More than a thousand protesters gathered on the steps of Sydney Town Hall on Monday 15 May at 6.30 pm to commemorate 69 years since the Nakba, the “day of catastrophe” that marks the illegal establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine when over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and 500 villages and towns were destroyed.
Organised by the Palestine Action Group Sydney, the event was held for activists to voice their resentment against the ongoing ethnic cleansing being carried out by Israel today and to remember the thousands of people who have died while fighting for justice.
Attendees at the Palestinian rally. Photo: Yusra Hadi
After giving a brief introductory speech into the current condition of Palestinians, the hosts participated in a salt water challenge in solidarity with thousands of Palestinians who are on hunger strikes in Israeli prisons.
Dr George Hatoum, a Palestinian community advocate, and Marcelo Svirsky, a Jewish academic at the University of Wollongong spoke about the importance of the BDS movement; a Palestinian-initiated campaign for boycott, divestments and sanctions against the state of Israel.
Dr George Hatoum presenting a speech on the night. Photo: Yusra Hadi
Jewish academic, Marcelo Svirsky sharing his experience in Palestine. Photo: Yusra Hadi
Svirsky urged the crowd to stand behind the BDS movement reinforcing that
“we should not stop at what is politically convenient to us, but we must act upon the demands of the oppressed”.
Among the attendees was NSW Greens MP, David Shoebridge, one of the few pro-Palestinian politicians from Australia to ever visit Palestine. He shared his experience during his trip to Palestine where he was deeply affected by the unfair treatment and obstruction of basic human rights by the Israeli’s.
“I acknowledge the rights for Palestinians to exist.” said NSW Greens MP, David Shoebridge.
A protester at the rally holding her copy of The Australasian Muslim Times. Photo: Yusra Hadi.
Before leading the crowd to march, Dalia Qasem, a student at Macquarie University shared the story of her great uncle who was a martyred in Palestine. She raised the importance of attending this event and what it means for the younger generation to support and advocate for Palestine.
Dalia Qasem shares her great uncles tragic story. Photo: Yusra Hadi
Shortly after, the boisterous crowd marched their way through the city circle waving their Palestinian flags up high and chanting loudly
“in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians!”
Amongst the crowd chanting was Palestinian-born, Aseel El-Kurdi, who travelled just over an hour from the Western Suburbs to attend the rally.
“The Nakba signifies a really important time for me and my family because that was the moment when everything was taken away from us. The repercussions of this day have not only impacted those who have experienced it first hand, but also the many generations that come after,” said El-Kurdi from Bankstown.
The night was successfully managed by authorities and concluded with a positive reaction from the public.
Fundraising stalls were set up which included flags, banners, ‘Keffiyeh’s’ (Cultural Palestinian scarves), badges, and more. Photo: Yusra Hadi
Palestinians continue to face the consequences of a decades-long occupation and process of colonisation and are still waiting for their internationally recognised right of return to their homeland.
Speaker at the Palestinian Rally. Photo: Yusra Hadi
This victim playing and manufactured grievance and bellyaching and babyish resentment Muslims go on with really makes me puke. Suck it up! Stop wallowing in misery about supposed injustices and just get on with life. How about the Japanese? Their capital, Tokyo, was firebombed and reduced to nothing but ashes in 1945, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs. Rather than blubbering like little children “woe is me” and “those dreadful Americans” they just picked themselves up and got on with it and now Tokyo is a happy and healthy city with 38 million people and the Japanese economy is the 3rd largest in the world. Japan is democratic, and people are free to make their own choices in life without being told what to do every second of the day. The Japanese have had a wonderful influence on us all, providing us with the fruits of their labour and intelligence. Including, unfortunately, the very Toyotas used by IS to ferry their pathetic boofhead terrorists around in.
I think Muslims are really badly served by the political ideology that they are captives of, known as “Submission”. Instead of allowing them to create a wonderful society as exists in Japan, overflowing with creativity and production and quality of life, Submission condemns people to an imperative for revenge, resentment, destruction and hatred of the like unknown in any other belief system so far invented by mankind. Muslim people are capable of anything the Japanese can do, they could be wonderfully productive and clever and inventive, instead of which we have this constant whingeing and negativity and death, death, death.
If only Muslim people could wake up to themselves and see how badly their belief system is affecting them, the world would be a much better place. Once upon a time the whole of Arabia, north Africa and the Mediterranean was Christian and Jewish. Now you complain that a tiny little pocket of territory is set aside in the Middle East for Jews. Instead of accepting this, recognising it is not going to change, and stretching out the hand of genuine friendship, you invent the previously non-existent entity of Palestine and waste your time and energy digging tunnels and firing rockets and committing all sorts of other atrocities.
Want some advice? Just get on with it, like the Japanese, and prove to yourselves and the world that you can rise above a setback and be well educated and live happy and productive lives. And also like the Japanese you should stop having enormous families. The world cannot afford further population growth, but you keep on breeding as if we were still living in the days when only a few children in any family made it into adulthood because of disease. Modern medicine, invented in the West, has meant most children now become adults and it’s just not necessary and actually plain stupid to keep on having huge families.
It would be a bloody good thing if there was never EVER another Nakba. And how dare you hold it in Sydney, a place that has nothing whatsoever to do with this nonsense. Please leave your tribal squabbles back in the Middle East and start behaving like the Australians we would all like you to become.
I find it quite perplexing that you use the words “supposed injustices” and the fact that you refer to Muslims repeatedly in your comment when I don’t recall mentioning ‘Muslims’ or ‘Islam’ not once in this article.
I’d like to inform you of these injustices seeing that you are clearly unaware of the current condition in Palestine, or for that matter, it’s condition for the past 69 years. Now because you seem quite hostile towards Muslims and anything we have to say, perhaps it’s best I use another source to convey my message. According to the 2016/17 Amnesty International report on Israel and Occupied Territories, some of these injustices include: the unlawfull killing of Palestinian civilians (including children), child imprisonment, torture and illtreatment of hundreds of Palestinians held in administrative detentions, illegal settlements… the list goes on.
This isn’t an issue regarding one specific belief system. Christians and even Jews have been affected by the illegal establishment of Israel. You don’t have to be Muslim to condone Isreals actions. In fact, a poll conducted in Australia shows that 61 percent of Australians oppose Isreal’s construction of settlements on occupied Palestinian land… and I assure you most of them arn’t Muslim or Middle-Eastern… I guess that explains the cohesive nature at these rallies.
I’d like to leave on one final note. If your family was attacked and your house was destroyed would you simply “pick up and get on with things”? If you were stripped from your basic rights as a human, would you simply “pick up and get on with things”? I don’t think so.
Enjoy your night Tom, or better yet, enjoy being a free and entitled human; a dream that the Palestinians will fight for till the very end 🙂
Any reasonable person would love it “if there was never EVER another Nakba”. This event was a remembrance of those who have suffered and continue to suffer oppression, and we would love to eliminate the need to call that to mind.
A friend said to me once, “What would you not do …to protect your family and those you love? If your home was stolen from you and given to someone else? If your family were beaten / raped / taken to secret prison and tortured? What would you not do?” And as a good peace-loving Kiwi I thought carefully about it. The answer is, “Virtually nothing. There is almost nothing I would not do to protect my loved ones and their right to a safe home, the one that we have lived in for generations, in the town where my grandparents and other relatives were buried, where we worked hard to make a great life for ourselves and the future.” So think about it instead of drivelling on about ‘just get over it’!