Tens of thousands expected to march in both Sydney and Melbourne pro-Palestine protests

Among those marching today is federal Labor MP Ed Husic.

Transcript

00:00I have been concerned about the way in which the Netanyahu government has conducted the

00:07pursuit of Hamas in Gaza from very early on. I called out very early on that I believed

00:14that innocent Palestinians were being collectively punished. I was calling out the deaths early

00:22on in 2023, the way that innocent Palestinians had been killed. We've now reached 60,000

00:29Palestinians that have been killed. Half of those are women and children. Australians are

00:36deeply, deeply affected by the images they're seeing out of Gaza. They want to send a strong

00:43message through peaceful protests to governments both here and abroad that the killing's got

00:48to stop, the starvation's got to end. And also, I think most importantly for many people, the

00:57images of children being starved, this is just completely unacceptable. Not only does

01:03it offend international humanitarian law, but it also offends our values as people.

01:09So I think you're going to see today people turn out to send the message that they want

01:15to see this all end. People just have had enough. They understand that Hamas must be pursued.

01:21They certainly want to see innocent hostages, Israeli hostages, released. But the way that

01:28the Netanyahu government has conducted its campaign, its failure to distinguish between civilian

01:33and combatant, its breaches of international humanitarian law, and just targeting children

01:39and the way that this has occurred is unacceptable.