Social media users have called for Barnaby Joyce to take an empathy course after he compared the Israel-Palestine conflict to “someone else’s turd” that he does not want to see “in my toilet”.
The Nationals MP, who was particularly combative on Thursday’s episode of Q&A, answered a question from the audience asking where the Federal Government stands on the conflict – which, since May 10, has claimed over 200 Palestinian lives and at least 10 in Israel.
“I don’t want their problems in our (country) — whether it is Catholic-Protestants, a Yugoslav issue or Sudan issue that’s on the other side of the world. We have enough problems closer to home,” Mr Joyce responded.
“We have problems in West Papua and Bougainville (Island). I don’t think anything is worth a drop of human blood. When people fire the first shot, they lose the argument.
“And what do we say? If I get engrossed in Palestinian-Israeli politics, and I take my mind off here profanely, but you say things with resonance to remember them. I don’t care. I don’t want to see someone else’s turd in my toilet. And if you come to our country, flush it.”
Diplomatic efforts gathered pace Thursday for a ceasefire on the 11th day of deadly violence between Israel and armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, as airstrikes again hammered the enclave.
The Israeli security cabinet was set to meet to discuss a possible ceasefire with the Hamas Islamist movement ruling the besieged and crowded coastal strip, official sources told AFP.
“Isn’t that a bit disrespectful?” host Hamish Macdonald asked Mr Joyce.
“There are people dying in Gaza, in Israel, right now. You’re a serving member of our parliament.”
To which Mr Joyce responded: “What do I do? What exactly do I do? Do we go over there and say to Benjamin Netanyahu, ‘Stop’. Everybody is saying that. Do we go to Hamas and try to explain to people that they’ve got to stop sending missiles randomly into people’s neighbourhoods to kill them? What is exactly my role?”
The 54-year-old said that neither Benjamin Netanyahu — the Prime Minister of Israel — or Hamas “give a flying toss about what Australia thinks”
“Our role in this is to say the bleeding obvious. I don’t think that one person is endorsing — not one drop of blood, not one person should be killed. Everybody is saying that,” Mr Joyce added.
“The trouble is, Hamish, they just don’t listen. This is a conflict that’s been going for as long as you and I, probably back 1000 years, probably past. It has to be that they have the epiphany that they have to stop killing each other … The only thing I can do as a member of parliament is to say, ‘Your problem. You should fix it up. You shouldn’t kill anybody. But don’t ever make it our problem’.”
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres told the UN General Assembly Thursday that “the fighting must stop immediately”, calling the continued crossfire between Israeli forces and Palestinian groups “unacceptable”.
“If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza,” Guterres added.
Joyce was immediately criticised on social media for his straightforward response, with those on Twitter saying he needed to take a Federal Government empathy course and was “washing his hands of international disputes”.
“MP Barnaby Joyce’s main concern about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is its intrusion into Australian life, he said on #QandA tonight,” one user wrote, with another adding after seeing the response they “couldn’t switch (the show) off fast enough”.
