The Hindu : MP demoted for remarks on suicide bombers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 25, 2004

International

International

MP demoted for remarks on suicide bombers

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 24. A prominent British Member of Parliament has earned the wrath of her party leadership and been demoted following a controversy over her remarks that she could `understand' why Palestinians living under Israeli occupation became suicide bombers.

Jenny Tonge, a senior and highly respected Liberal Democrat MP, who has consistently campaigned on issues of individual rights and freedoms, has been removed as the party's spokesperson for children after her remarks were seized by the Israeli embassy in London, the Conservatives and, mostly, right-wing commentators who said they amounted to supporting terrorism.

Dr. Tonge's comments at a meeting of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign here earlier this week unleashed a chorus of protests, led by the Israeli embassy which said it was "shocked and appalled'' by what she had said. Her remarks, a spokesman said, would "add to the atmosphere of incitement and hatred within Palestinian and Muslim communities.'' An Israeli Government spokesman was quoted as saying that "she is more despicable than Hitler''.

Dr. Tonge maintained that she had prefaced her speech with a strong condemnation of terrorism and it was wrong to interpret her comments as a support for suicide bombings. "I was just trying to say how, having seen the violence, humiliation and provocation Palestinians live under every day, and have done now for decades, I could understand, I was trying to understand where they come from.... If I had been a mother and a grandmother in Palestine living for decades in that situation, I don't know, I may very well have become one myself."But the Liberal Democratic leader, Charles Kennedy, said her comments were "completely unacceptable'' and "not compatible with Liberal Democrat Party policies and principles''. He ordered her removal from the party's frontbenches in the Commons even as some Jewish groups came out in support of Dr. Tonge. "Far from encouraging suicide bombing, Jenny Tonge was looking to the roots of the problem,'' said the Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

Two years ago, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, was forced to apologise for saying that young Palestinians "feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up''. Barely two weeks ago, the BBC dropped a popular chat show after its presenter wrote a newspaper column denouncing Arabs as "women repressors'' and "arm amputators''.

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