Yesterday, at the well-attended Three Years of Genocide in Palestine rally in Queens Park in Brisbane/Magan-djin, Khalil and I were interviewed by Michaela, a 31-year-old Italian journalist from Rome.
The diminutive, dark-haired Michaela told us something unusual about the way she works. She likes to photograph the hands of the people she interviews, because she believes a person’s hands reveal something of their character. After asking his permission, she photographed Khalil’s hand.
She was returning to Rome and then travelling to Germany, where her special friend, a Palestinian man, lives. I found myself wondering how he is received there. In a Germany whose political establishment has taken such a restrictive position on expressions of Palestinian solidarity, what is it like simply to live there as a Palestinian? It was something I wished I had asked Michaela.
During our conversation, Khalil recounted his story of being a six-year-old child during the Nakba of 1948. He had trouble containing his grief when he remembered fleeing the Israeli terrorists as a six-year-old. Perhaps, then, the banner over the rally should have read: 78 years of genocide in Palestine. He told Mikaela that his daughter Leila who had recently passed away was a journalist at the national broadcaster (ABC) that doesn’t treat Palestine fairly.
Michaela told us that we should not judge the Italian people by their Prime Minister. The people of Italy, she said, support Palestine. She pointed to the words now appearing on walls and posters:
BLOCCHIAMO TUTTO! — BLOCK EVERYTHING!
She explained this as a call to blockade and sanction Israel — particularly significant, she said, because of the Italian state’s support for Israel, including the provision of arms and military facilities connected with US military operations in West Asia.
We discussed many things during the long, filmed interview. Most importantly, Khalil was able to tell the story that has helped keep the Palestine solidarity movement alive in Brisbane through the hard years.
But something else is happening now.
Young people are thirsty for change.
Culturally and geographically they may be a very long way from Palestine, but many recognise something in the Palestinian experience that speaks to their own lives. They see Palestinians subjected to dispossession and extraordinary violence, yet continuing to resist. And they look around at their own society: the housing crisis, insecure employment, the absence of decent jobs, and the imposition of the gig economy on an entire generation.
They see the sumud of the Palestinian people — their steadfastness — and perhaps they want some of that steadfastness themselves.
They are becoming defiant.
Governments across the world may attempt to suppress the Palestine solidarity movement. But they should understand what they are dealing with. Palestine has become connected in the minds of a generation with much larger questions about the kind of world they have inherited and the kind of world they intend to create.
Blocchiamo tutto.
Ian Curr
12 October 2026