Grace Tame

Grace Tame

Former Australian of the Year (2021); activist · Tasmania, Australia
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Grace Tame is a Tasmanian advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse and was the 2021 Australian of the Year.

On 9 February 2026, at a Sydney Town Hall rally against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, she said Herzog had "signed his name on bombs that were used to kill innocent women and children", then led the crowd in chanting "from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada!" NSW Premier Chris Minns called her choice of words "terrible" and said: "that's what the consequences of 'globalise the intifada' mean, a violent uprising in Sydney's streets." Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said she should be stripped of her Australian of the Year honour. Her response: "Politicians and the press can deflect onto me all they like, but I'm not the story."

In the same ABC Radio Sydney Mornings interview in March 2026, when the host said the First and Second Intifadas "were incredibly violent moments", she interrupted: "we can't erase Palestinian history here... those Intifadas began as peaceful protests. Boycotts and labor strikes against Israel's violence, and it was Israel who first responded to those boycotts and those strikes with violence." Asked what she meant by the chant, she said: "Certainly was not my intention to incite violence." The First Intifada's opening protests in Gaza on 9 December 1987 included rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli troops (History.com); strikes and boycotts were also a major part of it. The Second began in September 2000 with stone-throwing riots at the Temple Mount; on 12 October 2000 two Israeli reservists were lynched by a mob at a Ramallah police station, and it became a campaign of suicide bombings (ADL; Times of Israel).

Later in that interview, asked about sexual violence against Israeli women on 7 October 2023, she said: "Those things have been debunked" and "I'm not going to sink to the level of entertaining any kind of propaganda." In 2024 UN officials had found reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred at several locations during the attack. On 10 September 2026 she said in an Instagram video that her comments had been "misinterpreted", that "I do not deny the legitimate accusations of rape made by individual Israeli women", and apologised "for any harm their mischaracterisation has caused" (ABC).

On 11 October 2026, the third anniversary of the October 7 attack, she addressed a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney, telling the crowd: "We know about the cynical weaponization of antisemitism, which is just another tool to distract and divide us."

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