A former deputy prime minister of Australia has called for a prominent women’s rights activist to be stripped of her Australian of the Year award after she led crowds in Sydney in a “globalise the intifada” chant just two months after the Bondi Beach massacre.
Grace Tame, 31, took part in an anti-Israel demonstration on Monday to protest a visit to the country by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Herzog was invited on the four-day trip by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to join Jewish Australians in commemorating those killed and injured as a result of the antisemitic December 14 terror attack on the city’s famous Bondi Beach.
Tame, who won the prestigious Australian of the Year award in 2021 for raising public awareness about the impact of sexual violence, led a chant of: “From Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada”.
The Gadigal people are the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the City of Sydney local area.
Tame also referred to Australia as a “spineless colony” and Herzog as a “war criminal” during a speech she delivered to hundreds of people.
Her remarks came eight weeks after two Islamist terrorists targeted a Chanukah celebration on the beach. Fifteen people – including a 10-year-old girl – were killed and 39 were injured in what was the deadliest terrorist attack in Australian history and the worst mass shooting there since 1996.
Federal and state politicians have criticised Tame, with Barnaby Joyce – who served twice as the deputy prime minister of Australia, most recently until 2022 – calling for her to lose her Australian of the Year accolade.
Recipients of such honours should “conduct [themselves] in a way that inspires the harmonious nature of Australia,” Joyce said.
Separately, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns described Tame’s comments as “terrible”, noting it had been only a matter of weeks since Australia “lost 15 members of the Jewish community to a hate crime, a violent terrorist uprising”.
He added: “That’s what the consequences of ‘globalise the intifada’ mean – a violent uprising in Sydney’s streets. I can only imagine what those families thought when they saw someone screaming it.”
Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame chants “From Gadigal to Gaza, Globalize the Intifada”
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) February 10, 2026
Gadigal is the Indigenous place name for Sydney, so she’s calling for “Intifada” in Sydney two months after Islamic terrorists massacred dozens of Australian Jews at Bondi Beach.… pic.twitter.com/8CJBij8bej
In January 2025 Nike appointed Tame – an ultramarathon runner – as a brand ambassador, but the sports giant terminated the her contract five months later after the activist published a series of inflammatory anti-Israel posts on social media.
Posting to her 270,000 Instagram followers, Tame claimed that Israel was guilty of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and accused supporters of the country of participating in the “legitimisation of Jewish supremacist ethnonationalism”.
In 2021, the Australian Financial Review named Tame as one of the “10 most culturally powerful people in Australia” while Time magazine included her in its round-up of “next generational leaders” in the same year.
The New South Wales government is currently considering measures that could proscribe the phrase “globalise the intifada”. In the UK, the Metropolitan Police in London and Greater Manchester Police announced a ban on the slogan at protests in the following the Bondi Beach attack.
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