Thursday, 28 August 2025

Middle East conflict

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:22): (1296) My adjournment tonight is to the Premier. The action I seek is for the Victorian Labor government to lobby their colleagues in the Albanese Labor government to impose sanctions on Israel, given the ongoing genocide and starvation they are perpetrating in Palestine, and end Victoria’s relationship with the weapons companies who are making genocide possible. Next week dedicated, heartbroken community members in my electorate will read out the names of more than 18,000 children killed in Gaza. There are so many murdered children that it is expected to take more than 30 continuous hours to read them all out. My constituents have asked me to join them.

Today I only have 3 minutes to speak in Parliament, but I want to read out some of the names of those 18,000 Palestinian children, starting with the babies who did not make it to their first birthday: (1) Noura Walid Abdulsalam Shaheen, zero years old; (2) Maryam Nour Al-Din Wael Daban, zero years old; (3) Fatima Louay Rafiq Al-Sultan, zero years old; (4) Watan Mohammad Abd Al-Rahim Al-Madhoon, zero years old; (5) Mohammad Al-Jabbari Said Misbah Al-Khour, zero years old; (6) Diyaa Ahmed Abd Al-Aati Saleh Moussa, zero years old; (7) Oday Mohammed Rafiq Al-Sultan, zero years old; (8) Mohammed Nidal Hisham Attallah; (9) Ahmad Shadi Talal Al-Haddad, zero years old; (10) Masa Mohammed Youssef Nasr, zero years old; (11) Ayat Abd Al-Aziz Omar Farwana, zero years old; (12) Maalek Mohammed Shafeeq Abu-Al-Kas, zero years old; (13) Sarah Abd Al-Rahman Mohammed Hamad, zero years old; (14) Mohammed Saleh Mahmoud Al-Deiri, zero years old; (15) Mecca Ahmed Eid Abu-Sherekh, zero years old.

These names are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the babies and children that have been killed by Israel in Gaza. We cannot say it does not have anything to do with us, because in the face of such atrocities there is something that we can do here in Victoria, and our humanity demands that we must do it.