22 May 2025

The Hon. Anthony Albanese, MP
Prime Minister of Australia
334A Marrickville Rd
Marrickville NSW 2204

Subject: Emergency community protest as 14,000 babies face death in Gaza

Dear Prime Minister Albanese,

We write to you as your constituents, as parents, grandparents, workers, and neighbours in Grayndler, to demand immediate action as the UN warns that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within 48 hours if humanitarian aid does not reach them immediately.

From 8:30am today, we are staging an emergency protest outside your electorate office. Some among us are also beginning a hunger strike in solidarity with starving Palestinian families who are now struggling to survive under Israel’s total siege of Gaza. More than 93% of children in Gaza – approximately 930,000 – are at risk of famine.

We, as constituents of Grayndler and citizens of so-called Australia, demand that your government:
• Publicly pressure Israel to lift the blockade immediately
• Expel the Israeli ambassador
• Cut all economic and military ties with Israel
• Impose sanctions until the blockade ends and aid flows

This is the deliberate starvation of an entire population, and Australia is enabling it. While babies starve, your government continues to maintain 65 military export permits to Israel and to refer to Israel as a ‘friend’. That is not diplomacy, that is complicity.

On Monday, Israel allowed just 5 aid trucks to enter Gaza on Monday – described by UN officials as a “drop in the ocean” – while continuing their devastating 11-week total blockade and continuous bombing campaign.

Despite global outrage, your government has yet to condemn Israel’s starvation siege, or its bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, schools, and aid convoys. The joint donor statement you released yesterday refuses to name Israel’s actions for what they are: war crimes and genocide. It defends the UN’s ‘neutrality’ while failing to acknowledge the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, and that all states have a duty not to aid or assist it.

You cannot claim to be outraged by starvation while you continue to provide political cover and military export approvals to the state doing the starving. We reject any statement that distances mass death from its perpetrator, or frames starvation as a logistical challenge rather than a war crime. We reject any framing that demands Palestinian compliance in exchange for their survival, and we reject the cowardice of governments like yours that offer words while refusing to act.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 53,573 and wounded 121,688 Palestinians. Now, at current UN projections, 14,000 babies will die: that is, 1 baby will die every 12 seconds in the next 48 hours. That is 23% of all public kindy kids in NSW in 2025, or more than the total number of babies born in the ACT, Tasmania, and the NT in 2024 – murdered.

This is genocide, and history will remember who stood by and allowed it.

Signed,
Concerned constituents of Grayndler