As many as 200,000 Australians have gathered across the country to take part in the Nationwide March for Palestine, calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
Organisers Palestine Action Group (PAG) have estimated 100,000 people took part in the march in both Sydney and Melbourne, while Brisbane recorded a crowd of 50,000 and Newcastle 3000.
Thousands of protesters also joined the action in regional locations, including Coffs Harbour, Geraldtone, Mackay and Tathra.
Although the Albanese government announced it would recognise the state of Palestine earlier in the month, PAG organiser Josh Lees said this action was not enough and Australia should apply sanctions on Israel.
“We’re sick of empty words, empty gestures like statehood recognition, which won’t do anything to stop this genocide,” he told Central News.
“So what we’re calling for is crippling economic sanctions on Israel and an end to the two-way arms trade, because currently our government is still sending weapons to Israel and they’re still buying weapons from Israel to fund their horrible war machine that’s slaughtering people every day.”
The march follows an announcement from the UN Secretary-General António Guterres calling the starvation in Gaza deliberate and preventable.
“It is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment – and a failure of humanity itself.
“Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival,” he said in a statement.
Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees addressed the thousands of protesters in Hyde Park. Photo: Ted Schief.
The rally in Sydney featured speeches from various prominent figures, including journalist Antoinette Lattouf, activist Grace Tame and NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson.
Taking to the stage wearing a T-shirt with the names of 180 journalists killed in Gaza, Latouff spoke about the high number of journalists fatalities compared to only 18 in the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Gaza is the deadliest so-called conflict zone for journalists since record keeping began, and still, despite Israel’s ban on international reporters, despite engineered famine, despite displacement, despite daily threats, Palestinian journalists remain the world’s eyes and ears inside Gaza,” she told the crowd.
“They are documenting their own genocide, that they managed to file a single story is nothing short of miraculous, and yet here in Western newsrooms, their work is often treated with suspicion, undermined, erased, dismissed, double standards abound.”
Lattouf added: “Journalists are meant to hold power to account, and that duty does not stop at our national borders, and it must not buckle to lobby pressure”.
“If western media continues to treat Palestinians’ lives as expendable and Palestinian journalists as disposable, then it will be remembered not as a witness, but as an accomplice. To newsroom leaders, I say, history is watching.”
Activist Grace Tame and journalist Antoinette Lattouf both spoke at the march in Sydney. Photo: Caitlin Maloney.
Josh Lees said the march on the Sydney Harbour Bridge earlier this month has built the momentum for action around the nation.
“That march has absolutely unleashed the floodgates in this country,” he told the crowd in Sydney.
Lees added: “One of the amazing things that’s happened in the last few weeks is not just that the numbers of people coming out are bigger than ever, but we have now hundreds and hundreds of organisations who have thrown their weight on the scales”.
He urged people to continue protesting next week, to counteract the planned “March for Australia” anti-immigration rally, which has been supported by Neo-Nazis.
“We’d probably be totally inclined to just ignore these freaks, except that this has been given mass media coverage… It is important for us I think to have a mass show of force out next week to say that we are the majority in this country,” he said.
“We are not going to let them march unopposed in our city spreading their horrible message of racism.”
Main image of marchers down Market Street, Sydney, by Ted Schief
Videos by Caitlin Maloney, Ted Schief and Chris McCarthy.
