Spurious cancellation of visa ignores all our homegrown hate

It is of great concern to read the report of the cancellation of the visa to Hillel Fulda, who is scheduled to speak in Sydney and Melbourne at a fundraiser for Magen David Adom, an Israeli charity for ambulances and emergency medical assistance. The cancellation appears to have come about as a result of pro-Palestinian activists appealing to the Department of Home Affairs to cancel the visa. One email stated: “His conduct poses a serious threat to Australia’s social cohesion, racial harmony and public interest.”

The Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, told The Australian he did not to want import “hatred” and that “Australians have a strong view that we don’t want hatred from overseas brought here”.

Is the minister serious? We already have hatred of Jews here, homegrown. And there is no action by the government against the hate preachers, often in the minister’s own electorate, where there is constant fermenting posing a threat to social cohesion and racial harmony. Fuld’s appearance at the charity event poses no such threat. Rather, the government has succumbed to mob rule at the cost of decent democracy and freedom of speech.

Dennis Bluth, Cammeray, NSW

After Tony Burke cancelled on weak grounds Hillel Fuld’s visa to visit Australia briefly to speak at events to raise money for Magen David Adom (Israel’s member organisation of the international Red Cross), it seems to me this is all a publicity stunt to placate certain members of his constituency.

Hillel can still speak to Australians in a televised session. Thus, Burke’s bite is only just a bark. Fuld speaks around the world because many respect his intelligence and his moral clarity. He has a right to comment about his own personal experience of terrorism (his brother was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in 2018).

Corinne Haber, Caulfield, Vic

Israel’s ‘legitimate’ war

Taking hostages is a war crime, and that crime is repeated every day that hostages are held, not just on the day they are taken. Those who accuse Israel of war crimes but remain silent about the hostages taken and still held by Hamas, and those hostages who have been brutally killed in captivity, display no semblance of humanity or consistency. This is compounded by their tacit acceptance of the hideous crimes perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, which precipitated Israel’s response.

Israel is engaged in a legitimate war of self-defence, and this of itself does not constitute a war crime. As in every war, innocent civilians become victims, but it is only when they are deliberately targeted (as in Hamas’s atrocities of October 7) that a war crime is committed. It is Hamas’s policy to put civilians in the way of Israeli strikes, for maximum propaganda effect.

We have just marked the anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings and the resulting expulsion from France of Nazi forces, and nobody has called this a war crime, even though thousands of innocent French citizens died during the fighting. The unintended deaths of civilians in war is a tragedy wherever it occurs.

Peter Davidson, Ashgrove, Qld

Chalmers off course

David Pearl’s excellent analysis deepens our understanding of the development of Labor’s plan to tax unrealised capital gains on superannuation balances over $3m (“Politics of envy puts paid to Labor’s big-bang tax reforms”, 9/6).

When interviewed by the ABC on February 23, 2020, growing up in Logan, Chalmers expressed his desire to be the treasurer in a strongly growing economy in an Albanese-led government. Yet, as Pearl writes, Chalmers seems to belong to the little-or-no-growth redistributionist school of thought on taxation.

Peter R. Tredenick, Laidley, Qld

Self-control the key

The well-researched item on the new weight-loss wonder drugs (“They work, but be careful using injectables for weight loss”, 9/6) has confirmed they are not so wonderful. As well as causing fat loss, they also result in muscle loss and bone softening; when these drugs are eventually stopped, weight re-accumulates, leaving patients weaker and at greater risk of fractures.

There are also concerns about side-effects in pregnancy, where a significant number of pregnant women are also overweight, with consequences for their offspring.

The obesity epidemic expands, with Australia second only to the US, 75 per cent of Australian males now overweight. Even more concerning is its occurrence at an increasingly young age, 50 per cent of young adults, are now overweight, 25 per cent of children, even 17 per cent of toddlers. The long-term consequences for health are clear, with diabetes and heart disease increasing, and life expectancy already in decline.

The solution is not an expensive, short-term, wonder drug, but better control of calorie intake and greater exercise. Unfortunately, there is no pill-substitute for self-control.

Dr Graham Pinn, Maroochydore, Qld