Young Arab Australians respond to Peter Dutton’s Lebanese migration comments

Soon after Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said settling Lebanese arrivals in Australia in the 1970s had been a mistake, my phone was hit up with a barrage of notifications.

“Check out what Dutton said, and don’t read the comments,” one friend wrote. Another sent: “Here we goooooooo.”

Yes, here we go, indeed. For context, we’re all Arab-Australian. Most of my good friends are. Some of them are Lebanese-Australian, and the rest of us are Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Jordanian. But we all swallowed Dutton’s words with feelings of disgust and amusement.

His statements sparked both condemnation and praise last month, when he said former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser made a “mistake” by settling Lebanese immigrants in Australia in the 1970s during the height of the Lebanese Civil War.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Dutton said: “The reality is Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people in the 1970s and we’re seeing that today.”

“We need to be honest in having that discussion. There was a mistake made,” he said.

Later in parliament during Question Time, last month, Mr Dutton went on to add: “The advice I have is that out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second and third generation Lebanese-Muslim background.”

As the descendants of ancestors from the Middle East’s Levant and thereabouts, Mr Dutton had implicated all of us, whether he intended to or not.

Arab Australians, who share the language and some similar cultural practices, were implicated with a collection of individuals who have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of us. Indeed, his comments weren’t only felt by the large, established Lebanese community here, but Arab Australians in general.

Moreover, linking second and third generation Lebanese-Muslim immigrants charged with terror-related offences in Australia to Lebanese immigration was simplistic. It was a strange leap that failed to account the many factors, experiences, and influences over four decades that have shaped the minds and motivations of Australians charged or convicted with terror-related offences.

It wasn’t long before an online group conversation turned into banter about “those goddamn Arab barbarians ruinin’ this country’’! Humour is our coping mechanism. Due to shared language, foods, culture, customs — broadly speaking — we have all been, and we all are, impacted by generalisations.

It is sad, and off-putting, that Mr Dutton is being lauded by some of his colleagues and commentators as being “honest” and for putting forward the “facts”. It is certainly true that the majority of those charged with terror-related offences in Australia are of Lebanese-Muslim descent and background. But it is a one-dimensional assertion to essentially profile all immigrants from Lebanon. Twenty-two of the 33 people accused of terror-related activities are Lebanese, therefore Fraser made a mistake — really?

My first thought was that a Year 8 essay requires a lot more rigour than that, and it would be nice if those holding positions in high office put in some thought and unpacked issues more critically.

I am of Palestinian heritage. One side of my family arrived in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s because of the Lebanese Civil War. They were stateless Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. Some still are refugees stranded in Lebanon.

When the state of Israel was formed, my family could not return to Palestine. It is a state of limbo that persists. Today, there are roughly 7 million Palestinian refugees in the world. In 1948, roughly 700,000 Palestinians were exiled by or fled from Jewish militant forces from their homeland Palestine.

Decades later, when the civil war conflict raged on in Lebanon, a few of my relatives made the move to Australia in pursuit of a better life. And a better life we do have.

When Lebanese and Arab communities migrated here in the 1970s — and Arab immigration has a long history, since the end of the 19th century — many of our communities settled among each other. We were — we still are — neighbours and friends.

We all ended up here by circumstances largely beyond our control. I did not choose to be born and raised here. However, I was, and it’s all I’ve ever known. And neither did anyone else, including the children of Lebanese immigrants.

What Mr Dutton’s comments seemed to hint was that it was our privilege, as Arab descendants, to be born in Australia. By waxing lyrical about the mistake it was to “let in’’ our parents and grandparents, and the subsequent “mistake’’ it was to be born here, it seemed as though he believed that his birth on this soil, on the other hand, was a God-given right. And that the children of recent Lebanese and, more generally, Arab immigrants are either mistakes, or exceptional. No in-betweens. No nuance. No humanising.

There are deep issues in the Lebanese, and, more broadly, Lebanese-Muslim communities in Australia. It’s undeniable. But many from those communities are working tirelessly to address them. They are nameless, they are faceless, they do not get — nor do they want — credit.

There are many Arab-Australians working hard to push boundaries, questioning cultural mores and outdated traditions, doing grassroots work to benefit both the Arab-Australian and broader Australian community, as well as just trying to get by every day like the rest of the world.

For the 22 Lebanese-Muslim Australians charged or prosecuted with terror-related offences, for the ones involved in the underworld of murder and illicit drugs, as there are, there are hundreds and thousands working and getting on with our lives.

We are lawyers, businesswomen and men, doctors, teachers, fashion designers, photographers, academics, scientists, journalists, tradies, bakers, police officers, bankers, and stay-at-home mums and dads. We are hikers and film-lovers and car-lovers and partygoers and pious and non-believing and questioning. We are so many things. The horror! We’re like most other people. And it gets pretty exhausting having to remind the generalisers that.

To reach back 40 years ago, half way across the world, and claim that that is where the problem lies, rather than taking into account all the in-betweens, is bizarre.

There are a multitude of intersecting factors, mentalities, world views, shaped by education, socio-economic conditions, family violence, media consumption, peer influence, asserting masculinity, and reconciling different identities and traditions. How crude is it to say, to believe, that it is an importation.

In fact, according to the most recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as of last year the majority of prisoners born overseas in Australian jails are from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, China and Vietnam, then Lebanon, with the most overseas-born prisoners in jail for committing serious offences coming from neighbouring nation New Zealand.

Amal Awad, an Arab-Australian author and journalist who is currently researching Arab and Lebanese communities for a groundbreaking new book centring on Arab women’s experiences Beyond Veiled Clichés - The Lives of Arab Women, said Lebanese-Australians, and more broadly Arab-Australians were hurt by Mr Dutton’s comments and responded to them negatively because they were “about putting people in their place, and defining a people according to the behaviour of a few.”

“We don’t do that with Anglo culture. We don’t look at domestic violence and see an Anglo perpetrator and say, ‘oh, well, all white men are like that.

“The first thing I thought about was how deeply affected people were by the civil war. I don’t think I interviewed a single Lebanese woman whose family was not affected by the Lebanese Civil War in some way.”

It’s tiring and boring to always have to prove our humanity every time a politician or commentator makes a handful of people, who we don’t know or have anything to do with, our problem. It is inexplicable that we continue to be tarred by the same, greasy, overused brush as Joe Blow.