Herzog Melbourne protest as it happened: Israeli president faces protests in final leg of controversial trip

Thank you for following our live coverage of the last day of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s controversial Australian visit.

The president’s final engagement was a Jewish community event in Melbourne’s Southbank, where protesters played a cat and mouse game with police, before rallying in their masses at Flinders Street Station.

Here’s a look back at what we covered today:

• Herzog declared Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government “serious partners” in the global fight against antisemitism, in stark contrast to the fury unleashed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi terrorist attack.
• A fringe anti-Zionist group leaked details of the Israeli president’s visit to Melbourne before the event, sparking a game of cat and mouse between pro-Palestine protesters and police in the streets across the city.
• As Herzog wound up his four-day state visit to fly home to Jerusalem, up to 10,000 pro-Palestinian protesters converged outside Flinders Street Station from 5pm, calling for his arrest.

• The mass evening gathering brought one of the busiest sections of the city to a standstill for the second time this week – following a 7000-strong protest on Monday against Herzog’s visit – but did not devolve into the angry scenes that took place in Sydney on Monday.
• There were a handful of scuffles, and police said they expected to charge a 39-year-old man from Coburg North on summons with assaulting police. The officer was not injured.
• The protest was otherwise peaceful and police did not need to use special move-on and search powers.

Thank you again for following our live coverage. I’m Cassandra Morgan, signing off.

The protest crowd at Victorian Parliament has begun to disperse to the sounds of Bob Marley’s Get up, Stand up.

There was another defiant chant of “From the river to the sea” as the protest concluded.

Thousands marched from Flinders Street Station to parliament. Speakers called for visiting Israeli President Isaac Herzog to be arrested, and for Israel to be sanctioned for war crimes in Gaza.

A handful of scuffles broke out in the crowd, but nothing like the violent scenes witnessed in Sydney on Monday. The mood of the crowd was angry, but peaceful.

Entreaties late in the protest to keep rallying for Gaza received a loud cheer.

Still in their thousands, protesters have arrived at the steps of Parliament House in Spring Street.

Police arrested one activist, putting the man in handcuffs while other officers surrounded him.

Minutes earlier, protesters launched into more speeches. Muslim Votes Matter national spokesperson Ghaith Krayem was the first speaker on parliament’s steps.

“We’re here because our silence would be complicity … we’re here to say to Australia, stop aiding and abetting genocide,” Krayem said.

He urged the crowd to keep protesting until Palestine was freed.

As the protesters begin to march from Flinders Street Station to Victorian Parliament, the crowd has grown to an estimated 5000 people.

Our reporters and photographers are on the ground with them, as they make their way to Spring Street. Here’s a gallery of some of The Age’s photographs so far today.

Palestinian activist Muayad Ali has delivered an angry rebuke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, saying, “I never swear, but this is not diplomacy.”

“This is not f---ing diplomacy. This is normalisation of genocide,” he yelled into a microphone.

“When you invite a representative of the Zionist regime, you send a message that Australia is willing to shake hands stained with the blood of children killed in Gaza.”

The crowd is chanting “shame” in response.

The Dandenong father of three came to Australia in 2008 on a humanitarian visa. His parents had lived in the Palestinian city of Haifa until the United Nations designated it part of the Jewish state in 1947.

His parents fled their homeland following the Tantura massacre in May 1948, and Ali was born in Iraq as a refugee.