Palestine is Not for Sale
The following speech was delivered by Dr Tasnim Sammak at the Naarm protest against Isaac Herzog’s visit on 12 February 2026.
I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. No pride in genocide.
As we gather here today, we condemn the genocide of the Indigenous people of this land, whose land is stolen and, as a consequence, we have a white government that thinks it is the authority over this land. Shame.
It is white sovereignty that brought Herzog here—white sovereignty, even though Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded. And that is the context we should really be talking about, the context that Minns and Albanese insist we forget. A context of colonisation here that allows so-called Australia to be an ally of the United States, which is also a settler colony, and of course Israel, the young colony.
The young settler colony. That is the ‘Australia-Israel’ relation they’re talking about here, yet they say to us that the relationship is based on civilisational values of democracy, harmony, liberty and equality. Shame, Australia, shame.
Colonisation here has not ended, and it’s time for colonisation to end—here and across the world. It’s overdue. And we are today’s anti-apartheid movement, because when apartheid ended in South Africa, it should have ended here.
But apartheid went all the way into the 1990s. And it continues to manifest here. It is structural. It is ingrained. It is systematic. We live under settler colonialism, white supremacy and apartheid here. It might not look like the apartheid in Palestine, but that is what Herzog is doing here. He is entrenching such overt and brazen racism here. Because there is change happening within this nation, and that’s what we should be talking about.
What is Israel doing when it comes here to foment such relations? Herzog is finding friends. The only friends that still represent colonisation in the world. The only friends who still are not anticolonial. And we stand with West Papua, who are still victimised. We stand with Latin America, that the US is threatening to invade.
We stand with our African brothers and sisters and we learn from them too. We learn that this is a long struggle. How many years did it take to abolish slavery? It is time for the Israeli colony to decolonise. That is not hateful. For us to call for the end of apartheid—that is the just solution. For us to call for the end of military occupation. For how long should the Palestinian people remain under the boot of the Zionist occupation? That is the context here. How long? It is up to us to end this oppression and to end this mass atrocity, because ‘times up’ for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
With this context in mind, I want to announce to you a new move that we are taking. With a lot of support, I am charging Isaac Herzog with genocide in the Magistrate’s Court. I bring the charge of genocide and mass atrocity against Isaac Herzog not as a state, and not as the United Nations, and not as the international community that has failed, before our eyes, to see seventy thousand Palestinians murdered. I bring this charge as a victim of this genocide.
My family is from Yaffa, so-called Tel Aviv, where Isaac Herzog is going back. My family is from Yaffa. We were exiled in 1948, during the Nakba, to Gaza. And my family who remained in Gaza, when Gaza was occupied in 1967, grew up in the refugee camps in Gaza. We are grateful for the refugee camps of Gaza and we stand with the refugee camps of Gaza. That is the history that I connect with when I stand here to fight for Gaza—Gaza the refugee camp, Gaza the concentration camp, Gaza, that will liberate the whole world.
Now we have surviving family in Gaza, and that is why our story hasn’t ended. Those who talk about ‘after Gaza’ must be corrected. It is not ‘after Gaza’. The Palestinian story is a story that will liberate, because it is a just story of a just cause, and it is a story that cannot be terminated. Justice will always force itself back. Justice will determine itself. And that’s what has happened here on this continent.
That’s what I learn growing up on stolen land. I learn about survival. I learn about resistance. I come to see possibility for my people too. I see that we will resist, and that Gaza will flourish from beneath the ashes, and that Trump will not own Gaza. That is not the vision for Gaza.
In Palestine, during the peace agreements, we had a saying: Palestine is not for sale. It’s relevant because Isaac Herzog is going around talking about ‘dialogue’ and ‘peace’, and Trump right now is meeting with Netanyahu to talk about the next plan for Gaza. So I want you to say it with me: Palestine is not for sale. Palestine is not for sale.
From the river to sea, Herzog to the ICC. From the river to sea, Herzog to the ICC.
We will see justice for the Palestinian people. And we will see survival. We will see liberation for the remaining Palestinian nation. Free, free Palestine!
Dr Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak is a Palestinian education academic, teacher and organiser. She's a co-founder of Free Palestine Coalition Naarm.