It’s fantastic to see such a crowd here this afternoon.
It is highly appropriate that we commenced with that minute silence by mourning the innocent victims of war and terror in the Middle East and in Israel. But it is important that we remember these are not victims of events that have only occurred over the last three weeks. These are victims of the campaign run by Hamas over nearly a decade since it seized control of Gaza. It is a campaign with more than 10,000 rockets that have primarily gone into southern Israel with the occasional one wounding Gazans themselves.
It is a campaign that has been indiscriminately directed at innocent civilians, particularly in Israel, in an effort to draw out war and as the behaviour over the last few days has shown, that was mentioned earlier, what we have seen now is one nation seeking to defend itself and its innocent civilians, seeking to avoid harming innocent civilians in necessary military actions and we have seen that nation accept ceasefire after ceasefire, yet we have seen one party – the terrorist group Hamas – continuing to launch rockets, continuing to propagate violence.
I say to my fellow Melbournians and Victorians and Australians, to those of us who don’t have a personal or family connection to Israel, imagine what it would be like standing here right now and hearing a siren go off and knowing that a rocket had been launched from North Melbourne or Fitzroy or South Yarra. We in Australia have the good fortune to live in the luckiest country on earth, a nation of peace, and I ask my fellow Australians to contemplate what it would be like with the next suburb, the next town, being a place where rockets could be launched at you and your children and your family any and every day. For that reason, for the reason that Israel is a western liberal democracy – we support peace, we stand with the people of Israel today in seeking just that; a peaceful existence.
Thank you very much.
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