PERTH students have vowed to walk out of classes this week to protest in Forrest Place against Israel’s harsh retaliation in the Gaza Strip to a terrorist attack.
High school and university students from Students for Palestine will be walking out of classes nationwide on Thursday and Friday to “protest the ongoing genocide” of Palestinians by the Israeli government and military.
The student-led organisation have also called for the Australian government to cut diplomatic ties with Israel.
Students for Palestine representative Ella Marchionda says the protest aims to demonstrate the “wholesale destruction of every part of Gazan society”, including the Palestinian education system.
“If students in Gaza can’t go to school and university, then neither should we,” Ms Marchionda said in a press statement.
The protest organisers say there is a “new urgency” for young people to protest after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push the war into the southern Gazan city of Rafah.
Up to 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and 70,000 wounded by Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip since the war started in October last year.
The Perth rally will be held this Friday, March 1 at Forrest Place at 11.30am.
Sacking
A new group of Friends of Palestine linked to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance members will also be holding a rally at Wellington Square on Friday March 8 in response to the ABC’s sacking of Sydney journalist Antoinette Lattouf.
Lattouf was sacked in December, days after she had shared a post from Human Rights Watch regarding the Israeli military’s war in Gaza, including a caption that the the humanitarian organisation was “reporting starvation as a tool of war”.
The Sydney-based journalist has sued the ABC for unlawful sacking.
by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER
Perth Voice Interactive 
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