Child safety campaigner Grace Tame has come under fire for suggesting rapes and sexual assaults of Israeli women and girls during the October 7 terror attacks were “debunked propaganda”.
The former Australian of the Year, who has been embroiled in controversy in recent months over her pro-Palestine activism, has been condemned by Jewish groups over her comments in an interview with ABC Radio host Hamish Macdonald on Monday morning.
Macdonald read out a listener question to Ms Tame asking why “she’s selective in her outrage”. “I’ve never heard her condemn or speak out on behalf of the Israeli women who were raped and killed by Hamas on October 7,” the listener texted.
“Have you spoken about that? Have you expressed outrage about that?” Macdonald asked.
“I’m not going to sink to the level of entertaining any kind of propaganda, Hamish. Yeah, let’s not do that,” Ms Tame said.
“What’s the propaganda included in that question?” the host asked.
“There have been … those things have been debunked,” Ms Tame said.
“Look, violence is … let’s be real, violence is happening on both sides, but this is not a fair fight. We’re not talking about two equal cohorts, even marginally.”
Macdonald noted that the Office of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict “has said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred”, including rape and gang rape, during the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas terrorists.
“Are you saying that is propaganda?” he asked.
“Awful things are being perpetrated by both sides,” Ms Tame said. “But this is not about whataboutism, this is not about selective outrage, I’m outraged about all of the violence. Would that we could get it all to stop, OK?”
“It’s just a question as to whether you’ve condemned that portion of what has occurred,” Macdonald pressed.
“Yes, and that’s a tactic of the bad-faith actors is to try to trip people up, you know, to get them to condemn this, condemn that, clearly I don’t support any of it,” Ms Tame said.
“As I said, I am a human-rights activist who advocates for the safety of all human beings no matter their background, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist … we shouldn’t be here arguing over brass tacks. I mean, just look at the hypocrisy …”
“To be fair, let’s not diminish what we’re talking about, it’s rape and gang rape, those are the allegations, I don’t think it’s arguing over brass tacks,” Macdonald said.
“I did not diminish any of those things, Hamish,” Ms Tame said.
“As someone who has been raped multiple times as a child myself, I have been choked, hit, spat on, I have been locked in cupboards, I have seen pretty horrendous things that human being are capable.”
She insisted “I do not dismiss any of it, no matter who the perpetrator is and no matter who the victim is”.
“What I think is really important is to, you know, remember what the broader context of this whole thing is,” she continued.
“So, you know, I think it’s frankly embarrassing for, you know, this particular shadowy cohort … you know, the Israeli Defence Minister called me ‘outrageous’. If he only knew that I was a 31-year-old woman from Tasmania who drives a beat-up Subaru, and at last count I had zero bombs, Hamish. I’m not the person you should be spending your time and resources to shut down. There are bigger fish to fry than me.”
The National Council of Jewish Women Australia (NCJWA) slammed Ms Tame’s comments as “repugnant”.
“What happened on October the 7th, wasn’t indeed as Tame says, a ‘fair fight’,” NCJWA president Lynda Ben-Menashe said in a statement.
“It was thousands of male terrorists streaming over the border from Gaza, to torture, rape and murder Israeli people in the most heinous ways. For Tame to claim this has been ‘debunked’ is repugnant. The terrorists themselves recorded their actions, the UN has accepted their veracity and made its own pronouncements, and organisations such as the Dinah Project have provided the legal case, and the ICC announced arrest warrants for Hamas leaders citing crimes including rape and sexual assault in detention.”
Ms Ben-Menashe added this was “in addition to the powerful and heartbreaking statements of female and male survivors, witnesses and first responders”.
“Many of the 251 hostages taken that day were regularly sexually abused during their captivity,” she said.
“Arbel Yahud, for example, has spoken of daily sexual abuse by her Islamic Jihad captors, which led her to three suicide attempts. For Tame to call this propaganda is not only a wilful denial and distortion, but also an outrageous insult to both the survivors and those who did not survive. We can only speculate about the reason someone who claims to fight for all victims of sexual abuse makes an exception when those victims are Jews.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) head of legal Simone Abel said that “for a survivor of sexual abuse, it is hard to imagine anything worse than another survivor discrediting or denying their abuse”.
“Grace Tame has engaged in the ultimate stonewalling by denying the sexual violence perpetrated by terrorist organisation Hamas on October 7,” she said.
“In doing so she has shown that she is not an advocate for all survivors of sexual assault, but only an advocate for some … [apparently] in the face of clear evidence Grace refuses to acknowledge what happened. She should be compelled to meet with the survivors and hear their accounts of sexual violence and torture.”
Sky News host Sharri Markson slammed the ABC on Monday night, accusing the national broadcaster of giving Ms Tame a platform to “spout her hateful views”.
Markson claimed Macdonald “barely challenged” Ms Tame “as she made outrageous claims that the violent rape of Jewish girls on October 7 was simply propaganda”.
“She also downplayed the violent and shocking terrorism committed against Israel, claiming it was simply resistance by Palestinians who have been oppressed,” Markson said.
“Hamish Macdonald … failed to press her on the fact that the chant ‘globalise the intifada’ has been realised with dozens of terror attacks around the world, including at Bondi. Instead, Maconald shockingly praised Tame. This is an outrageous failure of the ABC to give Tame a high-profile platform to express her dangerous and hateful views that can have serious repercussions for the Jewish community.”
Ms Tame and the ABC have been contacted for comment.
It comes after Ms Tame last week revealed she had lost all of her speaking engagements for the rest of the year, blaming a “smear campaign” against after she led a controversial “globalise the intifada” chant at a protest in Sydney against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
At the No to Violence national conference in Hobart on Thursday, Ms Tame announced she would not be speaking at any more events this year.
“This is my last presentation of the year and it’s only March,” Ms Tame told the audience at the No to Violence national conference in Hobart, adding that she felt she was “up against a well oiled political machine”.
At the conference, Ms Tame stressed she does not support violence or hatred in any form, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
‘Globalise the intifada’ is a slogan some activists use to call for international support for Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, but is considered by the Jewish community to be a call for violence.
The NSW government is considering banning the phrase under proposed hate speech laws, while it has already been outlawed in Queensland when used to menace or offend.
