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Hatred can begin at home

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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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Stop oiling the supply chain to ISIS

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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.