I don't trust any party -other than the Greens (oh no, I said the forbidden word)- to care about Islamaphobia. I've seen 2 decades of hate crimes against Muslims, yet it still continues. I also have a colleague who was pretty Islamaphobic towards students (with video and audio evidence), yet not only kept their job, but got a promotion. In fact, this year, a colleague was bigoted towards me in front of other staff ("why do you care about other cultures, fix your own first. We all know it's broken and a lie"), and they got given a position as a cultural support leader. The fact that Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, Peter Dutton, Dave Sharma, Andrew Hastie among others...have all at some point in their career stood up in Senate or Parliament and made an Islamaphobic comment and still get votes, elected, or support tells you everything you need to know about how widely accepted Islamaphobia is. I walked past a restaurant on my way home after ACDC this evening and someone has spray painted the word "Dog" on the window. The restaurant is owned by a Bangladeshi man. There is a bookstore in the suburb over from me that currently has a sign that says, "Re Bondi. I warned you not to vote for the Greens. You've brought war upon you", and has a big Israeli flag stuck outside.
You also are using that slogan which doesn't mean what you think it means. Not saying it should be allowed to be said, but that slogan did not come from Muslims as a means of war. It came about from PYM or WOL as a means of saying that people have a duty to stand up along side Palestinians and taking inspiration from their courage and resistance, by putting it into action through means such as boycotts, and political voting. Using it as a call to arms came from western media, who popularised it and created that meaning around it.
I'm not out here trying to say we have it worse. I honestly don't think one has it worse over the other. I think all minority groups face levels of racism and hatred, and we are pitted against each other in the never ending cycle of violence and hate, yet there are clear groups and classes that benefit from this vitriol and hate. They feed off ethnic groups constantly hating each other.
People keep saying lefties don't want to have the conversation about anti-semitism, but I think you will find that lefties are most concerned by anti-semitism. It's been yelled countless times that the anger is towards Zionism, not Judaism. It's also been very much brought to the attention that Semites include arabs and people of the middle east in countries such as Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait etc.
I would totally see where they are coming from, but am I'm not going to accept it. The crux is the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism and the failure to accept the difference between the two. What is happening is that people take what happened at Bondi as justification to be bigoted against 2 billion people, and engage in acts that harm, terrorise, and vilify those people, and think they have justification to do so without recourse. Much like those who fail to separate anti-zionism with anti-semitism, they fail to separate radicalism with Islam.
Something awful has been happening to Aboriginal people for more than 200 years. We tried to change that with a referendum, and Australia overwhelmingly voted no. We can't even recognise our Indigenous people in the constitution and care for our own (regardless of race), yet we want to run so quickly to fight the war for a nation so far away from us, that doesn't actually care for the average Australia.
I've read the report on anti-semitism by Jillian Segel. I agree with a lot of what she recommends, but unsure on other things. I'm curious if you have read it and your thoughts.
peo.gov.au
