Tuesday, May 20, 2014

My Curlies for Joe Hockey on Last Night's Q&A

The Australian treasurer's ducking and weaving on last night's Q&A in response to questioners' manifest anger and disbelief over just where this free market ideologue and his bogan mates were taking this country was, of course, predictable.

However, when a member of the audience alluded to his privileged schooling, and Hockey hastened to point out that his father had "come as a migrant from Palestine with no money," I would have followed up with these even more personal questions:

Mr Hockey, did your father leave Palestine in 1948 at the urging of Arab leaders so that their armies could drive the Jews into the sea, as the official Israeli version of these events has always maintained?

Mr Hockey, do you believe that your father, as a 1948 Palestinian refugee (and of course you, as his son), should have the right of return to Palestine from which he was driven in 1948, and if not, why not?

Mr Hockey, when you visited that Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza in the 90s with your father, you reportedly stated that 'there but for the grace of God I could've been.'* What exactly did you mean by this, and how do you think those unfortunate Palestinians ended up living cheek by jowl in those squalid Gazan refugee camps?

[*See my 30/7/13 post Joe Hockey: My Palestinianity is Firmly Under Control.]

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