Pure racism challenged

"If we are to listen to visiting Israeli professor Raphael Israeli, Rwanda must now be heading for disaster. "When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems," he contributed last week. For this, we are told the archetypal exhibit is France, where, thanks to a 10 per cent Muslim minority, "French people say they are strangers in their own country". Violence flows from sizeable Muslim minorities as surely as breathing, apparently. But "if there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don't dare to do it … they are drowned in the environment of non-Muslims and are better behaved".

Sometimes a statement is so manifestly boneheaded it is difficult to know whether or not it is worthy of a response. So it is with Israeli's unsolicited social commentary. "Greeks or Italians or Jews don't use violence," he blundered, as though the Mafia had never existed, and Revolutionary Struggle, an active Greek terrorist group, had not claimed responsibility for bombing the US embassy in Athens last month. Israeli either forgets or omits Dr Robert J. Goldstein, the American Jew convicted for plotting to blow up a Muslim educational centre with the stated aim being to "Kill all 'rags' — ZERO residual presence — maximum effect". The capitals are Goldstein's"

This op-ed piece in The Age, by Waleed Aly, responds to the outrageous statements made by visiting Professor Israeli, a visiting lecturer and guest of the AIJAC. One can only wonder about AIJAC's motives and policies in bringing the professor to Australia. Resourced as AIJAC is they must have known of the professor's racist views. If they didn't, then they fail in being an organisation which should be heard in any forum.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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