Ashrawi in Australia: a study in predictability

Although Dr Ashrawi recycled much of her traditional venom against Israel, she did display a new idea while in Sydney: the belief that Islamic fundamentalists who murder civilians are somehow equivalent to religious Christians or Jews, and even "ideological neoconservatives". Apparently, in Dr Ashrawi’s view, Condaleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz are the same as Hamas, al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiah suicide bombers. For Dr Ashrawi, it seems, the real tragedy of September 11 is not the deaths of nearly 3000 people in New York and Washington, but that it led to the "triumph of the neoconservatives".

As in the past, Dr Ashrawi’s version of the truth had little to do with reality. She accused Israel of "systematically dismantling Palestinian reality" and of conducting an "invisible transfer (of) whole territories". In the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, she repeated her earlier denial that Palestinian groups had used children as soldiers and human shields, saying the very notion was the "most horrible racist statement ever made about Palestinians or any group".

Unfortunately, many independent news wires such as the Associated Press and Agence France Presse have confirmed the Palestinians, including Yasser Arafat himself, have indeed sent children out to fight and as human shields.

Although Dr Ashrawi was lauded in the general press for her supposed support of a two-state solution and rejection of violence, she refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation and dismissed their violence as "so-called terrorism"; expressed "understanding" for those drawn to violence and "struggle" by the "occupation"; and attacked the Australian Government for banning Hamas. Ironically on the same day the Federal Parliament moved to do just that, she accused Israel of "pressuring" Australia into the move, and sarcastically called on Australia to "serve the cause of peace" by playing a "positive constructive role".

Moreover, she never condemned the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade or Tanzim, both part of the Dr Ashrawi’s own Fatah faction, all of whom have claimed responsibility for the murders of Israeli civilians, including suicide attacks. She even argued that Israel’s efforts at self-defence are worse than the deliberate Palestinian strategy to indiscriminately kill civilians!

Then there is the issue of her "support" for the two-state solution. Dr Ashrawi attacked former prime minister Ehud Barak’s 2000 Camp David offer of a Palestinian state as a "sham". Now, she rejects the "road map" requirement for the Palestinians to stop terrorism and dismantle their infrastructure, claiming the Palestinian cease-fire was not reciprocated by Israel, and says the plan is a "licence [for Israel] to shell and to bomb and to kill at will without accountability".

This critique is accompanied by a threat to replace Israel with a bi-national state "should Israel continue its expansion and its refusal to withdraw to the June 4, 1967 lines". In other words, Dr Ashrawi recognises Israel only in as far as Israel is prepared to capitulate to Palestinian demands, including a right of return which means Israel’s demographic destruction.

With regard to Palestinian refugees, Dr Ashrawi repeated claims that Israel bears "moral, ethical, economic and political responsibility" for the problem, and called for the children and grandchildren of refugees to "continue the struggle". She also called for refugees to "have the right to choose" whether to live in Palestine or Israel, a "right" not found in any statute of international law, and which is tantamount to calling for the destruction of Jewish Israel using demographics instead of violence. In other words, it seems Dr Ashrawi’s "two-state" solution involves not only the creation of a Palestinian state, but also the Palestinianisation of Israel through the immigration of children and grandchildren of refugees.

Even before coming to Australia, Dr Ashrawi’s supposed support for a two-state solution was compromised by recent her use of a grant from the Canadian Government – intended to develop Palestinian democracy – to publish a booklet advocating immigration to Israel of nearly four million children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees.

Perhaps the best illustration of why Dr Ashrawi was a poor choice for a peace prize came with regard to the antisemitism of many of her supporters around Australia. Many were dismayed, as Melbourne’s Age editorialised, at the "ease with which some supporters of Dr Ashrawi slipped" into racist talk about the "sinister" Jewish lobby. But Dr Ashrawi herself remained silent on the issue, preferring instead to condemn the supposed "hatred" with which Jews exercised their freedom of speech in a democratic country.

At the end of the day Dr Ashrawi has been and gone. The episode was a disgraceful exercise in political partisanship by the Sydney Peace Foundation and painful for all mainstream sectors of the Jewish community. Pro-Israeli and Jewish mainstream organisations, federal and state, were absolutely correct to voice their objections to Dr Ashrawi’s peace prize despite the racist invective hurled at us by our critics. And senior media and political figures, particularly in Canberra, made it clear they agreed Dr Ashrawi was an inappropriate choice for an Australian peace prize.

Dr Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.