At least 2000 pro-Palestinian supporters marched through the streets of Melbourne’s CBD on Tuesday night under the watch of dozens of police, as several speakers called out what they termed “Western hypocrisy” over the treatment of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and Palestine’s right to defend itself by “any means necessary”.

The snap after-work rally, organised by the group ‘Free Palestine Melbourne’ attracted young and old - including school children in uniforms - and heard from a number of activists including Jewish woman Dr Jordy Silverstein from a group called ‘Loud Jew collective’.

“I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors raised on stories of suffering genocide, trauma and loss and I refuse to be part of a culture and politics that says that it is okay to perpetrate these harms on another people,” she told the crowd.

Silverstein said that she and “many other Jews” supported the Palestinian people and were outraged by the lighting up of public landmarks like the National Gallery of Victoria

“We don’t want your blue and white lit up buildings. We don’t want your statements and solidarity with Israel. We don’t want you to send military funding,” she said.

Another speaker, who spoke presented himself as Geral from left-wing Filipino organisation Bayan said his country empathised with the people of Palestine due to its history of Spanish colonisation and said violence could justified.

“We know as Filipinos from our hearts that the oppressed have the right to resist by any means necessary even if that means fighting with arms,” he said to a cheering crowd.

Another speaker, presented as a Palestinian woman named Dana, said the conflict in Israel was Palestinians “finding their voice” and that “decolonisation” was underway.

“No one, absolutely no one is allowed to take the high moral ground and tell us how to defend ourselves,” she said.“Your selective humanity and double standards is hypocrisy. It’s complicity.”

She said those who supported the people of Ukraine fighting back against the Russian invasion of their country were, “calling Palestinians terrorists for doing the same thing”.

“For the past 75 years, we have been killed. We have been brutalized, we have been slaughtered. We have been ethnically cleansed, dispossessed and displaced,” she said.

“Make no mistake that we will be standing by unapologetically supporting and demanding our right to freedom, we will be unapologetic in supporting and demanding and seeking or liberation and our decolonisation from the settler colony”.

After an hour of speeches the crowd chanted “out, out Israel out” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” as they waved Palestinian flags and marched a block as traffic and trams were stopped.

Unlike at a similar rally in Sydney on Tuesday night, no anti-Semitic chants or flag burning occurred.

Another rally is scheduled for Sunday.