Arnold Roth’s daughter Malki was 15 when she visited a pizzeria in central Jerusalem and never came home.
Melbourne-born Malki was a talented flute player who took pride in caring for her blind younger sister. She was catching up with her best friend when a Hamas suicide bomber entered the pizza restaurant and detonated a bomb.
Sixteen civilians, including Malki, died in the explosion, which came at the beginning of what is known as the second intifada. This period included more than 100 suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists inside Israel and what was then Israel’s harshest military campaign since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Around 1100 Israelis and 3200 Palestinians are estimated to have died over five years.
“We lost our daughter, and we’ve never recovered from it,” Roth says, speaking by telephone from Jerusalem. “The hatred of the people who did this is fearsome, horrifying.”
Also born in Melbourne, he spent the first half of his life in Australia before moving to Israel with his family in the late 1980s. He continues to seek the arrest of Ahlam Tamimi, who helped plan and carry out the bombing.
Listed by the FBI as one of its most wanted terrorists, Tamimi was released from jail in a hostage-prisoner exchange in 2011 and is now a television host in Jordan.
Almost 25 years after the terror attack that killed his daughter, Roth’s grief is still visceral. So is his anger. His fury boiled over again last week when he saw footage of protesters in Australia’s biggest cities supporting a global intifada at rallies against a visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Among them was former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, who shouted “from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada” in a speech in front of Sydney’s Town Hall.
When Roth hears this phrase, he hears a call for violence and murder – and an insult to his daughter’s memory.
“Globalising the intifada is an act of madness,” he says. “To urge globalising the intifada has consequences that will shake Australia to its foundation. It’s a mistake, and an exercise in stupidity. I’m using a deliberately pejorative word because it’s inconceivable to me that people who use that slogan in public places do it while understanding what it means.”
Tame has attracted ferocious criticism for her appearance at the Sydney rally, including calls by leading Coalition politicians for her to be stripped of her 2021 Australian of the Year title. NSW Premier Chris Minns labelled her use of the chant “terrible”. Roth says he is disturbed that UN Women Australia has chosen Tame to headline an International Women’s Day event in Sydney on March 4.
“For my family and me – still today petitioning Jordan and the US for Tamimi to be extradited to face trial on terror charges [for the attack that killed Malki] – this adds salt to an open wound,” Roth, 74, says of the event.
Tame defended her use of the slogan in an Instagram post last week, saying the focus on her speech was a distraction from Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza.
“Disingenuously distorting definitions has been a cornerstone of Israel’s propaganda strategy for decades,” she said. “Choosing to put a negative spin on the word intifada – which literally means shaking off [in Arabic] – is just another example of that.”
Tame wrote: “I have spent over half my life fighting for the rights and safety of children. I do not advocate violence. I do not advocate antisemitism, Islamophobia or hatred of any kind.”
Tame was contacted for comment.
Roth says that while some protesters may understand the slogan differently, his interpretation is unequivocal. “Intifada is about murder,” he says. “People who are trying to dress that up with the camouflage of resistance language or self-determination rhetoric have no idea what they’re talking about.”
The Queensland government announced it will ban the phrase following the Bondi Beach massacre. A NSW parliamentary inquiry dominated by MPs from the Minns Labor government has recommended outlawing the slogan when it is used to incite hatred, harassment, intimidation or violence. Roth backs this proposal, saying: “I don’t understand why it hasn’t been proscribed.”
Most submissions to the NSW inquiry, however, argued against banning phrases such as “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” because it would unduly burden free speech.
The Imams Council of Australia said that intifada does not “carry a single, fixed, or inherently violent meaning” and has “historically described a range of resistance activities, including non-violent civil action, with its meaning depending entirely on context”.
“Criminalising political expression by reference to specific slogans is unnecessary, legally problematic, and risks disproportionate impact on particular communities,” the council said in its submission.
Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey warned against outlawing specific phrases, while the NSW Bar Association said it was “critically important not to legislate in a way that risks criminalising, by association, the conduct of those who are doing no more than participating in peaceful political movements and assemblies”.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry supported a ban, saying its use “normalises hostility, dehumanisation and intimidation, particularly toward Jewish Australians, and contributes to an environment in which violence becomes more likely”.
Roth is adamant Australia should not become a place where such slogans are normalised. “This is about changing the public discourse from political differences and arguments to open calls for murder. I don’t know anybody who could, understanding those words, just say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s OK’. It isn’t and it’ll never be OK.”
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