This is the transcript of a speech I gave at the 17 August 2025 weekly rally for Palestine in Naarm / Melbourne.
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Free, free Palestine!
Free free, free Palestine!
Free, free Palestine!
Free free, free Palestine!
I also acknowledge the owners of the lands on which we are gathered, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, including any First Nations people with us today. This always was and always will be, Aboriginal land. Just as Palestine always was, and always will be, Palestinian land. From the river, to the sea. Always was, always will be.
The last time I stood on a platform like this, I denounced the mainstream media over its silence on the atrocities being committed in Gaza. I denounced the silence of journalists and reporters as their colleagues are slain without impunity, by the so-called Israeli state, for the ‘crime’ of doing their jobs and reporting on the genocide of Gaza.
Has anything changed?
The last time I spoke on a platform like this, in October last year, around 170 journalists, most of them Palestinian, had been reported murdered in Gaza. Deliberately targeted in what amounts to war crimes, just to add to the litany of war crimes being committed by the so-called Israeli state.
As of right now, according to the International Federation of Journalists, the number of journalists and media workers on the ground in Gaza who have been murdered, now stands at 265. Again, most of them Palestinian.
That’s not including the Al Jazeera journalists who were murdered only this week in a targeted strike, by the Israeli state.
So I ask the question again, between October last year and now, has anything changed? Is anything different?
Of course not.
The so called Israeli state is still purposefully and with intent targeting journalists and reporters, labelling them as “terrorists”, to both manufacture consent for its genocide of Palestine and to prevent its war crimes from being broadcast to the world.
The reporters who remain, fear that they won’t make it out of Gaza alive.
What type of entity deliberately targets and murders journalists if it has ‘nothing to hide’? What type of entity bans foreign media access into Gaza if it truly has ‘nothing to hide’? You only target journalists when your enemy is the truth.
Yet, despite the fear, despite the knowledge that they may not make it out alive, these reporters still remain defiant. They still persist. They still bring us the unfiltered reality of what’s actually happening on the ground in Gaza.
That’s in stark contrast to the mainstream media here, on this continent, which either distorts this reality or worse still, remains largely silent on these atrocities as it attempts to pull the wool over our eyes. Speaking of things that haven’t changed.
Yes, there have been articles written on the murder of the Al Jazeera journalists, including by the ABC, mostly from a neutral or ‘balanced’ point of view. This reportage is interspaced with articles platforming the opinions of genocide apologists and outright Zionists alike, without flinching or questioning, as though this represents balance and reporting both sides.
The questions, therefore, yet again must be asked:
Is media neutrality in the face of a genocide actually neutrality, or is it complicity?
Is media ‘balance’, in this context, actually presenting both sides of the story or is it, at this point, reinforcing a clear power imbalance?
Is media neutrality or balance in the face of a genocide actually ethical, or is it giving credibility to the aggressor?
Are journalists and reporters actually doing their jobs when they regurgitate, word for word, the lines of a perpetrator without actually challenging it in their work?
I think we all know the answers to those questions.
Yet when a mildly ‘objectionable’ sign is seen, or a ‘controversial’ chant is heard, or someone does something ‘off par’ at one of these rallies; we see talking head after talking head, columnist after columnist, churning out think piece after think piece as though the cardinal sin of burning a piece of fabric is equivalent to indiscriminately dropping bombs on hospitals, schools and on children.
Interestingly enough, the aforementioned talking heads and columnists are nowhere to be seen when journalists and media workers are murdered for doing their jobs and reporting on the genocide in Gaza.
Where is the solidarity with your colleagues? Or are you that stuck in your own privileged bubble, detached from the reality of what’s happening on the ground in Gaza that you’ve reduced their lives, their work, to nothing but a mere statistic?
I think we all know the answer to that question too.
I’ll conclude this speech by quoting the words of Tareq S. Hajjaj, a Palestinian writer and correspondent in Gaza working for Mondoweiss, as I think they tell us everything. I quote:
“Lately, I have written almost all of my stories with tears in my eyes. When a journalist writes a story about a person they have never met, there’s a certain level of detachment. It’s completely different when we write stories about our friends and colleagues.”
“In the wake of the assassination of Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqa, and four other journalists in Gaza on August 10, every colleague of mine in Gaza now considers themselves as ‘martyrs on a waiting list’. They’re just waiting for their time to come. I’m about to talk to one of them in a minute. I’m left wondering if I might find them on the news later.”
“Israel is no longer hiding the fact that it is killing journalists. It openly boasts about it by claiming that they are tied to Hamas or other armed groups.”
“Anas said that the Israeli army called him three times in the past, ordering him to stop his coverage. He refused. They bombed his home and called again, he refused. Then they killed him.”
“Now, after the killing of Anas, the Israeli media has launched a new incitement against another colleague, Mohammed Al-Sharif, Anas’s cousin and an Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent in Gaza.”
“He has helped us in covering many stories throughout this genocide. Mohammed was my eyes inside Kamal Adwan Hospital when the Israeli army invaded it. He sent us vital testimony from the doctors and hospital staff as they were besieged.”
“The genocide brought us closer together, and in that, it created a collective with a single unified mission: to tell the truth about what’s happening in Gaza. From that collective, I got to know Hassan Eslayeh, Fatima Hassouna, Mohammed Qreiqe and so many others who were killed by the Israeli army.”
“Some of them were killed with their families in their homes. Others were killed in targeted assassinations.”
End quote.
I think we all know who the real journalists are.
Free Palestine. From the river to the sea.
-ENDS-
Photo: Kenji Wardenclyffe
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