The Daily Fail lets hatred off the hook in Bankstown

The Daily Mail mocked and pilloried a woman who confronted shoppers calling for Israel’s destruction, branding her a ‘Zionist Karen’, but it only served to highlight the Mail’s hypocrisy and that of Bankstown mayor Bilal El Hayek, writes Andrew Bolt.

How dare Jews argue back as people stroll through a Bankstown supermarket wearing slogans calling for Israel’s destruction “from the river to the sea”?

Shouldn’t they realise Bankstown, at least, is now virtually a Muslim colony, complete with a Muslim mayor and a Palestinian flag over the council’s office?

One woman, though, did protest at Bankstown Kmart, and is now being smashed for it, with Canterbury Bankstown mayor Bilal El Hayek even calling the police onto her.

Her sin was to confront a mother and daughter in matching shirts with a slogan many Jews understandably think is a call for the ethnic cleansing of the only Jewish nation, home to half the world’s Jews.

She gave them the middle finger, and roared: “Are you proud of wearing ‘From the river to the sea?’ … You are... get f… Allah.”

The T-shirt that offended the woman at Bankstown Kmart contained the “From the river to the sea” slogan, which calls for the destruction of Israel. Picture: Liam Kidston

Yes, that’s too abusive for me. That said, the provocation was great. Why does Kmart let in shoppers wearing slogans demanding the end of Israel? How offensive is that?

Not much, to judge from the Daily Mail’s coverage. It mocks the angry shopper as a “Zionist Karen” for her “rage”, her “shocking” words and “menacing” look.

But it had no criticism of the two women calling for Israel’s destruction and branding “Zionist Karen” a “rabid racist” and a “lunatic”, urging readers to help “find her”.

Even more worrying, Mayor El Hayek also had nothing to say about women wearing apparently genocidal slogans in Kmart, but plenty about the woman who took offence.

He’d contacted police, he said, and they were investigating this “deeply concerning incident”.

“We are committed to ensuring that everyone in Canterbury-Bankstown feels safe and respected,” he wrote on Facebook, in a post that didn’t seem to include the woman who felt unsafe from anti-Israel zealots in her shop.

A pro-Palestine protest event in Sydney, where anti-Israel prejudice has been growing rapidly and anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise. Picture: NCA NewsWIRE / Monique Harmer

“I am also deeply concerned about the alarming increase in Islamophobia,” he added, again forgetting to mention those slogans calling for Israel’s annihilation.

But El Hayek can be forgetful. Last October, he accused Israel of a “crime against humanity” – an “air strike” on Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital which killed “more than 500 civilians” and left “many infants and elderly buried beneath the collapsed building”.

He forgot to say the blast was caused by a misfiring Islamic Jihad rocket which hit the car park, not any building, and killed about 200 people.

But who cares about such details when 26 per cent of Bankstown locals say they’re Muslim and 17 per cent say they’re Lebanese?

That’s why you can now go through a Bankstown shop calling for the death of the Jewish state and still claim to be the victim of a “racist”.