Piers Akerman: Enough propaganda in schools, just teach
Australian kids need protection from anti-Semitic propaganda at school, where civics and history should be compulsory along with reading, writing and arithmetic, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Our kids need protection from anti-Semitic Islamic pro-Palestine propaganda at their schools.
Outspoken Granville Boys’ High School support officer Sheik Wesam Charkawi was ordered to work from home after posting a video to Instagram on February 16 criticising the response to two Bankstown hospital nurses who allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients and refuse to treat them in a widely-viewed interview.
Following a protest at the school Wednesday by students and members of Teachers and School Staff For Palestine demanding Charkawi’s return, the education department reversed its decision and allowed him back to the school on Friday.
The NSW Department of Education said in a statement it had “counselled” Charkawi over his actions and “reminded (him) of his obligations as a department employee”.
In actuality, the department buckled under pressure from Muslim activists at a school in a marginal electorate currently held by the federal Education Minister Jason Clare.
In his social media posts, Charkawi defended nurse Sarah Abu Lebdeh, who has been charged with three offences including threaten violence to a group and use of carriage service to threaten to kill. Her colleague, Ahmad Rashad Nadir, also defended by Charkawi, has not been charged.
In his Instagram post, Charkawi said the nurses’ comments were “never meant to be literal or intended to be a threat to patient care” and criticised the “hypocrisy” of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Health Minister Ryan Park for remaining silent “when confronted with the most egregious acts of violence committed by Israel”.
He also criticised “selective outrage”, saying “we refuse to accept a political and media landscape where Muslims are only visible when they are being condemned, but invisible when they are being killed”.
His criticism just doesn’t stand up.
There are Muslims elected to the federal and state parliaments, some local government areas have majority Muslim councillors – all visible, political and hardly condemned.
This weekend, more than a million visitors are expected to attend a Muslim food festival in Western Sydney celebrating the beginning of the Muslim holy month Ramadan. That is high-level visibility.
The leadership of the Muslim community is in denial and guilty of selective outrage.
Since October 7, 2023, Muslim leaders have failed to condemn the disgusting and unbridled savagery displayed by the barbaric members of Hamas, backed by Gazan civilians, as they raped, tortured, murdered and took hostage Israeli civilians 16 months ago.
Toddlers dressed as terrorists clutching scaled down weapons as they chant hate-filled slogans and accompanied by doting relatives taking videos for the family album have been seen in demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne.
There have been no noticeable responses by child welfare authorities or the woke media though, should some whacko decide to sew a neat little white-peaked Ku Klux Klan outfit for junior, there would be uproar from the chattering classes and questions asked in parliaments, state and federal.
The Albanese government has given tacit support to the anti-Israel lobby since the terrorist invasion as ASIO boss Mike Burgess declares anti-Semitism is now the greatest threat to life in Australia.
While Egypt and Jordan refuse to accept Palestinians fleeing Gaza, our government has granted about 3000 tourist visas and more than 1700 Gazans have arrived in Australia with minimal security checks, and has voted at the UN on anti-Israel motions.
NSW’s Labor Premier Chris Minns has spoken out against the surge in anti-Semitic terrorism but the failure of Education Minister Pru Carr to act forcefully in line with the premier’s stance is marked.
The Left of the Labor Party supports the whining Arab grievance industry which has seen the numbers of self-proclaimed Palestinian refugees grow from around 700,000 in 1948 to an estimated 9.3 million now – all this growth in population while claiming that Israel is committing a genocide!
Instead of employing activist ideologically-driven “support” teachers, the NSW Education Department should recruit civics teachers and make civics and history compulsory subjects, along with the core classes in reading, writing and arithmetic.
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