A new low for the Australian Jewish News?

In an Olympic Week, one doesn’t like to see such records being set.
The publisher of the  Australian Jewish News, Robert Magid, for reasons best known unto himself, has decided to engage in the vilification of refugees to Australia, particularly people who arrive by boats. H e says, in part “The Jews who fled the Holocaust faced certain death . I doubt whether there is a single boat person in that position. Some may have fled a war zone or limited economic opportunities while others are seeking an easy life. None were facing certain death.”  This of course, flies in the face of the consistent finding that almost all arrivals in Australia are genuine refugees.   And of course, he  puts the bar for being a refugee in the impossible category–you have to have a gun at your head–then ask for asylum. More generally of course, he thinks it’s all a racket and that they are a source of terrorism and fundamentalism.
This all goes to reinforce prejudices that regrettably exist in the Jewish community.  This is Hansonism clear as day.
Sol Salbe has put it well in a Facebook post “this is as disgusting as an opinion piece on refugees can be in the a newspaper circulating in a community where everyone has refugees in their family tree. I have to say that I have been expecting this. Clearly publisher Robert Magid (who has not built a reputation for subtlety) has jumped one way. It would be interesting to see how other leading luminaries jump”.
Tough Jews have no mercy.  It’s a message that is clear in Israel, has been clear amongst ne0-Cons in the US, and now it is being pushed here.  Lord help us.
This horrid piece of journalism is attached.
 
Larry Stillman
Robert Magid refugee op-ed