The media is playing a dangerous game today focusing on alleged anti-war agitators dressed in keffiyehs barricading Melbourne’s 2024 Land Forces Defence Expo that just opened.

Suppliers from the US and Europe are this week marketing land-based military systems to Australia’s defence industry while Australian governments are seeking their local manufacture.

Agitators though, sporting Palestinian flags, anti-Israel slogans and the (outlawed in Germany) inverted Red Triangle of death are hiding behind a fake anti-war agenda. Yet the media is deliberately misleading viewers in this regard.

This protest today is not anti-war. Rather it is anti-Israel-winning a war against the proscribed terror group Hamas in Gaza.

These protestors are fine when “war” is waged by Hamas as on October 7 2023 and winning it. Their keffiyeh-clad marches calling for “armed resistance by all means” have pushed that blatant message in the public’s face so forcibly it is impossible for them to otherwise gaslight it.

As for the media, Nine Entertainment (owners of the Nine News Network, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald among other brands) has already slipped up in its morning news coverage letting these Red Triangles on shirts and placards appear on screen. Bet you they’ll minimise them from now on.

In a grab for ratings Nine is mirroring the recently exposed shoddy journalism of the BBC. Nine wants to sensationalise these paid agitators today while denying viewers the narrative I’ve outlined above. But the mob will backfire on them shortly.

Businesses are struggling to get workers and shoppers back into the Melbourne CBD. It is peak hour right now, and those that are trying to get to work, can’t. It is felt that some corporate headquarters may be forced to lockdown their premises to protect staff who have somehow made in onsite.

We need better journalism than this. Who is funding today’s anarchy? Who are the familiar faces in the crowd? How can pro-terror supporters be anti-war? Why the display of antisemitic memes over and over again? Why at an expo designed to bolster Australia’s self-defence—a right that the Albanese Labor government has extended to Israel against terrorism, alongside other similarly-minded governments in the West?

We know what’s happening today. Tell the full story.

© 2024 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: Pro-Terror anarchists display the antisemitic slogan “Free Palestine From the River to the Sea” early morning today at the Melbourne Convention Centre. © 2024 Nine Entertainment, published in The Age online 9/11/24 8:45 am—fair use claimed only.