Inside the splinter group that stormed an Israeli restaurant

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There were plenty of familiar faces as the rally gathered on the steps of Melbourne’s State Library on Friday night – some of them veterans of the city’s long-running, and generally peaceful, pro-Palestine movement. But that night, stepping up to speak “for the first time to a crowd” at this anti-police protest, were key figures of a smaller fringe group.

Known as the Whistleblowers, Activists and Community Alliance, “WACA” has drawn the attention of police recently for a series of escalating actions – shutting down the Port of Melbourne to block Israeli shipping contractors and scaling the roofs of buildings where weapons parts are manufactured.

WACA spokeswoman Gaye Demanuele (far left) and Jemima Demanuele at Miznon on Friday night.

At least one of WACA’s members is known to counter-terrorism police for organising left-wing protests that have turned violent, according to a police source speaking anonymously to discuss operational matters. And some in the wider pro-Palestine movement have spoken of their frustration with the more radical WACA, which they claim often hijacks peaceful protests with aggressive tactics.

On Friday night, it was these WACA figures who led a splinter group of about 20 people away from the anti-police rally and down to an Israeli restaurant on Hardware Lane.

Those involved say they targeted the restaurant, Miznon, for its ties to a controversial Israeli aid program in Gaza where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. Friday night dining quickly descended into chaos. Activists chanting “Death to the IDF” scuffled with staff, knocking over tables and breaking a window as distressed diners fled, before police arrived and arrested one woman.

Four people have been arrested after a group descended on an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne on Friday.

It would be a night of disturbance for Melbourne’s Jewish community. In a separate incident nearby, at almost the same time, a NSW man allegedly attempted to firebomb a synagogue while children and families were inside. Later, in the early hours of Saturday morning in Greensborough, three cars were set alight and a building spray-painted with anti-IDF graffiti at a weapons company with Israeli defence links.

No one was injured in any of the incidents, and police say they are yet to find a formal link between the three or determine if the firebombing was an act of terror.

Both WACA and the broader pro-Palestine movement have disavowed the synagogue arson as a horrifying attack. They say they stand against Israel’s war in Gaza, not the Jewish community, and are frustrated by the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

But two local Palestinian protesters who did not wish to be identified said the WACA activists at Miznon were “dickheads” too. “They think they are righteous and have the right to impact innocent bystanders,” said one. “It ruins public opinion – they do it in Palestine’s name, and not one Palestinian was there.”

“There are a few of these groups, and WACA people are one. They come in and take things too far. We have to step in and de-escalate,” said another source, though they also noted that the chant of “Death to the IDF” again rang out through Melbourne during Sunday’s weekly pro-Palestine march.

WACA is often shadowy about its activity and membership online, reminding associates not to post evidence of actions and increasingly taking steps to avoid police surveillance through encrypted messaging and carefully planned meet-ups.

Three people were arrested in raids and charged on Tuesday over the Miznon incident.

After a series of raids across inner Melbourne on Tuesday, three people were charged with assault, affray, rioting and criminal damage over the Miznon incident, but it is unclear if they are part of WACA.

One of those charged, 50-year-old Antwany Arnold, is accused of hurling a chair at a diner at Miznon and was already out on bail for an incident at an earlier protest – which, a court heard, put him in breach of a condition not to travel into the city when he joined the action.

WACA spokeswoman Gaye Demanuele, another long-time protester, said she couldn’t confirm details of the arrests that would “make people vulnerable to police” or speak in detail about the group’s operations, given recent crackdowns on protest groups in Australia and overseas.

Jemima Demanuele, who was photographed sticking up her middle finger at people in the restaurant during the incident, has been stood down from her job at St Vincent’s Hospital as it investigates her conduct.

WACA was the “front facing” mouthpiece of a fluid collective of activists and “collaborators”, Gaye Demanuele said, and had posted a statement “on behalf of community members” who staged the Miznon action. “While politicians in so-called Australia clutch their pearls over one meal that was interrupted, we ask people to refocus their attention on Israel’s genocidal reign of terror over the Palestinians,” WACA’s statement read.

WACA members among protesters at Miznon on Friday.

Demanuele was also one of the protesters at Miznon, and has been criticised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for justifying the trashing of the restaurant while appearing in an ABC broadcast this week.

“There is no justification for that,” Albanese said on Thursday. “The idea that somehow the cause of justice for Palestinians is advanced by behaviour like that is not only delusional, it is destructive.”

Asked about criticism of WACA by the broader pro-Palestine movement, Demanuele said: “People are afraid of being associated with a more radical element because they see how the state represses protest … Because their income is threatened, their reputation is threatened, now [Premier] Jacinta Allan and Anthony Albanese are talking about terrorism.”

“They’ve formed a taskforce to deal with us,” Demanuele added, referring to Allan’s flagged crackdown on protest and the new antisemitism taskforce set up following the synagogue arson and Miznon incident. Federally, too, the government is considering stripping funding from institutions that fail to combat what is deemed hatred against Jewish people, as well as screening visa applicants for antisemitic views.

The earlier rally on Friday, railing against recent deaths in custody and alleged police violence at protests, was organised by WACA and other pro-Palestinian groups, drawing about 70 people. Speaking for the first time were two WACA associates, Charlie and Jemima.

But the rally split over WACA’s plans to march to Miznon – most refused to join them.

The group yelled and threw chairs outside Miznon on Friday night.

Pro-Palestine protesters have been calling for a boycott of Miznon after it emerged that one of its part-owners, Israeli entrepreneur Shahar Segal, was also serving as a spokesman for the controversial US-Israeli aid group Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Contractors guarding the foundation’s aid distribution sites have opened fire on starving Palestinians scrambling for food. At least 500 people have been killed and thousands more injured while trying to access aid at the sites, according to the United Nations.

Segal, whose restaurants in New York, Toronto and Paris have also drawn criticism from pro-Palestine groups overseas, has since reportedly resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Gaye Demanuele insisted WACA did not instigate any violence at Miznon, and that it was a “spontaneous” plan formed on Friday intended to “inform diners about where they were spending their money” that spiralled into chaos.

“The restaurant was not targeted because it has Jewish owners,” she said. “It was targeted because it is repping for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. There’s nothing humanitarian about the GHF – it’s an outfit that’s set up to lure people into killing fields. At no point were we anti-Jewish.”

It was “disingenuous” for politicians, police and others to conflate the Miznon action in Melbourne with the arson attacks at the synagogue or the defence company the same night, Demanuele said.

“The fire at the synagogue we are not connected with, and we would condemn. We are not about harming people. A bit of yelling is nothing compared to potentially putting people’s lives at risk by burning a synagogue. That’s horrific.”

Another WACA “collaborator” Charlie, known as Charlie the Commie online, told this masthead the earlier rally was organised in the wake of recent police assaults on demonstrators, including some that he said had left his friends with lasting injuries.

Anti-war protesters and police clashed outside the Land Forces weapons expo last year.

A restaurant with ties to the Israeli military was a valid target for direct action, he argued. But he added that a synagogue was not, condemning the attempted firebombing. He would not condemn what happened at the restaurant, and said he didn’t know the details of the Greensborough weapons company incident.

Police are also investigating footage circulating online that appears to be of the vandalism incident at that weapons company, where a masked and unidentified person warns: “Stop arming Israel or else ...”

WACA has been on the fringes of a wider campaign to expose Israeli defence ties to local companies and institutions for more than a decade. But, with the outbreak of war in Gaza and a new influx of student activists, their membership and tactics have shifted. The group say it now stands against the police too.

Some who stormed the Miznon restaurant wore masks or Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, others shirts emblazoned with “ACAB”, short for “all cops are bastards”. Last year, WACA members were among many anti-war protesters who clashed with police outside the Land Forces weapons expo in Melbourne. (Some of those cases are still before the courts.)

Months earlier, WACA scaled 60-metre cranes, formed barricades and paddled out on canoes to partially shut down the Port of Melbourne more than once as they tried to block an Israeli shipping company from docking. A police source said they had spiked truck tyres and set debris on fire during the blockade.

WACA was also the first to post footage of masked vandals spray-painting and lopping the head off the King George V statue in the city during King Charles’ birthday holiday in 2024. For this year’s holiday, the same group posted new footage of the statue’s head drifting off into the sea “back to England” in a Deliveroo bag.

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