Julian Assange joined at least 90,000 and as many as 300,000 people who marched across Australia’s most famous bridge on Sunday to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Left to Right: Mary Kostakidis, Gabriel Shipton and Julian Assange on the Harbour Bridge. (Consortium News).
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, his wife Stella and brother Gabriel Shipton joined Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis and, according to police estimates, 90,000 other people, but according to organizers as many as 300,000, to march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge on Sunday to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“At least 90,000 pro-Palestine protesters walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and into history through the pelting rain, as a larger crowd than expected used the landmark as a symbol, bringing the city to a standstill and leading police to sound the alarm of a potential crowd crush.
In the face of the sheer size of the protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, which organisers say drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people, police were forced to ditch plans for the march to end at North Sydney and redirected the crowd. … The last major march across the bridge was 25 years ago, when 250,000 people marched in support of reconciliation [with Indigenous Australians.]”
The rain didn’t stop us. A historic march. pic.twitter.com/zExuNAkGx9
— ?Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) August 3, 2025
Kostakidis is in court accused of racial hatred by the Zionist Federation of Australia for her social media reporting and commentary critical of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
[Consortium News was on the bridge and will be providing a full video report.].
The New South Wales premiere and police both tried to stop the march from happening by making protestors liable to arrest for blocking traffic. It took a Supreme Court ruling on Saturday to let it go ahead. About four times as many people turned up than organizers had expected — even in a driving winter rain — because of the concerted effort to stop it, an organizer told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The paper quoted Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees as saying said the march was “’even bigger than we dreamt of’ after people travelled from across the country to attend. He called the event a ‘monumental and historic’ success. ‘Today was just a huge display of democracy,’ he said.”
The massive turnout shows the revulsion a good number of Australians feel for Israel’s ongoing slaughter and for their government’s complicity. “Netanyahu/Albanese you can’t hide. Stop supporting genocide,” the protestors chanted.
Police were not prepared for the outpouring of outrage. The Herald said:
“NSW Police acting deputy commissioner Peter McKenna said the march came ‘very close’ to a ‘catastrophic situation’ and that officers had been forced to make a snap decision to turn tens of thousands around to avoid a crowd crush as people exited for North Sydney. McKenna said part of the problem was the organisers’ application to march stated that 10,000 people were likely to attend, not the 90,000 people the police estimated turned up.”
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
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It warms my heart to see Julian out in public standing up for humanity and smiling! Well done Australia! Sending a strong message to Western governments they are on the wrong side of history. Your people are not with you. Free Palestine!
911 and wikileaks was what woke? me in eanest .
He was listed in ‘hot topics’ on NewsNow for years .
absolutely inspiring!
i wish people in my EU country showed so MUCH SOLIDARITY.
even at least half as much would be sth – to show our elected officials
how fed up we are with their hypocrite, spineless pseudo support for
a people who does not bear the slightest blame for the shoa.
No doubt, “Aussies of the 21st Century,” rock’n the heart & soul of the Universe!!! TY!
Hear! Hear! “90k – 300,000” people of conscience, in the rain, “March Across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge.” An absophknlutely, overwhelming response, fm Australia “w/Love. “For the Children of Gaza,” For A Free Press. “One Heart! One Love!!” Leaving “The Bea$t,” AUKUS/NATO/Israel black & blue. A momentous, peaceful, non-violent, beatdown. Basically, the march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge is “an unalloyed take-down of AUKUS’ policies on both the Russia and China fronts” [including Israel]. Clearly, the “BBB,” BB’s B*tch of the West’s hate & wars trump peace. “No Love.”
….. “He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off;” AND, “It takes two hands to clap.”
“With these simple dictums, Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected Joe Biden’s, efforts to pressure Beijing into abandoning Russia on the Ukraine issue, while implicitly blaming Washington & its NATO allies for the crisis. The two aphorisms were cited in a 1030-word Chinese foreign ministry statement on a video call between” Xi Jinping & Joe Biden,
“that was an unalloyed take-down of US policies on both the Russia and China fronts.”
Thank You, Australia for “Living & Loving Out Loud!” TY, Joe Lauria, CN, et al. “Keep It Lit!”
Also in the photo above the guy in denim jacket is Craig foster former soccer /refugee activist
hxxps://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-03/julian-assange-and-craig-foster-at-sydney-harbour/105607334
and the last person on right (looking down) is journalist Antoinette Lattouf who was sacked from the national broadcaster ABC over tweet about Gaza.
hxxps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4exrwj8pjo
Thank you, Joe Lauria and friends. Thank you, Australia!