Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Every day, the world is told to look away from Palestine, to move on, to accept the unthinkable as the norm. But the brave humanitarians who are on the Global Sumud Flotilla to break Israel's illegal blockade and deliver aid to Gaza refuse to let the horrors of Israel's genocide disappear into silence. The flotilla is making this journey as Palestinians approach the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe that saw the violent expulsion of approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army during the establishment of the State of Israel. The Nakba is not just a historical event; it is an ongoing reality. The erasure of Palestinians through mass murder, displacement, dispossession and Israel's apartheid continues on to this day.

Yet it is not Israel that the Labor government will take action against but their own people who have the courage to tell the truth about the genocidal state's crimes and atrocities. They silence us for telling the truth but support Israel for murdering Palestinians with full impunity. It is barbaric and immoral. Palestinians will continue to resist, and people who have the moral compass will continue to come out on the streets in droves. They will continue to join flotillas, and they will continue to speak out no matter the consequences. They will do so with all the courage and conviction that Labor lacks. They continue because Palestinians deserve life. They deserve dignity, and they deserve freedom. They continue because they refuse to surrender to hopelessness. They continue because solidarity is one of the few things left standing against the machinery of death.