The land that was murdered

‘Resolve me, strangers, whence, and what you are;
Your business here; and bring you peace or war?’
High on the stern Aeneas his stand,
And held a branch of olive in his hand. – Virgils Aeneid

This is my forty-second al Nakba, there were many before I experienced my first. What is the Nakba? It was the creation of Israel on the 15th of May 1948, a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.

42nd al Nakba in Brisbane

My first al Nakba was when the Butcher of Beirut, Ariel Sharon, approved Christians’ slaughter of Palestinian refugees in the western part of Beirut. This was at the Shabra and Shatila refugee camps. Many of the people that were there with me in 1982 in King George Square at that commemoration of those murders have now passed away, but there are some friends and comrades that participated then were in the commemoration march today, our 42nd Nakba. Much has happened in the intervening years, the expulsion of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation from Beirut. The ruthless pursuit of the Palestinian leadership by Israel, the expansion into greater Israel from the river to the sea and now the insane slaughter of people in Gaza.

It has never been easy to organize in Brisbane around these horrific events described by the Justice for Palestine Magandjin leaflet that was handed out at the rally today.

“It’s on this day that we acknowledge and reflect on the parallels with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their history of colonization.” There was a call made for us to commemorate the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages and homelands and to stand with the people of Palestine to protest Australia’s complicity in Israel’s act of genocide from the outset.

‘If the Israelis murder a million people, what will they call it then?’
During the march, one my friends from 1982 asked me this question: “If it keeps going the way it is, and the Israelis murder a million people, what will they call it then? What will Anthony Albanese, what will the new leader of the Liberal Party, what will former US Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden, what will all the leaders in the West say? Will the word genocide ever pass their lips? The silence is deafening. When will they stop sending bucket load of arms? It took the holocaust for the word genocide to be coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin.

So today, one thousand (1,000) marched Brisbane streets to commemorate the old and the new live-streamed catastrophe. Only six years ago, in 2019, all that we could mobilise to Al Nakba commemoration was a hundred (100) people, and on that occasion we were forced out of the square. We had to conduct that demonstration on the footpath because Brisbane City Council had preferred King George Square to be used as a market.

Nevertheless we were privileged because we had a 1948er in our midst. He was six years old. Khalil Hamdan, now in his 80s, spoke at that rally telling the story of how his family fled from the Hagannah, a terrorist Israeli group whose leade, Menachem Begin, became Prime Minister of Israel. Khalil was present today.

There are two other 1948er in Brisbane this week, and their grandson, Nobile, spoke strongly at the rally, calling on Arab countries, Arab leaders, to support the Palestinians. He castigated them for ignoring the genocide. Anyway, it’s it’s a time of great turmoil in the world. What is to become of the Palestinians with Trump covering for Netanyahu. I think back to 1982 and how shocked I was to hear of 3,000 people horrifically slaughtered in Shabra and Shatilla, and all we could get in the square were 15 people, and they were the most affected people, Palestinians, who are no longer with us, either here or there.

Ian Curr
18 May 2025