With 'Anglos' doing battle with 'bloody Lebs' on a Sydney beach, racial tensions are boiling Down Under, writes Germaine Greer
'We are the Sons and Daughters of the Anzacs. We cannot expect our treasonous government to protect us in these times, they are the ones that bought us to this very place. With 150,000 Arabs entering our nation 'legally' each year, it is time Australians stood up and were counted. For we are the Sons and Daughters of the Anzacs, the men who protected us from threat and invasion in years gone by. Now it is your turn, OUR turn, the guard has changed, the times have changed, but true patriots shall never be silenced."
So runs the latest communique of the commanders-in-chief of the "Anglo" side in the south Sydney beach wars, summoning me and other "Australians" to Cronulla tomorrow to do battle with the foreign invader. Under freshly invoked emergency powers, the Australian who sent it to me could incur a fine of A$5,000 (€3,200). Meanwhile, Arab-Christian and Arab-Muslim organisations are desperately trying to impose a curfew on their communities; Lebanese mothers are being asked to use their authority in the family to keep their sons at home this weekend.
The "can-Australia-really-be-racist?" approach of the British media to reportage of the battle of Cronulla is gratuitous and silly. Australia is as racist as Britain, no more, no less. Australian racism derives from the same bottomless source as British racism - from universal ignorance and working-class frustration, reinforced by an unshakeable conviction of British superiority over all other nations on earth, especially the swarthy ones. If Australia had been colonised by any other nation but the British, it would be less racist. As it is, it is dying hard.
The governor of New South Wales, Marie Baashir, is Lebanese; her husband is Sir Nick Shehadie, Lebanese hero of Australian rugby union, while rugby league's greatest-ever points scorer is another Lebanese, Hazem El Masri. Christian Lebanese have done particularly well in multicultural Australia, dividing the expatriate Lebanese community along class lines. One troubling aspect of the present friction is that shots have been fired by the ubiquitous "men of Middle-Eastern appearance" during a carol service at the Catholic primary school of St Joseph the Worker in genuinely multicultural Auburn. The school is attended by many Catholic Lebanese children. But it wouldn't really matter if Queen Elizabeth herself was Lebanese: nothing is going to change the mindset of the new Anzacs.
Beach wars are nothing new. Australian satirists have been deriding moronic surfie culture for 50 years. The best beaches are territories that must be defended against all-comers, especially car-loads of "greasers". For seven years, according to some observers, gangs of "bloody Lebs" have been descending on Cronulla beach, mainly because neighbouring Maroubra Beach was barred to them by the multicultural surf gang "the Bra Boys". Then, on Sunday December 3rd, two young men, said to be surf lifeguards but not, in fact, identified or acknowledged by the Cronulla Life-Saving Club, were bashed to insensibility by four "men of Middle-Eastern appearance", who summoned others by mobile phone. What provoked the attack is not known, but a few days later, people chatting on the beach, referring casually to the trouble caused by "bloody Lebs", were overheard and narrowly escaped a bashing of their own.
THE LATEST EVENTS might be no more than skirmishes in the usual beach wars. But it does seem that Australian-born Muslim teenagers have finally had enough. Antagonism towards them has been mounting for years, so that even the most presentable middle-class young men of Middle-Eastern appearance find themselves routinely turned away from clubs and effectively ostracised from mainstream youth culture.
One case in particular has become a lightning rod for racial tensions. In 2002, Lebanese Muslim Bilal Skaf was convicted of organising gang rapes of Australian girls on three separate occasions. The crimes were horrible, and had been daily described throughout the tortuous proceedings in salacious and inflammatory detail by the Australian media. In what seems a knee-jerk reaction, Skaf was sentenced to an astonishing 55 years. This was widely denounced by redneck commentators as not enough. With Skaf and his brother in prison, the media dogged the rest of the family. When one of the three verdicts was overturned on a technicality, nine years of Skaf's sentence had to be set aside. The redneck media howled in rage and disbelief, and continue to howl, keeping the issue alive. The Bali bombings and Australian involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq have only reinforced the image of the universal enemy, the agent of evil, as the "man of Middle-Eastern appearance".
In the week that followed the first attack on Cronulla beach, redneck broadcaster Alan Jones encouraged his listeners to ring in and relieve themselves freely of their load of racist hatred. He also broadcast the text message that summoned people of like sentiments to "support the Leb and wog bashing day", which was the following Sunday, when drunken "Anglo" gangs armed with beer bottles turned up to get a beating from the police, who laid about them like madmen. The "bloody Lebs" then retaliated, coming in car-loads, armed with clubs, metal bars and anything else that would split a skull, even guns. Peaceable residents caught in their onrush were bashed.
THE PLACE WHERE all this happened is not a multicultural area, being entrenched white lower-middle-class, but Cronulla was one place where Lebanese families could reach the seaside. They did not surf, but they picnicked with their families and their hubble-bubble pipes in Guanamatta Park. The Anglo population had mostly accepted their weekly incursions - except for the moronic surfie fringe, who resented their very presence.
Even if the police manage to lock Cronulla down, the new Anzacs will regroup in the time that it takes to send a text message, faster than the police can reorganise to intercept them, and Lebanese Muslim youths, inspired by rap, ablaze with bling, armed to the teeth in their customised cars, will race to meet them. Already "patriotic" troops are massing on the Gold Coast and in the suburbs of Perth. This looks like being a bloody summer in Australia.