Fearing it would cause hostility, Sydney cancels controversial ‘Globalize the intifada’ forum
The normalization of calls for violent uprising against Israel — now exported to Sydney's public square — reflects the global spread of hostility toward the Jewish people and the fracturing of moral consensus in Western nations, echoing biblical warnings about the nations turning against Israel.
Joel 3:2
Prophetic Fulfillment“I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land.”
Why this passage
Joel 3:2 was spoken to nations that had dispersed Israel and treated her land as plunder. The original grammatical-historical sense addresses specific ancient peoples — Tyre, Sidon, Philistia — but the oracle's horizon explicitly widens to 'all the nations,' establishing a principle that God holds accountable any nation or movement that turns against His people and their heritage.
The prophetic logic is not merely local to Joel's day: God declares He will judge nations 'on behalf of my people.' This extends legitimately to every generation in which the nations organize against Israel's right to exist.
The prophet Joel declared, 'I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land' (Joel 3:2).
That ancient indictment was spoken to nations that treated Israel as a pawn — and the spirit of it now walks the streets of Sydney, where a forum designed to 'globalize the intifada' was organized not in a distant capital but in a prosperous Western city.
The cancellation is a mercy, but the demand that such a forum exist at all reveals how far hostility toward the Jewish people has metastasized into mainstream civic life. When a democratic city must weigh whether a public call for violent uprising is legal speech, something has already gone deeply wrong — and the believer is called to pray, not merely to observe.
Today's Prayer
Pray that governments and communities worldwide would recognize the ancient spiritual root of antisemitism and stand against it with courage, and that Jewish communities living among the nations would know the protection and faithfulness of their God.
Further Scripture
Additional passages that illuminate this event, each grounded in a distinct interpretive lens.
“They say, 'Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!'”
Why this passage
Psalm 83 records a coalition of peoples conspiring to destroy Israel as a nation — the precise motivation articulated in the psalm ('let the name of Israel be remembered no more') is not ancient sectarian grievance but an organized effort at erasure. The psalmist's lament is structural: peoples gather, they conspire, they speak destruction openly.
The parallel pattern — not the same actors, but the same organizing logic — is visible whenever movements publicly coordinate global agitation against Israel's existence, as the 'Globalize the Intifada' framing makes explicit.
How it applies
The forum in Sydney was not merely pro-Palestinian advocacy; its explicit aim was to challenge legal restrictions on a phrase that calls for a violent uprising against the Israeli state — in other words, to normalize the call for Israel's violent suppression on a global scale. This is the Psalm 83 pattern transposed into a democratic civic forum: open, organized, cross-national conspiracy against the name and existence of Israel.
The believer who reads Psalm 83 knows that such conspiracies are neither new nor ultimately successful — but they are real, and they demand intercession.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
Why this passage
Isaiah's sixth woe oracle targets a specific moral inversion: the deliberate renaming of categories so that what is evil is publicly framed as just, and what is good is publicly condemned. This was addressed to covenant Israel gone morally blind, but its principle is universal — God pronounces woe on any society that systematically inverts moral categories.
The plain grammatical-historical sense is a judgment on moral leadership that corrupts public perception of right and wrong, not merely private sin.
How it applies
The 'Globalize the Intifada' forum illustrates Isaiah's woe in civic form: a call to spread violent uprising is organized under the language of resistance, justice, and free speech — the moral vocabulary of good is borrowed to legitimize a call that advocates violence. When a city government must debate whether incitement to international violence is protected discourse, the inversion Isaiah warned against has already reshaped the public square.
The cancellation is welcome; the fact that legal challenge was required to stop it reveals how normalized the inversion has become.
Related by Scripture
Other events we've interpreted through the same passage or hermeneutical lens.
Russia disrupts mobile internet as Kremlin scales back Victory Day parade
Technology & SurveillanceShares Isaiah 5:20How child soldiers in Sudan become influencers on TikTok
Moral DeclineShares Isaiah 5:20North Korea ramps up executions over foreign media, says NGO
Persecution of ChristiansShares Isaiah 5:20Czech court hands 7-year prison term to man over attempted synagogue arson attack
Israel & JerusalemShares Joel 3:2US condemns Iran’s leadership role at UN nuclear conference as ‘beyond shameful’
One World Government / EconomyShares Isaiah 5:20
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Source: timesofisrael— we link to the original for full context.