AMW urges its members and the public to bolster the pressure on Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, who is reportedly facing internal calls and a petition - from deputy chairman Donnachadh McCarthy among others - to reverse his decision on Friday to sack Dr. Jenny Tonge from the party's front bench.
"Tonge simply acknowledged that the intolerable daily suffering of the Palestinians, which she has seen first-hand, can lead to the hopelessness and anger that may push someone to become a suicide bomber. This is not a show of support for suicide bombings, and she has said so publicly," said AMW director Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi.
"Dr. Tonge was not trying to elicit sympathy for suicide bombers. She was attempting to explain their actions, for without understanding there can be no hope of achieving peace and justice in the Middle East," said AMW executive committee member Georgina Baidoun in a letter published in the Daily Mirror on January 26.
"Therefore," added Nashashibi, "her sacking sends out the message that Kennedy is unwilling to even recognise the plight of the Palestinians, let alone speak out against it. Which is the worse offense?"
Please show Kennedy your support for a brave MP who has dared to speak out. You may even like to suggest that he sees for himself the suffering to which he seems indifferent.
You can contact Tonge at tonge@cix.co.uk and Kennedy by visiting http://www.charleskennedy.org.uk/
Please remain polite, and to assess response rates, send AMW your correspondence, which will remain confidential, to info@arabmediawatch.com
Below are useful quotes:
"I was just trying to say how, having seen the violence and the humiliation and the provocation that the Palestinian people live under every day and have done since their land was occupied by Israel, I could understand and was trying to understand where [suicide bombers] were coming from" - Dr. Jenny Tonge
"There can be no justification under any circumstances for taking innocent lives through terrorism. Her recent remarks about suicide bombers are completely unacceptable...They are not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles. If you're in an elected position, a position of responsibility, then even to convey the perception that somehow there is an ethical defence to be made of somebody who wants to be a suicide bomber is simply not acceptable...There can be no formal role for somebody who has given voice to such a view on behalf of a national political party" - Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy
"The sacking of Jenny Tonge has been greeted with dismay across wide sections of the party. Jenny made a brave attempt to try to bring attention to the fact that if the appalling suicide bombings are to stop, then we need to understand and address the desperation and political alienation that leads to such awful acts of violence. The party should take no lessons in condemning violence against innocent civilians from the Tory party, which have been such enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war in Iraq in which tens of thousands of innocent people were maimed and killed" - Lib Dem deputy chairman Donnachadh McCarthy
"She was being straight and honest and speaking from the heart" - Richard Burden, chairman of the all-party Palestinian Group
"We are appalled that the media has chosen yet again to oblige the state of Israel by ignoring the whole point of our lobby, which was to highlight Israel's ethnic cleansing and war crimes of which the apartheid wall is the most horrific example" - Palestine Solidarity Campaign general secretary Betty Hunter
"Jenny Tonge did not condone suicide bombings; all she did was to point out that anyone subjected to the Israeli persecution, of the kind the Palestinians suffer day and night, might just consider becoming a human bomb" - Anas Altikriti, president of the Muslim Association of Britain
"The last thing she was trying to do was condone suicide bombers. She is a very caring person who had been moved by what she saw when she had visited the Palestinian territories and she was expressing that. There were a number of Jewish people in the audience at the time and none of them balked at what she said when they heard it in context; in fact there was loud applause at the end of her speech" - Jewish comedian Jeremy Hardy
"Charles Kennedy should be ashamed of himself...What Ms Tonge said on Wednesday was unexceptional. She said the violence and humiliation suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state 'made me understand how people can become suicide bombers'. Yes, she did personalise her comments by saying that, if she had to live in the Palestinians' situation, she 'might just consider' becoming a suicide bomber herself. But it takes a pretty sad kind of literalism to interpret this as support...That Mr Kennedy, the leader of the party perhaps most committed to the ideal of free speech, should [sack Ms Tonge from the frontbench] for expressing a personal opinion that should in any case be uncontroversial is a terrible mistake. He should have defended to the last her right to speak her mind" - Independent editorial, January 24
"How has this attempt to identify terrorism's underlying cause been conflated with justifying or condoning it? It is like suggesting that all academics analysing the socioeconomic conditions in 1930s Germany that fostered the anti-semitism that led to the Holocaust must be Nazi sympathisers. Israel would have it that suicide bombers are simply evil or mad or brainwashed by militant Islam. That way it exonerates itself from any blame for the hopelessness which has spawned such horrors. I want to know why a 22-year-old mother of young children felt her life was so without worth and her cause so just that she blew up herself and four soldiers. Condemnation is easy but gets us nowhere. If the Middle East peace process is ever to move forward we need more politicians such as Ms Tonge seeking to understand" - Janice Turner, The Times, January 24
Below are links to relevant articles:
Lib Dems petition for Tonge's return
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1130945,00.html
MP sacked over suicide bomb claim
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/libdems/story/0,9061,1130227,00.html