What's driving so many Australians to take to the streets to speak out about the war in Gaza? Some are connected to the cause, others are embracing activism for the first time.
On others, he's frantic — running from a rally to a community radio station — trying to get the word out, to make people care.Back then, he worked nine-to-five for a corporate organisation. He wasn't glued to his phone, watching atrocities play out on screen, or helping organise protests.
"We can all feel empathy for people who are being harmed by a situation that has nothing to do with us or is completely foreign to us." Since October, he's become involved in organising pro-Palestine events, such as the recent "die-in" outside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's office in Sydney."You just hear too many personal stories for you to be comfortable knowing that it's going on and you're sitting there, complacent."
"For me, it was the severity of the situation … Once I saw it, I had to keep witnessing what was happening, and it got really painful," she says.assisted the group with newsletter writing, graphics and social media.Regina says the term activist is a "strange" and "new" label for her, but it's one she's comfortable wearing.But her decision to outwardly support Palestine hasn't come without friction.
Shula describes Tzedek as a space for Jewish people who "feel alienated from the mainstream Jewish establishment that's here in Australia". She joined the group in October. Ariel agrees that Gaza is "an awful place to be right now" and says he has empathy for Palestinian lives."Just I've seen the videos of Jews being indiscriminately slaughtered, I've seen the effects of the Israel offensive," he says."One was 'find whoever you can', and the other is a coordinated, intentional attack against a terrorist group embedded in civilian population … and that's extremely difficult to navigate.
For Ariel, it felt like multiculturalism — a value, he says, that Australia prides itself on — went "out the door". He finds it perplexing that many Australians, particularly those without cultural or religious ties to Israel and Palestine, are so focused on the conflict. His theory is that enough time has passed between the Holocaust and present day that the need for Israel is no longer as evident as it once was.
"There is a lot of anger and frustration, fundamentally within the protests, but there's a lot of love there, too."
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