Letter to Justice Rigg who knows not what he did
Dear Justice Rigg,
I’m writing as president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia to express the views of my Board about your ruling to allow the “March for Humanity” across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge on Sunday.
While I and so many others in my community are heartsick about the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel and the plight of hostages and of Palestinian civilians, and while doubtless the motivation of many of the participants was indeed humanitarian, sadly the tone and optics of the march turned out to be exactly as we feared.
I expect that you’ve now seen the huge photo of the Ayatollah Khamenei carrying a gun, behind which the leaders proudly strode.
As Iranian-born Ryde Councillor Tina Kordrostami posted, “We fled our country for freedom of speech, choice and identity. Today thousands march on our bridge alongside supporters of the regime, who took this freedom away from us…make it make sense.”
To paraphrase an Iranian dissident academic who spoke at an Iranian-Jewish women’s lunch my organisation hosted during the Iran-Israel war recently, the cognitive dissonance of seeing people who just a few years ago stood up for Women Life Freedom now standing with those who deprive women of their lives and freedom is truly mind blowing.
The signs and slogans at the march about “Zios” must have given marchers like Jenny Leong MP comfort, since coding Jews as Zionists means you don’t risk prosecution or have to apologise when you dehumanise them (like saying they have tentacles) or answer calls like Shayne Chester’s: “…may [the march] be the beginning of a rising tide that washes the Zionist filth out of this country.”
Maybe you didn’t anticipate the Hamas flags at the march, or the Taliban or Al Qaeda ones – all symbolising the polar opposite of human rights, especially women’s rights and queer rights and the rights of people to demonstrate freely in the streets.
Perhaps before you made your ruling you missed the post by Bhenji Ra, a dance ambassador for the 2026 Biennale of Sydney – a photo shared multiple times of one of the signs that was being prepared: “Death Death to the IDF”. Those chants were heard throughout the march.
Or other examples of incitement to violence, like Crikey journalist and president of the Black Peoples Union Keiran Stewart Assheton saying, “The people marching across the bridge tomorrow should continue marching to wherever Albanese lives and beat the living sh-t out of him.”
On the morning of the march, the Sydney Morning Herald published a video released by Hamas of the emaciated, starved Israeli hostage Evyatan David being forced to dig his own grave in a Gaza tunnel after 666 days in captivity.
You accepted the organisers’ argument that the marchers were driven by ‘the horrific images published in the media’. But neither this horrific image nor any preceding ones of hostages living or murdered in Hamas’ hell over the past 667 days inspired anyone to say a public word about them.
It appears that the “humanity” of the march leaders and speakers does not extend to those hostages or to any non-Palestinian victims of the war. Socceroo marcher Craig Foster has never said a word about the 12 Druze Israeli children murdered by Hezbollah rockets while playing on a soccer field last year.
Disgraced academic and exclusionary feminist Randa Abdel Fattah was a keynote speaker. She infamously said about the now United Nations-confirmed mass rapes and sexual violence on October 7: “This is not a #MeToo or ‘BelieveAllWomen’ moment”.
At least Palestinian activist Tasnim Sammak was honest when she posted “It’s March for Gaza, not march for humanity.”
Though nominally for humanity, this march also gave voice to ignorance, hypocrisy and hate.
I am sure you were unaware that you allowed it on the most sombre fast day in our Jewish calendar, Tish b’Av. On this day we process our intergenerational trauma about all the calamities that have befallen our people through history, including the destruction of our two ancient temples in Jerusalem by colonising invaders, our forced conversions by Crusaders in the Middle Ages, our genocide by Nazis across Europe and North Africa in the 20th century, our ethnic cleansing from the Arab lands of the Middle East soon after it, and now our massacre by Hamas and other Islamist terrorists on October 7 two years ago.
So many of us watched the march in a state of deep distress. In our eyes it represented another 90,000 steps towards the hateful and deliberate exclusion of our people from the human family.
Jewish people are not called the “canaries in the mine” for nothing. The images of Islamist leaders and terrorist group flags that we saw at the march should remind everyone that the enemies of Jews are also the enemies of women, queer and many other marginalised people. When Jewish Australians are not safe on our streets it means that our whole society is unsafe.
Indeed, the fact that the weekly public reading of hostage names was cancelled by police because they said all their forces were deployed for the march and they “could not guarantee the safety of the participants” says everything about the danger the march posed not just to us, but to all citizens of NSW.
I am sure you did not intend to enable more exclusion, social division, hate speech or incitement to violence when you overruled the government and police to enable this march, but sadly that is what you did.
The only consolation is that despite all the talk of how many people participated, the reality is that more than 99 per cent of NSW’s population chose not to. Australians do not like or want the import of overseas conflicts to our streets, and they are decent people who really believe in a “fair go” for all. Extending empathy to only one set of innocent victims of a war is not the Australian way.
Lynda Ben-Menashe is president of National Council of Jewish Women Australia. This letter was sent to Justice Belinda Rigg a day after the march.