Police now want to drop charges against a man they arrested last year for wearing a F*** Israel F*** Zionism t-shirt. But the man, Andrew Brown, wants his day in court. Michael West reports on a big test for free speech.
Andrew Brown was sitting on a wall on Bondi Beach last November wearing a Fuck Israel Fuck Zionism t-shirt when two police officers approached. Although he made no effort to flee, he was arrested, handcuffed and led around Bondi before being plonked in a paddy wagon and taken to Waverley Police Station.
The station was just up the road near Bondi Junction but Brown said the trip took 40 minutes, whereupon he was then held in a cell for six hours, DNA tested despite refusing, fingerprinted, photographed, and his shirt was seized as DNA evidence.
A year later and costs hurtling towards $1m for the state and Brown, the former Mosman Deputy Mayor and businessman has refused approaches by the Police prosecutor to have offensive conduct charges dropped. He wants his day in court.
He wants to win
and have it written in NSW Case Law that his conduct was a political statement and does not constitute offensive conduct.
Andrew Brown. AJA images quickly picked up by Daily Telegraph
The Court has set aside four full days in March at the Downing Centre in Sydney for the hearing. It is likely to involve the Attorney-General with his constitutional experts and solicitors and barristers as Andrew Brown says the NSW Summary Offences charges are overridden by the Constitution and the right to political communication.
Media pile-on by usual suspects
The upshot of the arrest and charges was a pile-on by the Israel lobby and right-wing media – Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph, the pro-Israel Daily Mail, 2GB shock jock Ray Hadley and Israel lobby groups on social media – who claimed, despite the clear political nature of Brown’s t-shirt, that it was an act of antisemitism.
“I was sitting on the wall at Bondi, doing nothing more dramatic than wearing a shirt. A week earlier a group of AJA activists claimed I had intimidated them. They photographed me. They later said I was offending the public. Yet on both days I had dozens of ordinary people come up to me and thank me for wearing it.
“I wanted to give you a clear and honest picture of where things stand with my court matter over the protest shirt that said “Fuck Israel, Fuck Zionism” and why it has grown far beyond a simple offence charge. It has become a test of political speech, police overreach, and the quiet power of a state agency determined to make an example of someone in order to appease a powerful lobby.”
NSW Police declined to respond to questions for this story. “As the matters remain before the Court – Downing Centre on 2 March 2026 – we won’t be providing any comment,” said a statement by Police Media.
A test for free speech
As a constitutional issue is raised, Andrew Brown’s lawyers have filed a notice under section 78B of the Judiciary Act. This requires every state and federal Attorney General to be notified. It means the matter cannot be treated as a simple local charge. It becomes a constitutional challenge about whether the state can use public order laws to police political communication.
This sits alongside an important Federal Court decision handed down by Justice Angus Stewart in Wertheim v Haddad 2025 FCA 720. His finding speaks directly to the core issue in Brown’s case.
Justice Stewart made a clear distinction between attacking Jews as a people and criticising Israel or Zionism as political entities. He stated that criticism of Israel or Zionism, even when it is stark or confronting, is political in nature and is not, without more, capable of being understood as directed at Jews generally based on their race or ethnicity.
He found that it only becomes unlawful when someone collapses Jews, Israel, Zionists and Judaism into one target and attacks the entire group as a single racial or ethnic category. In other words, the law recognises the difference between a political attack on a state or ideology and racial vilification.
“That distinction supports the core of my defence. It was not an attack on Jews as a racial or religious group.”
My shirt was a political statement about a state and a political ideology.
Draconian response by NSW Police
For making his political statement, wearing a t-shirt in public, the Police response was draconian. After the arrest and detention, came bail.
The initial conditions banned Brown from the entire eastern suburbs.
Yet he lives in Surry Hills, which meant that crossing South roughly South Dowling Street, some 400 metres away, would breach his bail conditions and he would go to jail for 12 months until his hearing, with a second bail unlikely..
“Crossing it would have meant arrest and possibly months in custody.” He challenged this in court Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge said the ban was absurd.
“If the shirt was offensive in Bondi, it was offensive in Boggabri. She allowed me into the east but forbade me from wearing anything connected to the dispute anywhere in the country, including my own home. We refused that too. She retired that week.
Eventually a different magistrate eased the bail conditions allowing Brown, who does business in the Eastern Suburbs, to travel anywhere, though he was not permitted to wear the same shirt in public or he would breach bail.
“Some months back the police prosecutor contacted my lawyers and said he would be dropping the two charges of causing offence. He had finally seen the video of the supposed intimidation incident.
The footage was taken from North Bondi Fish, looking down the esplanade. It shows me and the complainant more than ten meters apart, speaking for roughly eight seconds before I kept walking.
“No raised voice. No threat. Nothing resembling intimidation. He also acknowledged that the idea of charging me with causing offence on that basis was impossible.”
Brown’s legal team has filed a constitutional challenge to the Police case, arguing that the offence of causing offence is incompatible with the freedoms implied in the Australian Constitution, including political association, political communication and political protest. They argue that a state level misdemeanor cannot override those freedoms.
The Constitutional challenge means that every Attorney General in the country, including the Commonwealth, had to be notified. All declined to intervene except New South Wales. The New South Wales Attorney General, Michael Daly, chose to oppose the challenge.
Police opt to drop
The Police now say they intend to drop the two central charges against Brown of causing offence while leaving a single intimidation charge. He has been on bail for twelve months, his name dragged across newspapers, talkback programs and online platforms.
Is wearing a political t-shirt an offence? The state v Andrew Brown will expend a lot of public resources deciding.
“I would much rather the matter be heard in open court so a judge can rule that the shirt is not offensive and that there is no connection between Judaism, Jews, Israel or Zionism that can justify criminalising political expression.”
Zionism v Judaism
Brown is passionate about it. “Context matters,” he told MWM. “The people who shaped me deeply were my godparents, Jewish Hungarian Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Sydney after the Second World War. They were not fringe figures. They were central to the fabric of the local Sydney Jewish community. They were the closest friends of Frank Lowy. They were part of the group that founded the Hakoah Club.
My godfather managed the Australian under 23 Olympic soccer team for decades. They were respected, admired and loved by generations of people.
I grew up in their world. I went to synagogue with them. I was at Shabbat dinners occasionally on Friday night at DBs and Twenty One in Double Bay. My childhood was carried in the rhythms of Jewish life and Jewish memory.
I have no quarrel with the Jewish community. I was shaped by it.
“I was taught its stories, its grief, its laughter, its strength. And above all I was taught the meaning of never again. Not as a slogan. Not as a tribal shield. But as a universal moral command. Never again for Jews, yes, but also never again for any people anywhere who face ethnic cleansing, state violence or the slow machinery of fascism grinding toward them.
“That is the lesson my godparents passed to me. That is the inheritance I carry. And it is the reason I speak out. It is the way I honour them, their courage, and the six million murdered because the world decided not to see.
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