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Stephen Heydt: Why I’m protesting Qld’s new racist law

13 0
29.04.2026

I was arrested under Queensland’s new directly racist laws, supposedly to combat antisemitism.

I was one of 22 people arrested in Magan-djin/Brisbane on April 18. Whether it was necessary for so many police to arrest one 73-year-old Jew, I’ll let you decide. Perhaps unconscious echoes of a distant, but a never-to-be-forgotten Jewish past.

This abjectly racist law was designed to suppress a liberation movement, targeting Palestinian and Muslim Australians.

There is no mechanism in Queensland’s law to improve social cohesion or protect Jews or anyone else. The law is framed to cow supporters of human rights, carefully worded to avoid capturing the language of the Likud Party’s Zionist expansionism, while Queensland maintains the weakest gun laws in Australia.

The contrast could not be more telling.

If you’ve already seen media and are sick of my appearances, honestly, I’m on your side.

It seems, however, that people may still be interested.

In 1969, aged 16, I first became active in South Africa against apartheid; peacefully picketing in support of Durban dockworkers on strike, broken up by police tear gas and batons.

In 1976, Soweto school students went on strike against the........

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