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Pro-Palestine activists have taken to the Carols by Candlelight stage in Melbourne in a protest against the war in Gaza.
They disrupted the event briefly about 8.15pm today, waving Palestinian flags.
One woman ran toward the podium where Channel Nine personalities David Campbell and Sarah Abo were presenting.
“While you’re carolling, kids are dying in Gaza,” the woman yelled, before the microphone was cut off and she was escorted away by security.
Campbell attempted to calm the crowd as some booed.
“Everybody relax, settle down. Everyone’s allowed to have their – they’re allowed to have their moment, to have their time in the sun,” he said.
“But we did have kids here. So we want to make sure those kids are safe. They’re going to come back out in a second.
“It is a very hard time in this world. It’s a hard time, for us all to come together on a night like this too.”
The protesters were quickly escorted off stage.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said the boos showed the protesters were “not wanted”.
“You can always count on anti-Israel extremists to make everything about them and to appall decent, ordinary people,” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The war sparked when Hamas-led militants stormed communities in southern Israel on October 7, killing 1200 and taking 240 hostages, has devastated parts of the Gaza Strip.
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people has been displaced.
More than a dozen Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, the Israeli military said today, in a sign that Hamas is still putting up a fight despite weeks of brutal war.
Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history and has claimed a staggering toll on Palestinian civilians.
More than two-thirds of the 20,000 killed were women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday morning that a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed by an Israeli drone attack while inside the building of al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis. It provided no further details.
Yesterday, rescuers and hospital officials said more than 90 Palestinians, including dozens from an extended family, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on two homes in Gaza.
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for the rising civilian death toll, widespread damage and deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Israel blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, citing the militants’ use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel has launched thousands of airstrikes since October 7, and has largely refrained from commenting on specific attacks.
In the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank, the normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town on Sunday, as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the war.
The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists who gather each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the empty square.
