“We’re not normalising the abnormal, we’re not normalising genocide” – Remah Naji, Greens candidate for Moreton at Palm Sunday rally for peace and refugees on March 24, 2024, Magan-djin.
ON THE SAME day that the Australian government opposition leader, Peter Dutton, called Palestinians a security threat, Remah Naji threw her hat in the ring for the federal election. Remah is the Greens candidate for Moreton.
The seat of Moreton stretches on the south side of Brisbane from Moorooka down to Kuraby, from inner-city to the southeast, and it overlaps with the seats of Stretton and Rankin. All these seats have large migrant populations, including Africans, Chinese, Arabs, Afghanis, and people from the subcontinent.
Remah was born in Amman in Jordan from a family of Palestinian activists who were exiled from Yaffah in Palestine and has revoked her Jordanian passport in order to be eligible to contest the next Federal election to be held on the 3rd of May 2025.
Remah response to Mass Murdoch
On 17 February, I received an invitation to speak at Ambrose Treacy College’s assembly (to children aged 10 to 17) as part of their Empower Week. Their invitation specifically mentioned speaking about the impacts of war on Palestinian children. Our phone call with the school, prior to the assembly, re-affirmed this. The presentation was received well, and no issues were raised with me during or immediately after the speech.
The Courier Mail correctly reported that I was a guest at the school assembly where I shared the impacts of war on Palestinian children. But this wasn’t in my capacity as a Greens candidate, but because I’m a Palestinian woman who has been actively involved in helping organise a local community response here in Brisbane to the ongoing invasion and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Furthermore, the school isn’t within the Moreton electorate (and kids can’t vote anyway) so this definitely wasn’t something I was doing to win votes or push the Greens party. I took time off my usual work schedule to volunteer to speak at this school assembly. I think we all have an obligation to help educate people of all ages and raise consciousness about the genocide of Palestinians.
The Courier reported that a couple of unnamed parents were concerned about the content of my speech, even though, from what I can gather, none of those parents actually saw my presentation. It sounds like they heard from their kids that a Palestinian woman had spoken at the school assembly, and that they weren’t so much concerned about what I specifically said, but about the mere fact that I was invited to speak in the first place. So basically, it seems that the very small minority of parents who complained just don’t want someone of Palestinian ancestry speaking to their children.
The Courier Mail’s story claimed that I “showed distressing photographs of Gaza children.” That’s total bullshit. It shows how slack News Corp journalists and editors have become that they’d report something like that as fact without even checking. We’ve asked the journalist responsible for a correction and an apology and are waiting to hear back.
I’ve posted slides from my presentation so you can see it for yourself. The images I showed were of young people here in Brisbane who’ve been participating in peaceful protest.
I should add that during the assembly, separate from my presentation, the school itself also chose to play a video from UNICEF which I believe does show some images of Palestinian children who were harmed by Israeli forces. Showing that video wasn’t my decision, however I don’t believe there were any inaccuracies in the UNICEF video.
Overall, the tone of reporting from the Courier Mail – and the decision to even cover this story in the first place – is highly divisive and inflammatory. They even included quotes from a right-wing commentator who expressed an opinion about what I said in my speech, even though he didn’t actually see my speech himself.
Below, I’ve posted the transcript of my speech in full. I know some Zionists and right-wing politicians will still take issue with it, but I stand by the content of it.
In choosing my words, I was very mindful of the age and maturity levels of my audience. As a mum with young children, I’ve thought deeply about how to strike the right balance between educating children about the realities of the world we live in, and protecting them from imagery and content which could be traumatising or unnecessarily distressing.
The Australian school curriculum already covers war A LOT, including some units which are quite explicit and potentially distressing in terms of the detail they provide about the horrors of war. I don’t think there’s anything in my speech that’s inappropriate for children to hear.
Ultimately what’s going on here resembles the kind of pressure that the Zionist lobby applies on any institution which platforms a Palestinian speaker. Right-wing commentators prattle on a lot about ‘cancel culture’ and censorship, and yet they are consistently trying to censor and deplatform Palestinians for speaking out against Israel’s invasion.
I’m not going to bow to this kind of pressure, and I’m definitely not going to stop speaking out about Palestine.
As we speak, Israel is blocking humanitarian aid going into Gaza, and they are preparing to cut off electricity and water. Palestinian children are, again, the main victims of a collective punishment – a punishment that goes unchallenged by the Courier Mail and most of the mainstream Australian media. It continues to baffle me that Palestinian and pro-Palestine activists are accused of politicising something so blatantly atrocious like intentionally starving children. The reality is that Palestinian children are born into a world that politicises them, and all we’re trying to do is remind you they’re human.
Read the speech for yourself, and remind your friends that the Courier Mail can no longer be trusted as a reliable source of accurate information.
Full text of speech (also attached, along with all images used in the slideshow):
Acknowledgement of Country
I also want to express my sincere wishes for the recovery of Pope Francis. I pray to God to grant him a swift recovery and bless him with health and well-being, so that he continues his inspiring work. In fact, Pope Francis has been outspoken about the injustices against Palestinian children in Gaza, and he took a courageous stand when many others remained silent. Even when there was a blackout across the entire Gaza City, Pope Francis insisted on and managed to video call the only Roman Catholic Church in Gaza. And even while he’s in the hospital, he’s keeping contact with them almost daily, at 8 p.m. Gaza time, to be precise. May God bless him with good health and a long life. He continues to be an inspiration to all of us.
Hands up if you have ever met a Palestinian child.
Hand up if you’ve ever heard a story of a Palestinian child.
Here’s something about Palestinian children: They’re stubborn – I’ve got two of them.
Here’s another thing: They love life. Problem is: Palestinian children, those who are in Gaza, live in the most dangerous place in the world for a child.
Children under the age of 18 make up roughly half of Gaza’s population. They’re around 1 million children. Gaza is 360 square kilometers. Brisbane is 15,826 square kilometres. The reason Gaza is overpopulated is due to the fact that around 80% of the population are refugees from different parts of Palestine.
Something that is often missed in the 24-hour news cycle is the very human impact that wars and massacres are having on children and young people who are caught up in the middle of them. Before I talk to you more about what that impact looks like, I want to share a few words by a 12 years old Palestinian child, Tala from Gaza:
“They killed me a thousand times,
Yet each time I lived to create dignity for myself to live.
I will not die, I will not die, I am a Palestinian child.”
Tala survived the recent war. But 18,000 children did not. Between October 2023 – January 2025, a Palestinian child was being killed every 10 minutes in Gaza.
According to UNICEF, the number of children killed in Gaza during the recent war is more than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars worldwide. Tens of thousands of children have been injured. Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. 17,000 children have been separated from their parents as a result of the war, or find themselves unaccompanied following the death of their parents. Over a million children have been displaced.
On a hopeful note, yesterday was a good day for Palestinian children in Gaza. They were able to go back to school after 16 months of no education due to the war. They’re setting up classes on the rubble of their destroyed schools.
95% of schools in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, which led human rights organisations to call this scholasticide. Hands up if you’ve ever heard of this term before?
It’s the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s education system which threatens not only the future of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, but also the international humanitarian regime and our collective moral compass. In interviewing Palestinian children who were victims of the recent war, many of them said that global society is slowly accepting the unacceptable. The normalisation of violence against schools. And although they know they will rebuild their schools, there are immense challenges ahead of them.
According to UNICEF, about 90 percent of children in Gaza lack nutrition and face “severe” threats to their “survival, growth and development”. Malnutrition can lead to emaciation, a state of being abnormally thin that can be fatal. Even if these children survive and grow up, “they certainly don’t thrive. So they do less well at school.
When they’re adults, they find it harder to earn a decent income, and that turns the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next.
It is no wonder that Palestinian children in Gaza, despite their attempts to find meaning in all of this injustice, it is no wonder that the vast majority of them are experiencing serious psychological distress, especially anxiety and PTSD. Several physiological symptoms were reported including insomnia, nightmares, sweating, and bedwetting.
What’s alarming in all of this, is that it’s happened in violation of international humanitarian law. There were children who were documenting their own suffering for the first time in history, the victims, including children, have documented to the whole world to see, in real time, the crimes committed against them. And this begs the question, some of you might be interested in pursuing a law degree, it really begs the question that if those laws that have been introduced after the second world war have been repeatedly violated in Gaza, what is our role as international community?
Is having laws enough to keep us safe? A book called “Human Rights for Some” described the law as the sail of a ship. The sail, or the law, can guarantee motion, but it doesn’t guarantee direction. What we do in the ground is the wind that determines the direction of the ship.
Look, I feel honoured to be here. But I’m not here to tell a sad story, I’m here to raise awareness. And with awareness comes responsibility. I talk to you as change makers and future leaders. The world cannot afford to remain indifferent, for the cost of inaction is measured in the lives and futures of children.
I’ll go back to what I said before, Palestinian children love life. They still look for opportunities to play, to dance, to cook. They still defy the limitations of their existence even though they understand that about a quarter of the children’s population in Gaza do not live beyond 5 years of age due to the relentless wars. I remember in one of the interviews with a young Palestinian girl was asked what she would like to be when she grows up, her answer was one all of us need to stop at. She said you asked the wrong question, it’s not when I grow up, it’s if I grow up.
Some children and young people here in Brisbane did so many things to express their love and solidarity with the Palestinian children and I have some pictures for you here from our rallies in the city.
[ Show slide show ]
And finally, I want to share a few words with you from a letter written by three Palestinian children in Gaza:
“We know that other children around the world lead quiet and calm lives. While other children dream of having video games, we dream that one day this fighting will end. We hope that one day we can open our books again, write in our notebooks and study, that we can go outside and play with friends.
We have a lot of questions. Why is this happening to us? When will this war end? What are other children around the world doing? We’ve asked our parents, but they don’t have the answers.
If we could ask one more question, it would be this one: what will you do to stop this?”
Remah Naji
6 Mar 2025
