Trio charged with assault and other offences after incident at restaurant in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Three people have been charged with assault and other offences allegedly committed during a pro-Palestinian protest at an Israeli-owned restaurant in Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n
A 50-year-old man and two women, aged 48 and 28, were charged with assault, affray, riotous behaviour and criminal damage, Victoria Police said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Police allege that several people were involved in an altercation in which chairs were thrown and a glass door was damaged after about 20 protesters converged on the city-centre restaurant Miznon on Friday.<\/p>\n
Police said investigations into the incident were ongoing.<\/p>\n
The Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance, an activist group, said after the incident that the restaurant had been targeted as a \u201csite for direct action\u201d due to its ownership by Shahar Segal, an Israeli businessman who has served as a spokesperson for the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a person openly supports the terrorist state of Israel, especially what Amnesty International describes as their \u2018deadly, dehumanising and ineffective militarised aid scheme\u2019, they and their business are a fair target,\u201d the activist group said.<\/p>\n
A separate statement posted on social media by a person or people describing themselves as a \u201cgroup of autonomous individuals\u201d denied instigating violence and blamed the altercation on employees from another restaurant in the vicinity.<\/p>\n
The GHF, which is backed by the United States and Israel, has received widespread condemnation amid numerous reports of Israeli forces killing Palestinians in the vicinity of its distribution centres.<\/p>\n
The Gaza Health Ministry said on Saturday that at least 743 Palestinians had been killed and more than 4,891 others injured while seeking assistance at the distribution sites.<\/p>\n
Segal said in a social media post on Saturday that he had departed from his \u201ctemporary\u201d and \u201cvolunteer\u201d role with GHF. He did not provide a reason.<\/p>\n
Miznon said in a statement on Tuesday that Friday\u2019s incident had had a \u201cprofound impact\u201d on its staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actions of a few, caused much distress to our customers and to neighbouring restaurant patrons and staff,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile others have chosen to speak about who we are and decided we are a legitimate target for protest, we want to be clear about who we are, in our words. We are a restaurant, a place of hospitality, of warmth and welcome,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur greatest joy is to feed people from every background and viewpoint and to see the joy on people\u2019s faces as they enjoy our food and each other\u2019s company. That is our purpose and our objective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, Victoria Police on Sunday charged a 34-year-old man with a series of offences related to a suspicious fire at a synagogue in inner-city Melbourne on Friday.<\/p>\n
Authorities have said they have not established any link between the incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trio charged with assault and other offences after incident at restaurant in Melbourne. Three people have been charged…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13214,4740,4219,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-48758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114817806201813510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}