Anti-Semitism takes on new direction in France

#1026 for broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 25 Jan 2015.

In a recent newspaper column, executive director of the Sydney Institute, Gerard Henderson, took prominent barrister Julian Burnside to task for comments he made on Twitter about the Lindt Café siege in Sydney and the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris.

Mr Burnside claimed the Sydney siege was not a terror attack, despite the perpetrator having said that it was, and then declared that the subsequent Paris attack was terrorism but the public march that followed “decisively rejected Islamophobia.”

The link between the two incidents was, of course, religiously motivated violence, prompted by a commitment to Islam, however misguided or maverick it may have been.

As Mr Henderson observed, there was a later deadly anti-Semitic attack in Paris, and in both French incidents, “no Muslims were killed or kidnapped by non-Muslims, and the only believers deliberately murdered were Jews.”

It does truth and justice no service to encourage fear of Islam, or people who identify as Muslim. But peace requires justice, and justice requires that truth be told.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.