About 40 people rallied outside Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles’ electorate office on February 12 demanding he end the two-way arms trade with Israel.
The snap action, called by Free Palestine Geelong, was also a protest against the invitation to war criminal Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Marles was condemned as a “Minister of War” given his never-ending rhetoric about “enemies” and Australia’s “need” to spend billions of dollars on weapons.
Brendan Grull, Socialist Alliance candidate for Geelong, in the November Victorian election, said the invitation to Herzog was morally and politically wrong.
“His genocidal regime is breaking the supposed ceasefire, and continues to kill innocent men, women and children in their hundreds for the ‘crime’ of living on their land.
“Herzog’ rhetoric also endangers the lives of the Jewish people he claims to defend. It does not make sense to any sane person, but you have to understand the Australian government’s priorities are first to the US then to the military industrial industry and, through it, Israel.”
Grull said Labor was putting the billionaires’ interests and their own pockets before ordinary folk and he urged people to get involved in the pro-Palestine campaign.
