Police have charged a 64-year-old Victorian man with assault after he allegedly attacked a group wearing Palestinian keffiyehs in an Adelaide hotel.
Aboud Shaweesh was among the group of six allegedly hit just after midnight on July 6 at the Franklin Apartments.
He alleged that as he and his friends walked into the hotel elevator, the 64-year-old man said, “You support these f**king terrorist Muslim c**ts … I’ll kill every one of you c**ts.”
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When Shaweesh entered the elevator, he alleged the suspect pushed him, hit his friends and pulled their keffiyehs.
Shaweesh called the incident a hate crime, although the man was not charged with a hate crime offence.
“The only reason why he targeted us was because of the keffiyehs we were wearing and made the association we were Muslim,” Shaweesh alleged.
Part of the altercation was captured on video.
One of the girls in the group was left with a bruise around her eye.
Members of the group restrained the 64-year-old before police arrived, arrested him and charged him with five counts of assault.
Shaweesh said the 64-year-old Victorian man may have been intoxicated at the time.
He was refused bail and appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on July 8.
Shaweesh has been actively protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 38,600 Palestinians following a Hamas-led incursion that killed 1200 Israelis and resulted in 200 hostages taken.
He arrived in Adelaide earlier this month from Sydney to demonstrate outside Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office on Gouger St over what he said was Australia’s lack of action against a “genocide” in Gaza.
The Islamaphobia Register reported a 580 per cent surge in Islamaphobia incidents since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.
Among the incidents was a woman’s driveway in Melbourne graffitied with “disgusting” slurs over her support for Palestine, and a man sentenced to jail for planting a homemade bomb on a car outside a Sydney home with a Palestinian flag.
Shaweesh said at a pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney earlier this year, a member of the public “aggressively” approached him and tried to take away his banner.
He said the Federal Government’s rhetoric in relation to the war and demonstrations against it have perpetuated a “dehumanisation” of Palestinians.
“They are demonising Palestinians and Palestinian supporters. They are saying our protests are violent,” Shaweesh said about the government.
“It doesn’t surprise me that the public would see us in a threatening way and then feel like they can go ahead and attack us.”
The Federal Government plans to announce an Islamaphobia envoy after launching one for antisemitism on July 9.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the conflict in the Middle East had caused “a great deal of grief” for Jewish and Islamic communities.