Pro-Palestine protests to go ahead across the nation
A series of pro-Palestine rallies are set to go ahead across Australia as tensions continue to escalate after Hamas attacks on Israelis.
Participants of a Free Palestine rally react outside the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Monday, October 9, 2023. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Protests are planned for Canberra, Perth and Brisbane today (Friday) while organisers say they will also push ahead with rallies in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide over the weekend.
Pro-Palestine protests erupted as Israel launched retaliatory strikes following the death of more than 1000 residents at the hands of the Islamist group.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner pointed to a rally in Sydney earlier in the week when some chanted anti-Jewish slurs and lit flares in behaviour later denounced by organisers.
“What’s happened in Sydney and Melbourne we don’t want happening here,” he said on Thursday.
A Brisbane rally calling for participants to “come, listen, chant and call for no war on Gaza” is planned for King George Square on Friday from 6pm.
Mr Schrinner said he was concerned about rising anti-Semitism in the community, adding there was no justification for terrorism.
“To think that some people are trying to justify this at the moment is sickening to me,” he said.
Also on Friday evening, a few hundred people were expected at a rally in Canberra’s Garema Place with another protest planned for Perth’s Murray St Mall.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said any incitement of violence should be met with a “very, very heavy hand” and called for non-citizens who preached anti-Semitic speech at the rallies to be deported.
“People with that hate in their minds, in their hearts, don’t have any place in our society,” he said.
The Palestinian Action Group called Mr Dutton’s comments “a shocking attack on democratic rights”.
“People have a right to protest against the war crimes and apartheid policies of the Israeli state,” the group said.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general Mike Burgess said it was important for people making public statements to “consider the implications for social cohesion”.
“As I have said previously, words matter,” he said on Thursday.
“ASIO has seen direct connections between inflamed language and inflamed community tensions.”
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil urged Australians to consider the optics of rallies that could further hurt an already reeling Jewish community, adding it wasn’t about political views on Israel and Palestine.
Organisers will push ahead with a second Sydney rally on Sunday despite police not giving official approval for a march.
Samantha Lock in Sydney/AAP
This is the result of a ignorant, weak, anti-Israel, pro-palistinian government.
At a time like this, disgusting to allow these rallies to go ahead.
Maybe you can explain that Nachshon Amir, an ex-IDF officer who is helping organise the Melbourne rally. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/he-was-an-israeli-soldier-in-gaza-now-he-s-organising-free-palestine-rallies-20231011-p5ebhk.html
The evil of the attack and the Jewish community’s searing pain is undeniable. And I grieve for them. But Amir understands that that there is no monopoly on pain, and that the Palestinians have been drenched in it too, because he directly helped inflict it. He actually wants peace with the Palestinians, not for them to be silent and just disappear like the Israeli far right does.
Australia is a democracy – got it !!