Tuesday 26th of August 2025
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250,000 marched across the bridge...

At least 90,000 pro-Palestine protesters walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and into history through the pelting rain, as a larger crowd than expected used the landmark as a symbol, bringing the city to a standstill and leading police to sound the alarm of a potential crowd crush.

In the face of the sheer size of the protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, which organisers say drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people, police were forced to ditch plans for the march to end at North Sydney and redirected the crowd.

About 2pm, it was decided that large numbers of protesters be directed to turn back to the CBD to catch trains, while others were encouraged to keep walking northwards to North Sydney. By 3pm, protesters were told to halt and wait for police to direct them off the bridge in stages as scores of protesters were still at Wynyard waiting to begin the march. The bridge reopened for traffic at 5pm.

Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees said the march was “even bigger than we dreamt of” after people travelled from across the country to attend. He called the event a “monumental and historic” success.

 

Lees’ estimate of between 200,000 and 300,000 protesters was considerably higher than police estimates.

“Today was just a huge display of democracy,” he said. There were “no plans” for another demonstration over the landmark, he said.

NSW Police acting deputy commissioner Peter McKenna said the march came “very close” to a “catastrophic situation” and that officers had been forced to make a snap decision to turn tens of thousands around to avoid a crowd crush as people exited for North Sydney.

“We had to scramble. We had to make snap decisions. We had to really think about how we could get people safely out of that confined space and back into the city safely, because it came very close to us having almost a catastrophic situation,” he said.

McKenna said part of the problem was the organisers’ application to march stated that 10,000 people were likely to attend, not the 90,000 people the police estimated turned up.

He said any future march should be organised with much more time than the seven days provided by the organisers ahead of Sunday’s protest. The plan to stage the event dominated NSW politics last week, and the decision to allow the protest to proceed came down to a Supreme Court ruling on Saturday morning.

PAG spokeswoman Amal Naser said efforts by Premier Chris Minns and NSW Police to stop the event from going ahead fuelled the huge turnout by members of the public.

“The reason why that number quadrupled was because the police and the premier issued a co-ordinated campaign to attack the right to protest, and people took the emergency to come out today. [Minns and NSW Police] gave us more publicity than we could have ever asked for,” she said.

 

McKenna would not specify how much time police required before allowing another march across the bridge of a similar size. About 1000 police were deployed, including mounted police and police helicopters.

The last major march across the bridge was 25 years ago, when 250,000 people marched in support of reconciliation.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Sunday night committed a further $20 million to the humanitarian response in Gaza, taking Australia’s total contribution to about $130 million.

The latest funding, which will support humanitarian organisations to provide food and medical supplies, is delivered in co-ordination with Britain.

“Australia has consistently been part of the international call on Israel to allow a full and immediate resumption of aid to Gaza, in line with the binding orders of the International Court of Justice. The suffering and starvation of civilians in Gaza must end,” Wong said.

 

“Australia will continue to work with the international community to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and a two-state solution – the only path to enduring peace and security for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.”

After the march started at Lang Park near Wynyard station, the bridge’s road lanes were turned into a sea of umbrellas, signs and chanting protesters opposed to the Israeli government’s military action in Gaza. The throng of people spanned more than two kilometres.

Protesters chanted, “Netanyahu/Albanese you can’t hide. Stop supporting genocide” and protesters carried signs calling for a ceasefire and the end to the starvation of children.

Behind a large banner, protesters at the front included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former NSW premier Bob Carr, former federal government minister Ed Husic, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and human rights activist, former Socceroo Craig Foster.

Carr said the march had attracted “ordinary people” because of outrage over the “policies of starvation”.

“There are a lot of very ordinary people here who wouldn’t have been to a demonstration even any time in their lives, and they’re outraged by policies of starvation enforced by the IDF,” he said.

Despite Minns’ opposition to the march, many Labor figures braved the rain including state MPs Jihad Dib, Anthony D’Adam, Cameron Murphy and Lynda Voltz, and federal politicians Tony Sheldon and Alison Byrnes.

Husic said Minns couldn’t ignore the public sentiment towards the conflict in Gaza. “I think we had a turning point in the mind of middle Australia. They just don’t want kids to be killed,” he said.

 

Federal Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi and the party’s state MP Sue Higginson were also in attendance. Higginson said the march was a “remarkable moment in our history”.

Minns had opposed the protest, saying it would be “disruptive” and that it would cause “real public safety concerns”.

There were fears the march would not go ahead, but in an urgent decision on Saturday, the Supreme Court rejected an application by NSW Police for a prohibition order over the protest.

The order would not have banned the event, but it would have exposed protesters to potential criminal liability for blocking or obstructing traffic and pedestrians.

 

Justice Belinda Rigg’s decision meant protesters had a limited range of immunities from criminal sanction.

Rigg said the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech ultimately outweighed any inconvenience caused by the protest. She rejected a police submission that the court would be “condoning violent scenes, traffic gridlocks, ambulances not getting to where they need to go, and other undesirable consequences”.

Rigg said police still had “extensive powers”. NSW Police said ahead of the event they would be targeting unlawful and anti-social behaviour.

Liberal MP and shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser, a Jewish Australian, said his concerns went beyond traffic disruption as he issued a statement condemning the Sydney protest.

“The Harbour Bridge is more than just a road. It’s a symbol of unity for our city and our nation and should not be turned into a stage for protests that seek to divide us,” he said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/monumental-90-000-halt-city-with-march-across-harbour-bridge-20250803-p5mjwr.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE —

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

AND BIBI LISTENED.... GUS AND HIS MATES WERE THERE IN SPIRIT, WALKING IN THE RAIN.... WHILE PALESTINIANS STARVE UNDER BIBI'S RAINING BOMBS — BOMBS SUPPLIED BY DONALD... 

 

ORIGINAL PICTURE AT TOP FROM THE SMH

death parts...

 

Canada still arming Israel despite official ban, report finds
WYATT REED

In the course of a week, Canada accused Israel of violating international law, announced Ottawa will recognize a Palestinian state, and sent aid to be airlifted to Gaza. But a shocking new report makes clear that the proposed 51st state still arms Israel’s death machine.

Canada sent at least 391 shipments containing bullets, military equipment, weapons parts, aircraft components, and communication devices to Israel since late 2023, despite Ottawa’s repeated claims to have ended weapons deliveries to the apartheid state, a new report has revealed. 

By sifting through data from the Israel Tax Authority, researchers at Arms Embargo Now discovered what they called “a continuous, massive pipeline of Canadian weapons flowing directly to Israel” comprising over 400,000 bullets, multiple shipments of cartridges, and a variety of parts for Israel’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets. Since mid-2024, Israel received four shipments of Doppler Velocity Sensors, which provide navigation data needed for the F-35’s target acquisition and weapons delivery systems, five shipments of lightweight composite panels used by the planes, and two shipments of Modular Product Testers, which are used to diagnose problems on Israel’s air force fleet.

Of the 391 deliveries identified, the report’s authors were able to track direct 47 shipments of military gear with detailed commercial shipping records sent by Canadian companies to Israeli companies. 38 of those shipments were sent to Israel’s biggest military firm, Elbit Systems, and its various subsidiaries.

In March 2024, the previous Canadian administration claimed to have halted all permits for arms shipments to Tel Aviv, after the legislature passed a non-binding motion declaring that “Israel must respect international humanitarian law” and that “the price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.” In the following months, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted Canada no longer facilitated Israel’s horrors, going as far as publicly chiding one concerned Palestinian, “we’ve stopped exports of arms to Israel.”

But just before the apparent shift in policy, Ottawa greenlit a massive number of permits for Israeli-bound weapons deliveries, front-loading hundreds of orders in an apparent attempt to preemptively circumvent their own ban. Of the $30.6 million in military equipment sent to Israel in 2023 – the highest yearly total on record – $28.5 million was approved between October and December. Even today, many of those shipments continue to be fulfilled. To date, just 30 permits for military deliveries have been cancelled by Canada, which made that decision following a similar move by the UK in mid-2024 after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel was violating international law.

“The Canadian government appears to have pursued a strategy of rushing through a record-breaking number of arms export permit approvals to Israel prior to publicly committing to pause approving any new ones,” Arm Embargo Now explained in their report. “This was then quietly undermined by a series of exceptions and loopholes,” researchers wrote, suggesting “the government’s policy shifts were… aimed at diffusing public criticism while maintaining material support.”

Other Canadian institutions to have assisted Israel’s genocidal siege include a number of its universities. A separate report published by Just Peace Advocates found that in 2023 up to $100 million went completely untaxed as it was funneled  to Israeli universities from their ‘charitable’ arms in Canada. The money went to a variety of schools with strong ties to occupation forces, including Israel’s self-described “academic home of soldiers,” Bar-Ilan University, which took in around $4 million that year.

 

In addition, nearly $17 million was sent tax-free to Ben-Gurion University in 2023, which bragged of having “transformed itself into a back office for war” in October that year. Months later, Ben-Gurion announced the creation of two new “elite academic programs for future [Israeli military] recruits, as part of preparations for the transfer of IDF technological units to southern Israel.” The university says it works “in tandem” with the Israeli Air Force Flight School and claims to have trained around 1,000 pilots for military service.

Also receiving untaxed funds was Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, which has been described as “the incubator of most nuclear weapons work in Israel.” Weizmann has well-documented ties to a variety of Israeli spies implicated in efforts to steal nuclear secrets, and drew international attention after it was partially destroyed in a retaliatory Iranian airstrike on June 15. 

According to Just Peace Advocates, Canadian sources delivered over $36 million to the Weizmann Institute in 2023.

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/01/canada-arming-israel-despite-ban/

 

AND SO DO MANY OF ISRAEL'S FRIENDS — INCLUDING AUSSIELAND, UNDER THE "ISRAEL HAS THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF" DICTUM....

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

not on the BBC...

WHILE IT SEEMS THE BBC HAD NOT A SINGLE NEWS REPORT ON THE ITEM ABOVE — 250,000 OR SO PEOPLE CROSSING THE HARBOUR BRIDGE IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIANS, THE BBC HAD ONE STORY ON OUR BAD WEATHER:

 

Watch: Australians play in snowy winter wonderland

Australians made snowmen and enjoyed snowball fights after parts of New South Wales were blanketed with heavy snow over the weekend. 

Officials said around 200 vehicles became stranded when areas of the state received the heaviest snowfall in 20 years. 

"I've never seen snow before in my entire life," said Brendan Gough, who travelled from Queensland to catch a glimpse of the rare sight.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/crm479410ndo

 

AND ON OUR FAILED ROCKET:

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cz93xzv3njjo

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

for humanity....

 

Alison Broinowski

Watermelons in the rain

 

We knew a thousand police couldn’t arrest 90,000 of us, so the march for Palestine was always going to happen. An 11th-hour decision by Justice Belinda Rigg just made it legal.

Every Sunday since October 2023, pro-Palestine rallies, loudish but always peaceful, with relaxed police making no arrests, have been part of the Sydney scene. For the huge event we’ve just had, they were the warm-up. And just as well, because Sunday 3 August was so cold and wet.

Those who thought the weather would deter the marchers were disappointed. That would have included the Premier Chris Minns and the NSW police commissioner. So they resorted to other tactics and got their way in the end.

But before they did, there was sound, colour and movement all the way from Wynyard, up York street, and onto the bridge. While the sun was out, everything sparkled, and flags in watermelon colours waved. When it rained, on with keffiyehs and up with watermelon-patterned umbrellas. Watermelon-dangle earrings are the current political fashion statement.

Anyone who thought multiculturalism was killed off by John Howard was disappointed too. A wider, more spontaneous representation of Australian society couldn’t have been contrived. The marchers included thousands of old and young, whole families, babies, and people of many origins.

From the middle of the crowd, we couldn’t tell how far we were from the back of the pack — like in City to the Surf — or see how far ahead the leaders were. But it wasn’t a race to the finish, and not even a march, as much as a slow shuffle taking up the whole width and length of the bridge.

We couldn’t see Julian Assange with Bob Carr. Nor Clover Moore in her wet black hat, nor persecuted re-tweeters Mary Kostakidis and Antoinette Lattouf, nor the ALP, Green and Independent politicians who were at the front. Coalition members were even less visible.

So were the police horses, but they left evidence of their presence, which we had to avoid stepping on. A sea-plane from Rose Bay flew over for a look, as did a couple of news helicopters. Trains passed and passengers waved. But the best view was had by bridge climbers, who on a grey misty day could instead watch the whole march from above.

Then we realised the latest helicopters were police, and they were flying low, addressing us. The march kept stopping. Everyone got messages on their phones (how did they have all our numbers? no-one we knew had registered to march). Because of the danger of a crowd crush at the northern exit from the bridge, we read that we all had to stop and go back. Some people were already returning south on the side walkway, like New Yorkers escaping from the World Trade Centre.

We had been walking for two hours and had only just passed the halfway point on the bridge, under the Aboriginal flag. One man who remembered the Vietnam protests, and the Iraq demonstration, said we should all just sit down. My Chinese Australian friend went and demanded an explanation, and police told her it was for our safety.

They made us all turn round, and we did. So the crowd went back, still banging saucepans, still cheerful, still chanting “from the river to the sea” and “we don’t want your bloody war”, etc. But it made me feel a little of what the Palestinians have put up with for decades, being pushed here and there, told to go north, go south, go to a concentration camp.

We were many more than 90,000, according to my statistically-inclined friend Bevan Ramsden, who compares our event with an anti-Vietnam war march on Bourke street in Melbourne on 8 May 1970. Police said there were 70,000 packed marchers, and the organisers claimed 100,000. The length of the march, 500 metres, was the same as the span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The bridge (eight lanes) is twice as wide as Bourke Street (four lanes), and the official length of the bridge is 1.15km, more than double its span. The length of the Sydney march was even more than that, going back past Lang Park. So Bevan calculates that there were between 280,000 and 400,000 Marchers for Humanity on Sunday.

The march never reached its destination, the US Consulate-General in North Sydney. Public transport was closed all over the CBD, so people walked to wherever they could find a way back to their cars and their dry, warm homes. We all felt we had done something memorable. It was the opposition from government and police to the march that brought hundreds of thousands of us out in the rain. The point we made has clearly registered.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/watermelons-in-the-rain/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

tired....

https://michaelwest.com.au/we-are-sick-and-tired-scam-of-the-week/

“We are Sick and Tired” | Scam of the Week

by Michael West

 

This week’s Scam of the Week goes to Andrew Hastie, the man “sick and tired” of peace protesters but never sick and tired of defending war crimes.

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.