EDITORIAL

Ashrawi revisited

The reverberations engendered by Hanan Ashrawi’s visit to Australia are still echoing within the Jewish community and beyond. Her arrival in Sydney was accompanied by two concentric circles of public controversy. There was the core conflict over Dr Ashrawi’s selection as recipient of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize, which, in turn, generated a secondary controversy regarding the opposition to that award by the leadership of Australian Jewry.

Some have argued that the opposition to the Peace Foundation’s choice of Dr Ashrawi was ill-advised and damaging, contending that our efforts to request NSW Premier Bob Carr and other dignitaries not to be involved in the Peace Prize ceremony were particularly counterproductive.

This view was articulated in an opinion article by Phillip Adams entitled "Handing a Club to anti-Semites" that appeared in the 28 October edition of The Australian. In this piece, Adams accused the Jewish community of fomenting an antisemitic backlash. In the Sydney Morning Herald, columnist Alan Ramsey voiced even more vitriolic criticism, accusing Ashrawi’s "Jewish critics" of conducting a "virulent campaign of distortion and ridicule…"

Yet, Messrs Adams and Ramsey completely missed the point. While the public furore over Dr Ashrawi’s visit was accompanied by wild charges of sinister Jewish bullying, the core of this controversy turned on the issue of propriety. Hanan Ashrawi’s detractors were simply utilising their freedom of speech to express the view that she was an inappropriate recipient of a peace prize.  Her fundamental right to speak out was never under question, because censorship was never the issue.

The "Palestinianisation" of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize was the source of profound and widespread dismay not only among Australian Jewry, but also among other knowledgeable friends of Israel who hope for a secure peace. This broad sense of community disquiet was reflected in the wall-to-wall support given by all mainstream national and state Australian Jewish organizations to the campaign against the honouring of Hanan Ashrawi. The Australian Jewish News led the charge with very heavy coverage and strong editorials criticising both the Sydney Peace Foundation and Premier Carr, who the paper said (Oct. 17) had committed a "lapse of judgement" and in presenting the prize was "endorsing [Ashrawi’s] track record." The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies overwhemingly passed a resolution expressing disappointment in Premier Carr, calling upon him to reconsider his decision to present the award.

By bestowing its annual peace prize upon Hanan Ashrawi, the Sydney Peace Foundation, and its Director Stuart Rees, abandoned any pretence to objectivity, coming out of the closet and into the ranks of overt pro-Palestinian partisans. In fact, Dr Ashrawi herself acknowledged that this year’s peace prize decision was tantamount to a declaration of support for the Palestinian cause when she thanked the Foundation for having "courageously chosen to take sides in the struggle against injustice."

Yet, if the Sydney Peace Foundation can take a partisan position on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, why is it objectionable for Australian Jewry to weigh in on this issue? Phillip Adams, Alan Ramsey and other critics of the Jewish community’s campaign against this year’s peace prize have never provided a cogent response to this key question.

Perhaps the answer lies in the comments made by Stuart Rees, who is quoted by Alan Ramsey voicing crass ethnic stereotypes of Jewish conspiracy and machinations. The opponents of the Ashrawi prize, says Rees, are "members of a powerful group who think they have an entitlement to tell others what to do… They stay powerful because they are invisible. They bully and intimidate in the same breath they behave as unblemished pillars of the community."

Recent public affairs campaigns by other ethnic communities in Australia have failed to elicit such broadsides of condemnation from the media pundit-ocracy.

Contrary to Rees’ fulminations about backroom conspiracy, the Jewish community’s information and advocacy effort was in fact open and above board. These efforts catalysed some of Australia’s leading newspaper editorial writers and opinion columnists to come out against the choice of Dr Ashrawi as a peace prize recipient. Also, most importantly was the success achieved by this advocacy campaign in the place where Australian foreign policy is determined — Canberra.

Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Health Minister Tony Abbott and other leading Liberals came out foursquare in opposition to the awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi. Just as impressive was the fact that not a single senior member of Federal Labor Opposition’s foreign policy team spoke out in Dr Ashrawi’s favour. Federal Parliamentary support for the granting of the prize to Dr Ashrawi was limited to a handful of the usual suspects, including the hard left fringe of the ALP and the Australian Greens. Moreover, the Lord Mayor of Sydney made the courageous decision to abstain from participating in the awards ceremony.

Thus, far from being the exercise in communal stupidity that Phillip Adams and other critics of the exercise attempt to portray, the public affairs campaign to express displeasure about this year’s choice of recipient for the Sydney Peace Prize achieved indisputable political and media success on the critical issue of questioning Ashrawi’s suitability.

Other critics suggested that Dr Ashrawi’s long record of anti-Israel invective should be overlooked because she is a Palestinian leader who might play a senior role in her people’s future government. Anyone knowledgeable about Ashrawi’s actual profile in Palestinian society knows this is unlikely.

Secondly, these critics of the Jewish community’s advocacy campaign sought to apply a form of moral amnesia to Hanan Ashrawi in the hope of cultivating moderation. Yet, Phillip Adams, et al, forget that bestowing the mother of all peace prizes, the Nobel, upon another leading Palestinian did nothing to induce Yasser Arafat to abandon terrorism in favour of peace. In fact, it could be argued that in turning a blind eye to Arafat’s past sins, the foundation was laid for his future crimes. Rewards that are prematurely conferred without being earned do nothing to cultivate moderation,

Moreover, Dr Ashrawi’s own statements during her Australian visit once again revealed a consistent propensity for extremism that Phillip Adams and Alan Ramsey chose to ignore. During her appearance on the ABC’s "7:30 Report", host Kerry O’Brien asked Hanan Ashrawi about the need to destroy Palestinian terrorist organisations that regularly dispatch suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilians. She refused to condemn Hamas, (she later attacked the Australian government for banning the organisation, blaming "Israeli pressure") and then began a lengthy monologue about the need to construct the civil institutions of Palestinian statehood before anything could be done to disarm terrorist groups.  Never mind that such a process of nation building could take years.

Thus, Dr Ashrawi demands that Israel should refrain from acting in self-defence, while she rejects any expectation that the Palestinians should combat their own home grown terror. She loudly proclaimed that Palestinians cannot be made to "lie down and die quietly." Yet, Hanan Ashrawi seems to expect Israelis to do precisely that.

Dr Ashrawi’s declarations of adherence to a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict likewise ring hollow in light of the support she expressed for a Palestinian "right of return" when speaking at the National Press Club. Of course, the "right of return" is a euphemism for the elimination of Israel’s Jewish character through a massive influx of Palestinian refugees into Tel Aviv, Haifa and BeerSheva. Hanan Ashrawi believes that the Palestinians should be allowed to establish one nation in the West Bank and Gaza, and then should be permitted to usurp a second state by inundating Israel with millions of Arab immigrants.

The Australian Jewish community is strong enough to call a spade a spade, even if it is forced to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous bigotry and racist invective that result. Critics inside and outside the Jewish community have counselled timidity where tenacity was surely a more appropriate response. A do-nothing, "let-it-go-through-to-the-keeper" mentality would have led to even more of the fawning and uncritical adulation Ashrawi has experienced elsewhere, thus damaging prospects that the Palestinian people can be convinced to seriously address the rampant terrorism, supported by the current leadership, which is the most important obstacle to a two-state solution.

Australian Jewry consitutes a proud and strong community that should not hesitate to make its views known on issues of public import. Appeasement is beneath our communal dignity and injurious to the health of Australian democracy.