My previous local surfing spot!
What really went on atthe 2005 Cronulla riots. By Gary Johns in TheSpectator.
The Albanese government’s decision to allowpotentially pro-Hamas Palestinians to enter Australia has close parallels to the Fraser government’s appalling ‘Lebanese concession’, allowing‘unskilled, illiterate’ Lebanese Muslims of ‘questionable character’ to seekasylum in Australia. The sons and grandsons of these people were central to the Cronulla riots.
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By New South Wales Police Minister Carl Scully andPolice Commander Assistant Commissioner Mark Goodwin
Their conclusion is that the ‘offensive, xenophobicactions of the inebriated few’ on the 11th of December 2005 at Cronulla was nota riot. The retaliatory ‘violence and significant property damage andterrorising of suburbs’ that followed were riots, which took place in numerousSydney suburbs, including Brighton-le-Sands, Cronulla, Maroubra and Lakemba.
Cultural “enrichment”:
The spark for theunrest was misogynistic language directed at young bikini-clad Caucasian womenby young Lebanese men congregating at Cronulla Beach. There were also differences in acceptablebehaviour at the beach, years in the making. Kicking footballs in others’spaces was unacceptable to residents and visitors alike: ‘the towel versus thesoccer ball’.
Lebanese Christian barrister Stephen Stantonexplained, ‘there was… an arrogance in the members of the Lebanese community….The perception as to how women were to be treated was culturally out of kilterwith what was the accepted norm within the Australian community.’ …
The authors revealthat ‘Middle Eastern men’ were planning an attack on the ‘Northies’ Hotel atNorth Cronulla, including a drive-by shooting with machine guns, throwing alive hand grenade into the beer garden of the hotel from a mobile vehicle andspeeding away before the blast.
Another plan wasfor fifty cars full of Middle Eastern men to pull up at the front of MirandaWestfield’s shopping centre. Theywould alight and rampage through the multi-storey shopping centre, smashing theshops and violently assaulting as many people as possible with baseball bats,iron bars, knives, guns and other weapons. This act was intended to ‘Rip theChrist out of Christmas’.
Good policing averted these and othershocking plans for violent revenge. Thousandsof weapons were taken off the streets at roadblocks and in targeted searches.Weapons seized included guns, knives, home-made petrol bombs, improvisedexplosive devices, Molotov cocktails, metal poles, baseball bats, golf clubs,crates of bricks, rocks and lumps of concrete, wooden bats with nailsprotruding and shopping trolley handles.
The ruling class used the violence to bashdeplorable whites, thus validating their superiority:
The media acted like a pack, agreeing on the storyand collectively presenting the first day of the ‘Cronulla Riots’. The ‘pack’missed the main story, not the demonstration during the day, which turnednasty, but the violent, property-rampaging attacks in revenge. …
Academic opinion … predictably framed the Cronullariots as an attack on a minority.
The authors deftly take apart thiswell-worn and wholly inaccurate framing of events and explanation of why the‘riots’ occurred. There was tribalism, territoriality, incivility anddisrespect, but not racism or Islamophobia. …
Pragmatism won:
Fortunately, the better elements of bothcommunities won out with various initiatives.
One concerned the infamous attack on theBrighton-le-Sands RSL. A youth scaled the flagpole and removed the nationalflag, and others joined him to spit, kick, urinate on and burn it. The youthserved seven months of detention, and following an apology, the RSL sponsoredhim to walk the Kokoda Track.
Another positive program that Jamal Rifi and NSWSurf Life Saving initiated involved training young Lebanese men and women aslifeguards on Cronulla Beach. Established soon after the troubles, it sent amessage that the communities were not at war. Three Muslim women participatedin the program. One of them introduced the new burkini swimming costume, whichhas enabled scores of Muslim women to enjoy swimming comfortably and modestly.
Will the Albanese Government repeat the mistakes ofthe past?
The authors conclude, ‘Scholars, commentators, andthe broader community have allowed reverse racism to take place by maligning awhite part of Sydney but not an Arabic one.’ There are echoes of this inAlbanese Labor during the Voice referendum and the Gaza visa mistake. The lesson is not to invite trouble because the cost can last forgenerations.
Probably. They won’t be able to resist thevirtue-signalling to their peers.
