We Cannot Break Bread When You Break Your Own Rules

23 July 2014

A public meeting has expanded calls to the NSW government to replace Mr Vic Alhadeff as the Chair of the Community Relations Commission (CRC).

The calls to suspend contact with the CRC have extended beyond the local Arab communities to others ‘on moral grounds’.

Many who had accepted the invitation to the Premier’s annual Iftar dinner, organised by the CRC for Thursday 24 July 2014, have now vowed to withdraw.

The public meeting was hosted by Arab Council Australia and attended by parliamentarians, councillors, former Ethnic Affairs Commissioners, community leaders, lawyers, academics, journalists and community members.

The speakers tabled the documents including the statement issued by Mr Alhadeff which was copy-pasted from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His statement ‘justified’ the collective punishment and mass slaughter of over 600 Gazan civilians.

The Premier’s dinner is the first of many events that will be shunned by the very people that it ostensibly targets.

“In the true spirit of Ramadan and the dinner’s theme of ‘celebrating interfaith harmony’, there is no way community members can ‘break bread’ at the CRC Iftar while the chair still sits at the head of the table. No faith would condone the position that he has taken, and it would be grossly hypocritical to pretend that we are celebrating harmony,” explained former Commissioner Dr Ahmad Shboul (AM).

One of the speakers at the public meeting was former Commissioner and author Joseph Wakim who told the audience:

“These vilifying statements use the terrorist label and victim blaming to silence community voices. This shuts down dialogue and harmony which is the antithesis of what the CRC represents."