An independent forensic analysis has found “no evidence” a group of people chanted “gas the Jews” at a Sydney pro-Palestine protest last year, NSW Police confirmed.
Videos of the phrase being chanted at the October 9 demonstration — which was in protest of the Sydney Opera House lighting up blue in solidarity with Israel — were widely circulated last year, drawing condemnation from senior figures after they were reported on uncritically by Australia’s mainstream media.
One video, shared by the Australian Jewish Association to X (formerly known as Twitter), has been viewed more than 637,000 times. A second video, described by the AJA as the “uncut version”, has more than six million views.
While protest organisers admitted chants like “fuck the Jews” were said by “a group of idiots who were in a minority”, they claimed no one was heard chanting “gas the Jews”.
But almost four months since the videos were published, NSW Police has confirmed forensic analysis indicates the chant did not happen.
“As a result of independent forensic analysis of audio-video files of the demonstration provided to investigators, police have no evidence that this phrase was used,” NSW Police said in a statement on Friday.
“Police also obtained statements from several individuals who attended the protest indicating they heard the phrase, however these statements have not attributed the phrase to any specific individual.”
PEDESTRIAN.TV is not implying the Australian Jewish Association doctored the video.
Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon said that experts concluded with “overwhelming certainty” that the phrase was actually “where’s the Jews?”, and not “another phrase as was widely reported”.
When the video first began to circulate, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed its contents as “horrific” and “appalling”, and said he believed the pro-Palestine protest “should not have gone ahead”. Foreign Minister Penny Wong questioned whether Jewish people were even safe in Sydney.
NSW Premier Chris Minns accused the protesters of “celebrat[ing] atrocious indiscriminate killing” and suggested they had potentially committed a crime. Off the back of the video, police responses to pro-Palestine protests intensified and hate speech laws were changed — over events that now seemingly did not happen.
Video of pro-Palestine protest scrutinised by verification experts last year
In December, journalist Antoinette Lattouf and Cam Wilson published a report in Crikey questioning the validity of the viral video.
The two journalists noted at the time that third parties were unable to verify the audio of the footage, and no other videos from the pro-Palestine protest showed that the chant had taken place.
Crikey reported that analysis of the videos by verification experts at RMIT CrossCheck found signs that the audio was edited, including that the audio was “often out of sync with the video, that a section of audio was repeated during a clip, and that some audio was repeated while different clips were being shown”.
“These suggest that additional editing was done beyond splicing different video clips together,” the report said.
The report was referenced by pro-Israel lobbyists who pressured the ABC to sack Lattouf from a temporary radio-hosting role.
After NSW Police’s findings were released, she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that she “looks forward to receiving apologies” from the publications and groups that accused her of anti-semitism over the report.
Image: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
