Four hundred people rallied on January 17 demanding an end to Israel's massacres in Gaza and calling for the Australian government to cut ties with Israel.
Aboriginal elder Bob Anderson gave the welcome to country, noting: "my people know from our own experience about dispossession of our land, the murder of loved ones and the destruction of family and society, so our sympathy is with the Palestinians and their great losses and sorrows."
David Matters, state secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, told the rally: "Besides the right to life … that should have been guaranteed to the victims of the bombing, fundamental human rights have been denied to the people of Gaza during the long siege and this war — including the basic right to work and to farm their own lands.".
"The union movement has resolved to defend not only these rights but also the right of return to their family homes, which has been denied to them for six decades and which is also a right enshrined in international law", Matters said.
Left-wing academic Gary MacLennan described Israel's attack as a "war crime on defenceless people … This is one of the worst war crimes of our times. The shocking thing is that Israeli media reports that 74% of Israelis support the bombing of Gaza."
MacLennan pointed out that the reason why many Israelis support the attack on the Gazans is because in Palestine the Israelis have been invaders and thieves. "There has been no peace process, only invasion and theft!"
Ray Bergmann, a pro-Palestinian Jewish activist in the Queensland Palestine solidarity campaign, told the crowd: "The state of Israel does not represent the Jewish people or Judaism … Prophetic Judaism and political Zionism are opposites. Prophetic Judaism promotes justice and compassion. But political Zionism promotes the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from the holy land, now unholy because of the unjust and inhuman Zionist colonial project."
Nisma, a young Palestinian girl, said: "all the people of Gaza and their children should have protection from the terrible attacks of warplanes that cause horrible damage and pain and sorrow to the innocent".
The rally was organised by Justice for Palestine.
In Sydney, Simon Butler reports that more than 10,000 people protested on January 18 in one of biggest pro-Palestinian protests ever held in the city.
The rally, organised by the Gaza Defence Committee, met at Town Hall before marching through the streets to Hyde Park.
One of the speakers at the rally, radical journalist John Pilger, condemned the mainstream media's coverage of the attacks and compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews.
In Melbourne, more than 10,000 also marched on January 18.