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Fiddler on the Roof is much more than an entertaining musical to
Parish Patience immigration solicitor David Bitel.
Bitel, an accredited specialist in immigration law and an indefatigable
worker on behalf of refugees and immigrants, is winner of the 2002 Paul
Cullen Humanitarian Award, presented by Austcare at Parliament House on 10
October. The awards are named after Major-General Paul Cullen, the driving
force behind the foundation of Austcare in 1967 and, though in his
nineties now, still an active member of the Austcare Board.
In accepting his award, made for outstanding service to refugees, David
Bitel said he was honoured to receive an award celebrating such an eminent
Jewish Australian.
Bitel's background resonates with similarities to Fiddler on the
Roof. The Sholem Alecheim story of love, devotion and the breakdown of
tradition in a poor Jewish family in Tzarist Russia, is, he says, "my
own family history".
Speaking to LSJ from Hobart where he was attending the
inauguration of the Tasmanian branch of the International Commission of
Jurists, a body he helped set up, Bitel said his family could have been a
model for Tevye, the impoverished Jewish milkman and father of five
unmarried daughters who, as they grew up, broke with traditional ideas of
courtship.
"My grandmother, the youngest of 12 children, was born in 1870 in
a village outside Kiev. After being left orphaned by one of the
government-sponsored pogroms, families like hers and Tevye's were
periodically subjected to, she was brought up by her sole surviving
brother. They clashed when he insisted she marry a man of his choice, and
on her wedding night she ran off, finding work as a maid in another Jewish
house. She met and fell in love with my grandfather and together they fled
to Moscow."
Five children later, Bitel's Yiddish-speaking grandmother joined the
millions of eastern Europeans who quit the continent between 1890 and
1920, making her way, on her own, not to the United States, but to
London's East End.
"She arrived in Whitechapel as a refugee, speaking not a word of
English, and unable to read or write, and with five children to
feed."
No point in adding, "to educate".
Three more children came along. Bitel's mother, the youngest, born in
1912, was "the only one who got an education". Three years later
Bitel's grandfather died and the family were living in abject poverty in
the East End.
His mother grew up an activist. She joined the British Communist Party
at a time when it was home to many intellectuals, and was involved with
the Socialist International that assisted the Spanish Republicans in the
Civil War.
"She married my father during World War II," Bitel said.
"His parents had also been refugees from the Russian Pale and from a
pogrom in Kishinev in Moldavia."
Bitel's parents detested England, its prejudices, bigotry and the class
system.
"In 1947 they applied to emigrate to Canada, New Zealand and
Australia. Australia was first to respond."
Coming then from two families that had suffered persecution and been
dispossessed, but who retained an active interest in European letters and
problems, Bitel was raised in an environment focused on broad issues of
human rights and social justice.
"Remember the bastards Premier Robert Askin advised LBJ to run
over? My mother and I were right among them."
Indonesians, Filipinos and Bangladeshi
In 1973, while a law student, Bitel made a three-month visit to
Indonesia and "had my horizons broadened considerably". Since
that time he has made many visits there.
"I took out my law degree in 1975 at Sydney University and went
straight to Parish Patience - where I remain today - initially to practise
in the area of family law."
Changes in the immigration laws impacted hugely on his practice, with
its large number of Filipino and Indonesian clients, as did the
development of administrative law in the 1980s, a period of intense
activism for Bitel, when he was either founding new organisations or
joining and gingering existing ones.
He had joined the Labor Party at 15 and later became a member of its
State Immigration Policy Committee.
("For six years I was the only Labor alderman on Woollahra Council
- what an experience!")
Bitel helped to found the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, the
Immigration Advice and Rights Centre, and the Gay and Lesbian Immigration
Task Force, the last of which, he says, benefited from his Labor Party
connections.
"My political connections helped us get recognition of gay
relationships in this area, a world first."
His interest in human rights found additional expression through his
membership of the International Commission of Jurists.
Along with other ICJ members he investigated such matters as
Indonesian-generated refugee problems in Papua New Guinea, and the role of
right-wing vigilante groups in the Philippines. With Justice Dowd, now of
the NSW Supreme Court, he attended as an official Australian observer at
the election of members of the Constitutional Convention set up after the
fall of Ferdinand Marcos. Later he co-authored a book on President Cory
Aquino's failure to keep her promises.
He has been President of the Refugee Council of Australia since 1995.
He also set up and heads the Australian Refugee Foundation.
Have regard for the stranger
Bitel's association with ethnic groups is not a remote control affair.
He has had a Filipino partner for close to 25 years and takes pride in
holding the office of Vice-President of the Philippine Community Council
of NSW.
But it's among the Bangladeshis, one of the poorest peoples on earth,
that his name conjures up real adoration.
A friendship with a Bangladesh national in the late 1980s brought him
into contact with the Bangladesh people and their culture, and since then
"over 10,000 have come to live here with my assistance. I am now
considered the "father of Bangladeshi Australians". His name is
legend in the community, but his reputation has even travelled back to
Bangladesh which he visits regularly.
Standing in a queue in Dhaka on one occasion, "I had the amazing
experience of overhearing someone say to his neighbour, 'I hear David
Bitel's in town, I do wish I could meet him".
Since 1999 Bitel has "returned to my Jewish roots," and is
Chair of the Overseas Jewry and Social Justice Committee, of the NSW
Jewish Board of Deputies.
"I have really enjoyed this regenesis of my life," he told LSJ.
Jewish teachings strengthen Bitel in his activism. "'Have regard
for the stranger' was a milestone in the development of the Jewish
ethos," he said.
"Have regard for the stranger for you were strangers in the land
of Egypt. It was a hugely radical principle when it became part of Jewish
scripture and its civilising import is just as revolutionary today."
"Social justice activism is," he says, "an essential
element of Jewish teaching."
Mary Rose Liverani
The Law Society of New South Wales | 170 Phillip Street, Sydney NSW
2000, Australia | DX: 362 Sydney | Phone: +61 2 9926 0333 | Fax: +61 2
9231 5809 | lawsociety@lawsocnsw.asn.au
Additional reading:
Austcare
International
Commission of Jurists, Australian Section
Refugee
Council of Australia
Australian
Refugee Foundation
Immigration Advice
and Rights Centre
Gay and Lesbian
Immigration Task Force (NSW)
NSW Jewish
Board of Deputies
More
information about David Bitel
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