August 3, 2025 • 13 mins
In spite of pouring rain, government opposition and a failed police ban, 90,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge yesterday.
It was the largest pro-Palestinian protest in Australia’s history.
It was a moment of mass demonstration against 21 months of war in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed. Despite warning that the march could become dangerous, the protest remained peaceful and marked a powerful expression of a shifting public conscience.
Today, Walkley-award winning journalist and author, David Leser – on why he joined the protest, not in spite of his Holocaust heritage, but because of it.
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Guest: Walkley-award winning journalist and author, David Leser
Photo: AAP/Flavio Brancaleone
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
In spite of pouring rain, government opposition and a failed
police ban, ninety thousand people massed across the Sydney Harbor
Bridge yesterday. It was the largest pro Palestinian protest in
Australia's history. It was a moment of mass demonstration against
twenty one months of war in Gaza, where tens of
thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed. Despite warning
(00:33):
that the march would become dangerous, the protests remained peaceful
and marked a powerful expression of a shifting public conscience.
I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven AM today
Walkley Award winning journalist and author David Laser while he
joined the protest not in spite of his Holocaust heritage,
(00:54):
but because of it. It's Monday, August fourth, David, thanks
for speaking with me. They have of course been regular
pro Palestinian rallies in cities around Australia since the war began.
But what did it mean to have a protest take
(01:16):
over such a significant and iconic landmark as the Sydney
Harbor Bridge.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, I think it's all there. In the word iconic,
I mean that Sydney Harbor Bridge is what the world
sees every New Year's Eve as we are in the
new year. So in terms of the representation of a
collective sentiment on that place at this time, I saw
(01:41):
a very very very large demonstration in very very wet
conditions and an extremely civilized, well behaved collective howl of protest.
I think is a very very powerful moment.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeh New South Wales estimated that around ninety thousand people attended.
Organizers said they were expecting fifty. What does that say
to you about public sentiment at this particular moment.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I think public sentiment is boiling over. I just
think that it's impossible to see these images of famished,
desperate people dying of malnutrition, skeletal, particularly children. I mean,
there are moments that photographers and journalists capture that galvanize sentiments,
(02:33):
and it seems to me that the photos that we've
been seeing recently of starving children has done just that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Last week, the New South Wales Premier Chris Min's said
he didn't support the protests going ahead and didn't want
Sydney to descend into chaos.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I can't close down the central artery for a city
as big as Sydney, even on a short term basis,
but even if we had a massive heads up to
do it now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
The police then took matter to the Supreme Court to
get a prohibition order over safety fears. They lost because
the judge ruled that the right to freedom of expression
ultimately outweighed the safety risk. But what did you think
when the Premier intervene just try and stop the protest
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, I didn't agree with it. I don't think the
decision by Men's or the New South Wales Police to
prevent that march going ahead was the right action at
the right time. It smelt of politics and it was
a denial of a boiling public grievance. So to say
(03:38):
I'll look take another route for your march, do it
somewhere else, I mean, it's just not going to cut it.
Not while millions of Palestinians are facing death from starvation
or shelling from Israeli forces or malnutrition. I mean, there
(04:00):
is a people on the steering into the abyss, and
I think we need to be able to release the
valve when public sentiment gets to this point in order
for people to come together as a kind of a
common humanity in a moral community and express themselves together.
So I think he got that wrong. I do think
(04:22):
what we're seeing right now is we are asking ourselves
what has happened to our humanity that we could allow
this to be proceeding the way it is. And I, certainly,
as a Jewish Man, do not accept this idea that
it is anti Semitic to protest vehemently about the treatment
(04:47):
of the Netnyahuu government against the Palestinians. And so we
need to get clearer about definitions about how we use words.
And I don't even see this as a war right now.
I see this as a slaughter, because a war suggests
that you've got two equal sides, or more or less
equal sides fighting each other. This is just mass murder.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
David, you've recently written that you supported this protest not
in spite of your Holocaust heritage, but because of it.
Can you tell me about how your heritage informs your
position during this time.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well, my father was born in Germany. It was eight
years old when Hitler came to power and fled the
Nazis in nineteen thirty nine, a few months before World
War two began, was shunned at school, was expelled from
school for being Jewish, was frog march through the streets
of Coburg in the Old East Germany as a Jewish
(05:41):
boy and pelted with stones and rotten fruit along with
his peers from this Jewish boarding school. So he fled
Germany along with my grandfather and my step grandmother. And
on my mother's side, Latvian Jewish forty one relatives executed
in the forest outside of Riga, the capital of Latvia,
(06:05):
the Rumbula forest, or forced to dig their own graves
and then shot in the back. And that's been burnished
in my heart and soul and mind since I was
a young boy growing up. I think the fact of
that Jewish background informed my intellectual search. Well, how did
(06:27):
the people who survived the ovens survived the gas chambers
of the most sophisticated extermination campaign in modern history? How
did the survivors of that infamy become the persecutors of
another people? And I think you know Gabor Marte, you
(06:48):
know the famous psychotherapist. He talks a lot about trauma
and how trauma begets trauma, violence begets violence. So I
have for the past forty to forty five five years
studied the Middle East. Gone there several times lived in
Jerusalem to try and work out the nature of this
(07:09):
conflict that sits very close at the center of what's
informed my thinking and my impulses on.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
This After the break, will this be a tipping point?
You've been outspoken about what's been occurring in Gaza for
a long time now. What has been the personal cost
(07:39):
of that to you, David?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, nothing like the personal cost of being a Palestinian
in Gaza, and nothing like the cost of being a
Palestinian in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers have been
led off the leash by the net Yahoo government. This
is a very, very, very traumatic moment for Jewish people.
(08:04):
So the quick answer to your question, Daniel is I've
lost friends. I think there are people who just don't
want to have anything to do with me now because
they see me as having portrayed the tribe made the
Jewish people less safe. I take the view that unless
(08:24):
Jewish people are being seen to speak out on this issue,
then it would be understandable, if not inevitable, that the
majority of people would take the view that all Jewish
people are supporting what the State of Israel is doing
to the people of Gaza. And I think it's absolutely
(08:46):
urgent that there is seen to be which there is
a plurality of voices within the Jewish community who have
different views on this horrendous, never ending conflict. I think
what Nednyahu has done is two things. The first and
most important is he's brought a catastrophe down on the
(09:10):
heads of the Palestinian people. And he has committed mass
murder as an act of revenge for the horrors of
October seven. And in the process he has made Jewish
people less safe. And he has brought a moral catastrophe
down on all Jewish people. And we are at odds
(09:33):
with each other. The Jewish community is divided in a
way that I've never seen before in my lifetime. And
I'm nearly seventy, you know, So the fact that I
may fall out with certain friends, I think there's been
fallings out every which way across the board.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Day the weather. We're at a political tipping point kind
of remains to be seen. But Anthony Albernezi has joined
many other countries, including the UK, Canada and France, in
speaking about how to recognize a Palestinian state and how
it would actually practically be implemented. What have you made
of Australian a government's approach to this in recent weeks.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I don't know why he's dragging his feet on this.
I mean, I personally think that the declarations by France
and Britain and Canada that they'll recognize a Palestinian state.
It feels to me like a platitude. I would say,
when you start saying, like Slovenia did, we are going
to stop all shipment of arms to Israel, then I
(10:36):
think you're getting serious. I mean, to me, the two
state solution is kind of dead and buried. Politicians talk
about the two state solution all the time, but a
two state solution presupposes that the Palasins have actually land
to set up a state of their own. Well, part
of that land, Gaza, is all rubble, and the other
(10:58):
part of it the West Bank. There's seven hundred and
fifty to eight hundred thousand Jewish settlers in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem included, who are torching Palestinian villagers,
who are running amok. And how on earth would Israel
remove seven hundred and fifty thousand Jewish settlers in order
to make way for a Palestinian state. So very nice
(11:22):
for Makron Karnei and Code to actually call for a
Palestinian state. I think Albanese should do so too. I
think there's all sorts of legal and economic implications that
flow from the recognition of a Palestinian national entity and
what Israel is doing and the consequences for Israel by
doing what it's doing to a people who have a
(11:45):
state of their own recognized by the United Nations, as
opposed to a dispossessed people. But I would like to
see something more than that. I would like to see
government saying we're not sending arms or we will. Actually
we've been prevaricating about boycotting or sanctioning Israel, but we
cannot sit by now and in all good conscience watch
(12:07):
what Israel is doing to these people and not respond.
And I think that's what the demonstration on the Harbor
Bridge was all about, this cry from the heart of
the people of Sydney that enough is enough.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, David, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Thank you for having me, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Also in the news, Anthony Albernezi has delivered the keynote
address at the Garma Festival in northeast arnham Land over
the weekend. Outlining a new plan for a first nation's
economic partnership between the government and First Nations people. Any
speech to Prime Minister also acknowledged the work of the
europe Justice Commission, the first truth telling process in the country.
(13:04):
His comments have led some to speculate whether a national
truth telling process could be on the table. We'll have
more on that tomorrow. And the Secretary of the Australian
Council of Trade Unions says it's time to bite the
bullet on negative gearing reform. Sally McManus told the ABC
over the weekend she'll be calling for an overhaul or
the tax break at the government's Productivity round table this month.
(13:27):
The ACTU will argue negative gearing should be limited to
one investment property. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Thanks for listening.
In spite of pouring rain, government opposition and a failed
police ban, ninety thousand people massed across the Sydney Harbor
Bridge yesterday. It was the largest pro Palestinian protest in
Australia's history. It was a moment of mass demonstration against
twenty one months of war in Gaza, where tens of
thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed. Despite warning
(00:33):
that the march would become dangerous, the protests remained peaceful
and marked a powerful expression of a shifting public conscience.
I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven AM today
Walkley Award winning journalist and author David Laser while he
joined the protest not in spite of his Holocaust heritage,
(00:54):
but because of it. It's Monday, August fourth, David, thanks
for speaking with me. They have of course been regular
pro Palestinian rallies in cities around Australia since the war began.
But what did it mean to have a protest take
(01:16):
over such a significant and iconic landmark as the Sydney
Harbor Bridge.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, I think it's all there. In the word iconic,
I mean that Sydney Harbor Bridge is what the world
sees every New Year's Eve as we are in the
new year. So in terms of the representation of a
collective sentiment on that place at this time, I saw
(01:41):
a very very very large demonstration in very very wet
conditions and an extremely civilized, well behaved collective howl of protest.
I think is a very very powerful moment.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeh New South Wales estimated that around ninety thousand people attended.
Organizers said they were expecting fifty. What does that say
to you about public sentiment at this particular moment.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I think public sentiment is boiling over. I just
think that it's impossible to see these images of famished,
desperate people dying of malnutrition, skeletal, particularly children. I mean,
there are moments that photographers and journalists capture that galvanize sentiments,
(02:33):
and it seems to me that the photos that we've
been seeing recently of starving children has done just that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Last week, the New South Wales Premier Chris Min's said
he didn't support the protests going ahead and didn't want
Sydney to descend into chaos.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I can't close down the central artery for a city
as big as Sydney, even on a short term basis,
but even if we had a massive heads up to
do it now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
The police then took matter to the Supreme Court to
get a prohibition order over safety fears. They lost because
the judge ruled that the right to freedom of expression
ultimately outweighed the safety risk. But what did you think
when the Premier intervene just try and stop the protest
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, I didn't agree with it. I don't think the
decision by Men's or the New South Wales Police to
prevent that march going ahead was the right action at
the right time. It smelt of politics and it was
a denial of a boiling public grievance. So to say
(03:38):
I'll look take another route for your march, do it
somewhere else, I mean, it's just not going to cut it.
Not while millions of Palestinians are facing death from starvation
or shelling from Israeli forces or malnutrition. I mean, there
(04:00):
is a people on the steering into the abyss, and
I think we need to be able to release the
valve when public sentiment gets to this point in order
for people to come together as a kind of a
common humanity in a moral community and express themselves together.
So I think he got that wrong. I do think
(04:22):
what we're seeing right now is we are asking ourselves
what has happened to our humanity that we could allow
this to be proceeding the way it is. And I, certainly,
as a Jewish Man, do not accept this idea that
it is anti Semitic to protest vehemently about the treatment
(04:47):
of the Netnyahuu government against the Palestinians. And so we
need to get clearer about definitions about how we use words.
And I don't even see this as a war right now.
I see this as a slaughter, because a war suggests
that you've got two equal sides, or more or less
equal sides fighting each other. This is just mass murder.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
David, you've recently written that you supported this protest not
in spite of your Holocaust heritage, but because of it.
Can you tell me about how your heritage informs your
position during this time.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well, my father was born in Germany. It was eight
years old when Hitler came to power and fled the
Nazis in nineteen thirty nine, a few months before World
War two began, was shunned at school, was expelled from
school for being Jewish, was frog march through the streets
of Coburg in the Old East Germany as a Jewish
(05:41):
boy and pelted with stones and rotten fruit along with
his peers from this Jewish boarding school. So he fled
Germany along with my grandfather and my step grandmother. And
on my mother's side, Latvian Jewish forty one relatives executed
in the forest outside of Riga, the capital of Latvia,
(06:05):
the Rumbula forest, or forced to dig their own graves
and then shot in the back. And that's been burnished
in my heart and soul and mind since I was
a young boy growing up. I think the fact of
that Jewish background informed my intellectual search. Well, how did
(06:27):
the people who survived the ovens survived the gas chambers
of the most sophisticated extermination campaign in modern history? How
did the survivors of that infamy become the persecutors of
another people? And I think you know Gabor Marte, you
(06:48):
know the famous psychotherapist. He talks a lot about trauma
and how trauma begets trauma, violence begets violence. So I
have for the past forty to forty five five years
studied the Middle East. Gone there several times lived in
Jerusalem to try and work out the nature of this
(07:09):
conflict that sits very close at the center of what's
informed my thinking and my impulses on.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
This After the break, will this be a tipping point?
You've been outspoken about what's been occurring in Gaza for
a long time now. What has been the personal cost
(07:39):
of that to you, David?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, nothing like the personal cost of being a Palestinian
in Gaza, and nothing like the cost of being a
Palestinian in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers have been
led off the leash by the net Yahoo government. This
is a very, very, very traumatic moment for Jewish people.
(08:04):
So the quick answer to your question, Daniel is I've
lost friends. I think there are people who just don't
want to have anything to do with me now because
they see me as having portrayed the tribe made the
Jewish people less safe. I take the view that unless
(08:24):
Jewish people are being seen to speak out on this issue,
then it would be understandable, if not inevitable, that the
majority of people would take the view that all Jewish
people are supporting what the State of Israel is doing
to the people of Gaza. And I think it's absolutely
(08:46):
urgent that there is seen to be which there is
a plurality of voices within the Jewish community who have
different views on this horrendous, never ending conflict. I think
what Nednyahu has done is two things. The first and
most important is he's brought a catastrophe down on the
(09:10):
heads of the Palestinian people. And he has committed mass
murder as an act of revenge for the horrors of
October seven. And in the process he has made Jewish
people less safe. And he has brought a moral catastrophe
down on all Jewish people. And we are at odds
(09:33):
with each other. The Jewish community is divided in a
way that I've never seen before in my lifetime. And
I'm nearly seventy, you know, So the fact that I
may fall out with certain friends, I think there's been
fallings out every which way across the board.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Day the weather. We're at a political tipping point kind
of remains to be seen. But Anthony Albernezi has joined
many other countries, including the UK, Canada and France, in
speaking about how to recognize a Palestinian state and how
it would actually practically be implemented. What have you made
of Australian a government's approach to this in recent weeks.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I don't know why he's dragging his feet on this.
I mean, I personally think that the declarations by France
and Britain and Canada that they'll recognize a Palestinian state.
It feels to me like a platitude. I would say,
when you start saying, like Slovenia did, we are going
to stop all shipment of arms to Israel, then I
(10:36):
think you're getting serious. I mean, to me, the two
state solution is kind of dead and buried. Politicians talk
about the two state solution all the time, but a
two state solution presupposes that the Palasins have actually land
to set up a state of their own. Well, part
of that land, Gaza, is all rubble, and the other
(10:58):
part of it the West Bank. There's seven hundred and
fifty to eight hundred thousand Jewish settlers in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem included, who are torching Palestinian villagers,
who are running amok. And how on earth would Israel
remove seven hundred and fifty thousand Jewish settlers in order
to make way for a Palestinian state. So very nice
(11:22):
for Makron Karnei and Code to actually call for a
Palestinian state. I think Albanese should do so too. I
think there's all sorts of legal and economic implications that
flow from the recognition of a Palestinian national entity and
what Israel is doing and the consequences for Israel by
doing what it's doing to a people who have a
(11:45):
state of their own recognized by the United Nations, as
opposed to a dispossessed people. But I would like to
see something more than that. I would like to see
government saying we're not sending arms or we will. Actually
we've been prevaricating about boycotting or sanctioning Israel, but we
cannot sit by now and in all good conscience watch
(12:07):
what Israel is doing to these people and not respond.
And I think that's what the demonstration on the Harbor
Bridge was all about, this cry from the heart of
the people of Sydney that enough is enough.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, David, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Thank you for having me, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Also in the news, Anthony Albernezi has delivered the keynote
address at the Garma Festival in northeast arnham Land over
the weekend. Outlining a new plan for a first nation's
economic partnership between the government and First Nations people. Any
speech to Prime Minister also acknowledged the work of the
europe Justice Commission, the first truth telling process in the country.
(13:04):
His comments have led some to speculate whether a national
truth telling process could be on the table. We'll have
more on that tomorrow. And the Secretary of the Australian
Council of Trade Unions says it's time to bite the
bullet on negative gearing reform. Sally McManus told the ABC
over the weekend she'll be calling for an overhaul or
the tax break at the government's Productivity round table this month.
(13:27):
The ACTU will argue negative gearing should be limited to
one investment property. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Thanks for listening.
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