Back in August, The Canberra Times had this pull-on-the-heartstrings piece about a Gazan artist granted a humanitarian visa to enter Australia after 10 of his family members were killed:
Maimed Gaza artist in NSW after 10 of his family killed
Fayez Elhasani always wakes up in the dead of night at the same time an Israeli airstrike hit the home where he was sheltering in Gaza, killing 10 members of his family.
Asleep at 2.30am, he was flung 12m with his wife Sara across the ground-level home that was reduced to rubble on October 24.
Five of his ribs were crushed in the impact and his leg was shattered.
The loss of his five grandchildren (the youngest less than one year old), his son Mohammad and his wife, and two daughters as well as the husband of one has been unfathomable for him.
“What was the fault of these children being killed for no reason? Thousands and thousands of children have been martyred senselessly,” he told AAP.
“I’m crying for the kids who are going through these horrors we’ve never seen on this scale ever before.
“This is not a war, it’s a genocide.”
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A prolific painter with hundreds of colourful works under his belt, Mr Elhasani has exhibited in many galleries internationally, and had some of his canvasses shipped to Sydney several years ago for a show.
They are the only remnants of the once-thriving Rawasi art gallery that he founded which was also destroyed in the bombings on the blockaded enclave.
The 72-year-old is waiting to hear back from surgeons in Sydney on when he can have a leg operation to reduce the burns on his skin and fix protruding smashed bones.
“The night of the strike I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t hear anything but in the last fortnight I have been getting nightmares, seeing vivid visions of the destruction,” he said.
“I sometimes cry because there’s nothing to say. It’s cruel how you lose the closest people in an instant.”
Two of his grandchildren, Fayez and Fatima, were pulled from the ruins of the home and are with their cousins adjusting to their new surroundings.
“Fayez, my grandson, barely survived with shrapnel lodged everywhere, his entire body is still burned from top to bottom,” said Mr Elhasani.
The quiet teenager, who shares his grandfather’s name, also needs several plastic surgeries to fully recover.
Another son of Mr Elhasani, Yousef, is severely wounded in Cairo. He has been unable to secure a tourist visa which his sister Ranad applied for in November.
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“I never thought one day I’d be forced to leave my country”, Mr Elhasani said, remembering his leisurely walks by the Mediterranean Sea.
“This is the nakba (catastrophe) of all nakbas … our homes and possessions have been lost, our lives have been upturned but Palestine, as we say, is a mother that will always birth new generations,” he said.
This hard-luck story – which gives new meaning to the words “suffering artist” – came out around the time that Australian Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s call to not grant fleeing Gazans entry visas into Australia so easily due to security concerns, created controversy.
It has now been revealed that – shock, horror – there was a very good reason so many of Elhasani’s family members were killed.
A Palestinian man was granted a visa to Australia despite once hosting political members of Hamas and other terror organisations at his Gaza art institute, and having brothers and sons linked to banned groups.
The Opposition has demanded an explanation for how visual artist Fayez Elhasani was let into the country in July, questioning how he passed the visa character test.
Mr Elhasani, who was the director-general of the Rawasi Palestine Institute before the war, came to Australia after ten members of his family – including his wife and several young grandchildren – were killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza in the wake of the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
But his arrival has sparked questions about the visa screening process as social media posts show Mr Elhasani hosted a 2019 meeting of Palestinian faction leaders at the Institute, where he called for the Israeli occupation to be confronted by “all possible means,” while Rawasi Palestine accounts have repeatedly posted pictures glorifying and supporting attacks on Israel.
It can also be revealed three of Mr Elhasani’s deceased brothers and two sons participated in groups designated as terror organisations by either Australia or its allies.
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Mr Elhasani has previously told media he arrived in Sydney in July where he is staying with his daughter.
Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said Labor must “immediately clarify” Mr Elhasani’s visa process, including if his application was referred to ASIO and how he passed the character test.
Mr Paterson said anyone who “hangs out with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other listed terrorist organisations should not be welcome in Australia”.
“If the gravely serious allegations against Mr Elhasani are correct, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke must urgently explain what action he will now take to protect the community,” he said.
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Content posted by Rawasi Palestine during Mr Elhasani’s tenure at the institute includes a video shared in May 2023 on X showing rockets firing in the air with the caption, “O people of Gaza, glorify God … What blessed jihad your jihad is … the Palestinian resistance continues to respond and repel the brutal aggression”.
In May 2022, Rawasi shared a picture of a soldier standing on an Israeli flag with the caption “Jerusalem has one flag raised in it. Flag of Palestine”.
Meanwhile in August 2019, Mr Elhasani’s institute hosted a political meeting of Palestinian factional leaders including, Suheil al-Hindi an elected member of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Nafiz Azzam a member of the Politburo of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Saleh Nasser a member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Hamas and PIJ are listed as terror organisations in Australia, while the PFLP has been designated as a terror group by the United States, Japan, Canada and the European Union.
In a translated Facebook post, Mr Elhasani said he opened the factional meeting by “stressing the need to work to restore national unity, support Palestinian resistance” and “confront the occupation by all possible means to restore rights and liberate the land”.
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Mr Elhasani was not a member of any of the organisations present, however he has several deceased brothers and sons who were part of listed terror groups.
His brother, Iyad, was the head of operations division of the PIJ, while another brother, Mohamed, was also a prominent member of the group.
A third brother, Sami Al-Abd al-Hassani was a senior commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terror group by the US, EU and other Australian allies.
In May 2023, Lebanese news website Al Mayadeen published an interview with Mr Elhasani after Iyad was reportedly killed by Israeli forces, in which he described his slain brother as a “martyr” who had “always prepared resistance fighters who will continue to confront the enemy until the liberation of the entire land of Palestine”.
A video showing Iyad firing a rocket was posted on X by an Iranian journalist Haidar Al-Karrar commemorating his death in May 2023.
Two of Mr Elhasani’s deceased sons were also involved in the PIJ: Mohammed Fayez Al-Hassani was an operational unit commander, and Remah Fayez Al-Hassani was an operative in the group.
Mohammed, who was executive director of the Rawasi gallery while his father was director-general, was among the members of Mr Elhasani’s family killed in the Israeli air strike in October 2023.
Another of Mr Alhasani’s sons named Abdul Rahman, who is not involved in any of the organisations, gave an interview to Al Mayadeen on October 26 last year talking about his dead brother.
He said Mohammed had been “among the first people who travelled in 2012 to Iran, Lebanon and Syria, and trained in firing Kornet (anti-tank missile)”.
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Social media accounts belonging to Mohammed remain accessible, including a post on X from October 9 last year – two days after the Hamas attack – in which he posted an update celebrating the growing death toll.
“The number is increasing, so far 700 Israeli dead, praise be to god,” he posted along with a smiley face emoji.
On October 8 the same account shared a video of Israeli women dancing on October 7 at the Nova music festival while Hamas paragliders could be seen entering in the background.
He described the terrorists as “paratroopers who came to them (the festival goers) like fate and harvested them”.
Yup:
Old and busted: Who let the dogs out?
New hotness: Who let the dog in?
Which means there is one thing left to do:
Meanwhile, we are seeing from the anti-Israel protests in Australia that there are plenty more terror-supporting a-holes who need their visas revoked.