June 23rd marked the 37th week of protest led by Palestine Action Group (PAG) at Hyde Park.
Long-term PAG activist Damien Ridgwell opened the rally with “Free Palestine” chants, asking the crowd to come forward from under the trees where it had been sprinkling with rain.
Ridgewell reminded the crowd that “we’re not going to be deterred by a bit of cold and a little camp, to show our support for the Palestinian people against the atrocities that are occuring at the moment.” Ridgewell then introduced his co-chair Malik Albadawi, who also started his chairing with “from the River, to the sea chants.”
The first speaker was Jeremy Heathcoat, an Indigenous Community Engagement Officer at the University of Sydney, who began his speech with an Acknowledgement of Country. Heathcoat noted that the weekly rallies have been of great importance, emphasising that Palestine was an issue that “many of us have been fighting for years, and we won’t stop fighting.”
Heathcoat also spoke of the Indigenous support for the Palestinian community, as well as the recent motion passed by the NTEU at USyd supporting an institutional academic boycott of Israeli weapons companies and its ties to various weapons companies and institutions.
Ridgewell returned to the stage as Chair, speaking of the recent bombings of the densely packed refugee camps in designated so-called “safe zones.”
Ridgewell focused on the Australian Government’s complicity of the crimes carried out by Israel, emphasising that the Federal Government still continues to write off any criticism of Israel as “anti-Semeitc.”
Ridgewell also spoke about the Australian Jewish Association ( AJA), who recently hosted a former Israeli parliamentarian who quoted “favourably” from Hitler and stated that the Israeli military should “burn Gaza to ashes.”
The next speaker, Lousia Romanous, began her speech by stating that she was “angry”, but was “holding onto this anger to carry on, to learn more, to stand strong, to support the people in Palestine.”
Romanous also spoke of her home country, Lebanon, which shares its borders with the “terrorist, apartheid state of Israel,” a country which Romanous went on to later reiterate as having “no respect for human suffering, no respect for human rights.”
Romanous continued byasking the crowd to raise their hands for a segment of questions, such as “what do you do when international law is not respected?” Many in the crowd raised one hand, and in unison, answered “resist!”.
Towards the end of her speech, Romanous also showed her support for the USyd Gaza solidarity encampment by stating “the history boom will remember that you took a stand against the genocide”, and that it is “a reminder that the fight for justice knows no borders.” She finished her speech with a chant: “the people, United, can never be defeated.”
Ridgwell returned to the stage to introduce Sanja Adusumilli, a surgeon who had been working in Gaza several weeks prior, as well as a co-founder of the Global Medicine Foundation.
Adusumilli recalled harrowing and tragic stories of children in the Gaza strip who had been inflicted with life-threatening injuries over the weeks he had been in Gaza..
Adusumilli finished his speech by reaffirming his hope for the future: “hopefully we can live in a world we can be proud of and say – it is a beautiful world.”
Co-chair Albadawi returned to the stage to introduce the last speaker, long-time Palestinian activist Amal Nasser.
Throughout her speech, Nasser spoke of Labor senator Fatima Payman’s recent demand for the Federal government to recognise the state of Palestine. Nasser reaffirmed to the crowd that throughout the past eight months of rallies, “we have never demanded the recognition of the Palestinian state. We have demanded the things that have actually ended this genocide.”
Nasser went on to say that “we don’t need this colonial peace built on the idea of giving us crumbs, while our government will continue to collaborate with the Israeli state… that will not be achieved with stupid diplomatic deals.”
Nasser also reminded the crowd the movement for Palestine was at a “critical juncture, and that “we will fight and resist until Israel is completely derecognised.”
Protestors then marched en-route to and from Hyde Park.
