(The Age, 27/11/2023)
A four-day truce between Israel and Hamas has been condemned by speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne on Sunday and described as falling short of addressing the long-running plight of Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza.
As some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners were released as part of the truce agreement over the weekend, several thousands marched through Melbourne’s CBD for the seventh consecutive Free Palestine rally, where speakers criticised the temporary ceasefire.
Federal independent senator Lidia Thorpe tearfully told the crowd that 30,000 of her constituents had contacted her about the war in Gaza, wanting the government to act.
She said Indigenous Australians were sympathetic to the plight of Palestinian people.
“We know your pain and we are sorry that you have lost so many babies and so many family members,” said Thorpe, who is a DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman.
Victorian Greens MP Gabrielle di Vietri asked the assembled protesters: “What are you doing on Tuesday at 7am?”
“Are you getting ready for work? You’re getting ready for school. You’re still sleeping, maybe having a coffee.
“Tuesday 7am is when the Israeli government will continue its indiscriminate bombing of Palestine,” she said.
Di Vietri also called Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “gutless” for failing to call for a permanent ceasefire.
Another speaker, anti-Zionist Jewish author Nevo Zisin, said they were a “white Jewish settler coloniser on violently stolen Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land”.
Many protesters wore traditional keffiyeh scarves, which have become a symbol of the Palestinian movement.
Many also held signs calling for a ceasefire, labelling the bombardment of Gaza a genocide. Some held signs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Hitler moustache and captioned “child killer”.
A small number of protesters, including speakers, wore army camouflage and covered their faces.
Police were seen guarding Starbucks outlets in the CBD on Sunday after coffee stores and McDonald’s outlets were vandalised with fake blood and pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel stickers at last week’s rally.
Nasser Mashni, the head of the largest Palestinian organisation in Australia, the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, criticised the brevity of the ceasefire and encouraged boycotting international brands “complicit in crimes against Palestinians” but told protesters not to target businesses in Jewish neighbourhoods.
“There’s no room for any hate, no room for any hate in our movement. There is no room for antisemitism,” he said.
“If you went to Caulfield and you put boycott stickers on a Jewish-owned store, you did not help us. You did not help us, you hurt us.
“Our battle is against Zionism, it’s against oppression, it’s against colonialism, it is not against Judaism.”
Mashni said Israel “might be winning the death toll, but we are winning the humanitarian struggle”.
At various times during the protest, the crowd chanted: “Resistance is justified when Palestine is occupied”, “intifada, intifada”, “Alahu akbar”, “ceasefire now”, “out, out Israel now”, “1, 2, 3, 4, occupation no more, 5, 6, 7, 8, Israel is a terrorist state”.
They also chanted the popular Free Palestine slogan, “from the river to sea, Palestine will be free”, which some Jewish people say is antisemitic as they believe it calls for the annihilation of Israel. But Palestine advocates say the term calls for freedom and human rights for Palestinians.
Under the four-day truce, 50 women and children held by Hamas will be released in stages in return for the release of 150 Palestinians, including women and children, being detained by Israel. Humanitarian aid, medical supplies and fuel will also be allowed into Gaza as part of the truce.
On Friday, Hamas released a group of 24 hostages, including 13 Israelis, 10 Thai farm workers and a Filipino national. Another 13 hostages were released on Saturday, all of whom were Israeli women and children. They included six members of an extended family from the ravaged Israeli border village of Be’eri, who were kidnapped during Hamas’ cross-border attack on Israel on October 7.
Meanwhile, 39 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons have been released, including 24 women and 15 teenagers. Among them was 17-year-old Iyas Khatib, the son of a UN aid worker who was put in “administrative detention” last year without being publicly charged of a crime or put on trial.
Hamas killed 1200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages during an attack on southern Israel on October 7. Since then, nearly 15,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s intense bombing campaign.
One speaker, a woman identified only as Mona, said she had recently been evacuated from Gaza with the assistance of the Australian Embassy.
“There is no food, no shelter, no clean water,” she said. “I was there and I suffered. So we need to help the people in Gaza”.
Another Palestinian man who also spoke to the crowd, Ihab Hohammad Al Azhari, said the movement, “demanded nothing less than liberation to every single inch of the traditional Palestinian land, nothing less”. “We are talking about a stolen land. This is not a war, this is an honourable resistance.”
Victoria Police estimated 5000 people attended the rally, however, based on the appearance of recent rally sizes, observers noted the crowd appeared to be at least double the size.
Police estimates of attendance at the Sunday rallies held each week since October 10 have waxed and waned – between 10,000 on the first Sunday and as high as 45,000 a fortnight ago.
Also on Sunday, Zionism Victoria held a “To Israel With Love” festival at the Beth Weizmann Jewish Community Centre in Caulfied, where many Jewish Melburnians live.
Organiser Hallely Kimchi estimated between 1500 and 2000 people will have attended the event – which is held annually as a cultural celebration – by the time it was over.
Many attendees wore t-shirts that said “Bring Them Home”, referencing the remaining Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, and a wall outside the cultural centre featured posters of some of the hostages.
“This morning it was very special for us to actually go and actually mark off the ones that came home in the last two days with the word ‘home’,” said Kimchi.
Some of the Israeli hostages returned this weekend were known to people in the Melbourne Jewish community, she said.
“The word festival is very hard for us at the moment but it’s actually made it right today as they [some hostages] were released and it’s really special.”