If ever there were a moment to test whether our leaders match words after a terrorist attack with action, this is it. The verdict is clear: they do not.

Clover Moore, as Lord Mayor of Sydney, has the authority to prevent an event titled Why It’s Right To Say ‘Globalise the Intifada’ from proceeding at the East Sydney Community and Arts Centre, a venue owned by the City of Sydney. Yet neither Anthony Albanese, nor NSW Premier Chris Minns, nor Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig has chosen to act.

To be fair to Minns, he did attempt to halt the 3 August Sydney Harbour Bridge protest last year. That effort was overturned at the eleventh hour by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, with Justice Belinda Rigg ruling that the demonstration would be peaceful. Turns out, it wasn’t so peaceful. Minns himself conceded the limits of his influence, remarking today that the chances of Moore listening to him now were “zero”. Who, exactly, is in charge? Last I heard, it wasn’t Clover Moore.

The protest itself was notable not only for its scale, but for those in attendance. Among them on the front line were Clover Moore, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Mary Kostakidis, Craig Foster, Julian Assange, Bob Carr and Ed Husic, alongside Randa Abdel-Fattah, Meyne Wyatt, Antoinette Lattouf and Antony Loewenstein. The imagery on display – Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic State flags, alongside a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei spoke volumes. So why can they be waved with such impunity?

The defence often offered is that such gatherings are merely expressions of political dissent. Yet the reality is antisemitism rarely presents itself in static form. It evolves. In the modern West today, antisemitism is frequently refracted through the language of anti-Zionism, providing a veneer of legitimacy to sentiments that would once have been universally condemned. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran is not making a political statement. It funds terrorism through its proxies and calls for the destruction of the United State of America and Israel.

This is not without historical precedent. The........

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