Sorry, not all cultures are equal - particularly the ones that celebrate Hezbollah terrorists

Carrying a Hezbollah flag is light years away from, say, showing your support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas or hoping the Palestinians get a state, writes James Morrow.

Let’s check in on the state of multiculturalism in Australia, shall we?

Last weekend, just hours after news came through that Israel had eliminated Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, protesters at weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne were waving – wait for it – Hezbollah flags.

In one extraordinary piece of footage from the Sydney march, a woman in a hijab was seen holding up a cherubic little toddler in a Hezbollah t-shirt so another woman could take his picture.

As with the flares and chants at the October 9 march on the Opera House, police brass were loath to do anything about the flags or other signs of support for Hezbollah because they didn’t want to further provoke the crowd, thus sending the message that any mob that’s big enough can own the streets if they like.

While this was going on, several local Shi’a mosques held three-day memorial services to honour the “martyr” Nasrallah, with large crowds who had come to honour the “martyr” spilling out onto the streets outside Kingsgrove’s Al Rahman mosque in Sydney.

Demonstrators hold flags and pictures of Hassan Nasrallah, late leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, at a protest rally in the central business district of Sydney on September 29, 2024. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)

These events may have been shocking, but they were also entirely predictable.

Local support for foreign terror groups is precisely what you would expect after years if not decades of an official multiculturalism that refuses to make judgments about any foreign culture while relentlessly charging post-settlement Australia with colonialism, racism, and every other –ism in the book.

Mourners gather at Al Rahman mosque in Kingsgrove after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Photo Jeremy Piper

To put it another way, come for the vibrant cuisines, stay for the Hezbollah flags and memorial services for terrorists.

Again, let’s be clear here.

Hezbollah are incontrovertibly the bad guys. Israel has done the world a favour taking out Nasrallah as well as the group’s entire senior chain of command in recent weeks.

The organisation has a long record of hijacking, kidnapping, and torture, to say nothing of blowing up targets ranging from US Marine barracks in Beirut to Jewish cultural centres as far away as Argentina.

Not only that Hezbollah, which takes not just its cues but billions of dollars in funding from Iran, was also one of the driving forces behind the horrifyingly grim civil war that tore apart Lebanon, creating a “state within a state” that has amassed an arsenal bigger than many European countries.

Carrying a Hezbollah flag is light years away from, say, showing your support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas or hoping the Palestinians one day get a state of their own.

And while obviously the majority of local Muslims don’t subscribe to more fanatical interpretations of their faith, the fact is that out of an urge to not rock the boat and preserve the gloss of harmony, Australia has allowed support for militant and violent ideologies to fester.

What’s worse, at a time of record migrant intakes there is very little effort to turn “new Australians” into simply “Australians”.

Even the idea of taking Australian citizenship at – Lord forbid – an Australia Day ceremony is now contested.

Even Australia Day citizenship ceremonies are now contested. Photo: Tim Jarrett

Yet as other nations are already figuring out, this is – to use a word beloved of the left – unsustainable.

In the UK, Tory politician and leadership contender Kemi Badenoch (herself the daughter of Nigerian parents) belled the cat on over the weekend.

“Our country is not a dormitory for people to come here and make money. It is our home,” she wrote in the Sunday UK Telegraph ahead of the Tory party conference.

“Those we chose to welcome, we expect to share our values and contribute to our society,” she continued.

“We cannot be naive and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not.”

In Germany, which has suffered multiple terror and attempted terror attacks since then-chancellor Angela Merkel threw open the doors to refugees a decade ago, the country has also made the first steps to being more selective.

With the so-called “far right” seeing a surge in popularity driven by the perception that millions of migrants from often hostile cultures have overwhelmed the country, Germany has made affirming Israel’s right to exist a necessary precondition for taking citizenship.

And while Home Affairs minister Tony Burke has said he will “consider” cancelling visas of any non-citizens caught supporting Hezbollah, in France they’ve changed the law to enable rapid deportations.

In February, this saw a local imam who called the French flag “satanic” board a plane home for Tunisia less than 12 hours after being pinged by the cops.

Harsh? Perhaps.

But Britain, Germany, and France have all had far more bitter experiences with terrorism and imported ideologies.

Maybe we should learn a thing or two from them before it’s too late.

Originally published as Sorry, not all cultures are equal - particularly the ones that celebrate Hezbollah terrorists