Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Interviewer: In relation to mixing within the community obviously that’s an issue to be faced today with people like John Howard saying that they have to learn English.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: Was that something that you experienced here in Perth in relation to there being an obligation to blend with the wider community, to become more Australian?

Dad: No, it was different in those days. Much different. I was going to Hale [School], and I had enough problems. I wanted to do boxing in school, Saturday morning but no go, synagogue, okay. Then when I became friendly with boys at Hale and we’d go out together. The boy I was most friendly with – his parents were clients of my parents – explained to me said, “Look, we’re friends, we’re together but I don’t go to your house and you don’t get invited to ours.” That was the attitude, the feeling.

Interviewer: How did you sense the wider community?

Dad: Not like that. I took it to be typical Hale School. I even discussed it with Mr Johns. For instance when I first went to Hale School after being there a couple of weeks, Mr Johns asked me “Have you got a tennis racket?” I said, “Yes, I got one from my Barmitzvah.” I had never played tennis in my life. He said, “Bring your tennis racket and shorts to school.” And he arranged for a couple of boys, Lloyd and Irvine, (and there was supposed to be a fourth but he couldn’t make it), and we played tennis. And I was very friendly with Michael Perry. We’d go fishing on the Swan and stay overnight. He came to my barmitzvah and he was very happy.

Interviewer: So there was no sense of an, ‘us and them’ scenario?

Dad: No, no we lived the same life.

And if you are a blogger, feel free to help publicize this.

Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead McGuire, who arrived in Gaza on the “Free Gaza” boat, left, holds a gift from Gaza’s Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, right, at his office in Gaza City, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. The boat carrying international protesters sailed into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to bring attention to Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory. The 27 passengers include McGuire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.

If this doesn’t already speak volumes, allow me to make things clearer for you.

Hamas Charter:

Preamble

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

Article Six

The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine..

Article Seven

…”The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Article Eleven

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up…..

Article Thirteen

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

Free Gaza mission statement:

May 2008 marks the 60-year anniversary of the Nakba, “the catastrophe”, when the overwhelming majority of Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their ancestral homeland to create the state of Israel. In contravention of International law, human rights, and basic principles of morality, Israel continues to deny these refugees and their descendants their right to return home. Israel has neither acknowledged nor attempted to amend this historic injustice that gave birth to the Jewish state. Instead, more than 5 million Palestinian refugees languish in refugee camps, while their homes, farms, and properties are inhabited by Jewish immigrants who arrived in Palestine from around the globe.

The historic illegal appropriation of Palestinian land, home and heritage is at the heart of the Middle East conflict. It has given rise to the largest ongoing refugee population in the world. It paved the way for subsequent land theft in 1967, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing that has squeezed Palestinians in the West Bank into ghettos and bantustans surrounded by 27-foot walls, sniper towers, and military guards. It has created the open-air prison of Gaza with an impoverished and overcrowded population of 1.4 million inhabitants.

McGuire and her fellow Free Gaza tools are not peace activists. They are supporters of Hamas and their goals. They do not want a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict, but rather a one state solution – a palestinian state.

Update: Here’s a similar photo from two months ago.

A British activist gestures as she receives a Palestinian passport from senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (2nd R) in Gaza August 28, 2008. Two boats carrying foreign peace activists who had defied an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip left the Hamas-ruled territory on Thursday for Cyprus, taking with them seven Palestinians.

The gesture is a “V for Victory” sign, something arch terrorist Yasser Arafat was particularly prone to flashing.

In other words, not quite a symbol of peace.

One of the rabbis from Mercaz HaRav told me the most amazing story you’ll ever hear about Doron’s dedication to learning Torah, a story that competes with the Gemara’s account of Hillel’s near freezing on the roof of Shmaya and Avtalion’s Yeshiva (see tractate Yoma, 35b).

Doron wanted to learn Torah in Mercaz HaRav, one of the best of Israel’s yeshivas. But, since his early schooling was in Ethiopia, he lacked a strong background in Gemara. The Yeshiva rejected him. He wasn’t discouraged. He asked, “If you won’t let me learn Torah, will you let me wash the dishes in the mess hall?” For a year and a half, Doron washed dishes. But, he spent every spare minute in the study hall. He inquired what the yeshiva boys were learning, and spent most of the nights and all of his Shabbatot with his head in the Gemara learning what they learned. One day, the “dish washer” asked the Rosh Yeshiva to test him. The Rosh Yeshiva politely smiled and tried to gently dismiss Doron, but Doron wouldn’t budge. He forced the Rosh Yeshiva into a Torah discussion; the next day, he was no longer a dish washer but a full-fledged “yeshiva bachur”.

On weekends, when Doron would come home to visit his family in Ashdod, he’d spend the entire Shabbat either in the Melitzer Shul or the neighboring Gerrer shtiebel learning Shulchan Aruch and its commentaries. Three weeks ago, he finished the entire Shulchan Aruch and principle commentaries. Doron achieved in his tender 26 years what others don’t attain in 88 years. He truly was an unblemished sacrifice, who gave his life for all of us.

This is the type of person people should try to emulate, instead of the likes of Paris Hilton and the usual bunch of knuckleheads that today’s youth seem to adore.

The world is a worse place without Doron.