Melbourne rallies for Israel
ALMOST 1800 members and friends of the Jewish community gathered to show solidarity with Israel in Melbourne on Sunday, at a rally named Code Red: Stop The Rockets.
ALMOST 1800 members and friends of the Jewish community gathered to show solidarity with Israel in Melbourne on Sunday, at a rally named Code Red: Stop The Rockets.
As the Gaza conflict escalated, the rally was rapidly organised by the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV), the Australasian Union of Jewish Students and the Australian Zionist Youth Council, turning a large corner of South Caulfield’s Princes Park into a blaze of red-clad attendees.
Holding aloft Israeli flags and placards reading “Code Red: 15 seconds to safety”, “Stop Hamas terror” and “Israel has the right to live in peace”, the crowd heard addresses by communal, state and national spokespeople, sang Israeli songs and held a minute’s silence for the casualties.
After a siren was sounded, ZFA president Philip Chester read a message from Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem, who was attending a similar rally in Canberra. The envoy used a sporting metaphor: “The world’s fastest man Usain Bolt runs 200 metres in under 20 seconds. If Usain is that far from a shelter, if a rocket alarm sounds in southern Israel, he won’t make it to safety in time.
“Hundreds of missiles were fired from Gaza into communities in Israel, into homes, highways and schools. Children had to desert their playgrounds to stay indoors, students had to stay home from school to remain close to a shelter. Workers are disrupting their daily routine repeatedly to take cover. And yet there were no words of condemnation, there were no words of sympathy, as if Israelis are not entitled to these basic human rights,” Rotem stated.
Federal Cabinet Secretary Mark Dreyfus drew applause when he relayed a message from Prime Minister Julia Gillard, noting: “You could not want a clearer statement … nor could you want for any greater clarity of the support that our government gives to Israel at this time.”
“When you’re talking to people outside the [Jewish] community … you should make it absolutely clear … that there is no justification for the rockets, the hundreds and hundreds of rockets that have been sent over the last several years on a daily or weekly basis … sponsored and organised by Hamas … Israel is defending itself as any country would,” he said.
Victorian Liberal Senator Scott Ryan, who was set to move a motion in the Senate on Wednesday condemning the recent escalation in rocket attacks against Israel, said: “Last night we all went to bed in peace … knowing that what might wake us up is our son, our daughter or, at worst, our alarm clock. Millions of people in Israel do not have that luxury.
“The parks of southern Israel are not filled with trees as much as with concrete bunkers painted like those in Sderot so people can get to them within the 15 seconds or less they have from the Code Red signal … We stand with the people of Israel who seek nothing more than safety.”
Liberal member for Caulfield David Southwick read a statement on behalf of the ALP’s Marsha Thomson and himself, co-chairs of the Victorian Parliamentary Friends of Israel: “We wish to express our support for the Israeli people, whose only wish is to live in peace with secure and safe borders … While we are conducting this rally in peace, we see many Palestinian students … having rallies that do nothing to support peace.”
ZCV president Sam Tatarka spoke about the deaths last week of three Israelis sheltering from rocket attacks in an apartment in Kiryat Malachi. “One of them [Mira Scharf, 25], almost unbelievably, was the wife of the shaliach of Chabad who had taken the place of the couple who were murdered in Mumbai four years ago at the hands of terrorists.”
PETER KOHN
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