Our political leaders keep making tone-deaf, overbearing laws, then watch them get almost immediately wrecked by the courts, writesTom Tanuki.

SOMEONE WROTE SOMETHING TERRIBLE on the Jewel of Coffs Harbour, the famedBig Banana.I found out this had happened, but not specifically what it was theyd said.

____ Israel, said the photo.

Here it is:

The Sydney Morning Herald, exercising restraint and hiding the mysterious defacement (Source:SMH)

Like you, I could easily picture what came before "Israel".But I was not allowed to see it.And, I was made to understand, under no circumstances should I share it around if I did see the verboten image.

Or I might go to gaol.

Speaking to ABC Coffs Coast radio, local NSW Police Superintendent Joanne Schultzsaidthat the banana at the lowest level is graffiti, but at the worst, it could be considered hate speech.

Queenslands new speech laws raise alarm bells and stakes for writers and activists.

Superintendent Schultz admitted that this sliding scale was not about the gravity of the crime so much as the broadness of the new laws:

She refers to NSW Governmentlaws, introduced and then bolstered by the NSW State Government in the wake of the Bondi massacre, that threaten up to two years imprisonment for anything that occurs in public that is used to intentionally incite hatred.

NSW Police Minister,Yasmin Catley, also lined up to express horror:

What was the first word, placed just before Israel?The collective interest of a nation piqued, thrilled by the allure of the verboten.

(Source:SMH)

To meet the NSW Police Ministers definition of "antisemitic", the graffiti on the Big Banana surely far exceeded in gravity thestuntby defunct neo-Nazi group theNational Socialist Network, who lined up with a banner saying,Abolish the Jewish lobby outside the NSW Parliament in November of last year.

At that stunt, former NSN member andchild-marriage advocateJoel Davis conducted a speech in which he said, among many other things, that The Jews do not want to be criticised.That banner, and the speech spoke of Jews, not the foreign state of Israel. It was the rank and overt antisemitism expected of the militant neo-Nazi, and it fell well in line with that groups stated political aspirations, which included deporting all people of Jewish descent.

The far-right group is gone but the danger isnt Australia has just turned an organised hate group into hundreds of abandoned lone actors.

But theNSW Police found, incredibly, that the NSNs banner and speeches did not incite racial hatred.

So we have all these new draconian laws we never asked for, and theres no readily apparent way to apply them.Or, like NSWs anti-protest laws, theyre implemented for just long enough to permit their police tobeat up protestersbefore being speedilyoverturnedby the courts.

So what did the Banana say?

Local Coffs Coast Instagram page,Shire Bosses, tipped me off.They located the footage that had been blurred out by every mainstream news source, and they shared it, presumably bracing themselves against the wrath of the NSW Police Force.

Get ready.

A NSW Police Force dusts the Big Banana for prints, labouring underneath the words Fuk Israel (Source:@shirebosses| Instagram)

Fuk Israel.

Thats it? Fuk Israel? Not even the entire word? Like a kid might write it?

I dont know about you, but when I saw it, I literally burst out in laughter. Then I felt like crying a bit.Then I laughed more.

There you have it, audience. The NSW Police Ministers ultimate expression of antisemitism, ranking even above coordinated militant neo-Nazi actions, isthe words,Fuk Israel.

Recentpolling dataout of the U.S., the strongest pillar of Israels continued existence, shows that a clear majority of Americans now view the occupation state unfavourably.

Greater even than last year:

Deepcut News hassharedYouGov polling, which suggests that in Australia, the population feels much the same way.

Even Shire Bosses, the abovementioned Coffs Coast Instagram page, that shared the "offending"video, conducted a littlepollingof their own:

(Source: @shirebosses |Instagram)

Theres a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the general publics dim view of Israels genocide and the slavish support for it exhibited by our political and media class.I have always viewed the cause for this as largely owing to effective long-term lobbying and relationship-making.That is to say, the general public isnt shipped off on all-expenses-paid"study trips"to Israel, before then being directly subjected toindividual lobbyist influence, like Australian politicians and journalists are.

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and other Zionist groups like them arent wasting their time on us plebs.They court power where it matters.

Thats why our political leaders keep making tone-deaf, overbearing laws that are overwhelmingly unpopular with the public before watching those lawsget almost immediately wreckedby the courts.Its why they dont seem to hear how loudly theyre being jeered as their various state police forces, forced to follow their lead, attempt to implement phrase bans,watermelon arrestsand, now, Big Banana bans.

A good gauge of how dimly the public views the prospects for these laws to survivewas therecent arrestof a man outside Boeings headquarters in Brisbane.Jim Dowling was protesting Boeings ongoing supply to the Israeli Air Force.He had a placard which said:

I cant and wont speak to Jims motivations.But I strongly suspect that activists are now at the stage of using these stupid, dodgy, draconian laws to promote their cause.Why not?What else are they good for?

Jim Dowling told the media that he intends to plead insanity because he thinks the charge is insane.

I feel insane, too.I cannot abide by the level of ridiculousness weve reached.

I think "Fuk Israel"should be an ongoing feature on the Big Banana.Either by being subjectedto routine defacement or, ideally, by permanently approving it as part of the design.Its the most thrilling thing thats ever happened to the Banana.The Coffs Coast ought to embrace it.

I demand to be able to say "fuk Israel"without going to gaol for two years.I simply insist on this.

We all know that if I do say that, I mean the genocidal, colonial wartime nation-state of Israeland its political leadership, and the bloody grip it has upon occupied Palestine.

I do not demand to discriminate against individuals, nor to have another genocide occur on top of the one Israel is already enacting.

They simply cannot delude me, nor, for that matter, the general public, out of this very simple and intuitive anti-Zionist political stance.

Well may they try, our tone-deaf leaders and their stupid coppers.But in the end, if they try it with enough of us, they wont have anyone left standing with them.Well all be together, arm-in-arm, beneath the anti-Zionist Big Banana.

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.