“THE road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.” Joel Kuperholz, a Jewish teenager from Toorak who has taken out one of Hobsons Bay’s highest Australia Day honours, quotes British historian Ian Kershaw to explain why people should be “upstanders, not bystanders”.
Joel, 17, and Altona North Muslim Oussama Abou-Zeid have been jointly named Hobsons Bay young citizen of the year.
Two years ago, the pair formed the MUJU Peace Club’s Islamic and Jewish football teams, comprising Muslim and Jewish players equally.
“Those sort of sayings speak huge amounts, even in today’s society,” Joel says of Kershaw’s words.
He met Oussama at the launch of the More Than a Game program, an initiative of the Attorney-General’s office to combat violent extremism in Australia.
Over dinner, hosted by the Western Bulldogs and celebrating the end of Ramadan, Oussama says they watched a documentary about an Israeli-Palestinian football team that had played in the AFL International Cup for Harmony Week.
“After dinner, me and Joel were talking and we thought, wow, this would be good to have here.
“Originally, we thought it would just be a game of footy at the park, but then the Western Bulldogs got on board.
“I got my team, Joel got his team, and then we mixed the teams. So, there were 11 Muslims and 11 Jewish boys on the same team.”
Oussama, who just finished year 12 at St Paul’s College in Altona North with students of 67 nationalities, said it was his first real exposure to Jewish people. “We live in Australia. There’s no reason to hate anybody. We’re all human.”
Joel, who is about to start year 12 at Hawthorn’s Bialik Jewish college, says football breaks down prejudice and barriers.
‘‘It’s a uniting sport … like a second religion.
‘‘[There] is a distance between our communities and where we live, and so we physically don’t congregate in the same areas.
‘‘A lot of the Jews and a lot of the Muslims hadn’t met people from the opposing religion, and rather were basing preconceived ideas just from bias of media and, I guess, traditional background.
‘‘This whole program was about people meeting each other, creating a human face.
‘‘I happen to live in Toorak. However, where I found I could do the most was in Hobsons Bay. I feel that where we happen to live and be brought up is much like a roll of the dice.’’
