The Shahin Group, which sold its OTR South Australian petrol station and convenience store chain to an interstate company for $1.15 billion, did not arrange the meeting with renowned Israeli-American author Miko Peled but a spokesperson said members would attend.

Peled was asked to visit Adelaide for two days “through people he knows in SA” to tell influential business people about his perspective of the current conflict and how Palestinian people could best be supported.

A spokesperson for the Shahin Group said that the business people involved with the meeting declined to comment.

In Adelaide yesterday, the activist told InDaily that a reluctance to speak in support of or about the situation for Palestinian people was not surprising.

Peled said state and federal governments were following American policy in supporting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip since Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel killing around 1200 people and taking hostages on October 7.

Declared terrorist group Hamas blamed the blockade of the Gaza Strip, expansion of Israeli settlements and rising Israeli settler violence for their attack.

Since then, relentless Israeli bombing and a ground invasion in Gaza, which is home to about 2.2 million people, has killed more than 18,000 people according to media reports, mostly civilians including thousands of children.

Israeli soldiers on patrol in Gaza. Photo: AP/Victor R. Caivano

Peled fears the number of Palestinians killed will be far higher once “all the bodies are recovered from the rubble” and those reported lost are accounted for.

“Western democracies need to speak up and need to stop supporting Israel,” he said, adding that Israel had the support of the United States and Western democracies while “Palestinians have no one”, and he wanted to encourage SA business leaders to influence government decision-makers.

Peled has regularly travelled to Palestine to work with the popular resistance, the BDS movement, and other justice groups. He has been arrested several times by the Israeli authorities for his activism.

“There’s no one standing up for Palestinians: there has to be sanctions, a no-fly zone over Gaza, protection for Palestinians,” Peled said.

“Everybody blames Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Hamas is this evil in Gaza and supporters use Hamas to justify killing more than 20,000 (media reports say more than 18,000) civilians.”

The author and activist has received international recognition for writing about his unique experience.

Peled’s maternal grandfather Avraham Katznelson was a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

His father, Matti Peled, was a general in the Israeli army and pioneered an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in the 1970s. In 1997, Miko Peled’s sister lost her daughter, Smadar, in a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem.

But Peled blamed the Israeli regime for unrest and his first book The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine was praised by Pulitzer prize winner and social activist Alice Walker who said “few books on the Palestine/Israel issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one”.

Peled espouses the formation of one single democracy in Palestine with equal rights for both sides, releasing a second book in 2017 called Injustice: the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five about the closure of what was America’s largest Muslim charity organisation.

He pointed to the United States this week vetoing a United Nations resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, the United States instead signing off on a weapons package to support Israel that includes about 14,000 tank shells.

“Palestinians don’t have a military, they don’t have any tanks,” Peled said.

“One tank shell will destroy a building and kill those living inside: now they have about 14,000 shells? This is already after this massive destruction. This is butchery for the sake of revenge.”

The leaders of Ireland, Spain, Belgium and Malta today have written a letter to the European Council President Charles Michel calling for a discussion at an upcoming EU summit on the necessity of a ceasefire in Gaza.

When asked about the state government lighting up buildings in the Israeli flag colours after the attack by Hamas and concerns from South Australian community members about a failure to address calls for the same acknowledgment for the Palestinian people, Peled said it was not surprising.

A prominent Muslim leader resigned from the state’s peak multicultural board over the issue.

Peled was also not surprised to hear that Premier Peter Malinauskas considered pulling funding for Adelaide Writer’s Week last year, before the current conflict, when Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa was invited to speak after writing controversial comments about Ukraine.

Abulhawa joined a panel to talk about literature telling an alternative story about the “dispossession” of Palestinian people.

She is the executive director of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, an international children’s NGO upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children.

“This is a tricky issue, people are scared, people are worried, people are under a lot of pressure from Zionists who have weaponised anti-semitism,” Peled said.

“One of the reasons people are afraid is that they are not well informed.

“My role as I see it, I want to educate because I come from this background of a patriotic Israeli family. I know Israeli society; I grew up in Israel.”

Peled is a sought-after speaker and has attended events at four university campuses ranging from Indiana to New Orleans in the United States in the past two weeks.

He will fly to Melbourne from Adelaide to address another group of business people.