The Israeli government has offered to train senior Australian police officers in Israel as part of efforts to combat terrorism and antisemitism, reports OnePath Network.

In a letter to Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said his government was “ready and willing to assist” following the Bondi beach massacre on December 14 which killed 15 civilians.

“We bring extensive experience in combating radical Islamic terrorism and antisemitism,” Chikli wrote.

“We would welcome the opportunity to host and train senior Australian police officers and security personnel in Israel, sharing our expertise and best practices in countering terrorism and antisemitism.”

This comes amid growing public scrutiny over the handling of the Bondi attack and broader concerns around antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia.

The Israeli offer has sparked criticism. Writing on social media, handala.bds said: “Might as well rollout the red carpet for Mossad [Israeli secret service]”.

Juju_b.22 asked about the Israeli training offer: “To commit genoc1de?”

Adam_h_y_k asked: “Train them in what? The Hannibal directive?”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

She made it clear in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, again at her televised debate with Donald Trump a few weeks later, and in all her interviews since.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, if or when elected the 47th United States president, will continue the centre-right policies of her recent predecessors, especially her current boss, President Joe Biden.

This likely means that efforts to address income equality and poverty, to abandon policies that beget violence overseas, and to confront the latticework of discrimination that affects Americans of colour and Black women especially, will be limited at best.

If Harris wins today’s election, her being a Black and South Asian woman in the most powerful office in the world will not mean much to marginalised people anywhere, because she will wield that power in the same racist, sexist and Islamophobic ways as previous presidents.

“I’m not the president of Black America. I’m the president of the United States of America,” President Barack Obama had said on several occasions during his presidency when asked about doing more for Black Americans while in office. As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris is essentially doing the same.

And as it was the case with Obama’s presidency, this is not good news for Black Americans, or any other marginalised community.

Take the issue of housing.

Blanket housing grant
Harris’s proposed $25,000 grant to help Americans buy homes for the first time is a blanket grant, one that in a housing market historically tilted towards white Americans, will invariably discriminate against Black folks and other people of colour.

Harris’s campaign promise does not even discern between “first-time buyers” whose parents and siblings already own homes, and true “first-generation” buyers who are more likely not white, and do not have any generational wealth.

It seems Harris wants to appear committed to helping “all Americans”, even if it means her policies would primarily help (mostly white) Americans already living middle-class lives. Any real chance for those among the working class and the working poor to have access to the three million homes Harris has promised is between slim and none.

Harris’s pledges about reproductive rights are equally non-specific and thus less than reassuring to those who already face discrimination and erasure.

She says, if elected president, she would “codify Roe v Wade”. Every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter has made such a promise and yet failed to keep it.

Even if Congress were to pass such a law, the far right would challenge this law in court. Even if the federal courts decided to upload such a law, the Supreme Court decisions that followed between 1973 and 2022 gave states the right to restrict abortion based on fetus viability, meaning that most restrictions already in place in many states would remain.

And with half the states in the US either banning abortion entirely or severely restricting it, codification of Roe — if it ever actually materialises — would at best reset the US to the precarity around reproductive rights that has existed since 1973.

Less acccess to resources
Even if Harris miraculously manages to keep her promise, American women of colour, and women living in poverty, will still have less access to contraceptives, to abortions, and to prenatal and neonatal care, because all Roe ever did was to make such care “legal”.

The law never made it affordable, and certainly never made it so that all women had equal access to services in every state in the union.

Given that she is poised to become America’s first woman/woman of colour/Black woman president, Harris’s vague and wide-net promises on reproductive rights, which would do little to help any women, but especially marginalised women, are damning.

Sure, it is good that Harris talks about Black girls and women like the late Amber Nicole Thurman who have been denied reproductive rights in states like Georgia, with deadly results. But her words mean nothing without a clear action plan.

Where Harris failed the most of all, however, is tackling violence — overwhelmingly targeting marginalised, sidelined, silenced and criminalised folks — in the US and overseas.

During a live and televised interview with billionaire Oprah Winfrey in September, Harris expanded on the revelation she made during her earlier debate with Trump that she is a gun owner.

“If somebody breaks into my house they’re getting shot,” Harris said with a smile. “I probably should not have said that,” she swiftly added. “My staff will deal with that later.”

Grabbing attention of gun-owners
The vice-president seemed confident that her remark would eventually be seen by pro-gun control democrats as a necessary attempt at grabbing the attention of gun-owning, centre-right voters, who could still be dissuaded from voting for Trump.

Nonetheless, her casual statement about the use of lethal force revealed much more than her desire to secure the votes of “sensible”, old-school right wingers. It illuminated the blitheness with which Harris takes the issue of the US as a violent nation and culture.

It is hard to believe Harris as president would be an advocate for “common sense” measures seeking “assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws” when she talks so casually about shooting people.

Her decision to treat gun violence as yet another issue for calculated politicking is alarming, especially when Black folk — including Black women — face death by guns at disproportionate rates, particularly at the hands of police officers and white vigilantes.

Despite Trump’s disgusting claims, Harris is a Black woman. Many Americans assume she would do more to protect them than other presidents. However, her dismissive attitude towards gun violence shows that President Harris — regardless of her racial background — would not offer any more security and safety to marginalised communities, including Black women, than her predecessors.

The assumption that as a part-Black, part-South Asian president, Harris would curtail American violence that maims and kills Black, brown and Asian bodies all over the world also appears to be baseless.

In repeatedly saying that she “will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world”, Harris has made clear that she has every intention to continue with the lethal, racist, imperialistic policies of her Democratic and Republican predecessors, without reflection, recalibration or an ounce of remorse.

Carnage in Gaza
Just look at the carnage in Gaza she has overseen as vice-president.

Despite saying multiple times that she and Biden “have been working around the clock” for a ceasefire in Gaza, the truth is that Biden and Harris have not secured a ceasefire simply because they do not want one.

Harris as president will be just as fine with Black, brown, and Asian lives not mattering in the calculations of her future administration’s foreign policy, as she has been as vice-president and US senator.

Anybody voting for Harris in this election — including yours truly — should be honest about why. Sure, there is excitement around having a woman — a biracial, Black and South Asian woman at that — as American president for the first time in history. This excitement, combined with her promise of “we’re not going back” in reference to Trump’s presidency, and many pledges to protect what’s left of US democracy,  provide many Americans with enough reason to support the Harris-Walz ticket.

Yet, some seem to be supporting Kamala Harris under the impression that as a Black and South Asian woman, she would value the lives of people who look like her, and once elected, support marginalised people much better than her predecessors.

This is a delusion.

Just like Obama once did, Harris wants to be president of the United States of America. She has no intention of being the President of “Black America” or the marginalised. She made this clear, over and again, throughout her campaign, and through her work as vice-president to Joe Biden.

There is a long list of reasons to vote for Harris in this election, but the assumption that her presidency would be supportive of the rights and struggles of the marginalised, simply because of her identity, should not be on that list.

Donald Earl Collins, professorial lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC, is the author of Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004). This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written for, and first published by, German magazine Cicero.de (ref. Attentat in Christchurch – Willkommen in der Hölle). Thanks also to Prof David Robie, Pacific Media Centre AsiaPacificReport.nz for providing the featured image for this article.

OUT OF THE BLUE:

It was 1:39pm, Friday March 15. As was usual for a Friday hundreds of people had turned up to pray at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton, Christchurch. All was peaceful, women, children, men, people of all ages young and old, both Sunni and Shia, were in contemplative repose free of worry. It was a mild, late summer, 20 degrees celsius day. Earlier, the touring Bangladesh Cricket Team had briefly visited the mosque, but left early to attend a press conference. By 1:39pm, they had returned and were outside exiting a bus, intending to continue with their prayers inside the mosque.

At 1:40pm, ahead of the team, a man entered the mosque walking quickly up the front steps. He was carrying an assault rifle and dressed in combat uniform. He immediately began shooting people who were kneeling in prayer. The shots rang out and the Bangladesh team members realising they were witnesses to an attack, retreated, and fled on foot to nearby Hagley Park.

Back inside the Al Noor Mosque scores of worshipers were being gunned down, some killed instantly, others bleeding to death. The victims included little Mucaad Ibrahim who was three years of age.

Mucaad was known by his loved ones as a wise “old soul” and possessed an “intelligence beyond his years”.

Eye witnesses said that once the killer began shooting people, little Mucaad became separated from his family. In the chaos, his family could not find him. The next day Police confirmed he too had been shot dead by the killer.

The murders continued at the Al Noor Mosque until the killer’s firearms ran out of bullets. Then, he simply walked out of the mosque, got in his car, and drove six kilometres to the Linwood Mosque. There too were people who had gathered for their regular Friday afternoon prayers.

Mr Aziz picked up an EFTPOS (electronic funds transaction) machine from a table inside the mosque. He ran outside. He saw a man he describes as looking like a soldier. He said to the man: “Who are you”. Mr Aziz then saw three people lying on the ground dead from shotgun blasts. He realised the man was the killer. He approached the attacker, threw the EFTPOS machine hitting the killer, who in turn took from his vehicle a second firearm (a military style semi-automatic assault rifle) and fired four to five shots at Abdul Aziz, missing him. Then, in an attempt to lure the killer away from other people, Mr Aziz shouted at the killer from behind a car: “Come, I’m here. Come I’m here!”

Mr Aziz said he didn’t want the killer to go inside the mosque and kill more people. But the killer remained focussed. He walked directly to the entrance, once inside the mosque he continued his killing spree. Survivors speak of the killer wearing “army clothes”, dressed in “SWAT combat clothing”, helmeted, wearing a vest and a balaclava.

Inside the Linwood Mosque, another witness, Shoaib Gani, was kneeling in prayer. He heard a noise like fireworks but he and others weren’t too concerned and continued with their prayers. Then, as he and his fellow worshipers were kneeling speaking verses from the Koran, the man next to him fell forward with blood pouring from his head. He had been shot and killed instantly, Mr Gani said. Then others too began falling to the floor dead.

Mr Gani crawled under a table. He saw the killer and his firearm. “Written on the rifle were the words, ‘Welcome to hell’,” he said.

Victims, who were wounded and bleeding, were pleading with Mr Gani to help them. But he was frozen to a spot under a table knowing that the killer was walking around the mosque killing as many people as he could. Mr Gani believed he too would also soon be dead, so he reached for his cellphone, he called his parent’s back home in India. But no one answered. He tried to call his father’s number, but the phone kept ringing. He saw people around him bleeding to death. Others with fatal head-wounds “their brains were hanging out. I just couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to do.” Mr Gani phoned 111 (the New Zealand emergency number) and told the authorities people were dead and injured: “The lady on the phone asked me to stay on the line as long as I could.”

Outside, Abdul Aziz picked up one of the killer’s discarded shotguns. Inside the mosque, the killer’s assault rifle ran out of bullets. The killer then “dropped his firearm” and ran back to his vehicle. He got in the driver’s seat. Mr Aziz then ran toward the car. He threw a discarded shotgun at the killer’s vehicle: “I threw it like an arrow. It shattered his window.” Mr Aziz thinks the killer thought someone had shot at him with a loaded gun. The killer turned. He swore at Mr Aziz. When the window burst it covered the inside of the car with glass. Mr Aziz said the killer “then took off” driving in his car. He then turn right away from the mosque driving through a red traffic light and out into Christchurch suburban streets.

Some minutes later, Police and ambulance officers arrived at Linwood Mosque. Anti-Terrorist armed Police entered the mosque. Inside, Mr Gani said the survivors were ordered to put their hands up above their heads. The mass murder scene was covered in blood. The Police then secured the area. Some victims survived because they were under the bodies of the dead. Police told survivors to gather near a grassed area outside. There, people began weeping for their husbands, wives, parents, children, friends.

THE ARREST:

Seventeen minutes later, two Police officers identified the killer, apparently driving his car. They drove the police car into the killer’s vehicle, ramming it against a curb. Immediately, they disarmed the killer, cuffed him, noticed home made bombs in the vehicle – IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They arrested the man and secured the scene.

The rest of Christchurch was in lock-down, children were kept safe inside their classrooms, hospitals began to prepare for casualties, the city’s streets became eerily quiet, people were locked in to libraries, shops, their homes. Police and armed forces helicopters networked the skies. No one knew if the terrorist attacks were committed by a group of people or a lone gunman.

But back inside and entrances to the two mosques, 50 people were dead – one of the dead was discovered the next day by Police, the body was laying beneath others who had been killed. Scores of others were in hospital fighting for their lives, at least another ten were in a critical condition in intensive care. Pathologists from all over New Zealand and Australia were heading to Christchurch to help with documenting the method of murder of the dead.

Within hours of the killings, Australian media named the alleged killer as an Australian born citizen named Brenton Tarrant, 28 years of age. On Saturday morning The Australian newspaper’s front page read “Australia’s evil export”.

Other media in New Zealand followed with details of the man’s background. Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared in court the next day charged with one single count of murder. Other charges will follow. His duty lawyer did not seek name suppression nor bail, the lawyer told the judge: “I’m simply seeking remand and a high court next-available-hearing date.” Tarrant stood cuffed, smiling at those in the courtroom, at one point signaling with his fingers a ‘white supremacist’ sign. He will next appear in the Christchurch High Court on April 5.

THE AFTERMATH:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern later told media: “It was absolutely his [the offender’s) intention to continue with his attack.” PM Ardern said: “Police are working to build a picture of this tragic event. A complex and comprehensive investigation is (now) underway.” To balance the requirement of investigation with the customs of Muslim burials, PM Ardern said liaison officers are with the victims’ loved ones to help “in a way that is consistent with Muslim faith while taking into account these unprecedented circumstances and the obligations to the coroner.”

PM Ardern said, survivors of the massacre had indicated that this attack was not “of the New Zealand that they know”.

One day later, Survivor Shoaib Gani (mentioned above) told media he still could not sleep or eat. The sounds and sights were still vivid in his head: “I still can feel myself lying on the floor waiting for the bullets to hit me.” He said, he will travel back to India to visit family, but he will return to Christchurch: “It’s just a few people, you know. You can’t blame the whole of New Zealand for this… It’s a good country, people are peaceful. Everybody has helped me here. One right wing (person) doesn’t mean everyone is bad. So I can come back here and live and hope nothing like this happens in the future.”

In the hours after the attacks, all around New Zealand, in the cities and in small country areas, Police were stationed and were ready in case others were involved and were preparing further crimes.

Beside the Police officers, people, of all races and religions, began laying flowers at the steps to their local mosques. Messages included read: “Salam Alaikum, Peace be unto you”, and, Aroha nui”, “Peace and love”, “You are one of us”. The outpouring of grief swept the South Pacific nation, and as this piece was written, a mood of support, comfort, reassurance and solidarity with those of Muslim faith was in evidence.

In Australia, Sydney’s landmark Opera House was like a beacon in the night; coloured blue, red, and white – the colours of the New Zealand flag embossed with the silver fern (Ponga) an emblem of Aotearoa New Zealand. Australia’s peoples, like in New Zealand, began laying flowers at the steps of its mosques in a gesture of inclusiveness.

In the aftermath, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to ongoing financial assistance to dependents of those who have died or are injured, and assistance, she said, will be ongoing.

Questions are being leveled as to how a person with hate can enter, live, and purchase weapons in New Zealand while expressing hate toward other cultures and harbouring an intent to kill others.

PM Ardern said: “The guns used in this case appear to have been modified. That is a challenge Police have been facing, and that is a challenge that we will look to address in changing our laws… We need to include the fact that modification of guns which can lead them to become essentially the kinds of weapons we have seen used in this terrorist act.”

When asked how she was coping personally with the tragedy, she said: “I am feeling the exact same emotions that every New Zealander is facing. Yes, I have the additional responsibility and weight of expressing the grief of all New Zealanders and I certainly feel that.”

That responsibility includes ensuring New Zealand’s Police, the nation’s intelligence and security services and “the process around watch-lists, including whether or not our border protections are currently in a status that they should be, and, including our gun laws.”

THE BACKSTORY:

Indeed, New Zealand is part of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network that includes the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Global surveillance is coordinated and prioritised among the Five Eyes member states. While significant resource, technology and sophistication is committed to the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, New Zealanders fear that those who find themselves as targets, or within the scope of intelligence officers, are predominantly of the Muslim faith.

In contrast, the accused killer who allegedly committed the horrific Christchurch mosque attacks, has been active both on social media and the dark web expressing, with an intensifying degree, his ideology of hate and intolerance. It does appear of the highest public interest, certainly from an open source intelligence point of view, to ask questions of why New Zealand’s (and indeed the Five Eyes intelligence network’s) surveillance experts did not detect the expressed evil that had radicalised the heart and mind of the perpetrator of this massacre.

It is also fact, that New Zealand is a comparatively safe and peaceful nation. But within its midst are people and groups fermenting on racially-based hate ideas. Whether it be in isolation or among organised groupings, the threat of racially driven terror crimes exists.

The alleged killer, Brenton Tarrant, has lived among those of New Zealand’s southern city Dunedin for at least two years. It appears he was radicalised around 2010 after his father died and he toured Europe. He wrote about becoming “increasingly disgusted” at immigrant communities. In early 2018, Tarrant joined a Dunedin gun club and began practicing his shooting skills and allegedly planned his attacks.

Regarding Christchurch, while it has a history of overt white racist gangs, at this juncture, it does not appear they were directly involved in this series of crimes.

But this leads to many unanswered questions, including:

• Was the killer a lone mass murderer, a sleeper in a cell of one?
• Were those with whom he communicated and engaged with on the web in extreme white racist ideologies aware of his plans?
• Was Christchurch chosen by the killer for logistical reasons?
• Was it because the city is easier to drive around than Dunedin, Wellington or Auckland?
• Was it because Christchurch has at least two mosques within easy driving distance?
• Were the Bangladesh Cricket team in his scope of attacks?
• Was the killer attempting to incite a violent response from Christchurch’s burgeoning Muslim community, or, expecting a response from the Alt-Right, from white racist groups such as the Right Wing Resistance (RWR), the Fourth Reich, and Christchurch’s skinhead community?

THE FUTURE:

Survivors of Friday 15th’s terrorist attack say they have complained of an increase in racism and expressed hate in recent times. They say, their concerns have not been taken seriously. These are the concerns that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has committed to listen to, has committed to represent, and, as the prime advocate for her country’s peoples, to act on to ensure cracks in New Zealand’s border, security and intelligence apparatus are corrected.

And, what of New Zealand’s social culture? How will it be affected? That will be determined by the actions of each individual person, each community, town and city and how as a nation New Zealand redefines “The Kiwi Way”.

Members of New Zealand’s media will also need to act responsibly. It is fair to say some have a reputation for argument that verges on alt-right intolerance, for example, on Twitter only two days after the mass murders, a prominent radio journalist, who is employed by one of New Zealand’s largest networks, tweeted: “28 years on an [sic] we still haven’t stopped madmen getting guns. #ChChMosque… [Replying to @Politikwebsite] And the neo nationalist right are the result of the virtue signaling exclusionary left.”

Perhaps such examples are out of step with New Zealand’s population. But such attitudes do create a dialogue of justification for those who harbour intolerance. However, if the outpouring of love and compassion continues to bind rather than divide, then perhaps New Zealand has received, as they say, ‘a wake-up call’, where racial intolerance and extreme ideologies have no place among peoples of all kinds, Maori and Pakeha, of all religions, political persuasions and creeds.

One thing is certain; to stamp out the evil of hate extremism, New Zealanders will pay a price that will be charged against the Kiwi lifestyle. Personal liberties of freedom, of expression and privacy will certainly be eroded further as this nation of the South Pacific grapples with how to keep its peoples safe. The means of how to achieve relative safety will be hotly debated, but it is a necessary juncture in this nation’s history, a moment when we all must confront and challenge ourselves so that people of innocence, people like little three year old Mucaad Ibrahim, can go about their days in trust, in peace, in joyful purpose and achieve their deserved potential. Anything less is a second killing for the victims of Friday 15, New Zealand’s darkest hour.

When lives are tragically cut short, it is generally easier to explain the “how” than the “why”. This dark reality is all the more felt when tragedy comes at the hands of murderous intent. Explaining how 50 people came to be killed, and almost as many badly wounded, in Christchurch’s double massacre of Muslims at prayer is heartbreaking but relatively straightforward.

As with so many mass murders in recent years, the use of an assault rifle, the ubiquitous AR15, oxymoronically referred to as “the civilian M-16”, explains how one cowardly killer could be so lethal.

It was much the same in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando three years ago, when one gunman shot dead 49 people in a crowded space and, though the motive appears very different, the same sort of military instrument of death lies behind the 58 deaths in Las Vegas a year later.

READ MORE: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

An AR15 was used to shoot dead 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue last October and a similar weapon was used to kill six people in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.

It is a credit to the peaceful nature of New Zealand society that, despite the open availability of weapons like the AR15, the last time there was a mass shooting was in 1997. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern rightly identified reform of gun laws as one of the immediate outcomes required in response to this tragedy.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … “rightly identified reform of gun laws as one of the immediate outcomes required in response to this tragedy”. Image: Rebekah Parsons-King/RNZ

But lax gun laws are arguably the only area in which blame can be laid in New Zealand. Ardern, together with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was also right to refer to this barbaric act of cold-blooded murder of people in prayer as right wing extremist terrorism driven by Islamophobic hatred.

State and federal police in Australia have long warned that, next to the immediate threat posed by Salafi jihadi terrorism, they are most concerned about the steady rise of right-wing extremism.

Some comfort
There has been some comfort in the recognition that the most active right wing extremist groups, and there are many, are disorganised, poorly led, and attract but small crowds.

On the face of it, then, right wing extremism in Australia is nowhere near as serious as the neo-Nazi movements of Europe or the various permutations of white supremacy and toxic nationalism that bedevil American politics. In America, it is conservatively estimated that there were 50 deaths due to terrorist attacks in 2018, almost all linked to right-wing extremism.

In 2017, it is calculated that there were 950 attacks on Muslims and mosques in Germany alone. Many of last year’s attacks in America involved a common right wing extremist hatred of Islam, and a targeting of Muslims, joining a long-standing enmity towards Jews.

Almost all recent terrorist attacks have been lone-actor attacks. They are notoriously difficult to predict. Whether inspired by Salafi jihadi Islamist extremism or right wing extremism, lone-actor attacks commonly feature individuals fixated on the deluded dream of going from “zero to hero”.

One of the main reasons authorities struggle with identifying right wing extremist “nobodies” who post online, before they turn to violence, is that it’s difficult to pick up a clear signal in the noise of a national discourse increasingly dominated by exactly the same narrative elements of mistrust, anxiety, and a blaming of the other.

In Australia, as in Europe and America, mainstream politicians and mainstream media commentators have increasingly toyed with extremist ideas in the pursuit of popularity. Many have openly brandished outrageous ideas that in previous years would have been unsayable in mainstream political discourse or commentary.

Donald Trump can be deservedly singled out for making the unspeakable the new normal in mainstream right wing politics, but he is hardly alone in this. And sadly, for all of the relative civility and stability of Australian politics, we too have now come to normalise the toxic politics of fear.

Not a shocking surprise
No-one put it better than The Project host Waleed Aly in saying that Friday’s terrorist attacks, although profoundly disturbing, did not come as a shocking surprise.

Anyone who has been paying attention and who really cares about the well-being and security of Australian society has observed the steady growth of right wing extremist and right supremacist ideas in general, and Islamophobia particular.

They have seen the numerous attacks on Muslims and Jews at prayer and worried about the day when the murderous violence that has plagued the northern hemisphere will visit the southern hemisphere. But more than that, they have worried about the singling-out of migrants, and in particular asylum seekers, African youth and Muslims as pawns to be played with in the cynical politics of fear.

Scott Morrison is right to say these problems have been with us for many years. But he would do better to point out that our downward trajectory sharply accelerated after John Howard’s “dark victory” of 2001.

The unwinnable election was won on the back of the arrival of asylum seekers on the MV Tampa in August followed by the September 11 attacks, and at the price of John Howard and the Liberal party embracing the white supremacist extremist politics of Pauline Hanson.

Both major parties, it must be said, succumbed to the lure of giving focus groups and pollsters the tough language and inhumane policies the public appeared to demand and reward.

The true price
We are now beginning to see the true price that we have paid with the demonising of those arriving by boat seeking asylum, or looking too dark-skinned, or appearing too religious.

The result has been such a cacophony of hateful rhetoric that it has been hard for those tasked with spotting the emergence of violent extremism to separate it from all the background noise of extremism.

There are, of course lessons to be learned. Authorities need to do better. We can begin with a national database of hate crimes, with standard definitions and robust data collection. Clearly, we need to pay attention to hateful extremism if we are to prevent violent extremism.

But ultimately, we need to address the permissive political environment that allows such hateful extremism to be promulgated so openly. The onus is on commentators and political leaders alike. They cannot change the past, but they will determine the future.

Professor Greg Barton is chair in Global Islamic Politic at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. He is engaged in a range of projects working to understand and counter violent extremism in Australia and in Southeast Asia that are funded by the Australian government. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

OPINION: By Keith Locke

It was heartwarming to be part of such a big and diverse crowd in Auckland’s Aotea Square on Saturday standing in solidarity with the Islamic community after the terrible massacre in Christchurch. There were many passionate speeches highlighting the need to come together to fight racism and Islamophobia.

Many New Zealanders have picked up Jacinda Ardern’s theme “this is not us” but unfortunately this message is only partly true. Islamophobia is deeply embedded in our society.

Former Race Relations commissioner Susan Devoy says that “every single Muslim woman I know has faced racist abuse of some kind right here in our towns, on Facebook, in the media”.

In order to deal with this we have to understand where New Zealand’s Islamophobia comes from, and what sustains it. It goes a long way back.

Settlers in colonial New Zealand were deeply Islamophobic and white supremacist. Our white settlers saw themselves as superior to the “dark” people in the Muslim world and they treated Christianity as the only true religion.

New Zealand supported Britain’s wars in the Middle East and south Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries. These wars continue up until today, but with Britain now playing a subordinate role to the United States.

-Partners-

The white supremacist and Islamophobic message presented today is that Islam is a violent religion, or at least has the capacity to take a violent form, and this has to be combated by the intervention of Western powers.

Western excuse
This is the excuse given for Western military action in several Islamic nations including Libya, Somalia, the Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Of course, there have been violent and extreme political currents in some of these Islamic countries, often generating a public flowing from their opposition to corrupt (Western-backed) governments, or their opposition to foreign military intervention.

Now we are in a vicious circle of foreign intervention begetting jihadism, and jihadism begetting foreign intervention, and so it goes on.

And that has set off another vicious circle with the Islamophobia in Western nations upsetting the local Muslim community, motivating a few extreme elements to commit violent acts, which results in more Islamophobia, and so it goes around.

Whether consciously or not, successive New Zealand governments have helped foster this modern Islamophobia by participating in the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and not speaking out against Western military action in places like the Yemen, Libya and Somalia. The Western propaganda around those wars has fostered prejudice towards Muslims living in New Zealand.

If we really want to combat Islamophobia and white nationalism we should withdraw our remaining soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan and not participate further in America’s wars in Islamic countries.

We should also withdraw from the Five Eyes, and intelligence network based on the white supremacist premise that five “anglo” nations (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have the right to spy on every other nation.

Five Eyes interests
The Five Eyes operates mainly in the interests of Donald Trump’s America helping him, for example, to implement his Islamophobic ban on the citizens of several Islamic nations entering the United States.

It should be noted that the killer in Christchurch, Brenton Tarrant, called Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity” in his manifesto justifying the massacre.

Given the Islamophobic ethos of Western intelligence agencies, led by the United States, we should be against strengthening our anti-terrorist laws or allowing more intrusive state surveillance. Such an approach won’t help the Muslim community.

The reality is that the longstanding Crimes Act, which has been used to charge the current offender, covers all cases of murder, kidnapping, bombing and membership of a criminal group. Separate anti-terrorism legislation is clearly unnecessary.

The only (failed) attempt to use the existing Terrorism Suppression Act has been against local dissenters, in the Operation 8 case.

One takeaway from the Christchurch massacre seems to be that a violent act by a “lone wolf” is very hard to detect. Rather than move towards a surveillance society, our resources would be better devoted to promoting community tolerance and the understanding of diverse cultures.

Reducing the prevalence of Islamophobia in our society is the best path to take.

Keith Locke is a former Green MP and foreign affairs spokesperson, being first elected to the NZ Parliament in 1999 and retiring at the 2011 election. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished here with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz