SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australians gathered for vigils on Monday to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel, which sparked the war on Gaza, but the events were muted after authorities warned of tougher security measures.
At Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach, participants holding Israeli and Australian flags listened in silence to a reading of the names of Israel’s 101 hostages still held by Hamas.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has triggered protests from both Jewish and Palestinian groups across the world, including some in Australia, which has warned the events could inflame community tension and disrupt social harmony.
Some pro-Palestinian events planned in Australia to coincide with the anniversary were brought forward a day after talks with authorities, but pro-Israel groups went ahead with the events, from Bondi to Parliament House in Canberra, the capital.
“According to Jewish tradition, a year after an event of trauma and loss, we are compelled to cease our mourning, but it’s impossible not to mourn when 101 Israelis remain in that hell,” Alex Ryvchin, of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said at Bondi.
Ryvchin was referring to the hostages yet to be returned from the 250 seized by Hamas militants alongside 1,200 Israelis killed in the country’s deadliest attack, according to Israeli figures.
At Parliament House, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott told an event organised by Christian group Never Again Is Now that he lamented civilian Palestinian deaths but admired “the way Israel has been so incredibly fastidious in trying to avoid them”.
In a statement on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he condemned the Hamas assault a year earlier but added, “As we mourn and reflect, we also re-affirm a fundamental principle of our shared humanity: every innocent life matters.”
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)