Author – Columnist – Speaker – Writer
Published articles on human rights issues such as refugees,a nd the rehumanising the dehumanised.
http://connect.pure.com/p#!/au/content/podcast/2997683-2gb-ben-fordham-highlights
Monday 28 July, Radio 2GB
Forum On The Gaza Conflict
Confused about what’s happening in Gaza? Ben Fordham seeks a bit of clarity by talking to representatives from both sides of the conflict. Ben Fordham chats to Jeremy Jones, from the Australian/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and Joseph Wakim, founder of the Australian Arabic Council.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://bit.ly/1pUiu4G
We can’t condemn some arms bearers and not others, like Jewish Australians fighting overseas
The Courier-Mail
July 07, 2014
DURING recent Senate estimates hearings, ASIO’s head David Irvine announced that 150 Australian citizens were being scrutinised for suspected military activities in the Syrian conflict.
He cautioned that young recruits could return with “heightened commitments to jihadi terrorism”.
The self-declared caliph of the ever-expanding Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has called on Muslims to “rush” to arms with “heavy boots”. To try to combat home grown terrorism, Attorney-General George Brandis met with Imams who pledged to use their Friday sermons to help de-radicalise youth. Unfortunately, these Imams are more likely to preach to the converted.
Each time ASIO raises these alarms, echoes rebound with broader questions about Australians in foreign armies.
Sympathisers of the Muslim Australians taking up arms in Syria ask why Jewish Australians taking up arms in Israel experience immunity rather than scrutiny.
Nominally, the two situations are deemed incomparable: the Muslims are taking up arms with illegitimate and criminal terrorist organisations such as the al-Qa’ida-linked al-Nusra and ISIS and al-Qa’ida itself, whereas the Jews are taking up arms with the legitimate army of Israel. But this black and white branding belies the many shades of grey in between.
The atrocities committed by the loose affiliation of brigades and foreign mercenaries in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are undeniably immoral and inhumane. They have been incriminated for beheadings, kidnappings, crucifixions and cannibalism, as propagated on their own videos.
But the activities of the Israel Defence Forces and its official brigades are well documented by many human rights groups. They have been accused of collective punishment, illegal occupation, imprisonment of minors, torture of prisoners, bulldozing of homes, expansions of settlements and deployment of cluster bombs. Smart uniforms, badges and stripes do not make this right.
Just when does loyalty to a foreign country become disloyalty to Australia? Our homegrown “jihadists” are neither the first nor last to take up arms abroad, as borne out in the recent book Foreign Fighters by Dr David Malet.
Australians fighting with Iraqi jihadists 0:26
This longitudinal study covering 200 years, concludes that most responsive recruits tend to be “marginalised in the broader society”.
Spanish Australians fought on both the Communist and the Catholic side of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Jewish Australians fought in 1948 to establish a homeland. Australians fought on all sides of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s with Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, Slovenes and Macedonians. But who decides if this military service is moral and justified?
Most Australians now concede our participation in the “Coalition of the Willing” against Iraq in 2003 was unjustified given the false weapons of mass destruction pretext, which has precipitated a spiralling regional and sectarian war.
Since Saddam Hussein was toppled, Western governments have deemed those who have taken up arms against the Iraqi government as insurgents and enemies. But if those same mercenaries crossed the border to fight with the Free Syrian Army, they would be deemed as Western allies.
We can no longer pretend military service by dual citizens will not present conflicts of interest. Even by serving in the ostensibly benign Israel Defence Forces, our citizens would be inadvertently enforcing a one-state solution when Australia officially upholds bipartisan support for a Palestine/Israel two-state solution.
So rather than continuing this subjective policy of selectively condemning some arms bearers while condoning others, our government needs to take the more moral position of banning all such activities.
It is time to review the bilateral agreements regarding dual citizens and their duty for foreign military service. If our young citizens are seriously interested in taking up arms, then suitable candidates could be recruited into our national service. As citizens, this is both their right and responsibility.
Joseph Wakim, a founder of the Australian Arabic Council, is a freelance writer.
Originally published as What of Jewish Australians fighting overseas? Comments
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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
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.
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.
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.