Melbourne gallery displays Hamas symbol

A Melbourne art gallery is displaying a huge Hamas symbol as part of an exhibition that claims to respond to “the charged events that have erupted over the last nine months in historic Palestine”.

The exhibition called The Cave, The Flood features a massive red LED floodlight on a wooden frame in a direct reference to the symbol adopted by the terror group.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia.

The exhibition was created by visual artist and RMIT visual arts academic Leslie Eastman and is displayed at Hayden’s gallery in East Melbourne.   

Neither Eastman nor the gallery’s director Hayden Stuart has responded to requests from The Jewish Independent for comment but the artist’s statement on the exhibition says it explores the cave and rock beneath the Dome of the Rock, at Al Aqsa, al Quds/Jerusalem.

“The Cave, The Flood is a response to the complex history and meanings of this charged geological and spiritual pivot point, considering it from both religious and political perspectives. So much is clouded in Western reportage. So little of the context is appreciated by Western eyes,” the statement read.

A red triangle is a relatively recent symbol used by Hamas since October 7, deriving from combat footage published by Hamas’ Al-Qassam brigade, which shows a red triangle used to indicate Israeli military targets such as tanks just before they are struck. Usage of the triangle has spread to the international war-related protests.

In July, the Senate of Berlin voted to ban the symbol. The ban followed incidents in which the triangle has been sprayed on several venues, including a techno club and a bar that had hosted events opposing antisemitism or expressing solidarity with Israel after the October 7 attacks.

The motion put forward by Berlin's ruling parties, the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), stated that "sympathizers of Palestinian terror organizations" were using it to "mark possible sites for attack, to threaten opponents and claim public space as their own". Germany bans symbols of antisemitism such as the swastika and, since last year, the slogan “From the River to the Sea”.

The ­Coalition’s home affairs spokesman, James Paterson, told The Australian that displaying the red triangle went beyond the bounds of acceptable artistic expression.

“No supporter of the Palestinian cause in Australia should be associating themselves with the symbols of Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation,” Senator Paterson said.

“It is well and truly pushing the bounds of art, good taste and potentially even the law to appropriate an image used by the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s militant wing, to designate Israeli targets on the 7th of October and in their propaganda videos since.”

Strategic Analysis Australia director Peter Jennings urged the government to start taking a firmer stance against the symbol. “It’s used by Hamas in videos to show people being shot, everyone knows what it means,” he said.

“There’s no question it is invoking the target symbol used by Hamas… Here we have a symbol appropriated by terrorist groups, which is now being used regularly by Australian activists.”