About 15,000 people have attended a rally supporting Palestine in Melbourne, with the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, telling the crowd they were mourning for those who had died on both sides of the bloody conflict.
Sunday’s protest was one of several held across the country at the weekend. Victoria police said that there were “no major incidents of note”.
Bandt, the federal MP for Melbourne, described the Israeli bombardment of Gaza as a war crime and called for it to end immediately.
“We mourn the 1,400 Israelis who lost their lives but also the 4,000 Palestinians who lost their lives,” he said, according to local media reports.
Only hours after speaking at a similar protest in Perth on Saturday, Ayman Qwaider was told his sister and her three young children had been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
“My heart aches for my sister Alaa, a teacher and a loving mother,” Qwaider tweeted on Sunday. “She was killed by an Israeli airstrike at her home along with her precious children, Eman, Faiz, and 7-month-old Sara.”
My heart aches for my sister Alaa, a teacher and a loving mother. She was killed by an Israeli airstrike at her home along with her precious children, Eman, Faiz, and 7-month-old Sara. Israel has so far killed Over 1,560 children in the past 14 days. #StopGazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/1LfTqAgbQl
— Ayman Qwaider (@aymanqwaider) October 22, 2023
Nick Everett, the chair of Friends of Palestine WA, said Qwaider had moved to Perth in 2014 with his wife and was a valued member of the community of 200 to 300 Palestinian people in the city, who continued to “remain resolute” in seeking a “just solution” to the conflict.
“It is devastating, but it really only hardens my resolve to keep campaigning around this issue, calling for an immediate ceasefire, immediate humanitarian relief for the people of Gaza, and a change to Australian government policy to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza,” Everett said.
Ed Husic, a federal Labor minister and a Muslim, repeated his concerns on Sunday that Palestinians in Gaza were paying an “utterly horrible price for Hamas’s barbarism”.
“There is by no doubt, a requirement, and understanding there will be an undertaking by Israel to hold Hamas to account for what happened on 7 October without question,” Husic told Sky News.
“But again, you know, we’ve seen 1,000 children lose their lives since that point in time ... there’s got to be a better way to target Hamas.”
The federal opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, rejected the claim, saying the attacks carried out by Hamas were “horrific”. “It’s important that we do not allow moral equivalence to be drawn,” he told ABC TV.
Birmingham would not be drawn on whether Israel was justified in cutting off critical supplies to Gaza in its war against the terrorist group.
“Israel is dealing with a very complex situation and I’m not going to prejudge the military strategy,” he said. “Israel is well within its rights to act in ways that seek to disable Hamas.”
Additional reporting by Sarah Basford Canales and Australian Associated Press
