Dear Denis,
I have just read your article on The Conversation website entitled “Australian Writer’s Festivals are engulfed in controversy…” and was disappointed in your characterisation of my comments on the RN interview I gave Patricia Karvelas in December. You gave no context to what I said & in doing so you endorsed the most virulent activist interpretation.
Patricia Karvelas: You mentioned Israel has a right to defend itself, and we hear that language a lot, but at the same time, there has been a disproportionate impact on innocent people.
Deborah Conway: And yet I hear that response a lot. But I would say to you that…
Patricia Karvelas: But kids, lots of kids, we know they're not Hamas, right?
Deborah Conway: it depends on what you call kids. But, young people,16,17 year old young boys toting rifles.
I said ‘it depends what you call kids’ in response to PK saying “we know they’re not Hamas”.
I was trying to tell listeners, in the cut & thrust of a live interview situation, that when Hamas put guns in the hands of their adolescent sons to point at the enemy, Hamas steals their childhood, turns them into fighters & then turns them into casualty figures. It’s unbearably cruel.
I wasn’t talking about babies or little children, nor was I defining what I think to be a child, it goes without saying that the deaths of innocents are always tragic; I have said this on numerous occasions. Further, the Hamas tactic of embedding itself under schools, hospitals, mosques & homes, using civilians as human shields, is the worst kind of cynical exploitation of civilians, including innocent children, who are dying in this war, an inevitable outcome.
For further context around what I was saying see this article from Newsweek by Palestinian commentator Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
https://www.newsweek.com/origin-hamass-human-shields-strategy-gaza-opinion-1873499
And this one from the Washington Institute on how Hamas manipulates casualty figures
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/7168?disposition=inline
To be completely clear, innocent children are innocent children, and honest academics are honest academics.
Denis I ask if you would edit your article to reflect the nuance of what I was saying rather than repeat the blood libel that I condone the deaths of innocents.
Best
Deborah Conway