This was planned. And Chris Minns owns it.

NSW Police attacked dozens of peace protesters who gathered to protest Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia. Andrew Brown was there.

I was there. Not watching from a distance. Not reconstructing events from police statements. I was on the steps of Sydney City Hall with organizers and MPs, looking out at the large peaceful crowd and then watching the state choose violence.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has arrived in Sydney for a tightly guarded visit. This context is important because what occurred was not crowd management. It was a show of force. A message. A deliberate assertion of authority.

An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people gathered peacefully at City Hall to protest Herzog’s presence. Thousands of people were turned back by police cordons. Had the crowd been allowed to assemble freely, numbers were almost certain to have reached 30,000 or more. Families. Old people. Students. Healthcare workers. Jews and Muslims stand together. Calm. Disciplined. Focused.

There was no rebel energy. No vandalism. There is no threat.

I stood on the steps with protest organizers and elected representatives; I looked at the crowd that never swelled, never destroyed property, never resorted to violence. With me were Stephen Lawrence MLC, Sue Higginson MLC, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Cameron Murphy MLC and other Greens MPs and MLCs.

At least five sitting members of the Minns government were present. They weren’t wandering around the edges. They were chanting slogans with the crowd. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the voters. Watching events unfold in real time.

This was not extreme politics. This was the street of the parliament.

Commonly known as Dr Mo, Dr. Muhammad Mustafa did not address the crowd. He spoke to me quietly. Online, the Monster from the Middle East goes by the name Dr Mo; It’s a name that reads like bravado until you realize what made it up.

He told me about operating on children without anesthesia. About hospitals without electricity. About performing flashlight surgery while the bombs are falling nearby. About dozens of relatives killed in Gaza.

He did not raise his voice. There was no need for this. People who have experienced this type of loss do not show anger. They are carrying it.

That was the moral weight of the meeting.

While tens of thousands of Australians were exercising their democratic rights outdoors, Prime Minister Chris Minns was not there.

He was eating.

Eating dinner with a war criminal

Minns broke bread with Herzog at the International Convention Center while the Israeli president talked about social harmony.

This is the same Isaac Herzog who once said there were no innocent civilians in Palestine. The same Herzog who signed the artillery shells then jumped into Gaza. His government is now before international courts and his actions are under legal scrutiny.Minns knew exactly what this moment represented.

Last year, more than 300,000 people marched across the Harbor Bridge in support of Palestine.

Minns tried to stop it. It failed.

He lost in court. He lost the argument. He lost control. This march revealed the limits of his authority and the strength of popular opposition.

This was his chance to fix that.

Herzog was in town. The optics were international. Minns would not lose again.

Peace after violence

The rally ended peacefully. Speakers are over. People started to leave.

This should have been the end of the day.

Instead, it was the beginning of a deliberate escalation.

New South Wales Police closed the exits and sealed movement southwards towards Circular Quay. Citizens trying to go home were stranded without any explanation. There were no clear and legal instructions. There is no security reason. Just don’t contain it.

Bottlenecks were created deliberately. Confusion was created. Later, force was used against the chaos created by the police.

This wasn’t crowd control. It was crowd engineering.

police brutality

I watched the police intervene in the dispersed crowd.

I saw old people panicking.

I watched the bodies fall to the ground.

I helped a young girl who had been pepper sprayed in the face and fell to the pavement with a seizure. He was shaken and helpless. As he lay there on the ground, the police sprayed him in the face again. Again.

This was not an operational necessity. This was cruel.

Attacks on the elderly

I recently helped a 71-year-old woman whose eyes and face were red from pepper spray. He was blindsided, crying and asking what he did wrong. He hadn’t done anything.

My own family was not spared.

My mother is 84 years old. He was trying to leave peacefully. He was pushed by the police, fell to the ground and his arm was broken.

My sister lives with Parkinson’s disease. He was pushed and shoved by police during the same operation.

As the evening progressed, the brutality increased. Dozens of people were arrested. Protesters were dragged on the sidewalk, punched, kicked and restrained. This was not reactive policing. It was a proactive force.

Attack on those praying

Then I witnessed a line being crossed that would alarm anyone who believes Australia still respects fundamental freedoms. Sheikh Wesam Charkawi was prostrating on the ground, praying peacefully with his followers. Silent. Non-confrontational. The police entered anyway.

People were persecuted while praying. He was pushed. He was dragged away. He was forcibly pulled up.

This was no longer just an attack on the protest. This was an attack on worship.

Around 500 police officers have been deployed at City Hall and around 3,000 across the CBD. This scale was not accidental. It was a show of force. The police created the chaos that they later claimed to suppress. This tactic is known. It is taught. This is intentional.

And this is political.

Minns owns this

Chris Minns owns this operation from top to bottom. It cannot hide behind operational investigations or police statements. Their own MPs were also there. Hymning. I’m watching. Warning. They immediately realized this was wrong.

Minns wanted to prove that he was in charge. He wanted to assert his authority while hosting a foreign leader accused of mass atrocities. He chose violence as his language.

A Prime Minister who dined with a leader accused of genocide, signed off on bombs being dropped on civilians, whose police broke the arm of an 84-year-old woman, attacked a woman with Parkinson’s disease, sprayed the face of a child on guard duty, and brutalized people while they prayed has lost all moral authority to govern.

This wasn’t a mistake.

It was a tactic.

Chris Minns may still remain in office. “Thank you, guys,” he told the pro-Israel crowd at the Convention Center. a warm applause.

But tonight, as he clinked glasses with Isaac Herzog on the streets of Sydney, he lost his right to govern this state.

And I watched it happen.

Editor: This is the story we published just as news of police brutality began to spread on social media.

Peaceful, diverse, numerous, then attacked. Herzog protesters are shattering this narrative