Published: 6 May 2025
Last updated: 9 May 2025
More than 20 cities around the world held rallies in support of Israeli-Palestinian peace activists over the weekend, adding impetus to the People’s Peace Summit to be held in Jerusalem later this week. Sydney Friends of Standing Together was proud to host the Sydney Peace Action on Sunday.
This peace action event was unlike Jewish community rallies, which focus on support for Israel right or wrong with no mention of thousands of Palestinian child victims or the total devastation of Gaza. It was unlike the Free Palestine rallies, where anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment prevails.
Our action focused on supporting the growing strength of the peace camp within Israel.Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel are uniting in co-resistance, in groups like Standing Together, as allies for the cause of Palestinian freedom and equality.
Sunday’s action was a shared event: Jews, Palestinians and others, holding different views and beliefs, expressing ideas differently, but with a common purpose to say: “enough, no more killing, no more violence, let’s work for peace.”
An intertwined future
With the horror unfolding daily before our eyes, with no end to violence and deep divisions - between Jews and Palestinians, Israelis and Palestinians, and between some Jews and others, why do I, why do we in Sydney Friends of Standing Together, firmly believe that peace is possible? Because we must.
Many in Israel’s peace camp, Palestinian and Jewish, lost loved ones in the ongoing and recent atrocities. But they’re not calling for revenge. They’re calling to replace an entrenched, untenable status quo with a just and sustainable peace. Jews cannot be free or safe unless Palestinians are free and safe. Every child deserves a good future. There’s nothing that is more important. The peace builders’ message is that the future of Jewish and Palestinian children in Israel-Palestine is intertwined.
Their message gives us hope.
'The status quo is unbearable'
My Palestinian friend and colleague Sonya Schollum spoke about the experience of her Jerusalem-born father who migrated to Australia five years after the Nakba (catastrophe), the term Palestinians use to describe the establishment of the state of Israel.
“For Palestinians, the 77th anniversary of the Nakba next week remains a wound that has never healed. Acknowledging that pain is not about blame - it is truth-telling, and opening the door to mutual recognition, dignity, and, ultimately, peace. As my broken heart mourns the lives lost, today’s Action in support of the People’s Peace Summit is more urgent than ever.
“The violence we are witnessing must be the last. We cannot allow the brutality born of occupation and apartheid to continue scarring generation after generation of Palestinians and Jews. The status quo is unjust and unbearable, a betrayal of what we owe our children: the right to grow up in peace, dignity, and shared humanity. We must not fail them. It’s time to replace fear with dialogue, oppression with equality and division with understanding.
“Our action today joins a growing movement—across Israel-Palestine and across the world—demanding a future in which two peoples live side by side, not as enemies, but as partners in lasting peace.”
Sonya’s words give me hope.
'Palestinians were not born with an instinct to hate'
Dr Munther Emad from Gaza spoke about members of his family, friends and neighbours who were killed in Gaza in the past 18 months. Dr Emad had doubted that he could bring himself to speak, but decided he had to. He spoke for Gaza’s children.
“Palestinians in Gaza were not born with an instinct to hate or be violent,” he said. “Any of us, he said “could have been born in Gaza and placed in besieged lands with constant bombings and starvation”. But “the suffering of innocent Palestinians and Israelis does not have to be the end of our story… Let us use this gathering to pause and hear the voices of our children in Gaza, who are writing their names on their hands [so they can be identified]. Let us stand together so these children can write their names on their exams! And pursue their dreams and feel they belong to our humanity.”
Dr Emad’s speech was utterly heartbreaking.
Michael Chaitow, Executive Director ·of the New Israel Fund Australia spoke about the need to continue working for peace despite past failures.
“Some say we have already given peace a go and it hasn’t succeeded. So, what? We’ve given violence a go, and that certainly hasn’t succeeded. So why not try peace again?
He quoted Rula Hardal, the Palestinian Co-Director of a Land for All, who said that the liberation of the Palestinian people will also be the liberation of the Jewish people, adding “Our lives depend on each other, and the only way we can live securely is if we live with equal rights.”
Why do those of us at Sunday’s rally believe there is a place for a fight for peace here, in Australia?
Change comes in many forms, from inside and outside. We want to do everything in our power for the peace camp on the ground to become stronger than the war camp.
Not everyone in Australia believes that we should listen to the voices of peace within Israel. But we must. There can’t be real, sustainable peace unless those who live there, Jews, Palestinians and everyone in the land, embrace it.
There's a powerful international movement that doesn't believe that Israelis are capable of changing the status quo. They believe that ALL change must come from the outside by way of boycotts for example. We stand with the peacemakers in Israel who are working hard for a just peace. They believe that all Israelis will back peace, if we work hard enough. That's what gives us hope!
A focal point at Sunday’s event was a memorial names banner, recording the names of children killed in Israel and Palestine since Oct 7. The dead are mostly Palestinian children; the loss and grief on both sides are overwhelming. But if we unite, there is hope.
Comments4
Janet Kossy8 May at 03:19 am
Thank you for this article, Irene and TJI, and for the interesting video interviews. Rachel, I hope you don’t give up, but attend in person, and with an open heart and mind, events like this. Amongst the perspectives that differ from your own, and the opinions you disagree with, there will be stories and feelings that resonate with the human values we all share. Focusing on those may help you to feel more open to the compromises and recognition of the other that are always part of peacemaking.
Ramon Capel7 May at 08:17 am
Thank you for the article. Dear Raquel, I have to say that I am surprised by your comment, I am rather astonished. I disagree with your position, I think it is subjective and biased. But although not everyone can be required to be a historian and archaeologist, when you talk about history you have to be more rigorous and always question only one partial version. On this version all of Europe, America, should readjust and relocate far away. Should we have to rethink the right of ownership? It also leads me to think that education in Israel is perhaps not adjusting to reality and honesty but to necessity or finality.
Rachel Sussman6 May at 11:16 am
I started to eagerly reading this article with hope in my heart… I was hoping it will help revive what I always felt and believed in and to be honest grew up with… because growing up in Israel was growing up with the vision that one day it will happen, it can happen… songs of peace and hope were what we sang… sadly this hope died in me on 7/10, it felt like waking up from some delusion and it was a terrible feeling, for it left me with emptiness, no hope… I have been trying to revive hope and belief within me since 7/10 and when I saw this article, my heart flattered – can it be? Can we really revive the quest and work towards peace?… And so I eagerly began to read till I got to the part where activists insisted on seeing the day of Israel’s birth as ‘Nakba’ and their perception was justified by still others… And the hope died and I stopped reading… If there is hope for peace, Palestinians must face the truth: The Jewish people are indigenous to the land, they – the Palestinians- entered the picture thousands of years later, and this is historical fact, yes they came and settled with their visions and ambitions and right or wrong the inevitably created ties to the land and yes, these ties must be respected and given room but not on account of perceiving the rebirth of Israel as a ‘nakba’ because it is not… the only ‘nakba’ is of their doing – rejecting the offer to have part for their own State (as was given to them in 1947), wanting it all, denying the right of the Jewish people, taking responsibility for the choices they made and how it brought them to where they are…. I am really sorry, but to me, as long as peace activists still use the term ‘nakba’ with regard to Israel’s creation and existence and justify it, they have learned nothing, they do not really want peace, they do not really respect the Jewish right to their homeland (or at least part of their homeland), they do not really respect history, they really do not want to live side by side or share in peace… this makes me very sad but I will not fall for this charade again…
Shoshana Faire6 May at 09:13 am
Thank you Irene for capturing this so well and to Sydney Friends of Standing Together for this well organised heartfelt event and its plea for co-existence and peace I am both devastated and ashamed of what the Israeli Govt has already done and is now planning….