About 500 people gathered in Sydney on May 15 in support of Palestine, hours after the Israeli military killed more than 50 Palestinians who were peacefully protesting as the US opened an embassy in Jerusalem. Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.
More than 2700 Palestinian protesters were also injured in the deadliest day of Gaza border violence since 2014.
A Palestinian journalist Dr Ramzy Baroud said at the rally: "The Israelis and their American friends are dancing. They are celebrating while my people have dug 58 more graves just today. They have danced on our graves for far too long."
More than 100 Palestinians have died since March 30, which Baroud labelled as "absolutely horrific".
"I was born and raised in Gaza, so many of these people are people that I know," he said. "No words can describe the feeling."
The rally also marked the 70th anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe. The establishment of the apartheid state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 was made possible through violent ethnic cleansing, in which 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes or massacred and their villages destroyed.
Fouad Charida was an eight-year-old boy when he was separated from his family in the chaos of dispossession that year. He told the Sydney rally: "I am standing here in front of you as a survivor of a brutal massacre committed in my village 70 years ago."
