Labor MPs in spat over Palestinian coverage

Labor veteran Michale Danby has accused his colleague Melissa Parke and the ABC of misrepresenting the unrest in Israel.

Labor veteran Michael Danby has accused his colleague Melissa Parke and the ABC of misrepresenting the unrest in Israel and Palestinian territories, claiming they gave favourable treatment to the plight of Palestinians.

Mr Danby slapped down Ms Parke yesterday after she told parliament this month that eight Israelis and at least 37 Palestinians had been killed in the conflict so far and the “disproportionate” number reflected a “power imbalance”.

Ms Parke represents the West Australian seat of Fremantle and has been outspoken in her criticism of Israel and support for a Palestinian state.

“The member for Fremantle doesn’t necessarily represent the Labor Party,” Mr Danby said on Ten’s The Bolt Report.

“But she also gets wrong the basic metric that’s happening over there. More than 110 Israelis have been stabbed in shopping malls, in bus stations … and it’s very wrong to compare people with knives in their hands to people with knives in their chests.

“It’s understandable that people who are actually attacking school buses, and people standing at bus stops and in shopping malls, are put out of action if they’re in the violent act that they’re caught in.”

Mr Danby, who is Jewish and has a large number of Jewish constituents in his Melbourne Ports electorate, also lashed out at the national broadcaster for running a story on 7.30 last week that he said did not give “any humanity” to Israeli victims.

He has written to the show’s host Leigh Sales to express his “disappointment”. “The perpetrators are humanised, with stories about one of the 16-year-old fanaticised jihadi girls who tried to stab someone at a checkpoint, but none of the victims,” Mr Danby said.

An ABC News spokeswoman said the national broadcaster’s editorial policies “recognise that impartiality does not require that every perspective receives equal time, nor that every facet of every argument is presented, in every story”.

“A complex and contested story such as this must be fully explored from multiple angles over multiple stories,” she said. “We believe ABC News achieves this.”

Ms Parke said she and Mr Danby “agree to disagree” on the conflict and said she did not excuse violence against civilians.

“Israel is far from the innocent party here,” she said. “Israel has brutally occupied Palestinian territory for 48 years and controls almost every aspect of Palestinian life. Meanwhile it is busy expanding its illegal settlements, thereby making a Palestinian state impossible to achieve.”

Mr Danby said there were similarities between the violence in Israel and the shooting of a NSW police employee in Parramatta and the Martin Place Lindt cafe siege.

“If Australian police shot dead someone with a machete trying to get on a school bus, trying to kill Australian children, the Australian people would overwhelmingly support them,” he said.