Red Rag

I know, I know. This Uncle Watch business is getting a bit tedious, but he’s just so irritating. I suppose it’s a bit like Gummy Trotsky and John Ray — you know you should just ignore them, but somehow you can’t look away. They’re like the victims of a horrific car crash. So here goes.

A complex issue, and a simpleton’s response

Uncle’s commentary on the 7.30 Report interview conducted on the day of the Sydney Peace Prize ceremony is interesting. When it comes to Arab-bashing, he can set aside his usual prejudices and describe Kerry O’Brien as “almost-adequate”. But then it’s business as usual: misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the public record.

He starts by quoting a tricky question by O’Brien, but ignores Ashrawi’s response (probably because she answered well), supplanting it with his own version: ” it boils down to this: she’s worked politically for the Palestinian cause. She doesn’t herself throw bombs.” I’m not sure what point he’s trying to make. Would he prefer that she rejected political activism in favour of violence? No, of course not. He’s just trying to smear her because, as we know, all Arabs are terrorists, even when they’re not.

The next exchange republished by Uncle is the crux of things:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Throwing forward to today, in your speech for tonight, you deplore the cycle of violence involving both sides in very eloquent terms, but not once do you condemn specifically the violence of Hamas by name.

There’s not a reference to suicide bombers. Now, what signal do you think that sends?

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: … I did that on purpose because I don’t want people to dictate my language to me. When I talk about violence, I know what I mean.

You may have noticed an ellipsis here; I’ve highlighted it for your convenience. This is one of Uncle’s favourite devices, because by skipping parts of people’s answers, he can ignore important (but inconvenient) details. Here’s the missing section:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Now, what signal do you think that sends?

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: You haven’t heard my speech, but you read it.

KERRY O’BRIEN: I read it.

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: I never stick to written text anyway, but still, I did that on purpose because I don’t want people to dictate my language to me.

The reason that’s important is that Kerry O’Brien was drawing conclusions about the content of a speech before it was delivered. Uncle drew the same conclusions after it was delivered, and after he was warned it could be different from the published text. Ashrawi did mention suicide bombings, and she condemned them.

But Uncle isn’t the only one bagging Ashrawi’s speech without having heard it. The National Chairman of the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council — who have been at the forefront of the anti-Ashrawi campaign — made the following claim on AM:

MARK LIEBLER: Well I looked everywhere for a clear condemnation of suicide bombers, couldn’t see it anywhere. You know the people who go into malls and cafes and blow up women and children, no reference to it. There was also no call to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Brigades.

Linda Mottram, who actually knew what Ashrawi had said, set him straight:

LINDA MOTTRAM: There is one clip of Hanan Ashrawi where she says and I quote, “acts of violence against civilians, regardless of motivation or reason, must stop immediately, must not be encouraged, must not be condoned, whether suicide bombers or Apache helicopters”.

But the classic line came later:

LINDA MOTTRAM: Is it not more appropriate though for all players in this very, very bloody conflict to call for all violence to stop, which is what she did last night?

MARK LIEBLER: Excuse me, that’s not good enough because the Israeli violence is only… it is not violence.

Uh huh. Tell that to Mahmoud al-Qayed, the ten year-old boy shelled by Israeli troops today.

And why does Liebler still oppose Ashrawi’s selection for the prize?

MARK LIEBLER: Absolutely, I mean her speech demonstrates the fact that she wasn’t fit to get the prize. How can someone get a peace prize when they’re not prepared to make an outright condemnation of people who go into cafes and malls…?

LINDA MOTTRAM: But she has done that. She has that suicide bombers must stop their violence and should not be encouraged or condoned.

MARK LIEBLER: She has not said that. There has not been an explicit condemnation.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Well those were her words.

MARK LIEBLER: All she has said is all violence is wrong.

“All she has said is all violence is wrong.” This woman doesn’t deserve a peace prize — she’s obviously a raving warmonger. Ashrawi is unacceptable to the Jewish lobby because she condemns violence on all sides. They would accept her only if she condemned Palestinian violence while praising Israel for its latest despicable action.

But I’ve been sidetracked. Back to Uncle:

But she also says something else:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Given the number of deaths, given the killings that have been perpetrated by suicide bombers organised by Hamas, shouldn’t Hamas be disbanded if it can be disbanded? Would you want to see the serious attempts be made to disband Hamas?

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: I would like to see first of all an active political pluralistic democracy in Palestine so that those who want to dissent can do so peacefully by political means. Then I would like to see an active judiciary under a rule of law so that those who violate the law will be held accountable in accordance with the law.

I don’t want to see a civil war because that’s not the way to deal with this problem.

You see we’ve ended somewhere completely different.

Have we? The way I read it, we haven’t ended at all — O’Brien continues to ask questions on the subject, and Ashrawi continues to answer, but Uncle doesn’t seem to notice. They’re pretty good answers, too, explaining why she doesn’t condemn Hamas outright, preferring to reserve her criticism for its militant arm.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But they are a terrorist organisation, aren’t they?

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: You have to look at both sides of Hamas.

The political wing has men and negotiations and dialogue with the Europeans, with the rest of the world, even with Americans, for a long time.

It’s the military wing that has been condemned constantly.

Now there is a move -

KERRY O’BRIEN: I’m not sure how you can separate one wing from the other.

They’re both under the umbrella of Hamas?

DR HANAN ASHRAWI: No, you can, you can in a sense because the people who have been conducting negotiations with Europeans and others were the political wing - this happened in Ireland and different places.

You don’t illegitimatise everybody, then you have no interlocutor.

But now there’s a move motivated by this current Israeli Government and the American administration to consider all of Hamas as illegal.

The problem for Uncle is that Ashrawi is nuanced. She recognises that the world is not all black and white, for us or agin us, but that it comes in a wide range of greys as well. Even Israel recognises that Hamas plays a role as a social welfare provider, and apparently it does a better (and more honest) job than the Palestinian Authority. You might think that the whole organisation deserves to be condemned anyway, but to suggest that Ashrawi supports suicide bombing because she supports the social welfare work done by Hamas (and necessary because of the economic impact of Israeli policies on the occupied territories) is misleading.

Uncle goes on:

But is she a peace-maker? Consider where endorsing suicide-bombing leads.

Sabih Abu Saud turned 16 only a fortnight ago, and this week, he blew himself up when approached by Israeli troops, lightly wounding one soldier.

Unlike other parents of so-called martyrs, the boy’s father refrained from declaring his son a hero.

So far, the father, Kamal, has shown more political courage than Hanan Ashrawi, but he’s just a civilian.

“We love our children just as the Israelis love their children,” he says.

“We are not educating our kids to kill themselves or others. I don’t like killing. It is against my principles,” Kamal adds.

Right after his son blew himself to pieces he angrily accused the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of preying on a little boy, saying they should have left the 16-year old alone.

Which is precisely what Ashrawi refuses to say to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

That’s just not true. In 2002, that’s exactly what she said, in an open letter published following an al-Aqsa suicide bombing:

On Wednesday, more than 50 prominent Palestinians took out a full-page newspaper advertisement also condemning suicide bombings.

In the ad, published by the leading Palestinian daily Al Quds, the Palestinians urged militants to “stop sending our young people to carry out such attacks”.

It said the bombings only led to “a deepening of the hatred between both peoples and a deepening of the gap between us”.

Signatories include Hanan Ashrawi, a leading Palestinian spokeswoman and a legislator, newspaper editor Hana Siniora, and the Palestinians’ senior Jerusalem official, Sari Nusseibeh.

I have no doubt that Hanan Ashrawi would condemn the suicide bombing referred to by Uncle. She would also condemn, as she has in the past, any “escalation in the rhetoric, particularly from the Arab public, that ‘beautifies’ suicide bombings and martyrdom, when we know you must live to serve the cause.”

But she would probably draw attention to this fact, too:

On Sunday, Sabih’s mother noticed that a picture of the boy’s uncle was missing. The uncle, Nasser Abu Saud, a member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in April of last year during a major Israeli raid.

Sabih had taken the photograph with him…