Never Again is Now - Melbourne Rally
“And my life changed on October 7th”, these are the words of Rev. Mark Leach, an Anglican minister in Sydney, New South Wales, “and then October 9th, there was a famous, infamous rally in Sydney. It had started in Town Hall in the city centre of Sydney, right next to the Anglican Cathedral.”
Mark Leach and Rabbi Daniel
Mark is the Anglican Minister in Sydney, who stood on the steps of the cathedral, and as Pro-Palestinians who rallied were chanting, “Get the Jews, kill the Jews”. He took an Israeli flag out of my squash bag and waved this Israeli flag. All the eyes and the cameras turned towards him, then a bunch of Palestinian guys chased him up Bathurst Street threatening to slit his throat. These men were all wearing mask faces to ensure they were not recognisable. Mark hid behind the police car until the cops dispersed these guys. This got a lot of media attention.
I met Mark last Thursday night, February 29th, at the Jewish Shule Caulfield North. Mark Leach was there to address a core group of Jewish and Christian people to sow the seeds for running a “Never Again Is Now” Rally in Melbourne on April 14th. The venue is still to be arranged.
Mark referred to his family background, “my brother converted to Islam, so I’ve been very familiar with the trajectory of the rise of the “Brotherhood" and radical Islam.” On Monday, October 9th, there were slogans calling for the genocide of the Jewish people. Mark said, “The police warned the Jewish community to stay out of Sydney”. Ignoring this, Mark phoned the police and said he was planning to come down and “get some of the Christian community down to just be a voice and state their objection to what they were doing”. The police made it clear they couldn’t guarantee their safety. Mark explained to the meeting the reason he did this, “I am an Australian, and as a Pastor, as a Christian and as a Jew, and for all these reasons, it was completely unacceptable that this was allowed to happen”.
He reminded the audience that the blood had not yet dried in southern Israel, for the police force were still chasing terrorists, and the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) had not yet gone into Gaza. But these guys were calling for genocide when Israel was still grief-stricken. Mark said, “I thought someone had to stand up and say it is completely inappropriate that the police here in Australia should keep the Jews and the citizens of Australia out and allow this evil to fester. I thought it’s really clear, the morality of this issue is crystal clear, and I thought it’s what any decent human being would do.”
“But we know from history, in a country like ours or in Germany in the 1930s, people just wanted to keep their heads down and hope everything would get better and go away. I knew, like everyone did, that it would only get worse from October once the IDF went into Gaza, and the whole Iranian funded pro-Palestinian, left propaganda machine would go to work, and the battle that we would have in the anglosphere world to maintain support for the Jewish people in Israel would vanish.”
Because Mark had a good understanding of the theology and the politics of Islam historically, particularly since the Second World War, he was invited to give lectures to various communities. He said, “We need to understand what’s going on in radical Islam. There is now a diabolical coalition of radical Islam and the radical left. The two have joined together, and therefore, we need to know how to respond.”
Surely it’s time that Christians, Jews, or people with no faith but believe in decency and morality take a stand. We can no longer ignore and stay in our communities, hoping things will improve because we intuitively know they won’t. Mark said, “We know how this movie will finish.”
The story of Mark’s grandparents was given as an illustration of what can take place. In 1933, he said, “My grandmother’s best friend lost her job at the university being a Jew. She was a famous archaeologist. She was offered a job at the Vatican in Rome, spending the rest of her life working for the Vatican. However, the Italians started handing Jews over to Germany, but thankfully, the Nuns kept her hidden.
A friend of Mark’s grandfathers had been saying throughout the 30s, “You guys have to leave; it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse.” Mark said, “My grandfather was a stubborn old man. He believed because he fought in the First World War for Germany, they would be protected. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and they escaped to South Africa just in time.”
The problem is ordinary people just sit back and hope someone else will take up the fight, but they don’t. Mark said, “We have a common enemy, and I don’t use that word likely; I think there is an enemy. Both the radical left and radical Islam hate our civilisation and our culture, which is built based on scripture. The Judeo-Christian worldview we all share is the foundation of what we value and treasure. They hate, and Israel is the focus of that hatred, for they are seen as the archetype of the white colonial oppressor, capitalists; name your insults, but they are the archetype of what they hate about the rest of us.”
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” There is an argument about who said this, but the fact is, it’s true no matter who said it. Mark Leach was not going to sit back and do nothing. He said, “A group of us got together: a couple of friends and an old friend, Wayne Zwar and his wife, Michelle. After church one Sunday night, we met. We cried together, we prayed, and we wondered what we were going to do. We needed to do something.”
Fast forward, we connected with some guys from the UK who ran a bold group of Christian action against anti-Semitism. They mobilised a big meeting in Downing Street, and the president of the great synagogue in Sydney, David Lewis, attended that meeting. He said to them, “We need something like this in Sydney. We need keen Christians to take the lead.”
The rest of the story is inspirational. A small group of dedicated Christians headed up by Mark and Wayne pulled together, raised funds, phoned Churches, utilised public media, approached key like-minded speakers and on February 18th, 12,000 people from all walks of life rallied at the Sydney Domain, under the banner “Never Again is Now”. The goal is to see a similar rally in Melbourne on April 14th. The group is believing for 20,000 people to take a stand.
To find out more and register your interest. Contact Al Watson on 0418 368 866. Or email biblewalk@icloud.com