Posted on Tuesday, 17 October
Victorian Socialists' 2022 state election candidate Jerome Small was among a number of VS members who spoke at the Palestine solidarity rally in Melbourne on Sunday 15th October.
Jerome's full speech is on YouTube here:
Following the rally, Jerome wrote these reflections on the situation in Palestine in a post on his Facebook page:
"A huge honour to speak at Sunday’s rally for Palestine.
The Gaza Strip is smaller than the local government area of Hume (from Broadmeadows and Tullamarine out to Craigieburn, Mickleham and Sunbury). Imagine putting two million people in that area, cutting off water, electricity, food and fuel – and then dropping 6,000 bombs in a week.
This is the obscenity unfolding right now, courtesy of the Israeli state.
Samah Sabawi also spoke at yesterday’s rally. Her moving, enraging piece in Saturday’s Age conveys the feel of summer on a Gaza beach just a few weeks ago: the sea, the kids, the ice cream.
Today, Gaza’s morgues are full. The ice cream trucks are now required to store the bodies of those killed by Israel’s onslaught.
All while Australia’s foreign minister remarks how far away we are, and how hard it is to judge the decisions of the Israeli state. The stench of hypocrisy and complicity from Australia’s political establishment is almost overpowering.
We’ll be rallying again this coming Sunday 22 October, 12 noon at the State Library.
We’ll be refusing to stay silent while Israel demands the people of Gaza City must move or die, and while our government swears solidarity with the Israeli state while issuing meaningless dot points about international law and restraint.
We’ll be there because we know, as Martin Luther King observed, that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'. The struggle for a free Palestine is the struggle for a world free of oppression and the stench of war.
See you on the streets."