Grace Tame’s Selective Compassion

Of all the hypocrisies and moral failings that 7 October exposed, none is starker or more abhorrent than those relating to that day’s sexual violence. And it is hard to think of a more glaring exemplification than Grace Tame’s ABC radio interview this week.

Not being a resident of the Lucky Country, I had not heard of Tame until February this year, when Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia to pay his respects to the community that had suffered a mass terrorist attack barely two months before. Tame caused anger, bipartisan political criticism, and headlines when she led a protest outside Sydney Town Hall against the visit, face screwed up in apoplexy, chanting the pithy slogan “from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada.” There were calls to strip her of the Australian of the Year accolade, which I learned she had won in 2021 as an “advocate for survivors of sexual assault.”

On Monday, controversy flared again when she was interviewed by ABC Radio about her intifada chant and asked why she had been selective in her outrage in not condemning the rape and killing of women on 7 October.

“I’m not going to sink to the level of entertaining any kind of propaganda,” she responded. When asked to clarify what the propaganda was, she went on: “Those things have been debunked.”