The sacking of Liberal Democratic Party MP Jenny Tonge once again demonstrates the anti-Arab hysteria in British politics, writes Alistair Alexander from London Barely a week goes by in Britain, these days, without a public figure being sacked for ill-advised comments on the Middle East. In the last few weeks television presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk was forced to quit after writing an article that attacked Arabs for being "suicide bombers, limb amputators", and "women repressors". Last week, as if to show controversy is evenly spread between the likes of Kilroy-Silk and more progressive voices, the Liberal Democrat's spokesperson for children, Jenny Tonge, was sacked for her comments on Palestinian suicide bombers. Tonge was speaking at a meeting of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, having just returned from a visit to the occupied territories. Commenting on suicide bombers, she said, "I think if I had to live in that situation -- and I say this advisedly -- I might just consider becoming one myself." Meetings on Palestine are normally deemed unworthy of any media attention whatsoever. But, inevitably, Tonge's views provided the perfect cue for an off-the-shelf press uproar. Faced with a storm of criticism, the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy promptly sacked Tonge from his senior team. "There can be no justification under any circumstances for taking innocent lives through terrorism," he said in a statement about Tonge. "Her recent remarks about suicide bombers are completely unacceptable." Clearly Kennedy, did not warm to the prospect of being portrayed in the press as being "soft on terrorism" in a crucial week at Westminster. He hopes his decisive action will ensure the incident is quickly forgotten. And it probably will be; as a relatively minor figure in Britain's third political party, Jenny Tonge is hardly a household name. But Tonge's unfortunate departure still begs the question: what exactly did she do wrong? Her critics claim she supported suicide bombers. Her comments, opined MP and member of Labour Friends of Israel, Louise Ellman, were tantamount to giving a "green light to terrorism". Dan Seaman, an Israeli government spokesman, blew his top when talking to the Guardian newspaper about the matter. "In my eyes, she is more despicable than Hitler," he raged, "because she is supposed to know the difference between right and wrong." Tonge clarified her comments on the BBC's Today radio programme: "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." However, such nuance carries little weight in the British press. Eighteen months ago, the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, ran into similar controversy over comments on the Israel Palestinian conflict. "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress," she said. Hardly controversial, you would think. But Ms Blair was forced to issue a groveling apology after days of criticism in the press (resignation, not being an option, apparently). Most British politicians are broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. However much they sympathise, though, the harsh facts are there are precious few votes to be had in standing up for Palestine. And as Tonge's and Ms Blair's troubles show, public figures speak out on the issue at their peril. The British media predates George Bush by many decades in depicting "terrorism" in terms of political expediency. In Northern Ireland, for example, the brutality of the British security forces were screened from view by a monochromatic press campaign that demonised the IRA. No surprise then, that much of the British media appears to have difficulty distinguishing between Al-Qa'eda and Hamas. In the British media, when Israeli jets kill dozens of Palestinian civilians it is deemed "regrettable", but when suicide bombers do the same it is regarded as an "atrocity". And the fact that those jets have been supplied with British avionics, is, of course, never mentioned. State terrorism, it would seem, is a concept far too complex to contemplate.
