It was a common assumption during the darkest days of the US’ war on Vietnam that support for the war would dwindle once the body bags began coming home along “the low road” to small rural communities.

While the people of regional Australia might not have to endure seeing their young men repatriated from the Middle East in coffins, they are beginning to understand the genocide happening in Palestine. They are also being forced to acknowledge the complicity of their own governments, state and Australian.

One of the 24 August 2025 rallies was held in Bathurst, New South Wales. The area is somewhat conservative politically. It has a National Party representative in the Legislative Assembly and an Independent — formerly National Party — member of the House of Representatives.

Ethnically, it is not as diverse as the cities and culturally, it is dominated by the Mount Panorama speedway. Perhaps saving Bathurst partly from the redneck image which might go along with motor racing, there is a university. No doubt, many in the crowd knew of the fiasco at the Bendigo Writers Festival where a university was responsible for attempting to steer discussion away from Gaza.

It is difficult to imagine a more vital topic for writers and academics to discuss than the genocide in Gaza – unless perhaps it is freedom of expression which so obviously has been threatened by the Australian Government following sheepishly the line on Palestine and Israel expected by the US.

The crowd of perhaps three or four hundred gathering at Morse Park included people of all ages and many backgrounds. There were hijabs and keffiyehs in evidence and a range of skin colours. Along the footpath where some of us elders sat on our walkers, there were families with small children and dogs.

So what unites such a crowd in a country town? Speakers — including Stephen Lawrence, Labor MLC — emphasised the fact that the rally was on Wiradjuri land that was never ceded. So there was a strong element of anti-colonialism in the speeches. Lawrence noted that his time in Ramallah on the West Bank formed his opinion that the Zionists running Israel had instituted a system of apartheid every bit as severe as that of the Afrikaner regime in South Africa.

Lawrence — who joined the walk across the bridge earlier in the month — also pointed out that those inside the ALP today who claim Labor was not a party of protest are wrong. Labor parliamentarians have a fine tradition of acting on their consciences — sometimes at cost to their careers — and should do so now. He acknowledged the presence of David Mallard, a Greens Councillor from Orange at the rally.

The compassion displayed for the suffering of a helpless people showed that empathy is not confined to the cities. Humanity can thrive among isolated individuals as long as they have access to the truth about world events. The people gathered in Bathurst have, no doubt, escaped the shallow sloganeering about Israel’s right to defend itself which tripped so easily off the tongues of various government ministers in October 2023.

While mainstream media and conservative politicians have failed to be moved by subsequent facts, including the slaughter and starvation of thousands of children, the likes of Al Jazeera — and Pearls and Irritations — have offered fearless examination of the killing, the maiming and the distortions of truth.

In the elders’ backbench at the rally, there was a clear consensus. People who have memories long enough to have witnessed the horrors inflicted on Vietnam and Iraq — and some who remember the horrors inflicted on the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s — can see that what is occurring in Gaza is indeed criminal. We really need to change the kind of world that our grandchildren and future generations look certain to inherit. Currently, thanks to the cowardice of our political leaders, the world of tomorrow looks likely to exceed any dystopia in terms of environmental desolation, ongoing warfare and lack of personal freedom. The rich are inheriting this world in which adequate social services are regarded as totally subservient to the needs of the garrison state.

As spring brings better weather for outdoor activity, the demonstrations should grow. Palestine Action plans another rally on 21 September. Appropriately this is World Peace Day and will see the ringing of Peace Bells across the world, including in Cowra, not so far distant from Bathurst. Governments at all levels should encourage such events because they have a duty towards the mental health of the people they represent and such rallies keep us all sane. As silence implies complicity, it is vital that people of conscience associate themselves not with the powerful oppressors of Palestine but with the powerless victims.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.