On Tuesday October 1, Students for Palestine and demonstrators gathered outside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Marrickville office on Marrickville Rd to protest the expansion of the genocide on Gaza into Lebanon and demand an end to two-way arms deals with Israel. Members of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and NSW Police were in attendance. The rally was chaired by Gina Elias, from Students for Palestine.
A Lebanese Australian speaker began by appealing: “My people deserve to live in a land that is not occupied… [one] that we don’t have to rebuild”.
The crowd then chanted “From Lebanon to Palestine, occupation is a crime” and “Albanese you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide”.
The following speaker then gave a history of Israel’s invasions and occupation of Lebanon including briefly in 1948 after the Nakba, during the Lebanese Civil War in 1978 and from 1982-2000, as well as the most recent 2006 war.
UNSW Students for Palestine activist Avasa Bajracharya explained the role of war profiteering and how it is intertwined with university complicity in weapons manufacturing. Bajracharya opened with, “I want to start with a chant that Albanese personally hates: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
“As students we have the responsibility to stand proudly for Palestine”, she added.
Bajracharya gave an example of how corporations are complicit in the genocide, naming Boeing which “has provided IDF F-15 jets [and] deployed 2000 pound bombs that completely obliterated apartments with hundreds of civilian casualties”.
As a university student, she also called attention to the ensuing scholasticide whereby “every university in Gaza has been destroyed”.
The next speaker was Lebanese Australian Jumaana Bayeh, Macquarie academic, fiction author, and chair of Arab Theatre Studio. She opened with, “Forgive me if I’m not coherent, I haven’t slept for days”, about Israel’s recent ground invasion into Lebanon.
She labeled Israel as having “a never-ending and insatiable desire to incite violence and conquer more land”, and that “there are no hostages in Lebanon”.
She then castigated Australia’s current leadership, lamenting the “despicable Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and sidekick Penny Wong”, before calling Albanese the “worst Prime Minister in [her] lifetime”. She also criticised universities as institutions “maintaining a comfortable stance of neutrality”, while Arab students, staff and non-Arab allies “do not feel safe on campus”.
Activist and UNSW student Emma Terry spoke about how “Labor has never faltered in their support for Israel”. Terry explained that “our governments are expanding military aid and doubling down on political support for Israel”, as many call for a “regional, nuclear war” by pressuring the US to “intervene and attack Iran”.
Terry argued that ceasefire talks were a “facade”, saying, “I’m sorry Labor, I think your calls for ceasefire are bullshit”, before warning that “what they allow to happen in Palestine, one day it will happen to us.”
The final speaker, Yasmin Johnson, from Students for Palestine UTS, spoke to the media’s complicity referring to articles arguing that a war in Lebanon could help Israel’s economy “if fought like 2006” as well as op-eds pro-escalating a war against Iran.
“… This is an opportunity for the richest and powerful states in the world… if it requires millions of dead bodies, they won’t hesitate,” Johnson continued.
Throughout the rally, it was reiterated that “Students for Palestine is only getting started”, telling protestors to “take the anger you feel watching children be massacred in Gaza and Lebanon” and channel it into the fight for justice and liberation of oppressed peoples.
Rally chair Gina Elias encouraged attendees to “come out in numbers” to the October 6 protest, commemorating one year since Israel’s genocide “because the media will not”. With the NSW police attempting to ban the protest after deeming it a threat to safety, Elias implored that everyone shows up and sends the message to NSW police that “you can’t fuck with us”.
Elias also spoke to the next major rally on Thursday October 31 protesting the NSW Defence Summit, which is platforming weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, complicit in the recent bombings of Beirut.
