Posted on 12/21/2005 2:15:06 PM PST by free_kiwi
For too long our politicians and police have turned their backs on a festering problem writes Miranda Devine.
FORGET Clover Moore as the Grinch of Sydney's Christmas. The "Lions of Lebanon" with their Glock pistols and Molotov cocktails have put her to shame this holy season. While the NSW police lock down entire beachfront suburbs, instruct stores to stop selling baseball bats, and apply the full force of the law to pasty-faced nerds with a taste for Nazi literature, they continue to cower from the real hardmen, the Lebanese-Australian criminal gangs of Sydney's south-west who have ruled the roost in this city for at least a decade and now number in their thousands.
So when parents and children attending Christmas carols on Monday night, December 12, at St Joseph the Worker Primary School in South Auburn were abused and spat on by "young men of Middle Eastern appearance", there were no police to protect them. Not even when the sounds of gunshots echoed inside the church, and parked cars were pumped full of bullets. "Police were called by a number of parents and the principal, but they were unable to attend because they were needed elsewhere," said Cardinal George Pell in a statement.
The police were busy that night - Sydney's mini Kristallnacht "night of the broken glass" - as carloads of men drove east from Lakemba and Punchbowl to systematically attack whole streets of parked cars with bats and machetes. Identified by police as being of the proverbial Middle-Eastern appearance - code for Lebanese Muslim, despite the fact many are second-generation Australians - they also stabbed a man, smashed a woman's head with a bat, attacked another woman in a pizza shop and a man who was putting out his rubbish.
They were extracting revenge for the riot the day before on Cronulla beach when a protest against continuing intimidation of beachgoers by thugs described as Lebanese turned ugly and drunken racists attacked passers-by suspected of being "Lebs".
The retaliation from the gangs of the south-west was a calculated show of strength, with victims reportedly being asked if they were "Australian" before being attacked. Over the next 24 hours another three churches in Sydney's south-west were attacked.
With police unable to guarantee safety, Holy Spirit College at Lakemba cancelled its carols service. Other schools in the south-west cancelled concerts and end-of-year presentations or hired security guards.
Thus the lead-up to Christmas this year has been notable for a rash of cancellations of traditional yuletide activities. The North Cronulla surf carnival was called off. As was the Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club's annual Christmas cheer party, and a carols concert expected to draw 3000 people to Coogee beach.
Rather than a problem of race, religion or multiculturalism, Sydney is suffering from a longstanding crime problem. It is a textbook case of how soft policing and lenient magistrates embolden successive waves of criminals, infecting other people who might otherwise have been law-abiding.
The roots of the problem can be traced back to Telopea Street, Punchbowl, in 1998 when a Korean schoolboy, Edward Lee, 14, was stabbed to death because he went to the wrong house for a birthday party and looked at the wrong people in the wrong way. He didn't know that a notorious group of extended Lebanese-Muslim families, descended from the lawless hill tribes of Northern Lebanon, lived in Telopea Street.
When police arrived they were surrounded and intimidated by about 100 people. For two years they seemed incapable of solving the crime, despite at least 20 witnesses.
Lee's mother, Soobin, searching for clues to the death of her only child, went doorknocking in Telopea Street and the inhabitants laughed in her face. His father took to sleeping on top of his son's grave and weeping.
Eventually a youth, who was 15 at the time of the stabbing, was charged with Lee's killing. In 2003, the youth, who had said "f---ing Asian deserved it" after the stabbing, was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in jail. His friend, now-jailed triple murderer Michael Kanaan, received a three-year sentence for being an accessory after the fact.
But Lee's killing had brought unwanted police attention to Telopea Street's criminal activities, which included drugs and car rebirthing rackets. Soon Lakemba police station was attacked with machine-gun fire, death threats were made to police on their radio network and a police car was shot at as it travelled down Telopea Street. Kanaan was acquitted this year of the attack on the police station, which prosecutors said was to teach police a lesson for "hassling Lebanese people". An alleged accomplice skipped bail and was arrested in Lebanon on terrorism charges. No one has been brought to justice over the attack.
The police commissioner of the time, Peter Ryan, talked tough and did little.
Seven years later, the police are still running scared.
Last week, Channel Seven reported it had obtained a police incident report instructing police officers to stay away from Punchbowl Park that Monday night, where a group of men were congregating before heading to Maroubra.
The report said "a direction was given to police about midnight not to enter the area and antagonise these persons".
The Police Minister, Carl Scully, told reporters he defended the decision not to confront the group. Superintendent John Richardson was quoted saying a car crew sent to Punchbowl Park, where 10 cars and 40 men had gathered, was "ordered to withdraw and observe from afar. There was no trouble and sending police in would only cause trouble."
Setting the example of an astonishing lack of nerve, the Premier, Morris Iemma, told Sydneysiders to stay away from the beach for safety and then cancelled his Christmas media reception which had been scheduled for last Wednesday night. He appeared in every media appearance like a rabbit frozen in the spotlight, perhaps frightened of alienating Lebanese Muslims in his electorate of Lakemba.
That Iemma's electorate is at war with former premier Bob Carr's former electorate of Maroubra is a handy synchronicity. It highlights the ALP's long-term culpability in creating the monster that is plaguing the city, its history of ethnic branch-stacking and "whatever it takes" tactics to shore up support in the heartland electorates of the south-west, its policy of spin and cover-up which is at last coming undone.
As one passenger last week told taxi driver Adrian Neylan, who has chronicled the violence on his weblog, "the gangs have won".
Indeed they have, but the recent display of official cowardice in the face of the criminal gangs of Sydney's south-west is just a taste of the way Sydney has been run for a decade.
Nothing new here. Jump on the skinheads with both feet but let the Mussie run loose.
While I have no use for skinheads , white supremicists, or KKK members it is noticeble how PC it is to jump on them hard while leaving the rioters alone because they are untouchable, They are a minority after all and we all understand that minorities have a right to break the law.
This story is a week old.
What up this week down under...?
slow news week perhaps.
I suggest that PM Howard call his troops home from Iraq to kick some Muslim butt in Sydney. That is a ridiculous situation. What tourists are going to want to come to such a lawless place governed by goons?
What previous comments wrote (^^).
Same occurs from the look of things anywhere unless and until the rest of us speak up about it and make complaints. I just heard yesterday that the majority population in the Holy Land (and Bethlehem, particularly) is now Muslim. That there are fewer - to - few Christians remaining, most having moved away due to just this sort of violence upon everyone else not Muslim.
I really do feel badly hearing and reading about this taking place in Australia. But, it's an illustration of just what is occuring everywhere, worldwide, when these sort of violent, intolerant, aggressive and deathly groups gain a stronghold, relying on "don't hurt us because we're immigrants/a minority/Muslim/etc" excuse to cover their responsibilities and deflect attention from what they actually plan and intend.
It isn't peace. It isn't assimilation. The civilized world has to learn how to confront this problem within the definitions of democracy and not be timid about it.
There was a Muslim riot in Sydney? I must have missed that on the sleezy msm here in the states.
The police are running scared in Australia? Think about that next time you whine about American police being too tough on criminals. Remember, a dead criminal is no longer a criminal.
Australia: You have a problem.
If the "boys" have a taste for Nazi literature then they have a lot in common with the mo's who are long time Hitler/Nazi admirers. I would tend to believe that they would get along better.
My feelings too-let the Nazi thugs and the Lebanese thugs beat the crap out of each other and give the beaches back to ordinary working families of all ethnicities.
The news media in NZ/Austalia are treating it like
all the problems are over now that the white supremacists
have been rounded up and the "racism" has been brought to
the surface. Quite laughable really.
There were a number of fairly small riots and one reasonably large one in Sydney over a week ago now. On one side of the equation were Lebanese Muslims - but there were a lot more people involved than just Lebanese Muslims.
The police are running scared in Australia? Think about that next time you whine about American police being too tough on criminals. Remember, a dead criminal is no longer a criminal.
Australia: You have a problem.
No, the police are not running scared in Australia. At the beginning of these incidents, it is true that police command took a very soft approach to some of the people involved as they have for a number of years and if they hadn't done that, the situation probably would not have developed to the level that it did. But once the situation did develop, the police took a harder approach and regained control of the situation fairly quickly.
How do you explain that school programs were cancelled because the police could not or would not protect the particpants?
There's no reason most of those functions needed to be cancelled - the carols service at Lakemba is probably an exception, considering their location I can understand their caution - but many schools are overcautious about such matters.
Even more so, what tourists are going to want to visit a a place such as this, governed by spineless politicians and law enforcement?
This is an opinion piece. Miranda Devine is the conservative that SMH keeps on retainer to prove they are not biased to the left.
"Our Diversity Is Our Strength!" Tolerance(The inability to say yes or no. The inability to take a stand.) Dialogue, Human Dignity, Equality, Debate, Discussion, Different Points Of View, Democracy. Now one can see what the big words mean.
I don't whine in general, and not about the police in particular. You have me confused with a libertarianitwit.
The "you" as used here was generic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.