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Rabbi or imam, a threat is still a threat

http://bit.ly/1gk86tz

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/joseph-wakim-rabbi-or-imam-a-threat-is-still-a-threat/story-fni6unxq-1226833133261

The Advertiser
20 February 2014

“BY the power of our Holy Torah, we admonish you to cease immediately all efforts to achieve these disastrous agreements, in order to avoid severe heavenly punishment for everyone involved.”

In an open letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry, this wrath formed part of a recent statement by Rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel and “hundreds of other Rabbis in Israel and around the world”.

The rabbis were incensed by Kerry’s mediation between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

Their statement did not register on our media radar, as such ultra-orthodox voices are treated as atypical of mainstream Israeli society. If the word Torah is replaced by Koran in this statement, the words severe, punishment and everyone suddenly read as a global fatwa.

These rabbis attribute terrorism exclusively to their enemy as they proclaim that Kerry’s “incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’s terrorist gang amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe”.

This war-speak reaches the same pitch as their Muslim counterparts who purport to speak for the same deity.
But it is a fallacy to assume that only Muslims execute such threats and take the divine law into their own hands.

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at a Hebron mosque. He belonged to the Jewish Defence League, which the FBI later classified as a “far right terrorist group”.

He was publicly denounced by mainstream Jewish bodies as a lone madman and an extremist, yet over 10,000 sympathisers visited and venerated his “holy” shrine until it was forcibly removed by the government in 1999.

The growing influence of the 10 per cent of ultra-Orthodox citizens within Israel’s population of eight million continues to create a sectarian-secular divide.

While they may not resort to street violence like Palestinian stone-throwers, they flex their political muscle with violent decisions that suffocate Gazans, expand settlements and segregate the West Bank.

In Australia, the growth of the Muslim presence has seen a growth in Islamophobia. Too often, the extreme actions of an extreme minority are treated as typical and therefore stereotypical.

When the abhorrent placard at a 2012 Sydney rally screamed ‘‘Behead all those who insult the prophet’’, Australians screamed even louder with outrage.

Those responsible for this message were swiftly condemned and written off as unrepresentative by Muslim elders. But the mud stuck on the Muslim name.

When the abhorrent YouTube video by Sheikh Sharif Hussein was falsely attributed to the Islamic Da’wah Centre of South Australia in August 2013, again the elders tried to extinguish the local backlash and gross generalisations.

His “sermon” labelled Australian soldiers in Iraq as ‘‘crusader pigs’’ and beseeched Allah to kill Buddhists and Hindus who have harmed Muslims.

More than anyone, Israelis should understand that hate speech is the ominous precursor to violence, especially when coupled with real power and weapons.

The violent voices of these rabbis deserve the same amplification and accountability as their Muslim counterparts. We cannot keep marginalising them as extremists who don’t count.
They do count, and so will their victims.

Joseph Wakim is the founder of the Australian Arabic Council and author of Sorry we have no space

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Australia must find balance on Palestinians

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/australia-must-find-balance-on-palestinians/story-fni0ffsx-1226798510096

http://bit.ly/1cEKfo5

Australia must find balance on Palestinians

Herald Sun

9 January 2014

THE world body that created the state of Israel in 1947 has proclaimed 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Yet Australia was one of the seven opponents of the UN General Assembly vote on November 26, alongside Israel and the US.

Sometimes the best way to bring home the Palestinian plight is to bring it closer to home metaphorically: imagine living in a four-bedroom home with a garden that has been in your family name for many generations. Then, there is a door knock and authorities say you now need to allow refugees to live in one of your bedrooms. You accommodate. You now need to share your kitchen and bathroom.

More refugees and their relatives arrive. Now you need to sacrifice a second bedroom. Your family start to complain that they feel suffocated.

Your tenants are now armed and behave more like landlords. They insist that you now need to squeeze your growing family into one bedroom, or you are free to leave to live with your relatives in another neighbourhood. The new settlers now need priority access to your kitchen and bathroom. When you complain that this is unfair, you are told to use the kitchens and bathrooms of your neighbours.

The locks in the house have been changed, as have the locks to the control room that houses the water and electricity mains. The settlers now wish to demolish the ancestral home and the garden in order to build a larger house. Trees and personal connections to the land are uprooted. You are welcome to stay as a tenant so long as you stay within your confines and obey their landlord rules.

The majority of your neighbours have witnessed this catastrophe and have protested peacefully about illegal expansions. However, a couple of mansions in the neighbourhood have provided armed guards to protect the settlers from unbalanced criticism.

From the confines of your shrinking one-bedroom bunker, you are asked why the two families cannot live in one home as equals in peace and harmony.

Perhaps Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop would pose such an absurd question. During the pre-election week, Mr Abbott pledged that “we are firmly committed to restoring the Australia-Israeli friendship to the strength it enjoyed under the Howard government”.

This golden age saw foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer promote an unprecedented allegiance to Israel. After the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006, he trumpeted that “Australia had been more supportive of the Israelis than 99 per cent of the world” and that “being called pro-Israeli (is not) a badge of shame”.

Is this restoration representative of our Australian population? In November 2011, a Roy Morgan Research poll revealed the majority of respondents surveyed believe Australia should vote “yes” to recognise Palestine as a full member state of the UN. While 51 per cent responded “yes”, only 15 per cent responded “no”.

Before the so-called Arab Spring, Israel was touted as the only democracy in the Middle East. In December, Mr Abbott qualified Israel as “the only mature pluralistic democracy in the Middle East”.

How is it that this “bastion of Western civilisation” that was founded by refugees has now created its own refugees?

By abstaining from rather than supporting UN resolutions to end “all Israeli settlement activities in all of the occupied territories”, the Abbott Government will be voting against the “free world” and relegating itself to a handful of incomparable member states such as Papua New Guinea and South Sudan. It will be voting to sustain human misery and rendering a two-state solution totally unviable.

As more “peace talks” buy more time for more Palestinian land to be settled, there is more imbalance between occupier and occupied. This is best brought home with a floor plan of the shrinking territories in question.

Hence it is ironic that the justification for our policy change is that “Middle East resolutions must be balanced” and based “on its merits”. This wrongly presumes that there are two equal sides and any imbalance is tipped in Palestine’s favour.

The imbalance is evident when only one side deploys unmanned drones for military surveillance. Only one side has the backing of “the most powerful nation on Earth” by US President Barack Obama’s own admission.

The Abbott Government needs to fulfil its loyalty to our own democracy before it pursues loyalty to a foreign democracy.
Given our bipartisan support for a national apology to our dispossessed people, it is highly hypocritical to now cuddle up to those doing the dispossessing.

Joseph Wakim is founder of Australian Arabic Council and author of Sorry we have no space.

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Christmas is the critical time to reach out to lonely hearts, especially those close to home

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/joseph-wakim-christmas-the-critical-time-to-reach-out-to-lonely-hearts-especially-those-close-to-home/story-fni6unxq-1226789051420

http://bit.ly/1gSTaXf

Christmas is the critical time to reach out to lonely hearts, especially those close to home
The Advertiser, 24 December 2013

The countdown to Christmas is a critical time to reach out to the lonely hearts, especially those close to home. Source: Supplied

As the twinkling gaze of children turns to the North Pole to fulfil their wishes, there is an icy gaze by those who feel poles apart from this love and warmth.
Indeed, the Christmas season can be the most polarising time of the year.

For those who lack this love, it is the time when being the ”have nots” is most in their face. The glow of the nativity scene is lost on them, as they feel that there is no room for them at any inn, not even their own. Sadly, many are tipped over the edge as the pain of loneliness or loss becomes too unbearable.

As families congregate around carols and trees, and the aerial view of society resembles many rotating wheels, those who have fallen off the wheels become the loneliest dots. They seek to be understood, not to understand; to be listened to, not to be lectured. And they may be closer to home than the homeless people.

One can be lonely without being alone. Ironically, the annual celebration of the birth of the messiah could also be the time of pondering the end of a life.

Suicidal Christmas may seem like an oxymoron, but for those involved in its prevention, it is a fatal combination.

It is a time when one can hear one’s own heartbeat pounding in one’s head, and the ears ringing like sirens, and one’s life flash past. The rest of the world seems so caught up in expressions of love that they are oblivious to these ticking time bombs.

And when it tragically happens, there is gnashing of teeth, and a slow motion rewind of all the clues that were missed. The blame game can create lifelong ripple effects and survivor guilt.
When I worked with “street kids”, I struggled to understand why they could still take their own lives regardless of how much unconditional love we showered upon them.

“Do you really want to die or do you want the pain to go away?”
That hole in the heart cannot be healed by outsiders; they had to love themselves. Receiving love from others was not the suicide bulwark.

At the funerals, loved ones struggle to find peace. They try to answer one question: Why?

The countdown to Christmas is a critical time to reach out to the lonely hearts, especially those close to home. As we accelerate towards our self-imposed deadlines, we may speed past some subtle cries for help.

A person who suddenly decides to visit relatives and thank them for nostalgic childhood memories may be applauded with, “he is finally learning to show respect for her elders – isn’t this wonderful?” But he was actually preparing his farewells.

A person who stops going out with friends at night and instead withdraws to his bedroom may be applauded with, “finally he has outgrown that dangerous stage and stopped wasting money with late nights – isn’t it wonderful that he now stays at home with his family?” But he was actually starting to close in on himself.

A person who starts to give away personal and favourite belongings to others may be applauded with, “he takes after his father – isn’t this wonderful that he has become so generous?” But he was actually parting from all worldly possessions.

A person who declares his unconditional love may be applauded with, “he will grow up to be a fine man who is not afraid to express emotions”. But he was actually saying goodbye.

This Christmas, we can give the gift of saving a life, by giving presence rather than presents. It is indeed the gift of giving, even in the simplest abode, that was celebrated in the first Christmas.

We can try to make lonely people feel loved, and hopefully that they deserve to be loved. It is at this polarising time that they may most need to believe in another miracle: that they are worthy of our time, and worthy of self-love.

Joseph Wakim is a former Multicultural Affairs Commissioner and author of Sorry, We Have No Space.

If you need help, visit Lifeline here or call 13 11 14 or visit beyond blue here or call 1300 22 4636.

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Community on a winner with new language for fighting crime

http://bit.ly/1aiTzho

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/policespeak-drops-racial-labels-community-the-winner-20131117-2xp28.html

Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Nov 2013

Community on a winner with new language for fighting crime

The alarm clock was programmed for the 6.30am news bulletin. The first three stories centred on names that I recognised as Middle Eastern: Obeid, Gittany, Hamzy. The blanket of shame was poised to cover my head when the news reader mentioned their ethnicity. But he never did. This was a new alarm clock but we seem to have snoozed right through a milestone moment.

Eddie Obeid was at the centre of the ICAC inquiries. Simon Gittany was accused of throwing his fiancee from a 15th-floor balcony. Mohammed Hamzy was recently arrested as the de facto gang leader of Brothers 4 Life.

A decade ago, such names would have been magnets for the ”other” label, treated as non-Australians, baiting the shock jocks to call for immediate deportation. Police, media and government statements would have been littered with references to ”Middle Eastern” as if this explained everything, even though it explained nothing.

But this racialisation of the crimes was a cultural cop-out, as if the Middle Eastern DNA predisposed “these people” to crime, even though they were home-grown.

Fast forward 10 years, and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell congratulates the police for their efforts “to tackle gun crime across this city”. No reference to race. Simple as that. After ”breaking the back” of the gang on November 7, Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas also made no reference to race: “We arrested 10 members of the Brothers 4 Life gang, all of whom were hit with very serious charges.”

As well as commending Operation Talon, which has halved gun crimes since its start on August 17, Kaldas also noted the “members of the community who have already come forward … in helping us seize guns and arrest the criminals.”

Rather than resorting to racial labels and alienating the community, the new police culture builds on relationships and co-operation to deliver results.

The police statements to the media never once used crude descriptors such as ”Middle Eastern appearance” and demonstrated that this is irrelevant and unnecessary.

Contrary to all the scaremongering about removing these distracting descriptors, the recent arrests suggest that they may hinder rather than help in effective policing, as they risk putting offside those the police most need to be onside. Removal of racial references ensures lines of inquiry are not railroaded by ethnic detours.

By removing the race-tinted glasses and race labels from their apparatus, police may have inadvertently cracked the code of silence that often frustrates their efforts. By deeming race as irrelevant, the police leadership has steered public discourse towards a criminal gun culture, not a criminal ethnic culture, and talkback radio has finally followed suit. The strategy has succeeded in smoking out the criminals rather than driving them underground.

In my outreach work in building trust within the street sub-culture, it was clear that if there was no relationship, there was no responsibility. The rapport that the police have built with communities has replaced cold-calling with hot leads.

Kaldas aptly articulates this partnership: “Please remember, the information you provide could save the life of someone you love.”

When police behave badly, there are passionate demands for a public inquiry as to what went wrong. But when police swiftly snuff out a crime wave, there needs to be equally passionate demands for an inquiry as to what went right.

The lessons learned could be shared and applied not only in other Australian jurisdictions tackling gang and bikie crimes, but internationally.

If the police culture focuses on the criminal culture, not the ethnic culture, then it is a win-win-win for all concerned.

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Beware Australia’s real ‘illegals’

http://bit.ly/17QYaGP

The Advertiser, 8 November 2013

PICTURE this scenario at an Australian international airport arrivals terminal: “
Excuse me, sir. We are the Federal Police. You are under arrest.”
“Are you serious? What for?”
“Participating in illegal military activities while in Syria.”
“I was on a humanitarian mission!”
“You will need to prove it.”

But this scene will not play itself out in reality while politicians drag their feet in a legal quagmire.
The Abbott Government is renowned for its simple and clear statements, especially pertaining to border protection.

The incarnation of the ‘‘stop the boats’’ war-cry was to launch Operation Sovereign Borders, deploy a three-star general and render the seafaring asylum seekers ‘‘illegal arrivals’’.

So what is the incarnation of its “baddies versus baddies’’ banner overarching Syria?

Why have we not seen the Government launch Operation Foreign Fighters, deploy a three-star general and render the returning mercenaries ‘‘illegal combatants’’?

In his book Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts, Dr David Malet from Melbourne University claims that the 200 Australians participating in the Syrian war outnumber all other Westerners.

He contends that “the biggest danger is that they return home as recruiters” and are hailed as “heroes in their local communities”.

Surely, this must render them more dangerous than the ‘‘illegal arrivals’’ who are desperately seeking life for their beloved families, not martyrdom for their ‘‘brothers in arms’’ and a ‘‘ticket to paradise’’? Already four Australians are known to have been killed in Syria since the uprising began.

It was rich of former foreign minister Bob Carr to urge his successor to revisit the idea of legally blocking these Australian citizens from returning home from the Syria war zones. He had his chance.

What has been the result of his strategy of intelligence gathering and merely monitoring their recruitment activities after their return? The number of fighters swelled from single to double to triple digits.

While our intelligence agencies need to keep their confidential information and control orders out of the public domain in case the radicalised recruiters go underground, the public deserve more than blanket response of ‘‘trust us – we are doing much more than you think’’.

Regardless of reality, there is a prevailing perception that Australian jihadists come and go with impunity.
Community advocates sounded the alarm when there were two high-profile Australian fatalities in the battle zone in 2013. The alarm was amplified with when this figure subsequently increased.

The government’s “‘wait and see’’ strategy revealed a gaping loophole and made a mockery of our federal laws.

Those opposing the Syrian government did not want their sons to slip down this hole, as virtually all embraced Australia to flee from war. Those supporting the Syrian government also opposed this loophole because of their general concern over foreign mercenaries and terrorists allied with al Nusra and al-Qa’ida.

When David Hicks was participating in paramilitary training in Afghanistan in 2001, the US Military Commission charged him with “providing material support for terrorism” and he was detained in Guantanamo Bay until 2007. But when other Australians participate in military activities in the plethora of pro and anti-government ‘‘brigades’’, they return home to a hero’s welcome.

The current law is articulated by the Department of Foreign Affairs travel advice: “It is illegal under Australian law for Australian citizens, including dual citizens, to provide any kind of support to any armed group in Syria.

“This includes engaging in fighting for either side, funding, training or recruiting someone to fight.”. . . Australians who commit these offences while overseas may be prosecuted in Australia”.

Breaches may incur heavy fines and a maximum 10 years’ imprisonment. So why has there not been a single arrest, prosecution of or conviction reported to the Australian public since the alarm bells were sounded?

Too many of these Australians publicly claim to be offering humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugee epidemic, but their Facebook photos show them posing proudly with guns.
If the problem is loopholes within the current Australian law, then it is incumbent upon the Attorney-General George Brandis to update the national security laws. , just as the anti-terrorism laws were updated with 54 new Bills under the Howard government. The real ‘‘illegals’’ are arriving in planes, not boats.

Joseph Wakim is the founder of the Australian Arabic Council and author of Sorry We Have No Space.

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Are Christian Arabs an endangered species?

bit.ly/16rzkZT

National Times, 22 October 2013

Are Christian Arabs an endangered species?

From the onset of the Arab Spring in Syria, I was advocating a third way: unarmed dialogue, rather than the status quo advocated by the pro-Assad rallies or the forced regime change advocated by the armed rebels.

The more I listened to stories from those living in Syria, the more I suspected that the Arab Spring foliage was hiding some foreign seeds and foreign weeds. There was a disconnect between the factual testimonies and the fictitious tale. Many minorities, especially Christians, feared that a crude form of democracy would prevail: majority rules with no constitutional protection for the most vulnerable citizens.

But it was an uphill battle for me to find media space to question the Arab Spring goodies and baddies. “Sorry, we have no space” became shorthand for “sorry, we have no space for counter narratives”. If the Christians were declared an “endangered species” of animal, rather than the indigenous people, there would have been greater global outrage.

After all, the fishing bait that I was feeding to the media may have been bitter to swallow and my fishing hook was upside down in the shape of a question mark.

More than a decade after George W Bush’s divisive ultimatum, “Either you are with us with us, or you are with the terrorists”, it appeared that some still chose to watch a colour television in black and white.

Then I happened to be grounded at the airport. My plane had “something missing from its checklist” and could not take off. As I gazed out of the plane’s window, I had an epiphany that something else was grounded – me. After more than 20 years with more than 500 published opinion pieces, why was I still grounded at the same intersection?

A former editor once sniggered: “When will you stop beating the same racism drum?”
I replied: “When you stop beating the racist drum. When you stop, I stop.”

I looked at the wings of the plane and thought about the wings of my advocacy. Those who walked with me in the 1991 Gulf War had moved on. Those who walked with me in the 2001 War on Terror had moved on.

Many became disillusioned with this unpaid work. Some were fed up with being “fire extinguishers” that were rolled out every time Arabs behaved badly. Others became armchair advocates for the advocates, tweeting and emailing from their “clearing house” of articles by advocates. Many pursued creative paths by writing plays, writing poetry, writing musicals, writing PhDs or writing speeches.

I understood them, but still stood there. The perils of criticising fellow Christians when they are “Islamophobic” and criticising fellow Arabs when they are “anti-Semitic” come at a personal price.

But with the rise of so-called “Christianophobia” in Muslim majority countries, as warned by peace-activist Mother Agnes Mariam and British historian Rupert Shortt, it will be inspiring to see the rise of Muslim advocates defending the Christian “endangered species”. Just as many of those speaking out against Islamophobia were fellow Christians.

For too long, some sections of our media treated Arabs as a wild species to be contained and scrutinised in a test tube. But the irony was that some of us advocates were treating media editors like a school of fish without realising it. I wanted to inhabit their habitat and understand their feeding patterns so I could offer the right bait to catch the coveted “column”. But their feeding habits kept changing.

In the shadows of the Arab revolutions, there was an advocacy evolution. In the main streams of yesteryear, the bait had to be a proven “head” of a proven organisation with proven representation. But with global warming, the media mountains were melting and little islands were breaking away and sinking. The fish were migrating. They were more interested in immediacy than legitimacy.

Their food was literally “online” and they could feed from anywhere. As a free floater, my catch could no longer be fetched by casting one rod to one fish at a time. I needed to cast my net out wide.

After staring at each other through the barrel of the test tube for too long, editors and writers learnt that we swam the same turbulent ocean like little dots on a global page. We never said something so simple. “Let’s have a coffee” was code for let’s have a conversation. After all, coffee and conversation start with C which is an open circle, while Other starts with O which is a ‘closed circle.’

Joseph Wakim is the founder of the Australian Arabic Council and a former multicultural affairs commissioner. This is an edited excerpt from his forthcoming book Sorry we have no space to be released this month.

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Tall ships need taller humanity on boat people

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15558
http://bit.ly/1b8QNcT

ON LINE opinion, 9 October 2013

The spectacle of the white sails in the sun in Sydney Harbour was majestic. But the only indigenous Australians I saw were busking with their didgeridoo in Circular Quay.

It begged the question: what does this spectacle mean for the original Australians?
Was it an apocalyptic reminder of the First Fleet which offloaded white convicts then declared this their colony? Does the spectacle trigger an inherited phobia of white sails?

As boat after boat arrived on their shores, perhaps their elders saw the disruption, diseases and destruction to their ancient civilisation. Perhaps they dreamt that they could stop these boats and turn them back. Perhaps they contemplated their equivalent to Operation Sovereign Borders. Indeed, a cartoonist could have a field day depicting two tribal elders watching the white sails as one nudges the other declaring: time to activate operation sovereign borders as they dispatch their fleet of canoes.

Perhaps their descendants today shake their heads at our inability to see the irony of the latest wave of boat people phobia: the descendants of the white boat people who trespassed the original sovereign borders are now threatening to tow back any trespassing boats.

But there is another irony with the boat people phobia. Prior to the First Fleet, other boats had trespassed sovereign borders yet they were more welcome. The Makassan boats carried fishermen who sought trepan (sea cucumber) in trade exchanges. Like the current boat people, most came in fishing boats from the Indonesian Archipelago. And many introduced Islam to Australia. There is no evidence that the indigenous people were ever phobic of the spectacle of these Makassan boats.

It is this underlying phobia that is tainting the Coalition government’s Operation Sovereign Borders.

In his first briefing, the rationale declared by Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Scott Morrison was that that this “military-led border security operation” was his government’s “response to stopping the flow of illegal boat arrivals to Australia”. He evoked the relevant numbers that this cost Australia under the previous government: 50,000 people arrived illegally by boat on 800 vessels costing Australian taxpayers more than $9 billion and “sadly led to more than 1100 deaths at sea”.

It is the last conservative statistic that receives the least attention in the Minister’s ensuing “tougher approach”. The policy reeks of aerosol like an insect repellent. The rhetoric reduces the asylum seekers to tax-payer irritants that need a “broad chain of measures …to deter, to disrupt, to prevent”.

The problem is they are people, not insects.

Now imagine the same policy with greater emphasis on the last fatal statistic rather than on tax dollars. Imagine Minister Morrison declared a more humane rationale:

“Australians are proud of their warm hearted nature. We are proud of our hospitable rather than hostile nature. We remember that many of our ancestors took long sea voyages to settle into this great nation without regard to the sovereignty of the original people.

“Our primary concern is not the financial cost to our pockets, but the tragic cost of human lives lost. It is this statistic that must drive our resolve to prevention. Humans who drowned in vain, without names, without faces, without stories, without burials. Together, we must stop the causes of boat people, and stop the lies that predators peddle which give false hope to the desperate and vulnerable.”

His core message should not be that “those coming by boats will not be getting what they came for” but that boarding these fishing boats is suicidal for you and the children who you love more than anything in the world.

This more humane rationale protects Australia’s reputation while challenging the rationale of many asylum seekers who are driven by the love of their children who they desperately wish to save. We know that these families do not throw their children overboard, but the survivor testimonials of those whose children drowned at sea need to be amplified: boarding these boats may be akin to throwing your children overboard.

Ironically, voices of these grieving survivors could be the most powerful deterrent because they appeal to this universal love of their children.

As the white sails eclipse the Sydney Opera House which inspired its design, the navy ships dwarf the surrounding fishing boats. The juxtapositions create a memorable spectacle: our most powerful battle ships which were intended to deter and protect our borders are now being used to wage war on the weakest boats in the world.

It is only when our megaphone message changes to ‘stop the boats because we do care for you and your children’ that our humanity rises higher than the tall ships.

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Why would Lebanese board the boat?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15529
http://bit.ly/18lyHUy
On Line Opinion, 1 October 2013

Why would Lebanese board the boat?

The tragic drowning of the Lebanese citizens in Indonesia should be a wakeup call for officials … Lebanese people cannot build their future in their own country.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora galvanised the tragedy to highlight the desperation of poverty-stricken parts of Lebanon.

But this sentiment may be music to the ears of Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has been singing the same tune that our primary responsibility in these tragedies is to stop the boats.

While Abbott may galvanise the tragedy to highlight the fatal ‘means’, the source countries are navel-gazing about the human ’cause’.

But in a new military model that is driven by Operation Sovereign Borders and immigration policies coupled with Border Protection, questions of why asylum seekers leave their home countries are off the political radar.

To seriously and simply ‘stop the boats’, we cannot afford to be simplistic. We need to stop the causes of the people inside the boats. This does not mean solving all the inhumane push factors that drive this desperation, but it does mean looking beyond the ‘people smuggling’ pull factors and looking more at the people than the boats.

Who were the people inside the latest boat tragedy?

We know that they were an estimated 120 people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen, of whom there have been only 28 survivors so far.

We know that they were at sea for five days before food and water supplies depleted before the two Indonesian crew became disoriented then decided to return to the Javanese coast in six meter waves.

We know that the Lebanese boarders were mainly from Akkar, the northernmost region of Lebanon bordering Syria.

We know that more than a million Syrians have fled the war to Lebanon which has placed enormous economic strain on this struggling neighbour of only four million residents. Stories of Akkar families struggling without affordable schools, electricity and food to feed themselves abound. Stories of Syrians resorting to cheap labour, crime and even prostitution abound. Stories of car bombs exploding near Lebanese mosques in August, echoing the seismic sectarian strife within Syria and threatening to widen the fault lines within Lebanese civil society abound. Stories of frustrated Lebanese crying out for some of the foreign aid that is sent to their new Syrian ‘neighbours’ abound.

Stories of people predators with promises of visitor visas to Indonesia then a ship to Christmas Island abound. Akkar families with ‘nothing to lose and everything to gain’ became the perfect prey, in the hope of a future life in Australia.
Their voices of desperation drowned out the voices of reason by their Australian relatives over the phone, discouraging them, warning them that there is no such ship – it is a suicidal fishing boat.

The rest is history repeating itself, as recovered bodies are identified then flown back to their village for burial, if indeed they are recovered.

The latest tragedy has sent shock waves throughout Lebanon, prompting introspection about poverty and safety for those who see no future for their children. Local MP Nidal Tohme blamed “the neglect of [Lebanon] to Akkar residents” claiming that “their deprivation and leaving them alone to face poverty and unemployment is what led the sad citizens to venture to the unknown.”

Legitimate questions have been asked about how the boat boarders could use communications technology as an SOS, but could not use communications technology to predict the rough seas or discern that the smugglers were lying about the safe ships. They paint a picture of the asylum seekers as illegitimate and unsophisticated. Compatriots from Lebanon are likely to be deterred by the news of this tragedy, and may attract more attention from their government, both of which may be constructive outcomes.

But our discourse in Australia and Prime Minister Abbott’s discourse with his Indonesian counterpart this week needs to extend beyond the boats per se.

The Abbott government’s decision to curb foreign aid by $4.5 billion to pay for infra-structure is an example of compounding the causes of the people inside the boats. By steering and supporting a political solution rather than a military solution for Syria in the UNSC, Australia could again be redressing the causes of the people inside the boats.
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated, “the burden of helping the world’s forcibly displaced people is starkly uneven … anti-refugee sentiment is heard loudest in industrialised countries”.

Speaker of Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri called on authorities in Australia and Indonesia to launch an investigation to determine who was responsible for the incident.

But while Lebanon looks in the mirror, perhaps our prime minister can also look into his moral mirror and realise that his honourable mandate for humanity must always prevail over his political mandate for sovereignty.

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Give up something meaningful for Lent

Published in Sunday Age, 10 March 2013
http://bit.ly/14LDQkt

Fast and loose – give up something meaningful for Lent

”WHAT I have given up for Lent” has become a fashion statement in some social circles. The announcement has been trumpeted so loudly, it may as well be tattooed on foreheads with pride in place of the ashes of penance. Indeed, it is written on the wall of many Facebook pages for all the friends to see.

Some of my ”faithful” flock mope pathetically about how they have given up their favourite luxury – chips, pizza, chocolate or caffeine. They appear to have forgotten that it is not what goes into their mouth that defiles them, but what comes out of it: pride, profanities, gossip.

As a child raised with Lebanese Christian traditions, spirituality and culture intersected and fused. Meat was the prescribed sacrifice during Lent, which was meaningless to me as I detested meat.

I should have been denied dairy products instead. Ironically, I looked forward to Lent because I much preferred the lentil soups than the mandatory meat anyway.

Many Christian faithful who celebrate Lent may need to be reminded of its origins. It is meant to be a time to enhance the relationship with their maker through private prayer, with their ”neighbour” through private almsgiving, and with themselves through some private sacrifice.

But before the faithful sacrifice alcohol, there are some sobering biblical reminders against pride and hypocrisy because ”God sees the unseen”. When you fast, wash your face and comb your hair so that only God notices, rather than look miserable and moan so that people pity you. When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet. And in praying, do it in secret.

Looks like some social sins persist after two millenniums. Indeed, bragging on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram about what you gave up for Lent is merely a modern manifestation of hypocrisy and reward seeking.

Herein lies the biggest difference between fasting privately for spiritual reasons and fasting publicly for social reasons. The former is tougher because it involves long-term faith that ”God will reward you later”, while the latter is tempting because it involves fulfilment from ”friends” and ”followers”.

For the ”fashion” fasters, it prompts the question – why sacrifice your favourite edibles if you undermine it with conceit and complaint? Are you point-scoring for this life now, or the next life?

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Hard questions need to be asked in Syria

http://bit.ly/1ceWlmY
Hard Questions Must Be Asked In Syria
New Matilda, 8 August 2013
Joseph Wakim

Who committed the Syrian gas attack? Unless the UN can do its work, we’ll never know. To condemn the regime without evidence is to risk repeating the mistakes made in Iraq, writes Joseph Wakim

One glaring question has been avoided in the smoke surrounding the Ghouta video of chemical warfare: what if such an atrocity was committed by the anti-Assad forces, our de facto allies?

This taboo question poses many practical and political problems, especially with a fractured opposition without a clear leader who can be prosecuted. Human rights advocates such as Amnesty International have demanded that the United Nations Security Council refer this incident to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But war crimes need to be brought to trial without prejudice, regardless of the culprit.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urged that “we get the facts absolutely right first”, evoking the 2003 Iraqi invasion that was “based on, frankly, a lie”. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wasn’t as cautious, describing the attack as “the kind of horror that we’ve come to expect from one of the worst regimes in the world.”

Abbott’s pre-emptive comments echo British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who urged supporters of the Syrian regime to “wake up to … its murderous and barbaric nature”. Such comments show contempt for the 20-strong team of UN chemical weapons inspectors, led by Swedish expert Ake Sellstrom, who arrived in Syria last Sunday and who have been granted access to visit the site — despite being welcomed by sniper fire, a hallmark of the rebels.

Haigh’s provocations were predictable, coming from the country that hosts the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad propaganda front which rarely reports on atrocities against Christian minorities and is run by a one man band, Rami Abdulrahman.
Rudd need not reminisce over the “weapons of mass destruction” propaganda of 10 years ago. Syria provides more recent examples. Three months ago, UN Commission of Inquiry investigator Carla del Ponte announced that “according to testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas.” To want to ask these hard questions about the armed rebels is not a cynical conspiracy, but a recognition of the historical reality of the Syrian conflict.

Del Ponte’s bombshell gave credence to the counter-narrative that the rebels were provoking US president Barack Obama to trigger his contingency plan, announced in August 2012, in the event that chemical weapons were utilised: “a red line for us … that would change my calculus.”

With the latest Ghouta story, could the rebels be yet again waving the red rag to the US to charge into Syria like a raging bull, as promised a year ago? Obama issued this ultimatum not only “to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground”, but would he sanction an attack on the rebels, his allies, after granting the Free Syrian Army US$250 million in “non-lethal aid” in April 2012?

If the UN inspectors verify that chemical weapons were indeed deployed by the Syrian government, then president Bashar al Assad should be prosecuted for this crime against humanity in the ICC. If it was committed by rogue elements within Assad’s army, or his Shabiha, they should likewise be held accountable, just as we have seen with rogue personnel within the Afghan and American armies. But if the UN inspectors incriminate the rebels, who exactly is taken to court?

What if the Free Syrian Army deny that it was them and blame one of the many armed anti-Assad jihadists, each following fatwas from different heads in different countries with different supply chains of finances and weapons? Would such a scenario incriminate the sources of the weapons even if this is Saudi Arabia, Turkey or America? How would the ICC prosecute the “head office” of al Qaeda, Jabhat al Nusra, Liwa al Islam brigade or the cocktail of rebel groups and terrorist groups, some already fighting each other?

Clearly, this is far from a “civil war” and threats of international intervention ring hollow given the presence of foreign mercenaries already on the ground, some uploading their beheadings, cannibalism and infidel cleansing on YouTube for the world to see.

There are many reasons to be cautious of the amateur videos that have provoked global condemnation. Why are all the quoted eye-witnesses in the reports “opposition activists” rather than ordinary Syrian citizens? Why would the Syrian government ostensibly invite the weapons inspectors then flagrantly mock them with an act that is both genocidal and suicidal?
Why are the carers not wearing protective clothing to prevent contamination? Why has Doctors Without Borders counted 355 deaths, while the rebels say more than 1300?

Neighbouring Israel triggered the first chemical weapons alert in April using their satellite technology. Israel is concerned about both how Syria’s arsenal might be deployed in the current conflict, and the possibility of weapons falling into the wrong hands in a post-Assad regime. Israeli Minister for Intelligence and Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz, is understandably critical of the UN: “probing the use of chemical weapons without investigating who used it (sic) is ridiculous”. However, this call for UN intervention is ironic, given Israel’s refusal to join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, refusal to confirm or deny possessing nuclear bombs, and the UN General Assembly resolution 174 calling on Israel to open its own nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

As Australia prepares to take our place in the UN Security Council in September, we have an historic opportunity to be a circuit breaker. We could push for unarmed dialogue among Syrian citizens, free from foreign intervention. We could engage with the newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who has joined the global condemnation, given his country’s experience of chemical warfare with Iraq in the 1980’s: “We completely and strongly condemn the use of chemical weapons because the Islamic Republic of Iran is itself a victim of chemical weapons.” Australia can clear the smoke by asking the right questions.