as closed to the public. This must have required extraordinary effort from the staff of this small organisation, and cooperation from both Grace Tame’s office and many others in Bendigo.
If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs any further proof that his welcoming of the President of a genocidal state (which is currently offering the sale of occupied Palestinian land to Australian buyers) is not just divisive but dangerous, here it is.
For saying “globalise the intifada” – which means “take the resistance against Palestinian annihilation worldwide” – Grace Tame is not only being attacked relentlessly by the Murdoch media, she is being threatened, requiring security against violence.
Those who claim that when they hear words like “globalise the intifada” they feel unsafe have now made it literally physically unsafe for someone to speak those words. And our governments are encouraging the violence by supporting the spurious demands to make it a criminal offence to criticise Israel.
On International Women’s Day, in a city that has already been knocked about by bullying demands that cancel free speech, it is more than ironic — it’s tragic that an Australian of the Year who campaigns to protect women needs to be protected from abuse and violence.
When will enough be enough? Will it take someone being hurt for governments to stop this march towards a dreadful kind of censorship that enables the agendas of pro-Israel lobbies?
Bendigo has stood firm this time. And Grace Tame is even more admired and respected than ever. But this is not an Australia we want, surely, where a small but inordinately powerful group of zealots gets to dictate to government, via a corrupt media, what and who we should hear.
Dr Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival.
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