A Victorian civil tribunal has found that Hash Tayeh, the Melbourne restaurateur behind the Burgertory chain and a prominent Palestinian activist, incited hatred against Jewish people by leading a chant of "All Zionists are terrorists" at a protest, according to a ruling reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) determined that the chant, directed at fellow protesters, crossed the threshold from political expression into conduct that incites hatred on the basis of religion or ethnicity. The finding represents one of the more closely watched applications of Victoria's racial and religious vilification laws in recent years, coming against a backdrop of heightened community tension following the October 2023 conflict in Gaza.
The case drew attention well beyond Victoria's legal community. Tayeh is a recognisable public figure in Melbourne, and his activism around the Palestinian cause has been visible and vocal. Supporters argued that the phrase in question was a political statement directed at an ideology, Zionism, rather than at Jewish people as a group. That distinction, they contended, is meaningful: criticism of a political movement is not the same as vilification of an ethnic or religious community.
It is a genuinely complex argument, and one that serious legal scholars have not dismissed lightly. The line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is contested territory in both law and political philosophy. Zionism, broadly defined, is the belief in Jewish self-determination and the legitimacy of a Jewish state; it is held by a significant majority of Jewish people worldwide, though not all. Critics of the protest chant argued that characterising all who hold that belief as terrorists conflates a political position with criminal violence, and does so in terms that render a large proportion of the Jewish community indistinguishable from those accused of terror.
VCAT's finding rests on how the phrase functions in practice rather than in theory. The tribunal's reasoning, as reported, appears to be that the chant, delivered in a charged public setting, would reasonably be understood by an ordinary observer as targeting Jewish people broadly, given the near-universal association between Zionism and Jewish identity. That is a defensible interpretive framework, though it will not satisfy everyone, and an appeal remains possible.
Victoria's racial and religious vilification provisions are among the stronger such laws in Australia. Under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, conduct that incites hatred, serious contempt, or severe ridicule of a person on the basis of their race or religion is prohibited. The Act does include exemptions for genuine artistic, academic, and public interest expression, but those defences were evidently not accepted in this instance.
Civil libertarians and free speech advocates have expressed concern about where such rulings leave political protest. Australia does not have a constitutional free speech guarantee equivalent to the First Amendment in the United States, and the boundaries of permissible public expression are set primarily by statute and common law. The Australian Human Rights Commission has long acknowledged the tension between anti-vilification laws and the right to robust political speech, describing it as requiring careful case-by-case balancing.
Jewish community groups, including representatives who have documented a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia since late 2023, welcomed the finding. The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and other organisations have argued that rhetoric of this kind, whatever its intended political target, contributes to an environment of fear for Jewish Australians going about their daily lives.
The ruling does not resolve the broader debate, and it was never going to. Australia is grappling, as are many democracies, with how to hold two legitimate values in tension: the protection of minority communities from hatred and the preservation of robust political discourse on contested foreign policy questions. Both values matter, and neither is served by pretending the other does not exist. What VCAT has done is draw a line in one specific case; where the general boundary should sit remains an open and important conversation for Australian society to have.