KARRATHA PROTESTERS CALL FOR GAZA CEASEFIRE
BY GERARD MAZZA
Credit: Supplied.
Around 70 protesters gathered in Karratha on Saturday to call for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Families and community members gathered at The Quarter public square, flying Palestinian flags and holding signs with messages including “Ceasefire Now’, ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘You will not erase Palestine’.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israel has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza in recent attacks.
Human Rights organisation Amnesty International has said indiscriminate attacks by Israel have caused mass civilian casualties in Gaza and should be investigated as war crimes.
The attacks on Gaza have come in response to the militant group Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which Israel says killed around 1,200 people.
Karratha resident and event organiser Chris Jenkins told the crowd it was important to put recent events in historical context.
“75,000 Palestinians were brutally thrown off their land in 1948 in what’s called the Nakba, which is translated as ‘the catastrophe’,” he said.
“Palestinian people never agreed to the formation of what is declared by Israel to be a Jewish state in the Middle East, exclusively recognising the rights of Jewish citizens, and which is today an apartheid condemned by many countries of the world, including South Africa.
“No one should know more than the people of South Africa as to the experiences of apartheid.
“If you stand up for Palestine, be it now, or previously, here or around the world, you are effectively being told that you are an advocate for terrorism.
“We don’t condone the actions of targeting Israeli civilians, but I put it to you that Palestinians living in Gaza have experienced terrorism every day of their lives, be it the bombing, be it the restriction of movement, be it the cutting off of essential services like water, electricity, medicine.”
The protest vigil caused some controversy in the Karratha community, with a since-deleted post in a local residents’ Facebook group sparking debate on whether it was appropriate for the protest to take place on Remembrance Day.
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