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Islamic State is a creation like Frankenstein’s monster

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/islamic-state-is-a-creation-like-frankensteins-monster-20140922-10k8f4.html

http://bit.ly/1x3nGFU

 

Islamic State is a creation like Frankenstein’s monster

Joseph Wakim

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 2014

 

“We’ve seen this before. Extremists, foreign fighters returning home, responsible for terrorist attacks in our region.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop issued this warning to the United Nations Security Council last Friday regarding the threat posed by Islamic State beyond its caliphate.

But if earlier warnings were heeded, the crisis of the Islamic State monster could have been averted. Three years ago, Arab voices warned “we’ve seen this before”.

From Syria, Mother Agnes-Mariam warned that the Arab Spring had been “hijacked by foreign Islamist mercenaries, with strong support from Western countries”. In newspaper columns at the time I warned these Salafists were exploiting the sectarian fault lines to impose a theocracy, not a democracy.

Such warnings were ignored and these militants morphed into the monster we now know as Islamic State, or sometimes as ISIL.

Although the US-Saudi-Qatar alliance intended their pipelines of weapons and funds to reach the Free Syrian Army, their “intelligence” must have shown what local Arabs already knew: the pipelines were leaking. These dangerous toys would land in the hands of Al Nusra Front, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, and ultimately Islamic State, which now reigns supreme.

For veteran Arab advocates, this pattern is a deja vu: the West aids and abets mercenaries to emasculate a monster, until the mercenaries become the next monster that the West needs to “degrade and ultimately destroy”. But we are rarely asked to diagnose the causes of wars in our ancestral birthplace because the bloodstains may lead to the US and its regional allies. Instead, we are asked about who is bleeding on the streets.

We need to feed the shock horror stories as if it was a scoreboard of “team Australia” versus “unwelcome visitors”. But it should be no shock at all. As in the 1991 war on Iraq and the 2001 war on terrorism, Muslims and Arabs are conflated into one malevolent monolith. They are wedged between two media imperatives: the toxic talkback that poisons our airwaves with stories on Muslim villains, which in turn fill pages with photos of Muslim victims.

We roll our eyes as we roll out the same ugly examples. Last Thursday, a senior Imam leading a group of Hajj pilgrims was detained by Customs at Sydney Airport for a “routine baggage check”, which caused him to miss his flight. The Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim has received a written death threat depicting bleeding swords. Again, graffiti on mosques, egging of homes, threats by mail, and drive-by bigotry have confirmed that some see this as open season to terrorise Muslims and give them a “taste of their own medicine”. Again, an Islamophobia register has been opened.

While one motorist flaunting a black flag threatened to slaughter Christians at my children’s Catholic school last Tuesday, another peace-loving Muslim offered a bouquet to express his disgust.

As Prime Minister, Tony Abbott needs to send a blunt message to the perpetrators: “Have a good, long, hard look at yourselves,” because team Australia is about kicking goals, not kicking Muslims who are your fellow team members. Unlike Bob Hawke in 1991 and John Howard in 2001, he needs to condemn bigotry immediately (previous prime ministers did condemn bigotry, but weeks after they were repeatedly requested to do so).

Within Arab conversations, cynicism prevails about the predictable pretext to war: “We will save you from the monster (that we created).” It is borne out of cyclical and sickening patterns.

Here’s a reminder: On December 20, 1983, US special envoy Donald Rumsfeld did a handshake deal with Saddam Hussein when Iraq fought against Iran after the Islamic revolution. On  August 2, 1990, Hussein flexed his muscles into Kuwait and had to be, ultimately, destroyed.

Between 1986 and 1989, the CIA funnelled $500 million in weapons into Afghanistan when Osama bin Laden fought with his mujahideen militants to successfully expel the Communist Russian invasion during the Cold War. On September 11, 2001, bin Laden’s militants, having morphed into al-Qaeda, flexed their muscles into the United States with terrorist attacks. They then became public enemy No. 1. number one

Since 2011, the US-Saudi-Qatar donors have aided and abetted the anti-Assad mercenaries. In 2014, the Islamic State monster flaunted US equipment that it had seized and now needs to be degraded.

Unless we stop history repeating itself, we are doomed to witness yet another Arab leader crowned then crushed in 10 years. The familiar narrative evokes Mary Shelley’s haunting tragedy about Dr Frankenstein, who creates the monster for his own benefit. When the monster turns on him, Frankenstein hunts him down to exact revenge.

Although the story is nearly 200 years old, the current war testifies that the moral remains unheeded. The modern name for Frankenstein’s monster in US foreign policy is blowback. It is an ironic name because the Arab landscape is treated as a barbecue with many burners. As the flame knobs are continually upgraded and degraded, blowback is inevitable and thousands of innocent civilians will continue to be scorched in the process. While fictitious Frankenstein made one mistake with a tragic ending, the factual Frankenstein keeps cooking up monsters then counter-monsters, and needs to be told: khalas (enough).

 

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Plenty of smoke but little fire in Tony Abbott’s concerns over Muslim radicals

http://m.theage.com.au/comment/plenty-of-smoke-but-little-fire-in-tony-abbotts-concerns-over-muslim-radicals-20140901-10ay16.html

http://bit.ly/1B8AlGQ

Published in The Age, 2 September 2014

The Islamic State is emerging as a political movement.

 

The Prime Minister should be a beacon leading us out of the terrorism smoke, not fanning the flames.

Mr Abbott’s announcement that $13.4 million will be earmarked to “support community efforts to prevent young Australians being radicalised” is fraught with contradictions.

How can one allocate money to a “community” solution before we have any evidence-based research on the cause? There is no singular definable career path or pathology for the radicalised terrorist. Some are educated professionals who are drawn to ideology of a pure Islamic caliphate. Others are disenfranchised and unemployed, angry at their lack of belonging. Whether it is the pull or push factor, the allure of power and making history is a magnet for some.

The compounding factors may be idiosyncratic to the individual, compounded by their selected peers or by their selected social media. There is no evidence that the family or the “community” sanctions or supports this pathway to violent extremism. When discovered, these individuals appear to be leading a double life.

If “community” refers to Islamic organisations and mosques, they are rarely on the radar or habitat of these recluses. When was a radicalised jihadist recognised as a regular at a youth centre? These marginalised individuals appear to shy away from these “mainstream” professional agencies that encourage education and employment. Throwing the solution at the feet of Muslim community leaders implies that they are part of the problem.

While Mr Abbott is at pains to point out that his measures “are not directed against any particular community or religion”, this is refuted by his recent round of Muslim meetings. The leaders that the Prime Minister “consulted” last week while trying to sell his anti-terror reforms are the respectable officials and unlikely to be “consulted” by the radicalised jihadists.

The Attorney-General’s Living Safe Together website affirms that “there is not just one path to violent extremism”, and that “extremists exploit social and economic conditions, and individual vulnerabilities to recruit and motivate others”. However, it also affirms that “many projects are already under way across Australia under the Building Community Resilience Grants and Youth Mentoring Grants Programs”. This begs the question: has Mr Abbott announced a continuation of an existing funding?

Mr Abbott claims that “the best defence against radicalisation is through well-informed . . . local engagement”. But his concerns about returning radicalised extremists becoming “involved in terrorist activity here” may be ill-informed. ISIS is not al-Qaeda. The Islamic State is emerging as a political movement that is founded on reclaiming and expanding its own territory, commencing with Iraq and Syria.

Their enemies are infidels in their caliphate who refuse to swear allegiance to caliph Abu-Bakr al Baghdadi. Their ethnic cleansing is driven by a sense of victimisation and vengeance. As confirmed by many “rear-view mirror” empirical studies on the radicalisation process, angry political views are the prerequisite, not religious intolerance.

Unlike al-Qaeda, which launched attacks on foreign soil, this offshoot recruits fighters for its own soil. There has been no official escalation of Australia’s “medium” risk of terrorist threat since 2003. Despite this unchanged risk assessment, Mr Abbott heightens the media hype by referring to what “we have seen on our TV screens and on the front pages of our newspapers”.

If one listens to the propaganda of the travelling circus that recruits youth into the Islamic State, they are replete with references to western racism and hypocrisy.

If Mr Abbott is serious about “activities to better understand and address radicalisation”, the onus cannot be left at the feet of the “community”. Ironically, the double speak in his announcement has already fed conspiracy theories that Muslims are being targeted, yet again. The differential treatment of Australians in the Israeli Defence Forces, which have killed over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza, remain a bone of contention for many who see all killing of civilians as immoral, regardless of uniform or citizenship. The maps of Sydney CBD seized inside a “bomb-making” house in Brisbane failed to attract the usual terrorist headlines, perhaps because the suspect was not from the Middle East.

Even “moderate” Muslims have been angered by Mr Abbott’s recent ultimatum that “you don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team”, especially given that near half of the Muslim population was Australian-born.

Repeated references to “Team Australia” reduce these issues to a sport where the non-players are rendered non-Australian. Mr Abbott may be wise to play down the politics of fear by stating “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.

The hype around home-grown radicals planting bombs is real, and has been spurred by the free publicity given to Islamic State scaremongering. But planting the solution at the feet of the community is not realistic.

They need to be coupled with government efforts to stop the divisive language and foreign policies that cause the very radicalisation that the Prime Minister is ostensibly diffusing.

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ISIS: Lessons from the KKK

http://thehoopla.com.au/isis-lessons-kkk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvhsiEHFctY&feature=player_embedded

ISIS: LESSONS FROM THE KKK

Published in The Hoopla, September 2, 2014

Multiple choice question: Was it ISIS, KKK or Al Qaeda that was described as a “terrorist organisation, which in its endeavours to intimidate, or even eliminate those it dislikes, using the most brutal of methods”?

This is how US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas referred to the Ku Klux Klan in 2003. It echoes why Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri disavowed all links with ISIS in February when he accused them of sedition in Syria and condemned them for the “blood that was shed.”

The American KKK and the anti-American ISIS may appear a world and a century apart, but some have already alluded that ISIS is to Muslims what KKK is to Christians.

A closer look at KKK’s pitfalls may shed light on how to defeat ISIS.

In origin, both organisations were a resistance to a local invasion. The many incarnations of ISIS were borne out of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, while KKK was borne out of the post-Civil War era in 1865 when the Republican Party passed the Reconstruction Act, granting ‘equal protection’ to former African slaves. The KKK refused to recognise the freedom of African Americans.

While ISIS initially sought to restore their version Sunni supremacy in Iraq, KKK sought to restore white supremacy in America’s South.

Both sought to reclaim a ‘pure’ homeland. In the ISIS propaganda video ‘End of Sykes-Picot’, the Prophet’s ‘successor’, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was dubbed the ‘breaker of borders’. His ISIS troops trample over the 1916 post-Ottoman empire boundary between Syria and Iraq and declare that “the legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority”.

KKK also fought for its romantic view of the ‘invisible empire of the South,’ calling its leader a Grand Imperial Wizard. Their xenophobic slogans yearned to maintain the status quo. A magnet used by both movements is trying to make the complex simple – extremely simple.

The ISIS leader was a high ranking veteran from the war against the US invasion in Iraq, while the KKK founders were high ranking veterans from the Civil War.

The name ISIS is a translation of an Arabic acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (greater Syria), ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa as-Sham (DAESH). By contrast, KKK was a name based on the Greek word for circle and was concocted in humour by six veterans for their fancy-dress social club in 1866. They later learned that their white costumes with astrological symbols resembled ghosts which frightened superstitious African Americans.

While ISIS claims to have 16 wilayat (provinces) in Iraq and Syria with over 100,000 troops, KKK has 100 klaverns (chapters) and over 5000 members, mainly in South and Mid-West USA. Their peak membership in the 1920s reached 4 million.

Initially, only White Anglo Saxon Protestants could join the KKK, and Catholics were among their targets during the 1915 economic downturn alongside Jews and immigrants. The cross lighting ceremony began in the 1920’s to symbolise the cleansing fire of Christ that cleanses evil from the land and lights the way from the darkness of ignorance.

However, the modern landscape of white supremacy has forced many KKK chapters to accept non-Christians.

Similarly, ISIS regards Shiites and Alawites as infidels, not as Muslims. Despite their religious symbols, both ISIS and KKK have morphed into political movements about territory, cleansing, vengeance and power.

While Al Qaeda denounced the splinter group ISIS as overly violent, the first Grand Wizard, General Nathan Bedford Forrest tried to disband KKK for the same reasons in 1869.

Their supply chains of funding and finance are poles apart. ISIS controls over US$2 billion from oil fields seized in eastern Syria, Mosul’s central bank, donations from Gulf Arabs, business extortions, kidnapping ransoms and weapons stockpiles.

By contrast, KKK relies on their member fees and paraphernalia sales. This is one of many reasons for their repeated cycles of collapse, apart from their resurgence in the immigration boom of the 1920s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Since the 1970s, skin-head and neo-Nazis have proliferated in the white supremacist scene which has rendered the KKK brand name as the grandfather’s hate group. The modern groups rely on social media rather than BBQs and Klanta Klaus.

Unlike Al Qaeda, ISIS recruits Westerners through a highly coordinated social media presence including YouTube, Twitter, theme songs and their online magazine Dabiq. Their carefully executed videos attract global attention as they showcase their brute force and rapid results.

Modern racists have been put off by the lynching of innocent African Americans as they have more modern targets in mind. As the KKK membership attracts people with violent or anti-social natures, and they remain US citizens subject to criminal law, many leaders have been convicted and removed. With ISIS creating their own citizenship and jurisdictions, they appear immune from state laws.

The domestic terrorists beneath white KKK hoods have killed 3446 African Americans. The global terrorists beneath the black ISIS hoods have killed 50,000 Arabs, and counting.

While KKK was roundly denounced by churches, ISIS has also been denounced by Muslim leaders such as the Grand Mufti of Egypt who dismissed the reactionary caliphate as an ‘illusion.’

Just as KKK does not represent Christians, ISIS does not represent Muslims. Unlike the weak national leadership of KKK, the ISIS leader remains an elusive engineer of fear and media.

The KKK brand name was tarnished by its brutality and overtaken by groups with a different methodology and different targets. If the ISIS brand name becomes tarnished by its brutality against fellow Muslims and other minority groups, it may be overtaken by a splinter group that is more interested in territory than purity.

The KKK may not be able to teach us how to conquer ISIS, but it may teach us that its most powerful enemy may be within its own circles – especially former members who have become reformed and speak out. The repulsion by pure evil may trump the attraction to a pure territory.

These movements peak when fear peaks. They thrive on staged spectacles and free publicity which feeds into their power. We can only fan their flames if there is oxygen, and our media is their oxygen, inadvertently paying for their global recruitment and fear campaign.

To snuff out their flame, we need to stop retweeting their propaganda. The power of stopping supply costs nothing, but saves lives.

*Joseph Wakim OAM is the author of ‘Sorry We Have No Space’ (2013). He is an independent writer who has had over 500 opinion columns published in all major newspapers for over 20 years. He is the Founder of Australian Arabic Council and a Former Multicultural Affairs Commissioner. He blogs at www.josephwakim.com.au and is on twitter @WakimJ

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Guess who’s not coming to dinner

To break bread or to boycott: that’s Muslim Australia’s choice

Refusing to eat with someone is a gesture indicating they’ve dishonoured you. That’s why Muslim leaders are boycotting high profile events in an attempt to be heard

The Guardian.com, Tuesday 12 August 2014

In recent weeks, three high-profile boycotts have been launched by Australia’s Muslim leaders against the backdrop of the current conflict in Gaza. As a form of political activism, the boycotts are novel, but perhaps the response to them isn’t: they have been described as “divisive and unproductive” and a barrier to constructive dialogue.

Those remarks came from Vic Alhadeff, who was the subject of the first boycott. In his capacity as CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Alhadeff issued a community update on 9 July which justified Israel’s Operation Protective Edge by republishing a statement from Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs. By doing so, I and others argued, he abrogated his responsibility to remain neutral as chairman of the NSW community relations commission (CRC).

We argued his position had become untenable, and that he had to resign. Local Arab leaders issued an open letter to Victor Dominello, the NSW citizenship minister, and met with him in person, but the minister concluded that Alhadeff “is doing an outstanding job” as CRC chair and would remain in the post.

Similarly, Mike Baird, the NSW premier, affirmed that Alhadeff had “his full confidence” – although he conceded that it was inappropriate in his role for him to have made those comments. This was seen as a slap on the hand for Alhadeff, and a slap in the face for NSW’s Muslim leaders.

After being ignored, a boycott or withdrawal becomes a worthwhile option. Community leaders announced that they would “suspend involvement with the CRC so long as [Alhadeff] is at the helm … [because] the minister has walked away from what is morally right”.

Many who had accepted the invitation to attend the premier’s annual Iftar (breaking of fast) dinner, scheduled for that week, announced that they would “respectfully withdraw … on moral grounds”. They could not break bread with those who shrugged off what they saw as propaganda. Images of injured or dead Palestinian children had spoiled their appetite for a celebration.

The result was many empty tables at the parliament house dinner. Photos of Baird addressing the half-full room made a powerful statement: the premier and minister did not treat Australian Arabs and Muslims with respect, so they acted with respect for their culture, faith and tradition.

The “Iftar boycott” is such a strong image because dining is much more than physical act of eating, it’s a spiritual communion of people. There is an Arabic expression said after a meal is shared, along the lines of “there is now bread and salt between us”. Even the poorest people share what little food they have as a gesture of hospitality, which is often bread and salt.

Salt is a bonding and flavouring agent when baking bread, and a bonding agent that preserves friendships. It’s also a common motif in the Abrahamic faiths. In Christianity, breaking bread holds profound significance after the last supper, as does salt; Christians are described as the “salt of the earth” in Matthew’s gospel. In the Jewish Shabbat, there is silence during the hand-washing ritual before the bread is blessed.

Refusing to break bread together is neither about dishonouring the host, nor is it a threat or a provocation. It is, rather, a gesture to indicate that he has dishonoured you. The Sydney Morning Herald apprehended this in their editorial on 26 July, when they lamented that “some ill-chosen and insensitive words at an inopportune time have tarnished [Alhadeff’s] otherwise fine work”.

Alhadeff resigned the next day and Baird finally conceded that his comments had made his position untenable. “I will always listen to the Muslim community, just as he has in that resignation,” Baird said, proving the boycott was a landmark lesson in how to be heard without yelling; on 28 July he addressed thousands of Muslims at Lakemba mosque.

The precedent was repeated last week when the Australian National Imams Council announced its withdrawal from the annual Eid dinner hosted by the Australian Federal Police on 7 August. Again, it was a moral stand led by professor Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, the Grand Mufti, who said they “regrettably, must in all good conscience decline the invitation to attend the dinner in protest of the new proposed anti-terrorism laws … the amendments are a direct attack on the … presumption of innocence”.

Like the Alhadeff boycott, which was launched to preserve the CRC’s neutrality, the AFP boycott sought to preserve a fundamental maxim of Australia’s system of justice, the presumption of innocence. Neither promoted, imported or apologised for an ideology that is dangerous or divisive, such as fighting foreign wars.

Yet both boycotts were met by last-minute offers that miscalculated the seriousness of the Muslim community’s concerns: Alhadeff issued a statement, rather than an apology, and the AFP invited the Grand Mufti to speak about his concerns.

Many Muslim Australians watched with horror as their American counterparts were humiliated at Barack Obama’s annual Iftar dinner at the White House on 14 July, when he appeared with Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer. With Dermer’s tweeted support, Obama said during the dinner that “Israel has the right to defend itself against … inexcusable attacks from Hamas.” He was talking at them, not to them. Any hope that the dinner was a dialogue were smashed when the president left soon after his speech.

Given the US weapons supplied to kill civilians in Gaza, many argued that the dinner should have been boycotted in the first place. The American-Arab anti-discrimination committee made the case: “political engagement is important and having a seat at the table is crucial — but only when that seat is intended to amplify our voice as a community, not tokenise or subdue it.”

A third Australian boycott has been announced, over the controversial resignation of Fairfax columnist Mike Carlton. Peak Muslim organisations have written to Fairfax, calling for Carlton to be reinstated or they may stop cooperating with journalists and start targeting advertisers. Given that the Australian Jewish News had called for readers to “cancel your Fairfax subscriptions” a week earlier, this counter-boycott risks being trivialised; there was less at stake. It may have been wiser for community leaders to invite the editors to their table, break bread together, and explain why Carlton was a vital voice for the voiceless.

The political Iftar has arisen during a period of conflict and tragedy, but it may well become a new phenomenon in Australia. If Australians are serious about multiculturalism, the broader community should realise that the boycotts are a pouring forth of Ramadan themes of human rights, justice, integrity, poverty and morality, which return each year. The 2015 Iftar agenda could be political again; consulting with and respecting Australian Muslims may ensure next year’s hosts won’t need to guess who’s not coming to dinner.

http://bit.ly/1sKx6kc

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Hatred can begin at home

http://bit.ly/1sKwZFd

Adelaide Advertiser

Racial hatred laws and foreign fighter laws may seem disconnected, but Tony Abbott is right to link them: Joseph Wakim

August 12, 2014

RACIAL hatred laws and foreign fighter laws may appear disconnected. Hence, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s dual announcements to retain the former while toughening the
latter were met with much cynicism.

It has been presented as political trade-off to placate Muslim communities: garnering their support for the ‘‘guilty until proven innocent’’ proposal for returning ‘‘fighters’’ by retreating from the proposed dilution of Section 18C of the 1995 Racial Discrimination Act.

This exaggerated perception feeds into Islamophobia and ignores the fact that among the most vocal “Muslim’’ leaders who advocated against the 18C changes were from the Christian Arab communities.

It ignores a more important fact that incitement to racial hatred and incitement to terrorism thrive on the same continuum.

The Prime Minister was right to connect the two issues, albeit inadvertently.

On one end of this continuum is home-grown prejudice. Conversations around family dinner tables can teach children who to love, who to mock, who to fear, who to trust, who is us and who is them. If this is not moderated through wider socialisation and personal experiences, it creates fertile soil for poisonous seeds to be sown.

As the child matures and self-selects which media channels to tune into, the same world view about who to hate is reinforced. He can surround himself with social networks which further fertilise the hatreds. If he does not socialise with those who challenge him, the resulting foliage is never pruned, but blinds him from seeing the others as human.

He will utter statements such as Zionist pig or Arab terrorist as if it is a known fact, not as if it is racist. He will regurgitate propaganda about Israel wiping out Palestine, or Hamas wiping out Israel, with no regard to the human lives.

Whether racial hatred is yelled loudly in a train carriage or spoken softly in an executive office, it is still toxic. Sometimes the racism peddled in a suit and tie by lawmakers and politicians, such as the Howard government’s citizenship test, inflicts the most insidious damage. Hence, halfway across this continuum are those who harbour hatred and have the power to take action on the hatred.

The pre-emptive “I am a not a racist but’’ highlights the subjectivity of what counts as racism, whereby some genuinely believe that they are stating facts, not inciting hatred.

Websites and blogs that attract supremacist or hateful views have moderators, but they sometimes tolerate many vilifying comments because their subjective spectrum of intolerance is skewed. Repeated references to Arabs or Jews as terrorists or sub-human in their online comments and chat rooms are perceived as normal in their closed circles.

The grooming continues in the home is also reinforced as the young adult becomes addicted to daily updates on his preferred internet sites. He is incensed by graphic photos of injustices committed against “my people”.

In times of foreign conflict, dining table conversations may shift from who to hate to who is a hero: those who have made sacrifices, flown overseas, accepted their ‘‘duty’’, taken up arms and defended “my people”. The terrorist is always subjectively defined as the other.

This is the violent extreme end of the continuum: those who have graduated from using words to using weapons to end the life of fellow human beings. The other is dehumanised and dispensable. They are nameless and faceless, not someone’s beloved daughter, sister or mother.

Whether through homemade rockets or through a remote-controlled drone, whether they are wearing an army uniform or a black bandanna, human life is always equally precious, and therefore its destruction is always equally devastating.

Tony Abbott’s linking of the two issues may have been an accidental wake-up call to all of us. The dreaded home-grown terrorists that may create national unity behind “team Australia’’ may be literally home-grown. All foreign fighters who return home definitely warrant interrogation, and many of us called for this at the beginning of the war in Syria over three years ago.

But let us not delude ourselves that these fighters depart ignorantly and return home contaminated. And let us not delude ourselves that Muslims have a monopoly over fighting in foreign battles.

To uproot the causes of home-grown hatreds we need to redress the injustices that breed this radicalisation.

Injustices such as Australia pounding the UN Security Council table over the tragic loss of life in Eastern Ukraine, but not over the tragic loss of life in Gaza.

Injustices such as threatening to isolate Russia with sanctions, but not daring to apply the same moral standards with Israel. Injustices such as treating some foreign fighters with scrutiny and others with impunity.

The resolutions at the UNSC table need to disarm the hatred that begins in some dinner tables.

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The most fearful weapon in Israel’s assault: dehumanisation

http://bit.ly/1oqLJe2

The most fearful weapon in Israel’s assault: dehumanisation

Canberra Times
August 7, 2014

A Palestinian man at a funeral carries the body of a girl whom medics said was killed by an Israeli air strike. Photo: Reuters

If we were witnessing a kangaroo cull through aerial bombardment, there would be moral outrage. If we were witnessing a whale cull through ships, there would be moral outrage.

But we are witnessing a Palestinian cull by air, land and sea, and we are told to blame the victims for hiding among terrorists.

One euphemism used for this mass murder of civilians in Gaza is ”mow the lawn”, reducing Palestinians not to animals but to blades of grass. It is sold to us as a two-sided war between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas terrorists – not Palestinian people. The Palestinians all belong somewhere on the terrorism continuum as potential terrorists, breeding terrorists, born terrorists, supporting terrorists, hiding terrorists or armed terrorists. The loaded label is intended to throw a blanket over our eyes to blind us from any questions of legitimacy or humanity.

This is the well-worn, war-time propaganda of dehumanisation, aimed to absolve us from any guilt that the humans are like us – with a name, a face, a family, a home, a dream.
But it is time that this dehumanisation was worn out and discarded. It is the ”de” that needs to be mowed away to so we can see humanisation.

Propaganda relies on controlling the cameras. But social media has become a powerful weapon. As pilots ”send” air missiles down to Gaza, Palestinians ”send” videos up for the world to see – graphic and uncensored. Unlike the pilots who see inhuman dots on a screen, the videos enable us to see terrified humans with nowhere to hide. In real time, we become witnesses to the destruction of indigenous Palestinians and the reduction of their homeland to an abattoir.

When the terror-tinted glasses are discarded, this is not hyperbole. This is the making of history. This is the map of Palestine being shrunk and flattened, year after year, war after war, talk after talk, settlement after settlement.

If we could see Palestine from high above the unmanned drones, the picture makes more sense. Gaza is only 360 square kilometres, home to 1.8 million Palestinians, less the current cull. It is wedged between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, so unless they can swim, fly or dig, the people are besieged. Even the birds and fish avoid the area as a no-go zone.

This is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, with more than 5000 people a square kilometre. This equates to Drummoyne in Sydney, St Kilda in Melbourne or Fortitude Valley in Brisbane.

Imagine a leaflet telling you to leave these crowded areas. How is it possible for Israel’s pinpoint technologies to avoid the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? Where exactly are the humans supposed to swim, fly or dig? How can combatants hide behind human shields in a totally civilian area? How can there be any shields when no school, hospital or UN shelter is spared?

While the charter of Hamas may claim to eradicate Israel ”in words”, it is Palestine that is being eradicated ‘’in deeds’’ through regular culls named Cast Lead, Pillar of Defence and Protective Edge. The proof of the real eradication is in the grotesquely disproportionate fatalities.

The dehumanisation is central to Israel’s arsenal, but is also central to Palestinian reality. Since electing the wrong government in 2006, when Hamas took control of Gaza, these Palestinians endured a siege that has rationed their water, food, medicines, electricity and sanitation.

For the Palestinians in Gaza, the difference between a ceasefire and a war was the difference between continuing to die slowly, or die quickly.

This noose must be loosened if the Palestinian voices are to be heard. The deprivation of these basic human rights of a besieged people is a protracted war crime. The dehumanisation blindfolds us to two facts: all human life is absolutely equal, and these two ”sides” are absolutely unequal.

Any state claiming that their land ”belongs” to their religion, whether Israeli Jews or Hamas Sunnis, leans towards theocracy, not democracy. With or without Israel’s Iron Dome defence missiles, the rockets from Gaza have murderous intentions and must be condemned.

I dread the day that our children’s future children go on a school excursion to the Holocaust Museum and then to a Palestine Museum. They will see the shrinking map of Palestine, before it completely disappeared off the face of the earth. They will see photos, artefacts, testimonials, videos and timelines. They will see how the indigenous people were labelled as Arabs, Muslims, Gazans, Hamas, terrorists and refugees, but rarely as Palestinians. They will see how one proud people (the Palestinians) paid the price for the crimes committed against another proud people (the Jews). They will see how both people were dehumanised.

And our grandchildren will say: but they should have been best friends. And they will ask us how we let this happen to humans.

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Stop oiling the supply chain to ISIS

http://bit.ly/1u6y6E3.

As long as the US protects its Saudi oil supplies, the vital supply chain to ISIS and their ilk will continue to be oiled

The Advertiser
18 July 2014

“THE tyrant has fallen and Iraq is free,” trumpeted US President George W. Bush aboard aircraft carrier USS Lincoln on 2 May 2003. “al-Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed.”

On the contrary, al-Qaeda cells in Afghanistan reproduced a new ‘‘base’’ in Iraq. Many of us warned about this before

Operation Iraqi Freedom was unleashed but we were dismissed as prophets of doom.

While meeting with prime minister John Howard on 20 December 2002, we explained the delicate demography of Iraq and cautioned against further fuelling the anger of a nation already crippled by sanctions: another injustice in Iraq will be another magnet for al-Qaeda.

Comparing the new brand of “social media’’ terrorists such as ISIS with al-Qaeda is no longer scaremongering, as this next breed of masked men make al-Qaeda look like their elderly parents. Indeed, al-Qaeda has backed al Nusra Front over the delinquent ISIS in Syria.

Those Western voices who falsely declared the democratisation of Iraq a decade ago should now be given the attention they deserve. None. Yet the US have again dispatched hundreds of ‘‘military advisers’’ to counter ISIS in Iraq but not Syria.

They are the same “Arabists’’ and “experts’’ who failed to forecast the Arab Spring and gave no warning about the recent rise of ISIS.

Those Western voices have lost credibility with their amoral “enemy of my enemy’’ compass: the Salafi jihadists attacking the Assad government are freedom fighters, our friends. But if those same mercenaries step over the border into Iraq to attack al-Malaki’s government, they are now insurgent terrorists, our enemies.

This appears to make no sense as both the Syrian and Iraqi ISIS groups ignore the border in their quest to “reclaim’’ a Salafi caliphate. The English acronym is wrongly translated as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but the last letter actually stands for Shaam, or Levant, an axis that includes Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

Hence, their Arabic name is pronounced D-A-E-SH. The car bombings that recently rocked Beirut, attributed to Daesh, confirm that their Shaam extends way beyond Syria into all of the Levant. Their caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi recently declared that the “Islamic State’’ is “breaking the borders’’ and is not confined to Iraq or Syria.

Why would Western voices tolerate the Syrian branch but not the Iraqi branch?

The more credible explanation has nothing to do with Iraq or Syria or justice or democracy.

It has everything to do with the two greatest allies of the US in the region: Saudi Arabia and Israel.

As for Israel, so long as the Arab tribes and sects are depleting each other, this weakens them and relieves the oldest democracy in the region from global scrutiny of Palestinian human rights.

As for Saudi Arabia and adjoining sheikdom Qatar, so long as their pipelines of oil to the US continue uninterrupted, the US will turn a blind eye to their pipelines of weapons and finances to these jihadists.

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki openly accused Saudi Arabia of “supporting these groups financially and morally (for) … crimes that may qualify as genocide.”

Saudi Arabia and Israel, as arch allies of the US, remain untouchable while the US criticises Syria and Iraq for lack of democracy, lack of inclusion and lack of human rights.

Horrific images tweeted by the radical Islamic group ISIS.
The US foreign policy tolerates extremism, Salafism and Zionism when it suits their end game. Hence, it may be in US interests that al-Qaeda is not destroyed in order to manipulate the balance of power.

The aggressive ISIS cells thrive as they cross borders, seize weapons, steal money and cause carnage. But what happens when their use-by date expires and they approach the Israeli borders as part of their Shaam plan?

After the predictable re-election of the Syrian president, and the regaining of territory by the Syrian army, many ISIS jihadists recently crossed the border to fight a more winnable war in Iraq.

If Western voices talk about what “we’’ are going to do and who should replace al Maliki, then “we’’ have learnt nothing. If Western voices label the fighters as Islamists and blame Islam, then we have learnt nothing.

The majority of Muslim scholars preach mercy and forgiveness, not crucifixions and genocide. If the central message of Islam is reclaimed, it could be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Iraqi refugees try to enter a temporary displacement camp but are blocked by Kurdish soldiers in Khazair, Iraq. The families fled Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul after it was overrun by ISIS militants. Picture: Getty

As long as the US protects its Saudi oil supplies, the vital supply chain to ISIS and their ilk will continue to be oiled and the depletions will continue.

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After his Gaza comments, Vic Alhadeff should step down

http://bit.ly/1m9jiuh

After his Gaza comments, Vic Alhadeff should step down

Comments by the chair of the NSW community relations commission have inflamed tensions between Arab and Jewish Australians at a sensitive time

The Guardian, 14 July 2014

When former NSW premier Barry O’Farrell appointed the incumbent CEO of the NSW Jewish board of deputies, Vic Alhadeff, to the chair of the community relations commission (CRC) in December last year, did he think Alhadeff could straddle both roles?

Having been a commissioner myself, under both Labor and Liberal governments, I am acutely aware that this statutory body demands ambassadors of harmony. Yet a recent release, disseminated among his Jewish constituents, has achieved the opposite effect.
Wearing his CEO hat, Alhadeff issued a community update on 9 July, titled “Israel under Fire: Important points about Operation Protective Edge”. His statement reached the Arab Australian community and went viral.

In the post he condemned the “Hamas terror organisation” for its “attacks on Israeli civilians”, for “violating international law and engaging in war crimes as its militants launch rockets indiscriminately at civilians from civilian areas”.

His statement failed to condemn the collective punishment and indiscriminate attacks against Gaza. As chairman, his role is to prevent this kind of stone throwing, not engage in it.

Community relations commissioners are not appointed to advocate for foreign governments. We are tasked with bringing local leaders together, as neutral arbiters.

A Jewish colleague of mine, from my time in Melbourne, is a lifelong friend; we were part-time commissioners but full-time ambassadors. Whatever our other roles, we worked together, cautiously, to extinguish sparks before they became fires.

When he accepted the chairman’s position, he declared that he was “passionate about the need to advance social harmony and combat racism”. The Jewish board of deputies espouses the same view; its goals include combating all forms of racism. Alhadeff has spoken out in favour of retaining section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and opposes all forms of racial vilification. Yet he makes an exception, when Israel vilifies Arabs.

His statement copy-pastes the Frequently Asked Questions from Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs. The references to Israel as “we” and “our operation” under his name raises serious questions about whether he can truly be an ambassador for community harmony.

He refers to “self defence in response”, “operating with care” and “pinpoint technologies to hit targeted infrastructure”. Yet he fails to explain, or even mention, how Israeli strikes had already killed Gazan children and civilians by the time his release was published. The Gazan fatalities now exceed 160.

The release refers to the “recent kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers”, but not the recent burning alive of a 15 year old Palestinian student, even though Alhadeff personally tweeted his dismay. Neither did it mention the countless Palestinian children who are snatched from their beds, never to be seen again, and never to attract global condemnation.

What message does his statement send to half a million Australian citizens of Arab ancestry, many with relatives cowering under beds in Gaza? Would such statements build bridges and community relations, or build a wall between us and them?

Alhadeff has neither retracted nor apologised for his statement. Instead, Yair Miller, the president of the Jewish board of deputies, added insult to injury when he criticised Sunday’s pro-Palestinian rally as activists bringing “foreign conflicts to the streets of Sydney”. So it’s permissible to justify a foreign war on the Jewish board of deputies letterhead, but not to protest against war in the streets of your own city?

A spokesperson for Mike Baird, the NSW premier, gently rebuked Alhadeff in a statement, saying that while he “was not writing in his capacity as CRC chair … “He has acknowledged the need to focus on issues in NSW and avoid using inappropriate language regarding overseas conflicts”.

Baird is not responsible for appointments made by his predecessor. Asking Alhadeff politely to resign for his comments, made at such a tense time, would be the moral thing to do. It would be pro-harmony. To avoid escalating tensions, it would be wise to announce a date for Alhadeff to step down – for him to essentially “give notice”.

Honest dialogue may result from what has been a painful experience. It should go beyond exercising restraint about public statements, but on educating both parties about their impact on fellow human beings. Ironically, this what the chair of the community relations commission should have done in the first place.