In the face of condemnation, this rally was a big one

The pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne on Sunday was held in the face of the most dire warnings and condemnation from politicians on both sides of the fence. It made no difference. On a day of mixed Melbourne weather, thousands turned out.

The crowd that blocked the city for the bulk of Sunday afternoon, wending its slow way from the State Library to Flinders Street, then back to the library, was varied, colourful and utterly, loudly defiant.

At one stage, the rally stretched from Flinders Street Station to Bourke Street.Credit: Wayne Taylor

At one stage, it stretched from Flinders Street Station to Bourke Street Mall.

The politicians had worried about a march scheduled just a day before the anniversary of the October 7 slaughter of 1200 Israelis by terrorist group Hamas. It was tasteless at best, they said, and dangerous at worst.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, on Insiders on Sunday morning, called the planned rallies in Sydney and Melbourne “deeply regrettable”, and Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto had worried during the week that the organisers wanted to act “violently and in a way which either incites violence or puts others in fear for their safety”.

“Thank you,” Adel Salman, the president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said to the politicians for “promoting our protest”.

Yellow and green flags at the pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne.Credit: Wayne Taylor

In the 12 months since the October 7 attack and the brutal, ongoing Israeli response – in which more than 41,000 have been killed – this diverse movement has not just held together, but “has grown stronger, better connected and louder”, one speaker said.

From the perspective of the streets, that was hard to deny.

Middle-aged doctors from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, students, hundreds of children, activists of all stripes flooded in from the suburbs to the city. They marched under Palestinian flags, Lebanese flags, a transgender pride flag and even an Albanian flag.

Peaceful it might have been, but it had its sharp edges.

As the crowd marched past Starbucks in Swanston Street – protected particularly by police because of the belief by some that the company supports Zionism – the chant turned to “all Zionists are terrorists”.

A few doors down, a small group of protesters broke away to go to the doorway of a small skincare shop called Jevoute, to yell the slogan pointedly at the young man inside. The employee, who only wanted to be known as Vlad, said the shop was an Israeli brand, and this happened every time there was a protest.

The media was also a target.

On identifying myself as a reporter, I was requested by one group to denounce Israel and Zionism, and told by a young woman in a wheelchair and face mask to “f--- off” because in her view, The Age was the publisher of “pro-genocidal” content.

While the crowd mostly complied with police directions about carrying flags of proscribed terror group Hezbollah, there were blank ones in the yellow and green colours. And one man carried a placard with a Star of David flag morphed at its centre into a swastika.

On the placard were the words: “The irony of becoming what you once hated”. Drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and the Nazis is considered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to be antisemitic.

But these were minor instances in a huge and diverse gathering. It’s hard to remember a protest movement that has been as persistent, and consistently large as this one for 12 months.

The proximity of October 7 had no apparent effect.

Asked about perceptions of antisemitism, middle-aged artist John Nicholson was defiant. “The offence we’re likely to give each other by giving our different points of view here in Australia diminishes into nothingness really when you think about what’s going on in Gaza,” he said.

To many of the protesters, this is just an obvious point.

When reporter Charlotte Grieve asked two unrelated people why they were at the rally, they gave an identical answer.

“Because I’m human.”

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