Sydney's summer of hate

Today, hot westerlies will sear through the streets of Cronulla, whipping past the white apartment towers on the Pacific's edge, through the Norfolk Pines and palms of the beachside park, and over the tops of waves fanning across Voodoo Reef and Shark Island.

Temperatures will drive into the high 20s or low 30s, broiling already-tanned beachgoers as they head to Northies Hotel or the cafes and outdoor tables lining Bicentennial Plaza. It is iconic Sydney summer.

To the west, tar will be melting in the streets of Lakemba, bouncing off the red brick houses of a suburb dominated for three decades by the city's most important mosque.

In better days, the young Lebanese whose home this is would have thrown their towels in their cars for the 40-minute drive to Cronulla and the white sands of the beaches stretching north towards Botany Bay, the genesis of European settlement.

Not this weekend. The divide between southeast and southwest, white surf culture and migrant youth, will be drawn by heavily armed police. If any want to make it past lines reinforced by an extra 1000 officers drawn from throughout New South Wales, they will step into a potentially lethal tinderbox.

Local surfers Justin and Don, both 33, watch the waves roll in beyond the North Cronulla surf club and debate the violence that stormed across the beach last Sunday, when a mob of 5000 attacked anyone of Middle Eastern appearance in an eruption of drunken racism that shocked the nation and reverberated around the world.

"When I come to the beach," says Justin, "I have to respect everybody on the beach, men, women or children, regardless of whether they're from Uganda or freaking Newcastle. It's a lack of respect, man, a lack of respect."

Don listens, agrees for a bit, but finally jumps to his feet as Justin advocates tolerance: "**** them wogs. They come to our country and **** with us. **** this politically correct talk. The wogs want to **** with us, we'll **** them over."

In Bicentennial Mall another local, Damien - no one here wants to give surnames - worries about the summer ahead. On Monday night, when carloads of Lebanese took their revenge for Sunday's beatings with terrifying raids through Cronulla and Brighton-le-Sands and Maroubra to the north, he raced to his door as thugs took to his Commodore with baseball bats and iron bars.

"I shouted at them and one of them pulled out a handgun and pointed it at me," he says. "I don't know if it was real or not, but I wasn't waiting around to find out. I just shut the door and called the cops. I've never been so frightened in my life ... I just think it's going to get worse. I think someone's going to get killed."

In Lakemba, the media is not welcome. While Lebanese and Muslim leaders are using reporters to broadcast pleas for tolerance and peace, angry young men see them as enemies, whites who blame them for everything. Some have attacked journalists. Others simply believe there is no point in talking to them.

Text messages intercepted by police and the media speak their anger for them, mustering forces for battle against "Aussies" from as far away as Melbourne and Canberra, and from relatives whose families have made it out of Lakemba into the million-dollar homes of Cherrybrook, in Sydney's northwest, where high school teenagers have received the call.

One message, passed to the New Zealand Herald by a reader, urges:"They've tortured us around the world ... n humiliated us but its not gona happen anymore! Lebanese unite as 1 on the 18-12-05 prepare for war send this msg 2 every arab u know."

On the other side, white bigotry has been stirred by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as well as by thugs spoiling for a fight. A typical posting on the Stormfront website exults: "What a day. Thousands of white Aussies drive out middleeastern scum from their beach."

The white call to arms has also gone across the nation, urging racist violence in Melbourne, Queensland's Gold Coast and Adelaide and Perth, where there already have been battles between gangs of young whites and Middle Eastern youths, and attacks on Muslims.

An SMS message published in The Australian exults in the violence: "Today is only the beginning, this is a straight up WAR."

Bigotry

The Australian flag has become a badge of bigotry, draped around the shoulders of whites spoiling for a fight, and flapping on cars and utes driving circuits around the Cronulla beachfront. The slogan "We grew here, you flew here" has been lifted from the girl surf movie Blue Crush, where it was used by native Hawaiians against mainland US surfers, and turned against the "Lebs".

"Let's not be in denial about this," Muslim youth leader Fadid Rahman tells Channel Seven's special "Peace Wednesday" Sunrise show, "there is racism, on both sides".

The trigger for all this was the bashing of several young surf lifesavers on Cronulla beach two weeks ago by a gang of Lebanese youths. At most other times, in most other parts of Sydney, it would almost certainly have past unnoticed, just another random act of testosterone-packed violence.

But it happened on a relatively slow news day, and touched a raw nerve in the Australian psyche: surf lifesavers are Australian icons, a symbol of all that the nation sees good in itself, and a touchstone for its values since the Cronulla club was founded almost a century ago.

Newspapers, radio and TV jumped on the bashing. Talkback hosts, especially, pounded outrage and anger, fuelling a new debate on the role of the media in the shocking violence that was to follow. Morning radio king Alan Jones, while urging listeners against retaliation, called for "a rally, a street march, call it what you will. A community show of force."

There was anger enough at Cronulla. For years, locals have been complaining of a rising incidence of provocation, abuse and violence by groups of young Lebanese men. "It's been getting worse and worse, mate," says Cronulla local Richard. "The Lebs have been coming down here and calling our women Aussie sluts and pushing people around and spitting on us. It had to happen sometime."

Last week's violence was in many ways inevitable. Lakemba and the surrounding suburbs were a self-perpetuating magnet for the wave of Lebanese migrants that began as their homeland erupted into civil war in 1975, powered by the mosque that opened in 1977.

There were divisions. Maronite Christian Lebanese had arrived in large numbers earlier, with many setting up successful and prosperous lives before the influx of Muslims took Australia's Lebanese-born population to 72,000. More than 60 per cent arrived before 1986, and about the same percentage are Christian, creating some internal tensions.

It is not clear whether the violence includes similar numbers of Christians and Muslims, although anecdotal evidence suggests the two have been lumped together by white anger. Maronite Bishop Ad Abikaram felt compelled to issue a statement offering "a hand of friendship to Australian Muslims of Lebanese background as well as to Australians of all backgrounds, when the need is apparent to work as one community".

But whatever the internal dynamics, life in Lakemba and the surrounding suburbs produced common hard lessons: higher rates of unemployment, lower rates of educational achievement, discrimination and racist taunting that has been well documented in repeated studies, and a sense of isolation, anger and resentment.

Culture further shaped attitudes. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Nadia Jamal, who co-authored The Glory Garage, growing up Lebanese Muslim in Australia, wrote of the aggression that has tarred the community's youth: "This might have something to do with the double standards that have taken hold in some Muslim households. There are different rules for boys and girls, especially when it comes to discipline. Anyone who denies this is kidding themselves."

Thug element

Lebanese and Muslim spokesmen have also pointed out that the small thug element that drives violence by their youths is not bound, or even influenced by, religious, cultural or community standards. Police have also been accused of sidestepping the problem for fear of being accused of racism.

White perceptions - and bigotries - have been further darkened by a fear of terrorism that feeds on ignorance and difference, and by a handful of appalling crimes committed by Lebanese men that have stained an entire community, most notably gang rapes, drug turf wars and the shooting of the Lakemba police station.

Young Lebanese took all this baggage when they went to the beach. There was trouble first at Maroubra, a tough, insular community that has no time for troublesome outsiders. The local thugs, a group of surfers known as the Bra Boys, drove them out.

Cronulla is a similar beach, equally as protective of its turf and as tough as they come. Over the years other battles have been fought, and won, against interlopers from the western suburbs, rockers, and others. The book Puberty Blues, chronicling the ugly side of beach culture, was set there. The fierce territorial imperative that stains many beaches and erupts in the fistfights of "surf rage" has been a mark of Cronulla.

Locals resented groups of young Lebanese in their flash cars, in trendy street clothes they never shed even on the summer sand, and the air of arrogance they assumed. "I hate those greasy wogs," said Tony, 36, who claimed to have been twice gang-bashed.

Added Bob, another local: "My daughter's just 12, and she wants a bikini and a boogie board for Christmas. Do you think I'm going to let those bastards come down and tell her she's an Aussie slut?"

Localism and simmering turf tensions overlaid deeper, darker flaws in the Australian psyche. While the incredibly diverse nation has displayed remarkable tolerance and success in absorbing migrants from every corner of the world, there remains an element of unease.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has identified widespread, institutional racial discrimination across all levels of society. A decade-old but still widely cited study by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet reported 10 to 15 per cent of respondents expressing hostility to other groups.

The concern of Australia's leaders now is to isolate the haters and prevent wider schisms. Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Dr Ameer Ali draws a distinction between criminal behaviour and race or religion: "Why have Lebanese Australians and the Islamic religion been dragged in?"

Federation of Ethnic Community Councils chair Voula Messimeri urged new action against racial vilification, warning that Governments needed to crack down before the violence spreads further.

"We are already seeing racial vilification and incitement to racist violence spilling over into other regional centres and it is crucial that we nip it in the bud while we still can," she said.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma, warning of a ripple effect from last week's violence, added: "Mob violence and racial hatred do not spring up overnight and we need to closely examine the issues that lie behind these attacks. In the long term we need to break down the us/them mentality."

For Sydney's southern suburbs, fearing another eruption this weekend, this cannot come fast enough.