Selling Australia's Soul to Profit from Slaughter

Naarm (Melbourne) is hosting a 3-day Death Fest, a Genocide Convention where manufacturers of human killing machines are meeting to inspect their latest slaughter toys and cut deals that will increase their profits….because apparently money trumps people’s lives.

Those that support a Free Palestine have been protesting weekly in Melbourne since October last year.? We wake up to footage of Israel’s massacres every single day.? We see children with limbs missing.? We see the agony of parents whose children have been slaughtered, handed back to them in plastic bags.? We see tents on fire, the people inside them burnt alive.

And we see our politicians holding a Death Fest, revelling in the money-making potential of killing people.?

Let that sink in…..our politicians want to profit from killing human beings.? They dress it up as ‘defence’ but seriously, who is attacking us?? On the contrary, it is us who are attacking others who we’ve been told are ‘terrorists’.?

Do you truly think a premature baby in an incubator is a threat to our so-called democracy??

Palestine was invaded and occupied.? The highest court on the planet has committed Israel to a trial for genocide. It has declared Israel’s occupation of Palestine illegal.? It has declared Israeli settlements on Palestinian land illegal.? It has warned countries to stop arming and aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide.

In response, Victoria hosts a 3-day Death Fest to showcase the latest weaponry, some of which has been ‘battle-tested’ on Palestinians, men, women and children who simply want to live with the freedoms we take for granted.

Politicians pre-empted protests against this Genocide Convention and so bused in police from interstate.? They built a huge fence around the convention centre.? They blocked off roads with barricades and officers to impede all but Death Fest attendees.

We gathered.? We marched.? We blocked off intersections.? Traffic stood still.? People left their cars, to watch.? One motorist tapped out, Free Free Palestine on his horn and a track driver joined in.? We marched around the convention centre, back to the front entrance where we gathered.

There were rows of police, riot squad members with shields.? Police on horseback.? Protestors were stopping attendees from entering the convention.? It was amusing to see these arrogant, smirking war mongers assuming the crowd would part for them and then turning back when they realized that it would not.

These people work in the industry of killing human beings, slaughtering children.? They are the reason Israel can maim, murder, drop 2000lb bombs on refugee camps.

It’s interesting to me to consider that in prisons child-killers have to be separated from other inmates because to hurt a child is abhorrent, even to violent offenders.

But here we have industrial-scale death and destruction and the government sends police to protect them.

Worse.

Police used flash bangs.? I thought they’d fired a gun.? Three flash bangs thrown into the crowd and then police ran at us, waving batons and screaming, “Move! Move! Move!”

I was standing on a street, taking photos and if I had not run, I would have been trampled by people that are supposedly employed to protect citizens.? Instead, they were spraying capsicum spray and firing rubber bullets to push us away so we could no longer inconvenience the war profiteers.

That was when some protestors wheeled bins in between us and the police and set them on fire.? It was a deterrent to more police aggression. But even that didn’t stop them. After the fire brigade put out the fires, police stormed the crowd again.

One of our photographers was hit in the head with a rubber bullet and required surgery.

The aggression shown by police was riot-level.? The aim was to disperse us, to ensure that nothing impeded the Death Fest.

Were all the protestors angels?? No.

After 48+ weeks of peacefully protesting, almost a year of raising our voices and getting nothing but hollow platitudes from those that could stand against this genocide, we’re enraged.? Some are at a loss as to how to channel that rage.

Our politicians aren’t listening.? What we’re seeing is that they do not care.

Our politicians don’t see Palestinians as human beings.? They don’t see people opposing a genocide as human beings.? We are obstacles to be eliminated.

Last night we rallied again outside Hanwha, a war-machine company.? Then we marched to the Death Fest to hold a re-enactment of another Israeli massacre of Palestinians and to hold a vigil.

Police refrained from attacking us….so there was no violence.

To those that think protestors are just troublemakers, like the motorist who took the time to scream, “Get a life” at me as I walked to the tram stop in my keffiyeh, we feel the anguish of what’s happening deeply.

This is our Vietnam. It is an infection point and Australia must choose between humanity or killing.

In the park, there were 15,000 kites laid out on netting.? There is no longer one kite for each child slaughtered.? We were invited to take names and write them on the kites.

I wrote:

Falah Mustafa Jamil Eid (5 years old)

Layan Ramzi Muhammad Tamraz (14 years old)

Then we heard speeches from doctors, Irish songs, African poetry.? We saw images of child after child, now dead. ?We cried. I’m crying now.?

Because how can this be okay?? How can our politicians support killing, killing and more killing?? They are betraying us all.? They are selling not only their own souls but the soul of Australia.?

Instead of promoting reconciliation with our own indigenous population they are celebrating war.

After almost 365 days, I am still in shock, trying to process this new reality – Australia seeks to profit from killing human beings and our politicians will engage police to attack Australian citizens to ensure nothing impedes the slaughter deals currently being negotiated.

Shame Australia!? Eternal shame!