The owner and publisher of Australia’s only Jewish newspaper has been accused of “hate speech” and vilifying Muslims in article calling for Jews to be less compassionate towards asylum seekers who arrive by boat.
In last week’s edition of Australian Jewish News, published weekly in Melbourne and Sydney, property developer Robert Magid wrote that Jewish Australians should not support “illegal immigration” because of the collective memory of Jews trying to escape the Holocaust:
“The Jews who fled the Holocaust fled certain death. I doubt whether there is a single boat person in that position. Some may have fled a war zone or limited economic opportunities while others are seeking an easy life.”
Magid went on to argue that Muslim immigration was likely to lead to social disruption and an increased risk of terrorist attacks:
“Just last week, a Muslim husband and wife were convicted of planning a terror attack against Jews in Manchester … Obviously, if al-Qaeda or another jihad organisation wished to create a network of terrorists in Australia, undocumented illegal immigration would ensure the Australian authorities had no way of verifying their bona fides.”
Magid’s article has ignited a heated debate within sections of the Jewish community, with almost 350 people signing an open letter, organised by the left-leaning Australian Jewish Democratic Society, calling for the newspaper to apologise.
Jordy Silverstein, an AJDS member from Melbourne, told Crikey the article was “absurd and offensive”: “It’s pure politics and hate speech.”
Ralph Genende, a Caulfield rabbi and vice-president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria, has also spoken out against the article.
“Unlike Robert Magid in this week’s Australian Jewish News, I do not believe there are limits to compassion,” he wrote on the online Jewish magazine Galus Australis. “I take pride in being part of a people who put people and compassion first. Compassion or chesed (loving kindness) informs us, it is the imprimatur of our people, pride of our past, and guarantee of our future.”
Magid did not respond to requests for comment this morning. AJN editor Zeddy Lawrence, who estimates the weekly paper has a readership of 70,000, says he plans to address the issue in this week’s editorial.
“We publish lots of things people don’t agree with,” he told Crikey. “That doesn’t mean we were wrong to publish it … People who read the paper know we’re quite liberal on the whole in our sentiments.
“Had he not been publisher of the newspaper, people probably wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. They would have just seen it as a rant.”
Oh, so let’s have an open borders policy on the grounds of ‘compassion’. What if these undocumented people are war criminals or gangsters? Surely we have enough home grown criminals of our own to contend with.
It is naive in the extreme to think that these boats are full of pious innocents just longing to contribute to Australia. As a taxpayer, I’m sick of seeing these freeloaders turning up with a begging bowl and a sob story when they have paid tens of thousands to get here. No documents- no cred.
“It is naive in the extreme to think that these boats are full of pious innocents just longing to contribute to Australia”
Why is that? It’s not like we’ve had a wave of terrorists who have come via boats.
And even if we had what you refer to as an ‘open borders policy’ it doesn’t follow that the navy would stop intercepting them nor would the government would stop processing them including security and health checks.
Find something else to worry about.
Is Magid simply ignorant of the fact that it was the difficulty of Jews to escape that led, post WWII, to the Refugee Convention of which Oz is a signatory?
As for refugees facing death, consider the Hazari of Afghanistan, an oppressed & abused ethnic group – sound familiar?
In full agreement with Jennifer.
Genuine Refugees cannot afford a flight from Baghdad, Islamabad, Kabul and so on, then pay $10,000 to come over by boat.
Not to mention those who are still running businesses “back home” while collecting Government handouts over here. Now there’s a clever Refugee.
Sure there are the underprivileged and the displaced, but they can be resettled back to their own country now or in due course. Thus the Temporary Visa proposal which Gillard is too ignorant and stubborn to accept.
If they want to move to Australia for a better life, fine, join the queue and be vetted like anyone else from the UK, US, Malaysia and every other country who is welcome here, via accepted channels.
Those on the boats have no place in our country. Why, they are soaking up funds and resources that should be applied to our own people, Australians, who are in dire need themselves, and who this Government seems to be conveniently removing from the equation.
Watch the replay of Today Tonight and similar programs where we have Pensioners and Young Families living in Tents and Cars because there is no where else for them to live. Yet these people arriving by boat, these poor Refugees, are put up in Hotels with three meals a day, plus spending money, plud outings. Give me a break !! How about putting them in Tents, see how long that lasts before they Riot and burn them down. Genuine Refugees would be humbled and happy to have a roof over their head and three meals a day not set fire to the detention centers. We call them Detention centers and that is half the problem, they should be called Resettling Centers. Idiot Bureaucrats.
Bottom line, that Jewish Newspaper had the guts to say what the vast majority of Australians are thinking and talking about in the streets on a daily basis, while the Press and the Politicians skip around the edge.
Is it any wonder given Magid’s odious statements, that the only solution to
racist ‘Amerisrael’ is a one State solution?
Check out Antony Loewenstein’s new book on the One State view……..impressive scholarship
For mine, there’s a really strong race supremacist element to the globally
high profile Zionist view that ‘racism against Jews is much worse than
racism against any other ethnic group’…isn’t that a race supremacist position?
Aren’t we all fundamentally the same genus????..or did I miss something
scientifically profound of the past 1000 years????
Comments..anyone???….except Bob Carr…