That being the case, it would follow that Julian Burnside is self-evidently the one who threatens our way of life, not Prime Minister Abbott or Andrew Bolt.

He calls for example for a ban on any discussion of the actual “refugee” status of Muslims fleeing Middle Eastern states and passing by neighbouring and all other Muslim states, travelling for thousands of miles to enter Australia, making use of criminal syndicates to smuggle themselves into the country, and often destroying all travel documents just before arrival to hide their actual names and backgrounds. The propensity to violence by very many of these “refugees” is shown in riots, attacks on security guards, abuse of fellow “refugees” including children, and burning down whole detention centres, something not done by any other refugee groups including Vietnamese refugees incarcerated for years in camps, and European Jewish refugees detained in abominable conditions in central Australian camps during World War II as “enemy aliens.” Anyone challenging such criminal refugee behaviours “threatens our way of life,” according to Julian Burnside. However, the opposite is the case: enforcing silence about these matters is already a violation of “our way of life.” One needs no diplomas in law to know that, and Burnside’s expertise is evidently devoted to subverting what he allegedly “defends.”

He then goes on to extend this into advocacy of suppression of criticism of Islam itself and/or Islamic terrorism and their extremist supporters, even though the reality of the problem is shown around the world in every day’s newspaper. His views therefore constitute a threat to the norms governing our way of life.

While I admit that some of Mr. Bloch’s comments are acceptable, it must be agreed that the ASSUMPTION as per the majority of Germans not coalescing into the “final solution” is to a great extent false. Mass exterminations as method were introduced by the nazis well before 1942.Dachau concentration camp ( and extermination) was created shortly after the nazi ascent to power, in 1933. Dachau is in the heart of Bavaria, in a densly populated rural and semiurban area.I visited it.
It was a vast detention camp and, at first, most German communist leaders ( including Ernst Thaleman ), were interned and murdered there. Later it took large numbers of Jews as well. My own Uncle, Rabbi Briszk Otto was murdered at Dachau. While the actual “final solution” was not publicised as such, therefore it does not follow that express disapproval by the great majority of Germans could have been recorded, it was not apparent, ( and it may be falsely assumed that “approval” as such did not occur )it may be safely assumed that radical antisemitic measures, tantamount to extermination, did meet tacit approval by a Germany dominated by ALL nazi known policies, no matter how extreme. Pervasive acceptance of nazi ideology among the Germans was comprehensively studied in the seminal “Authoritarian Personality” and all successive reliable studies of the same. It is, therefore, safe to assume that most Germans were aware of the fate of the Jews who encountered nazified Germany. It must also be noted that the massive extermination of Jews on the Eastern front by SS auxiliaries was a known fact among the rest of the Wermacht, an army which numbered practically millions of Germans. It was done openly in territories controlled by the Wermacht. That included the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto etc.A Judenrein Germany was not, after all, a secret, it could not have been. Bloch’s assumption could be seen as ( I will grant, unintentional )absolving the great majority of Germans of tacit coalescing into the Shoah.
It is important to note that today Germany is making overt efforts in exposing precisely the FACT that , during the nazi period, a great number of Germans DID aid murderous policies by their inactivity, as I said, tantamount to support. Recently I was in Berlin at the concert hall of the Berlin Philarmonic. RIGHT in front of it there is a bus stop. On one of the sides of the shed there is a fairly large poster representing the picture of a nazi concentration camp commander, his criminal past described in details and the title of the text is “There Were Many Like Him “. It was placed there by German officials, not by some NGO etc.
Also one notices IN THE MIDDLE OF BERLIN “Ben Gurion Strasse” and “Itzhak Rabin Strasse”.
It is fair to say that Germany has come a long way…..

While I acknowledge almost all of Mr. Waldmann’s interesting insights, his attempt to disprove my statement in argument No. 4 that “(m)ost Germans didn’t support the gassing and burning of innocent Jews yet it was undertaken on an industrial scale” by referring to the approval of Nazism by the German population in the 1930s, is somewhat illogical. As obscene and as anti-Semitic as Mr. Waldmann’s specific examples of persecution against Jews were, they did not involve the systematic murder by gassing and burning as ratified by the Wannsee conference in January, 1942. There is a distinction to be drawn between a population bearing responsibility for the outrageous actions of its leadership and the express approval of those actions. So when, in the present context, Julian Burnside inanely parrots that “most Moslems do not support terrorism,” that is of no comfort to us, just as it didn’t help those millions of innocent Jews murdered in the final solution that their fate was not expressly ratified by “most Germans”. Geoff Bloch

It’s very dissapointing that successive Australian governments have broadly painted refugees as either possible terrorists, or economic opportunists. However, Iraq and Afghanistan did not produce refugees in significant numbers until war broke out. Therefore I assume nearly all are genuinely fleeing unacceptable danger.
If this is true, how should we treat them?

Argument 2.

There is a fundamental distinction between ANTIsemitism and islamoPHOBIA.
In concrete terms ANTIsemitism has manifested itself by precisely the meaning of the prefix “anti” , through clear acts of oppression, persecution, active acts of violent physical extermination. Jews have SUFFERED a seemingly infinite types of physical persecution.

Islamophobia has as suffix “phobia” which is ONLY a manifestation of
F E A R , reaching morbid stages. It is, therefore, an internalised process which AT WORST will manifest itself by distancing the subject of phobia from the object causing fear. It is a rejection as such, but, as evinced by events, NOT affected by violent rejection, intent of extermination. Islam itself contains explicit oppressive norms against others, leading to incitement to violent means, indeed acts of antisemitism among OTHERS.
Islamophobia, therefore can also be seen as a measure of LEGITIMATE DEFENCE.

Argument 3.
Moms DISPLAYED THE ISIS flag during his siege, therefore his connexion to islam is more than evident.

Argument 4.
Faulty in rebuttal. Nazism in Germany by 1938 reached almost complete approval by the German population left outside concentration camps or in political emigration. All Nazi policies, including the persecution of Jews received massive popular support. One example stick to my mind. Nazis came to power by March 1933. Approximately by May the same year the Berlin Music Conservatory voted unanimously the firing of Arnold Shonberg from the institution on account of being Jewish, ALTHOUGH he converted some thirty years earlier AND the Nurnberg Laws (1938) were NOT yet promulgated !!!Most of those voting Schonberg out were not even nazi party card carrying members . With the mass persecution of all anti nazi political parties ( Social Dem. and Communists in particular ) immediately after the ascent to power and a large abandonment of those parties by the initial voters, Germany became a solid nazi entity.

Argument 5.

ISIS function on a variety of support, obviously the most important is the most evident, military one , yet it may be assumed that ISIS as well as islamic extremism of similar kind has a more extensive support among muslims. It does not have to be the ISIS kind of support to be extremist and terrorist. Hezbolah as well as Hamas are also terrorist organisations as well as a myriad of others which in part and collectively speaking form a much greater cause for concern than even a mere four hundred known or suspected active military volunteers.

Julian Burnside offers a typical lawyer’s selective argument. In syllogistic terms he starts with a favoured false first premise and carries on with series of tendentious follow-ups which, when revealed through comprehensive causistics, are all but absurd, serving pernicious political agendas, not even an elementary exercise in logic. It is simply amazing that he has the temerity, actually hubris, to come out in public with such embarrasing stuff devoid of any intellectual pertinence. Who is this guy and why is he given public space on opinions !!! Did someone say “lawyer” !!!!!