Posted on

Stop oiling the supply chain to ISIS

http://bit.ly/V9GEui

Stop oiling the supply chain to Isis
ON LINE opinion

2 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.

Those who understand what hides beneath the foliage of the ‘Arab Spring’ also warned that the uprising was hijacked by those sowing seeds for a theocracy, not a democracy. Exhibit A: al Nusra Front. Exhibit B: ISIS.

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 rocked Beirut last week, attributed to Daesh, confirm that their Shaam extends way beyond Syria into all of the Levant. This week, their self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared that the ‘Islamic State’ is ‘breaking the borders’ and will conquer the ‘world of Allah the Highest.’

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. 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.

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.

Posted on

Palestinian unity is path to peace

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/print.asp?article=16271
http://bit.ly/RlOFu2

Online Opinion, 7 May 2014

If Israeli leaders are worried about a Palestinian unity government, they should look in the mirror. If they are worried about the forbidden apartheid word, they should look out the window.

When Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that ‘Abu Mazen has chosen Hamas and not peace,’ Palestinians enduring daily occupation asked: what peace?
If the continuing construction of Israeli settlements, home demolitions and military raids are ostensibly the hallmarks of ‘peace’, then Palestinians cannot be blamed for seeking alternatives. These actions in themselves have ‘essentially buried’ any remnants of a peace process.

It appears that no matter what Palestinians do, apart from capitulation, they are always the villains, never the victims.

If Palestinians embark on armed resistance or intifada, they are terrorists.

If a non-government movement embarks on a non-violent civil resistance or BDS, they are anti-Semitic.

If Hamas is democratically elected in Gaza as they were in 2006, they are blockaded.

If Fatah rivals Hamas as it did since 2007, it is rendered as impotent and illegitimate.

If Fatah reconciles with Hamas, they are anti-peace.

While the Netanyahu government rejects Hamas for refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist, it refuses to recognise Palestine’s right to exist along the 1967 borders.

The US has threatened to stop providing aid to the Palestinian Authority unless three conditions are met: recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous agreements. The fact that these reciprocal stipulations are not imposed on Israel highlights the bias of the peace broker.

Netanyahu would be hypocritical to threaten a Palestinian national unity government when his own Likud-led coalition announced a similar pact with Shaul Mofaz, chairman of the opposition Kadima party, exactly two years ago.

His current cabinet includes head of the Jewish Home Party, Economy Minister Neftali Bennett, who has publicly called for the unilateral annexation of Area C which is 60% of the West Bank. He has vowed that “a Palestinian state means no Israeli state. That’s the equation … There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel.” With these one state solutions declared by Palestine’s peace partner, is there anything left to negotiate? Should Netanyahu be given an ultimatum to choose between peace with Palestinians or these partners: “You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace, so far he hasn’t done so.”

His cabinet also includes Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who opposed a 2003 amnesty of 350 detained Palestinians: “It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.”

Apparently, only the Hamas rhetoric is an obstacle to peace, as the national unity governments of Israel are internal affairs.

In Cairo in 2011, an attempt at rapprochement by the two Palestinian factions failed to fulfil the accord. Hamas is now forced into a compromising position because its ally, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been ousted in Egypt and their smuggling tunnels to Gaza have been blocked. The misery and poverty of Gazans has necessitated negotiation and further compromises may follow.

Talking peace with a united and elected Palestinian government is not the beginning of the end. It is the epitome of democracy and the perfect climate for honest dialogue.

With elections in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine pending, Israel has long lost its monopoly as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. While US Secretary of State John Kerry cannot rewind the tape on his ‘apartheid’ slip, it will continue to be a self-fulfilling prophecy if Israel does not rewind the shrinking map of Palestine.

Posted on

Big reality gap in phony rhetoric on Ukraine from militaristic US

http://bit.ly/1jSUeJX
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-big-reality-gap-in-phony-rhetoric-on-ukraine-from-militaristic-us/story-fnihsr9v-1226846366717

Published in The Courier-Mail
6 March 2014

It is profoundly phony for the US Secretary of State to lecture Russia during press conferences about invading another country on phony pretexts.

What John Kerry was preaching deserves to be juxtaposed against what the US is practising.

“This … act of aggression … is really 19th-century behaviour in the 21st century,” Kerry said.

Well, we do not need to wind the clock back too far to see similar behaviour by the US. Rather than de-escalating and demilitarising the multiplying wars within Syria, the US decided to aid and abet the Free Syrian Army with $250 million worth of “nonlethal” aid. There was no guarantee this aid would not fall into the hands of foreign invaders, mercenaries and jihadists. And, indeed, in December the US was forced to temporarily suspend the shipments after the Islamic Front seized a range of US-supplied equipment, along with weapons, from warehouses.

“You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” Kerry intoned. Yet in 2003, the US led the invasion of Iraq on the phony, as it rapidly turned out, pretext of weapons of mass destruction, without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council. That was not in the 19th century, but the 21st century. The promises of democracy and liberation have been replaced by the reality of war and instability with no end in sight. US oil companies have bled Iraq of its oil reserves by setting up shop in Basra, while Iraq has bled over half a million citizens from war-relation deaths. So who was asserting their own interests?

“The people of Ukraine are fighting for democracy, they’re fighting for freedom,” Kerry went on.

So were the people of Syria in their unarmed uprising in Dar’aa three years ago. But when many countries began to “assert their interests” by funnelling weapons to both the army and the rebels, the aspirations of the Syrian citizens were hijacked by foreign agendas. Hence words like democracy and freedom ring hollow given the recent US intrusions There are now sarcastic bumper stickers in the Middle East that threaten: “Be nice to Americans. Or we’ll bring democracy to your country.”

Kerry again: “If (the Russians) have legitimate concerns … there are plenty of ways to deal with that without invading the country … We call on Russia to engage with the government of Ukraine this is a time for diplomacy … not to see this escalate into a military confrontation.”

Why is this universal principle selectively applied? The Syrian National Council and their foreign sponsors were never encouraged to “engage” with the Syrian Government, or hand in their weapons during the November 2011 amnesty, or trust the “general conference for national reconciliation”. Rather than pursuing “plenty of ways” towards dialogue about legitimate concerns, the rebels proliferated and became default allies with invaders such as al-Qa’ida. The “time for diplomacy” was repeatedly squandered by all parties which inevitably saw the crisis “escalate into a military confrontation”.

Even in Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott toed the same line that “Russia should back off … people of the Ukraine ought to be able to determine their future themselves.” But where was this posturing and principle when Australia recently chaired the UNSC, when the people of Syria sought a civil and political solution, rather than a summit of sponsors?

Before Kerry and his 21st-century allies next meet the press, perhaps they ought to meet the mirror and take an honest look at how dishonest they sound.

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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?