Prominent Lebanese-Australian doctor Jamal Rifi has alerted police to a potential threat to his life after an international campaign to stir up hatred against him by misrepresenting his work with a charity for critically ill Palestinian children.
In the past two weeks, media outlets backed by the Iranian-aligned Hezbollah have smeared him as an agent of Israel and energised harassment of him in Sydney’s southwest.
“To say that I’m working for the Zionists is like saying I am an enemy to my people,” said Dr Rifi, a GP in western Sydney. “That by itself puts me at a greater risk.”
Dr Rifi’s struggles to stop the Islamic State ideology gaining a foothold in the Lebanese-Muslim local community saw him recognised as this newspaper’s Australian of the Year in 2015; in taking this stand as a moderate Muslim leader, he made enemies.
This month Beirut-based media outlet Al Akhbar launched a campaign distorting his service with multi-faith charity Project Rozana, begun in Melbourne by businessman Ron Finkel.
The venture transports critically ill and injured Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals for treatment, drawing on volunteers from both sides and thereby building trust, as well as training Palestinian doctors, nurses and therapists with an eye to future needs of an independent Palestinian state.
Read the article by Bernard Lane in The Australian.