Hundreds of Muslim Australians have gathered to mark two years since Israel began its military assault on Gaza in retaliation to Hamas' attack.
Speakers at the emotional rally in Bankstown on Tuesday evening told attendees waving Palestinian flags that Israel's lethal campaign is grounded in decades of illegal occupation.
They gathered despite pleas from several Australian leaders, including Anthony Albanese, to leave October 7 alone for Jewish groups to mourn Hamas's deadly surprise attack on the date two years go.
"We are gathered here today, despite immense pressure on the organisers of this rally ... through the politicians of this country that today is not a day to mourn ... or in remembrance of the Palestinians," speaker Firaz Nomin told the crowd.
"It should be a day instead on which we pretend that history started two years ago."
They lambasted Mr Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong saying they should be concerned with seven Australian citizens detained in Israel as part of an aid flotilla to Gaza shouting "Bring them home".
Other speakers recounted the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Franckom and six-year-old child Hind Rajab, as they led the crowd in chants of "Stop killing children".
At the same time on Tuesday night that about 1000 gathered in Bankstown, roughly 400 marched through Melbourne for a peaceful vigil to honour the war dead.
Further gatherings are planned this week, including Palestine Action Group's planned Sunday rally that would start in Sydney's city centre and finish at the Sydney Opera House forecourt.
Police are challenging that protest, with Jewish leaders taking the rare step of joining a court push to stop it.
The NSW Supreme Court elevated the matter to the state's highest court for a hearing set on Wednesday, when pro-Palestine lawyers will argue police opposition to the protest is unconstitutional.
"You'd have to live in a vacuum not to be aware of the significant public importance of these proceedings to all members of the community," Justice Ian Harrison said, citing the urgency required to have the matter finalised by Sunday.
NSW has a permit system that allows protest participants to block public roads and infrastructure unless a court denies permission due to a police challenge.
A lawyer for the organisers argued a narrow reading of the protest legislation meant only relatively minor protections would be offered.
Specific offences relating to activities at the Opera House would not be covered, unduly constraining demonstrators' implied constitutional right to political communication, they said.
"This case will have far-reaching ramifications, not only for the pro-Palestine movement, but for the right to protest in general in Australia," their lawyer Nick Hanna told AAP.
Police say the Opera House forecourt, which is mostly surrounded by water, is ill-equipped to handle the 10,000 attendees organisers expect.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Michele Goldman said the 2023 Opera House protest, during which chants of "where's the Jews" broke out, was one of the darkest moments in the state's history because the iconic location had been appropriated by anti-Israel demonstrators.
Along with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Ms Goldman's organisation wants to join the police court bid to argue against the location of the protest.
But Justice Harrison said his reading of the Jewish groups' evidence was "the location was less important than the protest march at all".
The council's co-chief Alex Ryvchin agreed and said authorities needed to have "a good hard look at the cost and the toll of these protests".
Police challenged an August march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in court, arguing it would cause too much disruption to the city and on public safety grounds.
The NSW Supreme Court rejected that application, paving the way for more than 100,000 people to march across the bridge.
Premier Chris Minns, who opposed the August march, has backed police in urging the organisers of Sunday's rally to choose another part of Sydney.
