Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' This is the peaceful, hopeful cry for freedom that the people of Palestine and their allies have been making for decades. It's a chant that has reverberated across the globe as people have taken to the streets in their millions to demand an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza and an end to the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

For the past 2½ years, we've seen a concerted effort by the Israel lobby and its enablers in the media to criminalise speaking the truth about Israel and to criminalise this call for justice. Earlier this month in Queensland, my home state, two young people were arrested in Brisbane for protesting Israel's genocide. One wore a singlet that read, 'From the river to the sea'. The other, Liam Parry, who explained that the words were a call for Palestinian freedom, has been charged under Queensland's new hate speech laws that have prohibited the phrases, 'From the river to the sea,' and, 'Globalise the intifada.' It is very clear what is happening here. After failing miserably to smear and demonise a peaceful movement protesting the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians, governments have unleashed the full force of the state to try to crush dissent and silence those exposing their complicity. And guess what? It's not working either. Palestinians and their allies are still turning up to tell the truth and oppose the genocide, risking their own freedom to fight for a righteous cause that should animate us all.

People see Israel for what it is now. The bad-faith accusations of antisemitism have lost their power. An entire generation of young people has watched Israel's war crimes in real time, and they no longer believe the lies. Israel is a colonial apartheid state run by a fascist government that is, even now, trying to expand its territory northwards by invading southern Lebanon. Defence minister Katz even admitted that the invasion of southern Lebanon would follow the model of Rafah in Gaza. 'From the river to the sea' is not hateful. It is a moral, just demand for an end to this apocalyptic madness and a peaceful future for all. As my colleague Senator Faruqi said yesterday:

People are choosing courage. Governments are choosing cowardice. We will keep choosing courage. We will not be silenced. No law, no arrest and no threat of prison will change this. The truth does not disappear just because those in power are afraid of it.

The charges against Liam Parry and others must be dropped and these draconian anti-free-speech laws overturned. Labor must withdraw support for the Trump-Netanyahu war and demand an immediate end to the bombing of Iran and the invasion of Lebanon. And Palestine must be free—from the river to the sea.