Skip to main content

💔 One Eye for Gaza: Hannah Thomas and the Price of Speaking Truth



🖋️ By Malik Mukhtar
📍 ainnbeen.blogspot.com | 🗓️ June 29, 2025


She stood on the pavement—Hannah Thomas, lawyer, activist, former Greens candidate.
She stood—holding no weapon, only a banner and a conscience.
She stood—outside a factory that allegedly helps plate the steel for F-35 jets now raining hell on Gaza.
And for that—Australian police slammed her to the ground.
Now, she may never see from her right eye again.

Let that sentence burn into your mind:
“She may lose her sight—for standing against genocide.”

🇵🇸 In Gaza, Eyes Are Lost Forever

In Gaza, there are no surgeons left for eyes.
Eyes are buried beneath concrete. Eyes were starved shut. Eyes were blinded by phosphorus, smoke, dust. Children in Gaza have forgotten what it means to look up without fear. And still, the bombs fall.

From October 7, 2023 to now, tens of thousands dead—many torn apart by American-made weapons, polished and prepped by foreign contractors. The livestream genocide has not stopped. The world's silence has not cracked.

And those who dare raise a voice? Their silence is forced.

🇦🇺 Australia’s Iron Fist

On June 27, 2025, a peaceful protest erupted in Belmore, Sydney. Dozens of Australians gathered outside SEC Plating, a company accused of helping arm Israel’s war machine. The protest was vocal, but peaceful.

NSW Police ordered them to disperse. Under Section 197 of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002, police in New South Wales may issue a “move-on order” if they believe someone’s presence is obstructive or causing harassment. The bar is dangerously low. Vague terms like public safety or obstruction are invoked.

When Thomas refused to abandon her post—because Gaza cannot abandon its dead—police used force. Brutal, disproportionate force.

Photos show her bloodied face. The right side collapsed in purple-black swelling. Her eye sealed shut by trauma.
Doctors now say she may permanently lose sight in that eye.

What is the price of dissent in a democracy?
Apparently, vision.

⚖️ The Law, Weaponized

This isn’t about just one protest.
This is part of a wider crackdown—on voices for Palestine, on conscience, on protest itself.

Under NSW law, the Summary Offences Act and LEPRA (Law Enforcement Powers and Responsibilities Act) allow for charges like:

  • Unlawful assembly
  • Failing to comply with police directions
  • Obstructing traffic

All vague. All subjective. All ripe for abuse.

And what of justice for Hannah?
No officer has been suspended. No investigation deemed “critical.” She was arrested—but not charged—as if to wound her, and walk away clean.

🟢 Green Voices, Bloodied Faces

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi said:

“This is brutal. This is unjust. There must be an investigation.”

Senator David Shoebridge echoed:

“Police violence cannot be swept under the rug. Peaceful protest is not a crime.”

Yet even as Greens leaders demand justice, the NSW Acting Police Minister refuses to classify this as a “critical incident.”
Apparently, near-blinding a woman in broad daylight isn’t serious enough.

🌐 Human Rights Are Not Selective

Where are the global watchdogs?
Where is the outrage from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN Human Rights Council?

They know this:

  • That Australia's suppression mirrors what is happening globally—
  • That pro-Palestinian advocacy is being criminalized across “liberal democracies”—
  • That to speak out for Gaza is now seen as a threat to the status quo.

This is not democracy. This is manufactured consent enforced with batons.

🔥 One Eye Shut. Millions Turned Away.

Hannah Thomas is one person.
But she stood for millions.

She stood while others scrolled past death.
She stood while children in Gaza cried out.
She stood where governments refused to.

And now she may never see from her right eye again.
But we must see.
We must look harder. Deeper. More defiantly.
Because Gaza’s livestream genocide will not stop with bombs. It continues in silence. In cracked skulls. In blinded eyes. In shattered voices.

✊🏽 Call to Action

If you still have your voice, use it.
If you still have your eyes, open them.
If you still have your freedom, defend those who don’t.

Because today, it was Hannah.
Tomorrow, it could be you.

📎 Link to full coverage and updates at bottom of article.

🔗 ainnbeen.blogspot.com


Comments

Anonymous said…
I am horrified that Australia is directly comicit in this atrocity...and no longer surprised by our so called law enforcement officer's violence. We read about it on almost a daily basis. And what has happened Ed to Hannah is despicable. Where is our Albanese's voice and action to hold the cops responsible? Where is his protection of the right to protest peacefully?
July 14, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Malik said…
Thank you for your powerful and heartfelt response.

You're absolutely right to be horrified. Australia's complicity—through silence, diplomatic cover, and suppression of peaceful dissent—raises deeply troubling questions about our national conscience. The treatment of Hannah is not just despicable; it's symptomatic of a growing intolerance toward protest and a dangerous erosion of civil liberties in so-called liberal democracies.

As you pointed out, law enforcement violence is no longer an anomaly but a pattern. And yet, the absence of leadership—from Prime Minister Albanese in particular—is deafening. When the state fails to defend the fundamental right to protest peacefully, it signals not neutrality, but complicity.

Your voice—and the voices of others who refuse to turn away—are critical in this moment. Thank you for standing up, for speaking out, and for holding power to account.

Warm regards,
Malik Mukhtar
✍️ www.ainnbeen.blogspot.com



July 19, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When the World Gives Permission: From Gaza’s Rubble to the West Bank’s Maps

  There are moments when history does not announce itself with explosions—but with paperwork. On paper, Israel’s approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank is framed as an administrative decision. In reality, it is a cartographic act of violence: borders redrawn without consent, futures erased without headlines, and international law treated as background noise. This is not an isolated policy choice. It is the logical continuation of a world that watched Gaza burn—and learned nothing. A Timeline of Forewarning, Ignored December 11, 2025 Israel’s security cabinet quietly approves 19 new Jewish settlements across the occupied West Bank . The decision remains largely under wraps. December 20–24, 2025 The news becomes public. Fourteen countries—including the UK, France, Germany, Canada, and Japan—issue a joint appeal urging Israel to reverse the decisio n, warning it violates international law and undermines any remaining possibility of a two-state solution. Isr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Starving Gaza: How Silence Is Enabling a Genocide in Real Time

  Gaza: Starving a Nation in Broad Daylight — and the World Must Act Now Seven weeks. Zero aid. Two million lives on the brink. Gaza is not just suffering — it is being starved. Deliberately. In full view of the world, an entire population is being pushed into famine, death, and despair. No humanitarian aid or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for over seven agonizing weeks. This is now the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced — a man-made catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. The evidence is clear and horrifying: All 25 WFP-supported bakeries in Gaza have been forced to shut down. No wheat. No fuel. No bread. WFP food parcels — intended to last two weeks — have been completely exhausted. Safe drinking water has run dry , leaving families to scavenge scraps to burn just to cook a basic meal. Food prices have exploded by up to 1,400%. Hospitals are collapsing without medicine, electricity, or clean water . And yet, just beyond Gaza’s sealed borders, h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hajo Meyer: Auschwitz, Zionism, and the Courage to Say “Never Again Means Never Again”

Hajo Meyer did not speak from ideology. He spoke from Auschwitz . Born in Germany in 1924, Meyer survived the Nazi machinery of annihilation and emerged with a conviction that would shape the rest of his life: the Holocaust was not a Jewish lesson alone—it was a human one . To betray that universality, he believed, was to betray the dead. Late in life, Meyer became one of the most unsettling voices in Jewish ethical discourse —not because he denied Jewish suffering, but because he refused to let that suffering be weaponized . The Moral Core of The End of Judaism (2005) In his seminal book, The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed , Meyer argues that Judaism is not defined by land, power, or ethno-nationalism , but by an ethical tradition rooted in justice for the vulnerable. One of his central claims is uncompromising: “ Judaism is not a bloodline or a state . It is an ethical tradition. When that tradition is abandoned , Judaism ends — regardless of who claims ...
Post a Comment
Read more

When the President Sounds the Alarm, But the Government Looks Away.

A President's Moral Warning Israeli presidents traditionally avoid political confrontation. Their role is largely ceremonial and symbolic, intended to unify rather than divide. Yet Herzog chose to speak openly about something many observers have documented for years: the erosion of moral restraints. His language was unusually severe. Warning of what he called " a terrible process of brutalization " within Israeli society, Herzog lamented that " there are segments among us that are barely shocked by violence anymore " while " certain other segments treat it lightly." Perhaps most alarming was his warning that extremist conduct is no longer confined to society's fringes. Such behavior, he said, is " threatening to enter the mainstream ." The significance of the speech lies not merely in what was said, but in who said it. When a country's ceremonial head of state feels compelled to warn that brutality is becoming normalized, the ...
Post a Comment
Read more