‘We know your pain’: Thorpe addresses Free Palestine crowds in Melbourne
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A four-day truce between Israel and Hamas has been condemned by speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne on Sunday 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, thousands of people gathered in Melbourne’s CBD for the seventh consecutive Free Palestine rally, where speakers lambasted the temporary ceasefire.
Senator Lidia Thorpe speaks during a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne on Sunday.Credit: Luis Ascui/The Age
Federal independent senator Lidia Thorpe told the crowd that 30,000 of her constituents had contacted her in relation to 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 senator 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.
Nasser Mashni, the head of the largest Palestinian organisation in Australia, the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, also criticised the brevity of the ceasefire, but used his speech to tell 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.”
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.
Many protesters wore traditional Keffiyeh scarves, which have become a symbol of the Palestinian movement. The Age sighted a handful of protesters dressed in military camouflage.
Under a four-day truce brokered by Egypt and Qatar, 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. Hundreds of trucks of 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 in a surprise cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7. Since then, nearly 15,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes.
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.
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