Fired up in Merri-Bek

Late last year, two arsonists broke into a hamburger eatery in Caulfield, as captured on CCTV footage. Victoria Police allege the duo emptied a pair of jerrycans, struck a match and bolted into the night as the restaurant exploded in a massive fireball.

Buildings go up in flames for all sorts of reasons — vengeance, bad luck and bad wiring, insurance scams — but owner and high-decibel Palestinian advocate Hash ‘River to Sea’ Tayeh was having none of that. Nor were senior Muslim organisations, which pumped out press releases blaming … you guessed it … those rotten Jews.

“It is imperative that this investigation be handled with the utmost care and urgency, and that the offending parties are dealt with by law enforcement for their racial and politically motivated violence,” demanded the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV), paying no heed whatsoever to the assurances of police investigators adamant the fire-bombing was garden variety arson connected to the ongoing “tobacco wars” and in no way an attack on Muslims.

Like so much of what VicPol does these days — apart, that is, from blasting anti-lockdown protesters with rubber bullets, doing what Labor demands, arresting pregnant women in their kitchens for social media posts and collecting speeding-fine revenue — efforts to calm the Prophet’s followers were worse than useless.

How could it not be the Jews? That was the immediate surmise of, let us be frank, noxiously aggressive bigots and anti-Semites.

How could it not be the Jews? That was the immediate surmise of, let us be frank, noxiously aggressive bigots and anti-Semites. Tayah’s restaurant was in Caulfield, the heart of Jewish Melbourne, there was a synagogue nearby, and the October 7 massacres were a recent memory — a heartening one, according to ICV president Adel Salman. “What we don’t denounce, very clearly, is legitimate acts of resistance and for the Palestinians to rise up on October 7 and say we are no longer going to tolerate this siege, this occupation,” said Salman, whose organisation, it is worth knowing, receives generous state government funding.

Who knew roasting babies alive is “legitimate” resistance?

Despite the arrest of two suspects, now in custody, that statement about the arson being “racial and politically motivated” remains on the ICV’s Facebook page, and yet the grants keep flowing. As police said at the time of the arson, Middle Eastern passions were not a factor.  Courts have since been told the alleged arsonists were hired guns engaged to do what is said to be their specialty.

Predictably, given the ICV’s incendiary comment, Muslims and a few of the usual leftoids turned up outside the synagogue on the next Friday night to give the Jews attending Shabas services a hard time. Violence ensued. There were injuries. Pepper gas filled the air. Arrests were made. And burgermeister Tayeh was at hand, of course, to add another angry voice. Mercifully, we heard little of him until recently, when he was arrested — no, not for commissioning the arson, which has never been alleged — but for promoting hatred against Jews. Whether he ends up in court now depends on the Victorian Department of Public Prosecutions, so don’t hold your breath.

Tayeh is contesting a seat on Merri-Bek Council, known as Moreland until it was changed when the municipality’s fathers and mothers discovered the name wasshared with a Jamaican estate  where slaves once laboured in the sugar fields. Yes, Merri-Bak is that sort of place, a council that prides itself on opposing nuclear war, frets about Demon Carbon and supports so many woke causes there simply aren’t enough poles out front of the council chambers to get all their flgs flying at the same time. Filling potholes, rounding up stray dogs, that sort of boring parish-pump stuff, — well, you’ll find plenty of residents who think the council falls well short of the ideal.

All of which means Tayeh has a good chance of fulfilling his aldermanic ambitions, especially when ratepayers in the suburb, which has a high Muslim population, get to see his campaign video.

Clean the streets? Nah.

Longer library hours? Nope.

Cut rates? Don’t be silly.

No, Tayeh is campaigning on an anti-Israel platform, as detailed in his X video available at this link, a still of which is below.

That’s a local hipster pretending to be Benjamin Netanyahu, who the candidate asserts needs to be collected just like the suburb’s rubbish.

Given the ratbaggery that prevails in Merri-Bek, one might almost think they deserve each other.

— roger franklin