Dr Jamal Rifi is a Lebanese-born Australian general practitioner and prominent figure in the Lebanese Muslim community in Sydney. (Britta Campion/The Australian)

Rifi fears hate campaign may take a nastier turn

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.