Assala Sayara’s voice rings out over Hyde Park in Sydney, clear as a bell.
“This is my favourite chant,” she says into the mic. “Follow along. Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry, Palestine will never die!”
For five weekends running, Sayara has been leading the chants at the pro-Palestine rallies in Sydney, thundering through a popular set list that has become a defining part of the protests.
“These rallies are a place for me to hold my ancestors and their voices on my back. And the chants are a chance to claim back what is mine, our Palestinian identity, and when I chant, I feel like everything in my body is moving,” Sayara says.
“I’m not just chanting with my voice, I feel like my heart is chanting.”
The 26-year-old says she loves public speaking, but has had to overcome a speech difficulty and has been on a journey to find her voice.
“It was once the incessant discomfort of speaking that allowed me to discover and connect to a part of myself that I didn’t know existed,” Sayara says.
“The resilience I found to speak through discomfort became the strength that I learned to lean on in order to amplify the voices of my people, who have had to resist through their discomfort for more than 75 years.”
The rallies have become central to the pro-Palestinian movement in Australia, growing week to week across capital cities.
They began as a response to Israel’s declaration of war on Gaza, after the ruling faction of the coastal strip, Hamas, attacked Israel and killed 1,400 people on 7 October.
And while the rallies have faced controversy and condemnation from politicians, they have only grown as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues, with the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reporting over 10,300 deaths (including over 4,200 children) as of Wednesday.
This weekend will mark the sixth consecutive week of rallies. Last weekend organisers reported 100,000 people turned up to the rally in Melbourne, up to 50,000 in Sydney despite rain and more than 6,000 in Brisbane.
Collectively, they amount to the largest and most consistent anti-war rallies since the Iraq war, and the organiser of Sydney’s events, Amal Naser, says she expects them to continue growing.
“I think their growth is a reflection on the level of brutality in Gaza. We’ve already seen our protests having higher numbers than ever before, and an increased awareness of what was happening in Palestine is coming with the increased level of brutalisation.”
Naser says a wide range of people attend the rallies, including young people and students, families, retirees, different migrant communities, unions and advocacy groups.
“The Australian public are increasingly appalled with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and they’re increasingly appalled with our government’s response to it. So it’s attracting a lot of people on to the streets.”
She says organisers across the country have faced “increased levels of scrutiny and harassment” in the past month.
Tasnim Sammak, an organiser of the Melbourne rallies, says the rallies have a very specific purpose in the short term: to pressure the Australian government into calling for Israel to stop its bombardment of Gaza.
“That would be through imposing military sanctions, cutting aid and cutting military exports to Israel. That’s short-term and quite immediate. In the long term, we hope to see Australia advocate for the siege on Gaza to be lifted and for an end of the occupation of Palestine.”
It comes after it was revealed Australia had approved 322 defence exports to Israel over the past six years, including 49 permits for Israel-bound exports in 2022 and 23 in the first three months of this year.
“I believe it is possible for a Labor government to take a different stance and to pressure Israel into abiding by international law,” Sammak says.
The UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross have stated they believe Israel is committing the war crime of collective punishment through its siege of the Gaza territory.
Dr Martin Kear, a senior lecturer at the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, says he doesn’t think the government will change its position despite the protests.
“I think the protests will increase the political pressure on the government to be more critical of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip,” Kear says. “Having said that I still don’t think that it will change the government’s unflinching support of Israel at all.”
Kear says there is a danger for the Australian government that Israel’s violence will only increase and weaken its position.
“The danger here, both for the Albanese government and for Israel, is that the latter’s actions will become so egregious and wanton that the international community will be forced to openly criticise Israel.”
