Since then, Lattouf repeated her claim in a Crikey article last week, and just yesterday the Daily Telegraph reported about more witnesses coming forward, as well as additional audio, to verify those chants actually occurred.
NSW Police have been provided with testimony from witnesses who heard protesters chant “gas the Jews” at an ugly Opera House protest in October, contradicting claims the anti-Semitic phrase was never uttered.
The Daily Telegraph has sighted four statutory declarations from individuals who were present at the melee which have been offered to police as they continue their investigations into the October 9 protest, which were beamed around the world.
The declarations come as controversy continues over what was and was not said on the night of the protest at the Opera House.
Last week online magazine Crikey! claimed that “police and independent fact-checkers have been unable to verify whether the chants happened”.
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However the four declarations add further weight to claims by Jewish groups that the chants, which evoke the memory of the Holocaust, did occur.
“I saw two separate groups coming in towards the steps and they were chanting different things,” one declaration reads.
“One group was chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘Allah akbar’ while the second group was chanting ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘f–k the Jews’ and then the two groups merged into one.”
A second declaration stated that both anti-Jewish chants were “repeated over and over”.
“I felt shocked by what I heard and at the change in the energy of the crowd.”
Another said that protesters on the forecourt “started letting off flares and then at approximately 7.45pm they started chanting ‘f–k the Jews’ and ‘gas the Jews’”.
The individual said that after protesters took a camera she was using to document the protesters and “kicked it like a soccer ball,” police refused to intervene “so as ‘not to invite more violence’”.
All the signatories asked that their names not be revealed for reasons of privacy and safety.
The Daily Telegraph has also been provided with additional audio from the night which has had background noise removed in which both “f–k the Jews” and “gas the Jews” can be heard.
Alex Ryvchin, author and co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said “everyone knows that ‘gas the Jews’ was chanted” and that those who claimed otherwise were guilty of “dishonesty and gaslighting”.
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“The willingness of people to believe the chants were made up despite overwhelming evidence is similar to the denial of the October 7 atrocities themselves.”
The article itself is bizarre, in that the author admits other terrible, violent chants did occur, just that there is no proof either way that “Gas the Jews” was chanted.
But new unedited footage unearthed by Crikey, an independent audio report and interviews with forensic audio experts have cast further doubt on whether that specific chant was captured in this footage.
Even if these videos don’t depict that chant, it neither proves the phrase wasn’t chanted, nor does it cast doubt on the other (widely reported) anti-Semitic chanting from protesters.
However, a “gas the Jews” chant is both distinct and significant as that specific language would be likely to reach the criminal standard of threatening or inciting violence against protected groups, according to a briefing reportedly given to the state’s police minister. And the interpretation of the videos will be likely to influence whether NSW Police charge protesters as they have been shown to police.
This new footage also appears to capture what one expert said is a protester shouting “We’re gonna kill them all”, a previously unreported allegation of incitement to violence.
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Crikey has also obtained, from an independent protest observer, new footage of the moment captured by both Sky Newsand theAJA’s footage, with the new footage including a close-up of the group of protesters chanting. The observer told Crikey that he heard protesters chanting “Where’s the Jews?”. Crikey has shared the footage below, which has been blurred due to legal concerns.
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Thomas also identified one voice from the footage yelling “We’re gonna kill them all”, which she said was “unambiguously a threat”. A NSW Police spokesperson said it is conducting extensive investigations into the entire protest.
On the day after the protest — long before there were doubts raised about the “gas the Jews” claims — McKellar was filmed talking about his experiences covering the protest. When live-streamer Chriscoveries brought up the chant during their conversation (at 7 minutes and 53 seconds into the video), McKellar offered an alternative suggestion: “I would debate that ‘gas the Jews’ was never said, from my footage. When you listen to it, it’s ‘Where’s the Jews?’.”
McKellar told Crikey that he stood by his October statements about the chants and shared evidence of emails repeatedly sent over the past two months contacting federal MPs to tell them to correct Hansard because he disputed their quoting of the chants.
The idea they chanted “Where’s the Jews?” is also bizarre. What does that even mean? And assuming that is what they chanted (a huge stretch), is that not also threatening?
And if this wasn’t all enough, the article admits to the existence of the four statutory declarations as reported by the Daily Telegraph:
On Monday, TheDaily Telegraph reported on the existence of four statutory declarations from people at the protest who claim they had heard “gas the Jews”, which have been given to police.
Deakin University senior lecturer Dr Matteo Vergani, who researches hate and extremism and runs the initiative Tackling Hate, said it was crucial to attempt to find verified accounts to combat the misinformation that’s exploded in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“This is a good opportunity to talk about something broader, which is the amount of misinformation polluting news everywhere, and the fact that people use it to justify their polarised views,” he told Crikey on the phone.
You don’t get much more in terms of “verified accounts” than statutory declarations. Yet somehow Crikey seems to want to cast doubt on them.
Crikey and Lattouf should hang their heads in shame for their attempts to gaslight us.
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
