A far-right Zionist group built on a foundation of violence has been causing scenes of chaos at pro-Palestine rallies, writes Yaakov Aharon.
SCENES OF VIOLENCE broke out on Sunday 6 April in Melbourne's CBD as Victoria Police moved on and arrested members of the far-right Jewish club The Lions of Zion (TLOZ).
TLOZ is an organisation that regularly counter-protests against Palestine rallies to “reclaim” Melbourne CBD. It was not the first time TLOZ had found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Police know the group well.
Co-founder and Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) veteran Yaacov Travitz led the protest from the front, wearing a jacket with the club's black and white colours.“I'm keeping it simple,” Travitz said. “We stand for three words: unity, courage, and pride.”
But the Lions of Zion is more than just a far-right club for Zionist activism. It is a registered organisation with charitable purposes, including fight training. The “fight club” has connections to Nazi groups from Melbourne's anti-lockdown movement and appears to model itself on sanctioned terrorist groups abroad.
‘This Sunday, let’s reclaim our city’
Before the Sunday Palestine rally and counter-protest by TLOZ, Victoria Police told Independent Australia they were ‘aware’ of the situation and that there would be a ‘visible police presence at these events’.
The statement from Victoria Police added:
Police have been attempting to engage with the organisers of the counter-protest, however the group has not been forthcoming with their plans.
We ask organisers to engage with police so we can help facilitate a safe and peaceful protest, so it is disappointing to not receive this engagement.
TLOZ proceeded with its protest anyway. TLOZ co-founder Josh Kelman emailed precise plans and instructions to registrants for the event, notifying that by registering for the event, people ‘acknowledge that there is a risk involved’.
Kelman wrote:
‘Depart Caulfield Station at 9:46 AM. Proceed from Flinders [Street Station] to Parliament Steps, arriving by 10:21 AM.’
Kelman added:
Travel in groups... Conceal any flags, signs, or Israeli paraphernalia until we’re gathered.
This Sunday, let’s reclaim our city. [IA emphasis]
In anticipation of TLOZ's protest potentially breaching the peace, Victoria Police formed a line on the corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets, blocking the club's route. Following an hour of the club facing off with police, they were instructed to move on.
Some TLOZ protesters assembled further down the road. Eyewitness accounts say that TLOZ had planned to go around the police line. Police were ready and met them on the corner of Bourke and Russell Streets, a short while before the Palestine rally was set to pass by.
Police issued another move-on order to ensure that the Palestine rally could march peacefully.
Travitz said to the police:
We’re not in a group. We’re not protesting. We’re not nothing.
You’re asking us to run away because you won’t be able to control the hate mob.
The police repeated their concerns that the club may cause a breach of peace when they meet with the imminent Palestine rally. The club members were blocking traffic, wearing TLOZ shirts, flying Israeli flags and carrying protest signs.
At that point, police used physical force to move the club on. Several people, including an elderly woman, were restrained. Travitz and Kelman were arrested face down on the pavement. Later on, police released them without charge but said they may be summoned by police at a later date.
During the incident, the repurposed anti-lockdown anthem ‘You’re the Voice’ by John Farnham blasted from the club’s boombox:
Tracing TLOZ’s roots: Cookers and Nazis
‘COVID times?’ TLOZ captioned their video of the day’s action.
Indeed, the club is modelled on other anti-lockdown and far-right groups. “Australia for Australians,” is the club’s rallying cry.
TLOZ organiser An Nguyen was regularly active in the anti-lockdown movement and the splinter groups that came from it. In October 2024, he attended an event by Leave Our Kids Alone, an anti-trans group led by former professional wrestler Craig Cole. Cole was also a headlining speaker at the National Workers Alliance launch.
Nguyen joined TLOZ at an event by Celebrate Australia on 26 January 2025, where he posed for selfies with Nick Patterson, founder of Australian Peacemakers.
Patterson – formerly a gym owner and MMA fighter – founded Peacemakers during the lockdowns, during which the group challenged cops to fights while providing amateur security for anti-lockdown and Christian Zionist rallies.
Patterson was the first speaker at the launch of the Nazi group National Workers Alliance at the Polish Club in June 2024.
Founding organiser of TLOZ Reuven ‘Rubi’ Flescher – who was raised Jewish and became a born-again Christian – previously organised with Nazi groups within the Victorian Freedom Movement.
Specifically, Flescher also organised anti-lockdown rallies with Peacemakers, as well as Harrison McLean in 2022. The year before, The Guardian published an investigation showing McLean intended to slowly introduce his followers to Nazi ideology, by showing them ‘that Hitler had some good points’ and introducing them to the ‘Jewish Question’.
McLean's networks also issued callouts for ‘people trained in some form of combat’ to clash with police at protests.
Flescher shared a post denying accusations that he is a paedophile. IA is not alleging that Flescher is a paedophile.
First rule of Fight Club: Register as a charity
“The Lions of Zion is not an organisation,” Travitz told The Israel Connexion podcast (22 January 2025). “I like to classify us as a movement.”
Travitz said TLOZ was rapidly expanding its membership and was receiving “calls and messages begging us to come to Sydney”:
“We’re going to go national and then we’re going to go worldwide.”
Despite Travitz’s preferred description of his “movement", TLOZ registered as an incorporated association and club with Consumer Affairs Victoria three weeks later.
According to an official statement, the club includes members who are:
‘Aborigines [sic] and Torres Strait Islanders – traditional landowners – Persians, Samoans, Israelis, Christians, and Jews.’
The club's extract states that its goal is to pursue ‘charitable purposes’ including activities promoting multiculturalism, social cohesion and peace.
Another purpose is ‘equipping individuals with practical skills for self-protection and emergency preparedness, including self-defence training’.
Furthermore, the club is to ‘empower individuals and communities through structured education [and] skills training... to foster resilience and self-sufficiency’.
As such, TLOZ advertises self-defence training with its instructor, Dion Fransman. The club promotes Dion Fransman as an 8th-degree Krav Maga black belt and as having worked with the security details of the Presidential Guard of Kenya and the King of Malaysia.
Dion Fransman said:
‘Together, the Lions of Zion bring unparalleled expertise and dedication to self-defence training and community upliftment.’
A plea to TLOZ webpage's visitors urges those looking to make a donation to get in touch with co-founder Josh Kelman by email, however, it does not list its privacy policy or its incorporated association number.
IA reached out to Kelman and TLOZ, seeking to clarify how donations are made and how the club is funded. The club refused to comment.
IDF veteran Travitz ‘hit with a tidal wave of PTSD’
On 26 February 2024, Travitz announced on a Jewish community Facebook group that he was ‘creating a support group for veterans of the IDF’.
At first, this group was known as Unsilent Majority, but later rebranded as The Lions of Zion.
Travitz wrote:
We will be seeing those fighting in this current war begin to return in the near future.
Three years ago when I moved back to Australia from Israel I had a hard time readjusting...
I was hit with a tidal wave of PTSD from previous experiences.
In most of his appearances, Travitz wears a khaki T-shirt, cargo pants, sturdy boots, a military-style watch and a black hat emblazoned with the Israeli flag. He is a military man, through and through.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, politicians and Ukrainian community leaders urged Australians not to sign up as foreign fighters.
ABC News reported that intelligence services, Australian Border Force and terror researchers were concerned that foreign fighters returning to Australia from the Ukraine War would pose a domestic threat.
Levi West, director of terrorism studies at Charles Sturt University, told ABC News:
The risk lies in the idea you go over, you experience conflict, you experience violence, you get trained, your capability improves.
It means when you return, you have two things. You potentially have greater influence in recruiting and influencing and radicalising others. But you also yourself have a greater capacity to deploy violence itself. [IA emphasis]
Know the name: ‘It means terror’
TLOZ has expressed support for the Jewish supremacist and former Member of Knesset Meir Kahane, who died in 1990 and was a proscribed terrorist in Israel and America.
In one video shared by the club, Kahane said:
“It's important that every one of you know what the name Kahane means to the Arabs. It means ‘terror’. They're afraid. And that's the only language they understand.”
Kahanism is a Zionist ideology, named after Kahane, advocating for a theocratic Israeli state in which only Jews can vote and with “Greater Israel” borders expanding from Egypt to Iraq.
The Jewish Defence League, founded in 1968 by Kahane, was a militant Zionist club, similar to TLOZ, which focused on combating antisemitism in the streets of New York. In 2001, the FBI designated it a right-wing terrorist group.
Australia has sanctioned 21 Israeli organisations and seven people due to their associations with Meir Kahane.
‘For The Lions of Zion, it’s open season’
The recent arrests of the club's co-founders are not isolated incidents.
On 23 March 2025, the club marched towards Melbourne CBD to face off with the weekly Palestine rally. Again, police intercepted them along the way to warn them against the counterprotest, but TLOZ did not accept the advice.
When TLOZ arrived at Melbourne CBD, they were met by a police line separating them from the Palestine rally.
Police threatened to arrest Roman Kostenetsky, an attendee of the protest, unless he took down an inflammatory sign that said ‘All Palestinians are terrorists or terrorists [sic] supporters’.
Kostenetsky initially refused to comply while TLOZ members came to his defence, but eventually compromised by partially removing some words from the sign.
After an hour of TLOZ facing off with police and defying a move-on order, police physically removed TLOZ from the area. Supporters of Palestine cheered as they watched, many of them having been cut off from attending the Palestine rally because of the police line.
As police were removing TLOZ, a member of the club jumped over a tram barrier to charge at a woman, knocking her to the ground and wrestling an Israeli flag from her grip.
“That's my flag!” he yelled. Police pepper sprayed the man but did not make an arrest.
Victoria Police's treatment of the club's 23 March 2025 protest was roundly condemned by Jewish community leaders and politicians, including the Victorian Shadow Minister for Police, David Southwick:
“Once again, pro-Hamas protesters are hijacking our city and spreading hate without facing any consequences. These protests will persist as long as the Government remains inactive.”
On 9 February 2025, the club held a counterprotest in opposition to an event by the Jews for Free Palestine on the Parliament's steps. IA has spoken to multiple sources from the pro-Palestine protest, including women, who say that the club's members made them feel unsafe and filmed their interactions without consent.
An organiser with Jews for Free Palestine, David Glanz, told IA:
‘One Jewish woman was driven to tears. Obviously for TLOZ it's open season on “the wrong sort of Jews”.’
On 22 December 2024, Travitz approached the steps of the Parliament of Victoria wearing a balaclava. He ripped the balaclava off and recited a poem, challenging his political opponents to a fight.
Travitz's poem specifically called out the names of prominent Neo-Nazi Joel Davis and President of Australia-Palestine Advocacy Network Nasser Mashni.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Previously, Ryan Fransman had been listed as a self-defence instructor promoted by TLOZ. This was inaccurate and IA apologises for any misunderstanding.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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