A man who put up graphic anti-Israel posters asked police how people could be expected to sit and do nothing about the killing of Palestinian children, a court has been told.
Mohammed Ali Elmisselmany, 23, and Mouhammad Misselmany, 20, were both charged with affixing a placard or paper on premises without consent during a protest in Sydney’s city centre on September 21.
The posters depicted images of children and injured people and featured slogans such as: “Israeli snipers regularly shoot children in Palestine.”
The men, who are brothers, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to six-month conditional release orders without convictions in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday.
In delivering his sentence, Magistrate Brett Shields described the nature of the material as “troubling”.
While the message was not considered criminally offensive, the magistrate said some in the community might still have been disturbed.
“The thing that’s troubling is the content,” Mr Shields said.
“You have your perspective about what’s going on in the Middle East. There are other people that have a different one.”
Other slogans depicted on the posters referred to Australia’s ongoing diplomatic relationship with Israel.
“”Hey dumba**! The Israeli army shot this 6 year old girl 355 times yet our government still has a ‘close and warm relationship with Israel’,” one poster read, according to court documents.
“Police consider the nature of this offence to be serious due to the current political climate surrounding the current Palestinian and Israeli conflict,” the documents said.
Elmisselmany’s lawyer said his client had an interest in human rights, which had landed him in trouble.
While being arrested, the 23-year-old said to the officer: “I hope you understand why people do stuff like that … like putting up posters.”
“When a bomb drops and kills children … we are expected to sit here and not do anything about it.”
If the duo had been picked up by a council ranger rather than a police officer, the issue would have gone no further than an infringement notice, the court was told.
They also would not have been committing an offence if they had simply been handing out the posters at the protest, rather than sticking them to walls, the lawyer said.
The conditions of the sentence mean both men must not commit further offences and must appear in court if called upon to do so.
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