A women’s march is being organised by Northern Rivers group A Mother’s Cry in solidarity with Israeli women and girls, and as a response to what the group describes as the UN’s ‘disturbing and harmful silence, following the brutal Hamas terror attacks in Israel’s south on 7 October.’
The march will take place this Sunday, 3 December, starting at Main Beach in Byron Bay. Women will gather from 9.30am, with banners and wearing white and red clothing and facial attire denoting the violence that occurred and the silence that followed.
A Mother’s Cry will commence the march at 10am, walking towards the Pass. Community members are welcome to join the mothers in solidarity.
Organisers say this event is part of a global action around the #metoounlessurajew campaign, and coincides with UN Women’s global 16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign.
The Byron event will be the first #metoounlessurajew march to occur in Australia.
Hypocrisy and silence
According to A Mother’s Cry, while UN Women publishes detailed reports focusing on the challenges faced by women in Gaza, it almost completely ignores the atrocities committed against women in Israel during the Hamas terror attacks.
‘To date they have made a single Instagram (where notably, many young people are getting their information about the conflict) post on the issue. Not only that, they deleted their original first post condemning Hamas. This bias and neglect highlight a significant disparity in the organisation’s approach to the crisis in the region.’
They note that António Guterres of the UN made a statement about gender-based violence on 30 November.
A Mother’s Cry quotes International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, who said, ‘We cannot leave a world for our children where burnings and executions and rapes and killings can take place as if they are normal, as if they are to be tolerated as if they can happen without consequence…
‘And when these types of acts take place, they cannot go uninvestigated and they cannot go unpunished. Because these types of crimes that we’ve all been watching, that we saw on the 7th of October, are serious violations, if proven, of international humanitarian law.’
The Mothers Cry march on Sunday is designed to expose and condemn the inaction and hypocrisy of these international bodies and call for acknowledgement and action.
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