Joe Hildebrand: Hardline Muslim activists targeting Tony Burke the true traitors to their cause
The disgraceful targeting of Tony Burke and others by hardline members of the Muslim community is one of the ugliest episodes in Australian history, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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Every once in a while a country reaches a crossroads where it has to ask itself which way it wants to go. What sort of a country does it want to be? What will it tolerate and what will it refuse?
Australia is the most multicultural nation on earth and the most successful multicultural nation on earth.
It is something of which we should be enormously proud.
People from all over the planet have been coming here for 60,000 years, working and living alongside each other, sharing each other’s food and languages, and overwhelmingly sharing Australian values.
Values like respecting each other’s beliefs and political differences; like settling our arguments with votes instead of violence.
This makes Australia the best place to live and also sends a message that human beings can live together in friendship instead of fear.
And it is this that makes attempts to sabotage and undermine the great fabric of our nation so despicable.
The ugliness that has been exposed among some individuals in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks is a wake-up call in itself.
It tells us not that multiculturalism has failed but that extremism cannot be tolerated or it will.
Some with such views are homegrown student activists who have never met a cause they didn’t like; others are those who have let old prejudices travel with them to Australia.
Either way, we cannot allow such deranged furies to flourish here.
The disgraceful targeting of Tony Burke and others by hardline members of the Muslim community is one of the ugliest episodes in Australian history. If we excuse it, then we allow it and if we allow it, God help us.
The southwest Sydney MP has been ruthlessly and relentlessly pursued and his campaign material defaced and vandalised – eyes and face burnt scratched or blacked out – ever since activists decided to make the war in the Middle East a local issue.
In this he is not alone. Jewish MP Josh Burns has had his electorate office brutally vandalised and the PM’s own electorate office was barricaded by activists for months.
But the apparent threat to Burke is both more visceral and more personal.
Unlike the left-wing activists who populate Australia’s inner suburbs, and the left-wing MPs who represent them, Burke lives in Muslim working-class heartland and has represented their interests for decades.
Even since October 7, Burke has played a critical role in Australia advancing Palestinian statehood at the UN. As Home Affairs Minister he was effectively solely responsible for bringing thousands of at-risk Palestinians to the safety of Australia.
For this, he and the government have been attacked by conservatives and Jewish groups, and yet supposedly pro-Palestinian activists have attacked him more brutally than any.
Because for such diehards, no matter what you do it is never enough.
And so a minority of hardliners is trying to whip up anger against him in his own community to the point where he has now been told he shouldn’t be allowed to feel comfortable in it.
The idiocy of the argument doesn’t make it any less frightening.
Burke was attending a Muslim prayer meeting on Friday March 21 – as strong a show of support for the Muslim community as you can get at a time when it is under great strain.
And he showed up despite WhatsApp messages being reportedly circulated ahead of the event urging people to “hold them to account and show them they are not welcome”. Once there, Burke’s protection detail felt the mood was unsafe and he left, and it is here it gets really nasty.
Antagonists circulated a video attacking Burke for leaving the event they wanted to make him feel unwelcome at, while at the same time claiming they were disappointed they didn’t get to hear him speak.
The video also attacked Muslim MP Jihad Dib, who has done more for the Punchbowl community than perhaps any human alive, and whose teacher wife was disciplined by the Education Department for being too outspoken as a pro-Palestine activist.
But of course that was not enough. It is never enough.
The activist in the video accused Burke of “scurrying like a rat” and challenged him and other politicians to “come speak to us” while at the same time saying: “Don’t you dare show your faces in front of us, because you won’t be made to feel comfortable within our community.”
It’s deranged but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous to our democracy, nor our community, in which everyone should feel comfortable.
People on the right constantly say multiculturalism doesn’t work and Islam is incompatible with Australian values and hardline firebrands like this are doing everything they can to prove them right.
It is they who are the true traitors to their community.
Listen to The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you obtain your favourite podcasts
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