Joining the dots
EDITORIAL
IN recent weeks, there have been few more sickening images gracing the pages of the popular press than those of Islamic State extremists exhibiting the decapitated heads of their enemies impaled on stakes.
The most shocking emerged just this weekend, showing a young boy – the son of Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf – holding aloft the severed, bloody head of a Syrian soldier.
“That’s my boy!,” the convicted terrorist tweeted, his boastful pride revealing the twisted and barbaric nature of a movement that is sweeping the Middle East, forcing hundreds of thousands of Christians and Yazidis to flee their homes or face death. Just how many failed to escape in time is unclear, but with reports of several hundred being slaughtered in recent days, terms such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are not being used lightly.
At least not in this context.
For on university campuses across Australia, it is Israel – the country on the frontline of the battle against Islamist aggression and expansion – that is being accused of these crimes.
It is to the credit of our government and to all our politicians who express their solidarity with the Jewish State that they recognise the current conflict is not of Israel’s choosing; that Israel is seeking to defend itself against the very terror that Islamic State is perpetrating elsewhere in the region.
And it is to the credit of those columnists and commentators in the media, who refuse to kowtow to the populist misguided image of Israel the oppressor, that they see Hamas for what it is and aren’t afraid to lay the blame for the tragic death and destruction of the past month squarely at the feet of this terrorist regime.
Far too many in our society, however, fail to connect the dots. At the same time as they express horror and outrage at the brutal barbarism of Islamic State, they march through our city centres shouting their support for an organisation that is committed to the destruction of Israel and has no qualms about killing innocent civilians, even their own. Hamas places rockets in schools, in mosques, in hospitals. It urges Gazans not to evacuate when the IDF gives advance warning of a strike. It has routinely broken or refused ceasefires. It has dug a network of tunnels designed to wage war on Israel from underground. And yet, the marchers turn a blind eye to the evidence, chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
They fail to connect the dots. For if they did, they would instead be chanting, “From the river to the sea, Israel will be terror free.”
They would see that the Christians and Yazidis and Israelis face a common threat.
They would see that Mehdi Nemmouche, the man accused of murdering four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May, has been linked to the same jihadist group as Khaled Sharrouf.
But they fail to connect the dots.
If there were no repercussions, the issue would be academic. We would be aggravated and frustrated that members of the general public could be so misguided. But there are repercussions: a Jewish man assaulted in Melbourne; Perth’s Carmel School graffitied with the words “Zionist scum”; a rabbi abused in a shopping centre in the same city; and then the terrible incident last Wednesday afternoon on a school bus in Sydney where young students were tormented by teenagers reportedly yelling “Heil Hitler” and threatening to slit their throats.
Meanwhile, older Jewish students are facing their own struggles on campus with motions condemning Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and expressing support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
At one university it is reported that a particular Jewish student has been subjected to a sustained campaign of abuse and, as a result has been unable to attend class.
The only saving grace is that, though they have spiked, the levels of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism here in Australia have not reached the levels they have in Europe. In Rome, the latest spate of hate posters call for boycotts of Jewish shops. In Britain, one council has flown the Palestinian flag over its building, one MP has declared his city an “Israel-free zone,” and a London theatre has refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival, an event it has hosted for the past eight years.
In Sweden, a demonstration against anti-Semitism had to be cancelled amid fears of violence, while in Denmark a Jewish school has told students that they can’t leave the premises if they’re wearing visible Jewish symbols such as kippot.
God willing, in the days and weeks ahead, our community will be spared the excesses endured by our fellow Jewish communities in the Diaspora.
And God willing, in the days and weeks ahead, our fellow countrymen and women will learn to join the dots.
comments