- Over 10,000 protesters gathered in Sydney on February 9, 2026, to oppose Herzog's visit, with police responding with excessive force, including indiscriminate pepper-spraying and physical assaults, as seen in viral footage showing a middle-aged man being punched by a riot cop.
- The protest was part of a nationwide event, with over 20,000 attendees in Melbourne, 5,000 in Brisbane, and thousands more in other cities, opposing Herzog's visit, which was invited by Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, despite a UN inquiry finding Herzog incited genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
- The NSW Labor government invoked extraordinary legislation to ban protest marches, and Supreme Court Justice Robertson Wright rejected a legal challenge to the "major event" declaration, setting a precedent for the government to prohibit demonstrations against future political visits, with Prime Minister Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns defending the police actions and denouncing protesters as violent.
JUSTICE MATTERS
The World Socialist Web Site and PBS NewsHour demonstrate distinct framing differences in their coverage. While the World Socialist Web Site describes the event as a "police rampage" with "indiscriminately pepper-spraying, bashing and charging at the demonstrators," PBS NewsHour does not mention the Sydney protest or the police response, instead focusing on a separate story about a U.S. official's visit to Armenia. This omission by PBS NewsHour obscures the violent suppression of protests and the controversy surrounding the Israeli president's visit, as described by the World Socialist Web Site, which quotes witnesses likening the police actions to "the actions of the US administration of President Donald Trump in Minneapolis."
Cross-referenced with: PBS NewsHour
