Articles/Letters
Oh what a feeling: the furrows and the crushing Story & image S Sorrensen
A white Toyota 4WD is speeding straight for me. Collision course. But I’m not moving. I’m staring it down, like it’s a charging rhino. Don’t blink. Don’t move. Mind over metal. Toyota may be the go-to vehicle for your working man or jihadi terrorist – an unstoppable lump of heavy machinery – but I’m not budging. You see, I’m on a beach. Yes, a beach. I’m not on a slippery building site wearing a hard hat, or in a desert storm wearing a Kalishnikov, I’m on a beach in a national park. I’m a bloke in a sarong and I’m standing my ground against this pippi-crushing mechanical monster. I’m angry. The Toyota churns through sand and over coffee rock. A motorbike overtakes the Toyota, using an outcrop of coffee rock to get air. The rider, garbed in helmet and brand from previous page
large noticeboard. This would be ideal as it is still quite visible from the street and would not obstruct pedestrian flow. For a Shire that is celebrated for its social zeitgeist and progressive dialogue, surely a sponsored and permanent street-level community noticeboard should be part of the cultural resonance and conversation. We need to ensure there is a space that is not privately vetted and that is open to the whole community to freely discuss, promote issues and interests. Ron Curran Byron Bay
Genetic questions
Given that neo-Darwinism has been trumped by the resurgence and vindication of Lamarckism and the acceptance of the passing on into the next generation of experience from ancestors (through the switching on and off of genes), it occurs to me that immunisation against certain diseases should be passed on and that herd-immunity should be passed on. Does anybody know? In his book Eden In The East Dr Stephen Oppenheimer began a much wider study based on his observation that certain communities in PNG were resistant to malaria while neighbouring communities were susceptible. Though living in proximity, they were of different cultures that did not interbreed. continued on page 14
names, gives the thumbs-up to the Toyota driver. Coffee rock is a feature of this stretch of beach. According to scientists, coffee rock is a relic from an earlier age, like 60,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower and these dunes nurtured swamps and lakes. Organic matter and layers of time bound the sand together, and this soft brown rock was formed. Locals, who have been here a lot longer than scientists, reckon it’s the creation work of Dirawong (the goanna spirit) and the Rainbow Serpent. If I were to take my death gaze from the Toyota and look south, I could see where Dirawong, exhausted after all that creation, and bitten by the sometimes cranky Rainbow Serpent, lies with his hurting head in the healing waters of the Pacific. I would also see, less than a hundred metres away, three
more 4WDs, an esky and a dog ensconced among the coffee rock. But I’m not shifting my gaze from the approaching Toyota. I have my feet firmly planted next to recently
smashed coffee rock. The tread marks of a fat Goodyear etched into the broken rock marks the start of a new year for some brainless buffoon with a turbo charge. The Toyota spooks a pair
of Pied Oystercatchers. They scurry away, orange beaks and legs flashing like a warning. These birds are endangered. They lay their eggs in shallow scrapes in the sand. Given the trashing this beach is getting – the busted coffee rock, the deep furrows in the sand, the tyre tracks up and over the dunes – I reckon this pair of Pied Oystercatchers is probably very much feeling its vulnerable status. What pleasure do people get out of vandalising a beach? Can’t beaches, especially national park beaches, be exempt from the car obsession that grips our culture? Will it take a person being run over as she lies on a beach towel to bring some sanity to this sea shore? Sadly, it is legal to drive a car on this beach. But it is illegal to ride a motorbike here. It is illegal to drive over the coffee rock. It is illegal to drive up the dunes. It is ille-
Palestinians and Christians at risk
Q Vic Alhadeff (Letters, January 6) does not dispute Patriarch Michel Sabah’s claim that ‘Israel confiscated part of Bethlehem’s northern lands and approved the expansion of the illegal settlement of Gilo – built on privately owned lands of Bethlehem – by 891 new housing units’. Does Mr Alhadeff and the NSW Board of Jewish Deputies endorse this theft? In 2012 former minister for foreign affairs Bob Carr stated, ‘The government has repeatedly urged Israeli leaders to cease settlement activity. ‘In the communiqué of the Australia-UK ministerial meeting in January this year, for example, we called for an end to Israeli settlement activity, noting that it was illegal and undermined the prospects for peace.’ Despite his promise in 2009 not to build more settlements, Netanyahu has overseen a 40 per cent increase in settlement building in 2014–2015 alone and 68 per cent of that lies in land slated for the foundation of a Palestinian state. No doubt Netanyahu and the 580,000 settlers in 123 government-authorised settlements, 100 unauthorised outposts and 12 major neighbourhoods in illegally annexed East Jerusalem don’t give a damn for Palestinian rights or the opinions
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of Australia and the international community. Gareth W R Smith Palestine Liberation Centre Byron Bay
Q For his silly ‘Christians in peril’ argument, Vic Alhadeff was desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel to produce Rami Fellemon, who is the director of Jerusalem Evangelistic Outreach (JEO) that aims at proselytising ‘all people in the Holy Land to come to Christ’. JEO is a partner of SALAM, of which 99 per cent of its directors are Americans (mainly Texan) and whose mission is to ‘reclaim the Holy Land for Christ’: the fundamentalist Christian Zionist aim that includes the conversion of the Jews (watch out, Alhadeff) which will bring about The Rapture – the raising to heaven of true born-again Christians (a Christian variation of the chosen people). To get to the truth of the peril Christians in Palestine face, look no further than Benzi Gopstein, far right leader who urged a ban on Christmas and called Christians ‘vampires’. He looks remarkably like the Zionist fanatic who ranted, in Geraldine Doogue’s doco on Easter in Jerusalem, to pilgrims in the site of the Last Supper: ‘This is not a church! This is a Jewish state!
Medinat yahudi. This is not a church! It’s a museum! We don’t need your dirty money! We don’t need your [inaudible] ... You go out! This is the Land of the Jews!’ – the fundamental strategy of Zionism. Dr Vacy Vlazna Sydney
Q Concerning Christians in Palestine, the readers of The Echo might be interested to hear of just a few of the main churches which have joined the boycott or have passed divestment resolutions against Israel and its illegal and brutal occupation. These include: the Uniting Church in Australia, Presbyterian Church (USA), World Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, The Methodist Pension Board, The Church of England, the United Church of Canada, to name but a few. In Israel and in Palestine many churches have been attacked by Jewish thugs and Jewish terrorists, mostly by arson, including: the Monastery of the Cross, the Church of Dormition, the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish (where Jesus fed the hungry masses), Beit Jamal Monastery for nuns of the Sisters of Bethlehem, Greek Orthodox seminary for the study of Christianity. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
The graffiti left on the smouldering walls read obscenities like ‘Mary was a whore’ and many others too disgusting to print. Christian graveyards have also been vandalised, gravestones smashed and sadly ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ sprayed in large, apparently unashamed letters – how easily the oppressed have turned into the oppressors. Mandela, Tutu and many others have called the illegal occupation apartheid, only much worse. However, an Israeli expert in law may be a more reliable source. The former Israeli attorney-general Michael BenYair said, ‘In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories’ – he means Palestine. At least in this regard Israel doesn’t discriminate; it applies its brutal apartheid equally harshly to Muslims and Christians. Subhi Awad Mullumbimby Q I
was born into a Jewish family. All my grandparents are Jewish. In 2013 I visited Israel and Palestine (currently called the West Bank) and spoke with Father Peter Bray, vice-chancellor of Bethlehem University (Catholic) and with many of the students. The student population comprises 2,982 undergraduates and 236 postgraduates with 78.3 per cent female, 75 per
gal to drive through the Pied Oystercatchers. It is illegal for a vehicle to go within 15 metres of an un-vehicled person. But none of it is enforced. The Toyota is almost upon me. I don’t flinch. At the last moment, the Toyota veers around me. The driver is a young bloke, Fourex in hand. ‘Look at this mess,’ I say, pointing to the broken coffee rock, as he passes. He looks at the wrecked rock, a puzzled look flitting across his face. Then he hits the accelerator, the spinning Goodyears sending up a plume of white sand peppered with ground coffee rock. Maybe Richmond Valley Council and NPWS should pull their fingers out and protect this beach by enforcing their rules. Q Read Rea ead d more more of of S’s S s work w at
echo ho h o.n net e .aau/ u heere-a echo.net.au/here-and-now
cent Muslim and 25 per cent Christian. Does Mr Alhadeff believe that in a community ruled by ISIS large numbers of women would be permitted to study at a Christian university? Would such an established Christian university be permitted to operate at all in a community ruled by ISIS? The university magazine carries stories about previous graduates. For example, Sa’ed Bannoura, a Christian graduate of the university, was permanently crippled in 1991 by Israeli gunfire to his chest and back. Lubna Al Zaroo, a young Muslim graduate, was helped to gain a Fulbright Scholarship. There are numerous examples of Muslim and Christian mutual support. Jewish settlers and the IDF evict Palestinians from their homes, torch entire olive groves, burn down inhabited houses and attack Palestinian children en route to school and even kidnap them from their beds at night. They don’t ask whether the children are Muslim or Christian; to them they are all ‘Arabs’ and must be expelled or killed. The occupation itself is the crux of the problem for Palestinian Christians, not fear of their Muslim compatriots converting to ISIS. Jenny Bush Wilsons Creek
The Byron Shire Echo January 13, 2016 11