As the sun began to set at Sydney’s town hall, some people quietly lit candles while a person began reading the first few stanzas of a poem. Calls for resistance echoed throughout the city’s central business district.
An 18-year-old activist, Hussein Abdullah, took the microphone, identifying himself as Lebanese-Muslim. “I’m angry,” he started. “I’m outraged – 365 days of genocide, 365 days since the world abandoned us. The only other emotion that has outweighed my rage is sadness.
“There are no words, no speeches, no actions grand enough to capture a collective emotion. Grief has made itself our constant companion.”
It was a sombre crowd who gathered on Monday evening for a vigil “to honour and mourn and remember” Palestinian and Lebanese lives lost in Israel’s latest military campaign that began almost 12 months ago.
It began with a minute’s silence, which was followed by a multi-faith prayer from members of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim community. A heavy police presence surrounded the gathering.
A Kaddish – a Jewish prayer praising God, traditionally said in memory of the dead – was read first. Then Costandi Bastoli, born in Jerusalem and director of Palestinian Christians in Australia, spoke.
“We refuse to let any unforgiveness or hatred to take hold,” he said. “May we preserve our hearts from hatred and cultivate a desire for good, for all.”
Ahmed Ouf, a councillor at Cumberland council, asked the crowd to raise their hands. He recited supplications in Arabic “for the kids, the women, the men, the people” of Gaza, Palestine and Lebanon.
The evening concluded with singing of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance anthems as the crowd waved candles and lights from their smartphones.
The vigil followed protests in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on Sunday, a day before the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks by Hamas in southern Israel.
The New South Wales police applied to the state’s supreme court last week to prevent both events from going ahead. But pro-Palestine organisers reached a last-minute agreement to proceed with the 6 October rally as well as the standing vigil on 7 October, which did not require a protest permit.
“I’m beyond proud of what the movement has done yesterday and today,” Jana Fayyad from Palestine Action Group, which organised the town hall event, told Guardian Australia. “We showed the state, we showed the police, we showed the media that their ploys to try to villainise us didn’t work.”
Waiting for the vigil to begin, and wearing a Palestinian flag around his neck, Joseph, a Palestinian Australian, said there “was too much suffering going on”.
“We’ve had a lot of relatives who have been displaced in Gaza, the West Bank,” he said. “It’s been one year. Too many dead. We don’t want this to spread even further.”
More than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel during the 7 October attacks and subsequent military confrontation.
In response, Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza has killed almost 42,000 people and decimated neighbourhoods, displacing 1.9 million people and leaving a further 500,000 with catastrophic levels of food insecurity, according to local health ministry sources.
The Israeli military has been conducting intense aerial campaigns in south Lebanon and the capital, Beirut.
About 600 people attended a rally at Lakemba mosque in Sydney’s south-west, many bearing Lebanese and Palestinian flags and others with Palestinian symbols. A heavy police presence included riot squad officers and a helicopter.
The Lebanese Muslim Association’s secretary, Gamel Kheir, described the vigil as “exactly what’s happening in the eastern suburbs, respecting the lives that have been lost”.
“This is not a celebration of any kind and for people and the politicians to make it out as if we’re celebrating some atrocity is so disrespectful,” Kheir said.
The event aimed to mark a “difficult 12 months” for those with links to Palestine, according to an organiser, Faraz Nomani.
“There’s catastrophic levels of death and destruction, we’re here today to mark the fact that is was on this day last year that that sequence of events started,” Nomani said.
No arrests had been made at protests or vigils in Sydney as of 9pm Monday, police confirmed.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
