Image: Images: sydpalpics & palestineactiongroup on Instagram.
Thousands of people marched through the streets of cities all around the country over the weekend, in pro-Palestine rallies that call for ceasefire, and to support freedom and peace for Palestinian people.
Pro-Palestine rallies were held all around the country over the weekend, in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Launceston, Adelaide, and more.
The marches were held on days surrounding the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks, where Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel – the major catalyst for the ongoing and currently escalating Israel-Palestine conflict.
The marches were held to draw Australian awareness for the conflict as it intensifies even further, and more and more people in Gaza and Lebanon are being killed and injured.
Israeli authorities say approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7 last year. The Gazan Health Ministry says more than 41,000 Palestinians have since been killed during the Israeli offensive that followed this attack.
Around 10,000 protesters at Sydney’s pro-Palestine rally
In Sydney, the rally – which almost didn’t go ahead after NSW Police filed court proceedings in an attempt to get the pro-Palestine events shut down, but the case was dismissed – was estimated to be approximately 10,000 people.
The enormous crowd was awash with colourful keffiyehs, or the red white black and green of the Palestinian flag, and watermelon symbols, and protestors waved signs calling for a ceasefire, and for Australia to cut their support for Israel.
The crowd of protesters was so enormous that the march had to keep stopping, so the start of the march didn’t crash into the tail end of the protesters.
The Sydney rally was organised by the Palestine Action Group, a “Sydney-based activist organisation committed to supporting Palestine and opposing Israeli Apartheid”, who have been organising rallies throughout the entire year.
View this post on Instagram
Speeches at pro-Palestine rally call for action from Australia’s politicians
Speeches went for around an hour in Hyde Park before the march.
The crowd chanted ‘shame, shame’ and ‘Labor Party, blood on your hands’ among other protest chants, as rally organisers urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other Labor politicians to stop supporting Israel.
First Nations activist Lizzie Jarrett addressed the thousands of protesters, saying “we will always show up for our Palestinian family”.
Jarrett said the Prime Minister is “arming, he’s funding, he’s being complicit in the continued genocide of innocent civilians”, to which the crowd responded with the chant “shame, shame Albanese”.
Cries of ‘shame’ were also directed toward Foreign Minister Penny Wong and NSW Premier Chris Minns.
Heavy police presence at every rally across the country
The police detail at the Sydney rally was large, as was the police presence at the rallies all around the country.
In Sydney, countless uniformed officers could be seen all along the march route, as well as mounted police and helicopters overhead.
Minimal arrests made
Despite the crowd of protesters being extremely large all across the country, arrests were very minimal.
Of a crowd of 10,000, there was just one arrest made at the Sydney rally.
A 56-year-old man was arrested for allegedly displaying a swastika. He was charged with “knowingly display[ing the…] Nazi symbol without reasonable excuse”.
The man was bailed, and will appear in court at a later date in October.
NSW police confirmed this was the only arrest made in relation to the Sydney rally so far. Another man was reportedly detained for breaching the peace, but was taken to the station and spoken to by police, then released.
7k attend Melbourne pro-Palestine rally
In Victoria, approximately 7,000 people attended the rally in Melbourne’s CBD.
The rally saw the large crowd waving flags and participating in similar chants to Sydney’s crowd.
However, the Melbourne protesters showed their support for Palestinian people by laying thousands of small paper kites in front of the State Library, one for each life of a child killed in Gaza in the last year.
Prior to the rally, Premier Jacinta Allan sent a ‘final warning’ to people who are pro-Palestine and were planning on attending the rally, telling them “don’t”.
The Premier told protesters to “show some respect” to Jewish people who were experiencing grief about the October 7 attack.
“It is a day of profound grief and trauma and deep sadness for Melbourne and Victoria’s Jewish community,” she said.
“There is a right to peacefully protest but with that right comes a responsibility to do so respectfully and understand what the grief and trauma is being experienced by others in our community,” Ms Allan said.
“It should be a day of understanding. We need to pause and see that conflict in the Middle East should not bring conflict to the streets of Melbourne or Victoria.”
But after the rally, Victoria Police confirmed that no major conflict occurred on Melbourne’s streets during the peaceful rally, and then only four arrests occurred out of 7,000 people.
A Victoria Police spokesperson said four people were arrested for ‘public order-related matters’, but “There were no major issues of note reported to police”.
“There were no displays of prohibited symbols at today’s protest,” the spokesperson confirmed. “Overall, police were pleased with the behaviour of attendees.”
Leave a Reply