In the wake of the Bondi attack, many migrants, particularly Arabs and Muslims, have faced an outpouring of racist bile on social media, in workplaces and on the streets.
Police in Sydney staged a dramatic arrest of seven young Muslim men, detaining them overnight after ramming two cars and declaring there was “potential for a violent act”. After this was splashed all over the media they were all released the next day without charge.
The Islamophobia Register recorded a 740 per cent increase in reports of racist attacks in the fortnight afterwards.
In Melbourne, an imam was forced from his car and punched in the face, and his wife threatened, in January in a racist attack.
Both Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter blamed the Bondi attack on “an opening of the migration floodgates”. Katter called for all migration from the Middle East and North Africa to be banned, saying migrants “bring with them their hatred and their wars”.
March for Australia’s Bec Freedom has called for deportation of both Jewish people and Muslims saying, “get your wars off our shores”.
New laws
The Albanese government has also fanned the racism, with new laws aimed at migrants and the Muslim community.
New powers to cancel or refuse migrant and visitor visas will create more difficulties for Muslim and Middle Eastern migrants. And there are a series of laws aimed at so called “hate preachers” that are about targeting the Muslim community.
Yet it was a Muslim migrant from Syria, Ahmed al Ahmed, who wrestled the gun from the hands of one of the attackers and saving dozens of lives.
Racist violence and war were not introduced into Australia by recent migrants.
Australia is a violent imperialist country founded on the massacre of Indigenous people—and police who shoot Aboriginal people today like Zachary Rolfe are never punished.
Australian Nazi Brenton Tarrant massacred 51 Muslims in New Zealand in 2019, inspired by the vicious Islamophobia pushed by governments and the mainstream media.
Australia has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East and Afghanistan in the past 25 years, who carried out well-documented war crimes. And Israel’s genocide in Gaza is very much Australia’s war too—the Pine Gap spy base in Alice Springs sends intelligence to the IDF and Australia continues to export weapons parts to Israel.
Instead of scapegoating, we need to stay on the streets for Palestine, to force our government to impose sanctions on Israel and do everything in its power to end the genocide in Gaza.
