Jewish News publisher responds

Robert Magid writes: An article written by Matthew Knott appeared recently on Crikey headlined “Jewish paper speaks ‘hate’ against Muslims, boat people” (August 7, item 13) concerning an earlier article I had written in the Australian Jewish News.

There was absolutely nothing in my article that suggested hatred of Muslims or boat people. The thrust of my earlier article was:

(i) that Jews should stop comparing survivors of the Holocaust with boat people. There is simply no comparison. Further Jews were not destination shopping and would have gone to any destination to escape what was certain death;
(ii) illegal immigration deprives genuine refugees of an opportunity to come legally to Australia; and
(iii) it is the government’s responsibility to its citizens to vet and verify those who wish to come to Australia.

My references to social disruption in Europe and that many terrorist attacks emanate from Muslim extremists are uncontestable facts. It is the impossibility of verifying the identity of potential immigrants who have destroyed their documents that heightens those risks and underscores the government responsibility to which I have referred.

Do I hate? Yes I do hate. But what I hate, aside from the distortions of my opinions, is xenophobia and racial and religious discrimination. In fact I have devoted much of my life to fighting intolerance.

I am a supporter of “Together for Humanity”, an organisation dedicated to furthering understanding and friendship between Muslims, Christians and Jews. I hosted their recent fundraising event at which I enjoyed the company of leaders of the Muslim community.

At our home we hosted an event attended by over 60 participants to hear the life story of two young Muslim students, men of considerable integrity, courage and common sense. I sponsored and hosted the Israeli-Palestinian AFL team in Sydney under the auspices of the Peres Peace Centre.

About seven years ago I set up the Dot.Com.Mob, an organisation dedicated to the provision of computer centres to remote indigenous communities. We have been active in Hopevale and Wigal Wigal, Palm Island and in Central Australia. Our initiative has been replicated in many of the communities in the North Cape.

In the 60s I worked on economic development in the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Subsequently I advised the government of Ghana. I organized scholarships for Bedouin students at the Ben Gurion University.

My office is a veritable United Nations. I have Muslim friends whose company I enjoy and colleagues at work whom I respect.

One would have to be blind not to notice that there are extreme Islamic cultures in which women who are r-ped are sentenced to death, where kindergartens teach infants to strive to become suicide bombers, where children are taught that Jews are pigs and monkeys, where imams preach death to kaffirs (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Shia Muslims, apostates), where preachers call for the lynching of gays, where Westerners are lynched because someone expresses a negative view of their religion. Again these are uncontestable facts and to ignore their existence is the worst form of intellectual dishonesty.

In my opinion most Australians believe that, under the circumstances, it is important to properly consider and determine who is coming into the country. This is not a prescription for excluding moderate Muslims, but for the government to fulfill its responsibilities in exercising its discretion and to ensure that all potential citizens are willing to accept the values of an open, free, tolerant community and not bring extreme values or cultures, which will eventually undermine our society. A responsibility the importance of which could not have been more clearly evidenced than by the appalling events in Sydney on Saturday.

Our monolingual national obsession

Mungo MacCallum writes: Re. “Parliament reports on indigenous tongues: can they be saved?” (yesterday, item 3). Greg Dickson’s piece reminds me of an old joke: what do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? Australian.

The problem with funding indigenous language programs is basically that most Australians find them as irrelevant as programs into ancient Greek, Latin, Old Norse — or, for that matter, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Bahasa Indonesian or even French and German. This attitude may be parochial, short-sighted and even downright racist, but it is both widespread and persistent. Until there is a serious government push to make the study of languages relevant — even compulsory — the tongues of Aboriginal Australians will languish, like so much of their culture and heritage, at the bottom of the heap.

Campbell v Sheridan 

Richard Broinowski writes: Re. “ABC’s Eric Campbell to Greg Sheridan: put up or shut up” (yesterday, item 14). Well said Eric Campbell. I bet Sheridan can’t meet your challenge. It’s time he was called to account. The same thing goes for Gerard Henderson, Miranda Devine, Janet Albrechtsen and others on the unrelentingly biased right.

Pedant’s corner

Ian Smith writes: OK, I know that this is “pedant’s corner” stuff — but your lead item on the Minerals Council report (editorial, yesterday) misuses, as many do, the phrase “to beg the question”. You use this, as many do these days, to mean: “raises the question”.  But that’s not what “begging the question” really means.

My understanding is that begging the question is a type of circular argument or logical fallacy in which a proposition relies on an implicit premise within itself to establish the truth of that same proposition. In other words a statement that refers to its own assertion to prove the assertion. So for example, the statement “chocolate is healthful because it’s good for you” begs the question — the conclusion is stated as a basis for the conclusion.

So “begging the question” is avoiding — rather than asking or leading to — the question. Now class, is that all clear? If so, I’ll retire to pedant’s corner (where I might give a lecture on misuse of the phrase “hoist by his own petard”).