House of Representatives Date: 7 October 2025
Speaker:
I call the Member for Fisher.
Andrew Wallace MP:
Today we commemorate the most appalling atrocities that occurred in Israel two years ago today, where we saw the massacre of some 1,200 innocent Israelis. Women, children and men were slaughtered, women were raped, and some 250 people were taken hostage.
I had the opportunity, along with the Member for Macnamara and others, to visit Israel just two short months after the event, and what I saw will stay with me forever. Before we went to Israel, the Israeli Ambassador briefed a number of members of the PJCIS and gave us the opportunity to see a 43-minute video or a compilation, at least, of the body-cam footage of those Hamas terrorists slaughtering 1,200 Israelis. That also will stay with me for the rest of my life.
When we visited southern Israel, we went to a town called Sderot, which is called the air-raid-shelter capital of the world because it has an air-raid shelter every 100 metres in public spaces. Every single home has an air-raid shelter because of the tens of thousands of rockets and missiles that have been fired from Gaza into the town of Sderot. Occupants of Sderot have around 30 seconds or so to get into an air-raid shelter once the siren goes. That’s their life, and that’s the life that they have led for many years.
Some of the images that have stayed with me from that trip, visiting with the Member for Macnamara and the Member for Flinders, were from walking through the kibbutz Kfar Aza and seeing the absolute destruction of homes. Walls were pockmarked with gunshots from RPGs and small-arms fire. Homes had been burnt to the ground.
The footage in that video, seeing white HiLux 4×4 utes pulling up, taking the hostages and driving back into Gaza to the absolute jubilation of the residents in Gaza that Jews had been captured, will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It is a good thing that we commemorate today, and we hope, and I hope and pray that peace is near. Too many people have died. Too many people have suffered on both sides since 7 October, and I hope and pray that this peace plan comes to fruition and that it holds.
Nobody wants to see innocent life being taken. Nobody wants to see people suffer, and I’m sure that everybody in this place would share those views.
So today we recognise the loss, pain and grief of the people of Israel, and we say: Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel live.
END
Media Contact: Brendan West – 0402 556 646 – Brendan.West@aph.gov.au
