And other rantings from the organiser of the failed One Nation event in Melbourne.
He may be the nation’s most popular television personality, but Waleed Aly, apparently, isn’t universally loved by all Australians.
Well, by at least one Australian… and his angry Facebook friends.
Avi Yemini is the founder of IDF Training, a Melbourne company which helps Australians prepare to join the Israeli Defence Force.
Yemini was born in Melbourne and joined the IDF when he was 19. He claims to have served as a sniper in Gaza for three years.
He’s also now an active organizer of ‘conferences’ – it was Yemini who invited One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts to speak at an event in Melbourne, only for it to be cancelled after a coordinated pushback by a broad cross-section of Melbourne’s Jewish community.
Mr Yemini is not happy…
But then, there’s some quite compelling evidence that he’s been a little angry for a while now.
Here’s what Yemini posted on his Facebook wall last week, in response to media around Peter Dutton’s claims that Lebanese immigrants should never have been let into the country in the 1970s and 80s.
And, here’s a very small taste of what followed….
For the record… Waleed Aly, who is of Egyptian heritage, was born in Melbourne, just like Yemini was.
Yemini responded to a series of written questions from New Matilda. He explained that he was born in Australia, and his mother is a Yemenite, his father a Pole.
Yemini defended his comment about Aly’s family being prevented from entering Australia as a “figure of speech”.
You might ask yourself, beyond Facebook, what self-respecting media outlet would allow the promotion of this sort breathtaking hate-speech?
Well, Avi Yemini appeared on free speech warrior Andrew Bolt’s show earlier this week.
Bolt had him on to explain how the ‘violent left’ shut down his planned conference. In fact, as Michael Brull reports here, it was a united response from the Jewish community of Melbourne which derailed it.
It’s going to be a long fight folks.
* New Matilda is a small but proud part of the launch of the Sparkke Change Beverage Company, which has launched a innovative beer brand on Pozible recently. You can pre-order your ‘Boundless plains to share’ alcoholic lemonade, your ‘Consent come come after you do’ apple cider, your ‘Change the date’ pilsner or your ‘Nipples are nipples’ ginger beer by pledging now on Pozible. Click here, and thanks for the support.
Donate To New Matilda
New Matilda is a small, independent media outlet. We survive through reader contributions, and never losing a lawsuit. If you got something from this article, giving something back helps us to continue speaking truth to power. Every little bit counts.
