Sydney (Australia), Oct 7 (EFE).- The Jewish community in Australia paid tribute this Monday to the 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7, 2023, today marking the first anniversary of the attack against Israel by the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas. , with a series of vigils and emotional events in the oceanic country.
“A year after the attack, we are still in the midst of mourning,” Michael Gencher, executive of the anti-Semitism group StandWithUs Australia, said this morning at a vigil in eastern Sydney, with which It marked the first anniversary of what was the greatest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.
“There are still (almost a hundred) hostages (in the hands of Hamas), there is still war, and the pain remains,” Gencher added in statements reported today by the Australian news agency AAP.
Also outside the Canberra Parliament, hundreds of people gathered in a demonstration organized by the Christian organization Never Again Is Now to mark this anniversary, with the presence of the Israeli Ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, and various Australian politicians.
At that event, Australian flags were waved alongside Israeli ones, as well as some Iranian flags from Pahlavi – the Government that governed Iran before the Islamic revolution -, according to the Australian edition of The Guardian newspaper.
“October 7 is a day of terrible pain,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement released today, expressing solidarity with the Israeli hostages, their families and Jewish Australians who have been victims of the antisemitism since the beginning of this conflict in the Middle East.
“We recognize the distress that the conflict has caused here in Australia” and “we unequivocally condemn all the prejudice and hatred” that has been exacerbated in Australia since then, Albanese stressed.
Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been attacks against Jewish Australians, a community that represents 0.4% of the population of more than 26 million inhabitants, forcing the Canberra Executive to appoint last July the Australian lawyer Jillian Segal as in charge of the fight against anti-Semitism.
Today, pro-Palestinian vigils and demonstrations are also being held throughout the day after thousands of people protested the day before in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne, as well as other parts of the oceanic country, to ask for a ceasefire and remember the more than 41,800 Palestinians killed in the conflict. EFE
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