From the Daily Tele:

Racism wrapping itself in flag: vet
October 12, 2006

CRITICS who forced the RSL to retract its invitation to a flag burner to march on Anzac Day have been accused of being unpatriotic and hiding their racism behind the Australian flag.

Vietnam veteran Barry Billing feared the backlash against the RSL’s idea could encourage extremism and even breed terrorists in Australia.

Threats of violence yesterday forced the RSL to back down from its plan to allow a 17-year-old Lebanese-Australian who stole and burnt a flag during last December’s Cronulla riots to march among flag bearers in Sydney next April.

But Mr Billing, a former president of the New South Wales Vietnam Veterans Association, said subsequent threats to throw missiles and spit at the youth were as much a display of mob violence as the race-inspired riots.

“Threatening violence toward this young man, in my view that’s worse than what he did,” Mr Billing said.

A third generation soldier, Mr Billing said his grandfather and father who served in World War I and World War II would be “mortified” by the angry opposition from some veterans and members of the public to the RSL’s gesture to the teenager.

“I can understand people being upset and angry about defiling the Australian flag, I don’t condone what he did,” Mr Billing said.

“But I fought under that flag for the right for people to demonstrate.

“I fought for the right of a 17-year-old Muslim boy to demonstrate and steal a flag and be punished for it under a justice system.

“I didn’t fight for a young man of any extraction to be persecuted, hounded and stepped out and told to go back to his country, which is Australia by the way.

“We’ve got to show what values are, not isolate these people.

“I can see how we get terrorists and fundamentalists. If you isolate people, where do they go?”

Mr Billing said most Vietnam veterans supported the RSL.

He said the teenager had served his time in a juvenile detention centre and had apologised, but was still being persecuted by cowards using the flag as cover.

“Where is the first refuge of the coward? Wrap yourself in the flag,” he said.

“There’s a sniff of racism in all this reaction.”

Lebanese community leader Keysar Trad also feared the reaction could cause further tension between Lebanese-Australians and the wider Australian community.

“This is not patriotism, this is outright bigotry,” said Mr Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.

“These people making all these threats are certainly not expressing Australian values and are setting a very dangerous precedent.

“Unfortunately it will recruit some rednecks to their cause and this is an unpatriotic cause, it’s a cause of exclusion, it’s a cause of isolation.

“My concern is that these people are feeling that they’ve won, that they got what they wanted, but it could just mean more people who are prone to racism might join them.”

NSW RSL president Don Rowe said he received a great deal of support today but was frustrated that security fears caused by a minority forced him to retract his invitation to the teenager.

“You could easily turn a whole batch of young people into terrorists the way we treated him,” Mr Rowe said.