“We don’t want your blue and white lit up buildings. We don’t want your statements and solidarity with Israel. We don’t want you to send military funding,” she said.
Another speaker, who spoke presented himself as Geral from left-wing Filipino organisation Bayan said his country empathised with the people of Palestine due to its history of Spanish colonisation and said violence could justified.
“We know as Filipinos from our hearts that the oppressed have the right to resist by any means necessary even if that means fighting with arms,” he said to a cheering crowd.
Another speaker, presented as a Palestinian woman named Dana, said the conflict in Israel was Palestinians “finding their voice” and that “decolonisation” was underway.
“No one, absolutely no one is allowed to take the high moral ground and tell us how to defend ourselves,” she said.“Your selective humanity and double standards is hypocrisy. It’s complicity.”
She said those who supported the people of Ukraine fighting back against the Russian invasion of their country were, “calling Palestinians terrorists for doing the same thing”.
“For the past 75 years, we have been killed. We have been brutalized, we have been slaughtered. We have been ethnically cleansed, dispossessed and displaced,” she said.
“Make no mistake that we will be standing by unapologetically supporting and demanding our right to freedom, we will be unapologetic in supporting and demanding and seeking or liberation and our decolonisation from the settler colony”.
After an hour of speeches the crowd chanted “out, out Israel out” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” as they waved Palestinian flags and marched a block as traffic and trams were stopped.
Unlike at a similar rally in Sydney on Tuesday night, no anti-Semitic chants or flag burning occurred.
Another rally is scheduled for Sunday.