Celebrate Palestine South West joined the national day of action on October 12 drawing around 200 people to Reuther Park in Wooditjup/Margaret River. It was a powerful call for peace and justice for the occupied people of Palestine.
Wardandi elder Viviann Brockman-Webb spoke about ongoing and systematic oppression, exclusion and displacement of her own people and making the connection to the catastrophe in Gaza, as well as that of all colonised peoples.
Greens WA policy advisor and MC Georgia Beardman said: “We will continue to march until there is a permanent ceasefire; until the Israeli siege on food, water and medicine for Palestinians is permanently lifted; until Israel no longer controls the borders and the free movement of Palestinian people; until the apartheid … system which has made Palestinians second-class citizens on their own land, for the last 77 years is dismantled; until Palestinian self-determination becomes a reality … until war criminals face justice.”
She concluded by saying that “none of us are free until Palestine is free”.
Local doctors and musicians Kate Fitton, Shakir Al-Joudi and Verelle O’Rourke offered a haunting rendition of “Shel Shel”, a Palestinian song of hope — a melody of resilience against the crushing weight of violence.
Erin Adson, a peace worker of Jewish heritage who has volunteered extensively in the West Bank was the keynote speaker. With her lifetime of experience in conflict resolution, Adson gave stark, personal testimony from the front lines of Apartheid.
She spoke of a reality that official narratives obscure including having to walk children to school to shield them from settler violence, of begging soldiers at checkpoints to allow pregnant women passage and of being shot at with chemical canisters banned under international law.
“Just in case you thought any of this started two years ago, it did not,” Adson said. “It began 77 years ago and it was given a name: Nakba, the Tragedy.”
Adson framed the struggle as a fundamental moral choice, not as a distant conflict. “Silence is the soil in which injustice grows,” she warned the crowd. “By choosing to be here today, you are gardeners of truth. May we plant seeds of resistance, the seeds of humanity and water them with our voices.”
The rally called on the government to adopt four key demands: Sanction Israel now; End the two-way arms trade between Australia and Israel; Expel the Israeli ambassador to Australia; and arrest Israeli citizens who have fought in the IDF during the Gaza genocide and seek to come to Australia, as per Australia’s international legal obligations.
The subsequent march was the sound of a small town speaking truth to power, its energy a quiet rebuke to the handful of counter protesters whose presence only served to underscore the urgency of the cause.
[Get in touch with WA at celebratepalestinesw@gmail.com.]