One family’s beautiful beach life robbed of innocence
Not that this is news, but the journos at the smh consider it worthy of printing anyway. One woman describes her horror that her son would be drawn to spectate of beach riots, but ultimately lays blame for the riots at he feet of ‘young lebanese men’. Curiously enough, the 5000 white race-rioters remain blameless.
“I’ve been shocked and surprised by what I’ve seen,” she says.
Despite her amazement at the scale and viciousness of the recent confrontations, Ms Iredaou says tension has been building on the beach for some time.
Her son, Matthew, is a junior lifeguard and has often experienced the anti-social behaviour that some locals say groups of young Lebanese men are bringing to the foreshore.
“It’s their complete arrogance and disregard for the rules that most of us follow at the beach,” she says.
“You don’t kick balls at people, you swim between the flags, you don’t call girls by disgusting names.”
My favourite bit is where the journo has to explain this woman’s local connections. I for one, was fooled by her ‘foreign-sounding’ name. I thought this might be a story about how an innocent family got assaulted by racists after going for a dip. Rest assured, its actually about a “fit and tanned”, very local, PE teacher.
Ms Iredaoe, 51, has lived in Cronulla for two decades, moving here after growing up on the sands around Bondi in Sydney’s east. Fit and tanned, she teaches physical education at nearby Kirrawee High School and lives with her son Matthew and daughter Jamie, at Wanda, just north of Cronulla beach.
The smh is offering a soapbox to racial bigotry by running these puff pieces where “locals” vent at “lebs” in their own words.


Greer on Cronulla. Reasonably incisive I reckon.
http://bull.anarchy.org.au/viewtopic.php?p=241#241
Comment by @ndy — December 17, 2005 @ 10:19 am
Yep. Pretty dispiriting stuff, all reflecting that contemporary capitalist Ausralian nationalist culture is about denial and deflection. Both Gerard Henderson and Miranda Devine wrote about the supposed need of the left to “admit the reality of Lebanese criminal gangs” in response to the racist violence at Cronulla. Funny, but were the racists at Cronulla actually asking the dark-skinned kids they were beating up whether he or she realised the need to admit this reality? “Er, ouch - my Mum’s Indian - ouch - but - ouch - yes - there are gangs - fuck - ouch - leave - ouch - me - alone - fuck -”
Another response you get on fairfax message boards about racism is “every country has its racists”. Well, duh. The question is whether that country has a leader who finds it politically convenient (even exciting) to mobilise them, or to operate in an environment free of condemnation. Australia fails dreadfully whenever John Howard has been leading the Liberal Party.
At the same time, I get a bit dismayed by those who want to have candlelit vigils to show “Australia is a tolerant place where people get along”. That’s simply another avoidance strategy. Anyway. Happy New Year.
Comment by Ben E — January 7, 2006 @ 12:47 am