Times have
not been good to the cold war site, Harry’s
Place.  Having supported every war in
the Middle East they have bathed in the Islamaphobic afterglow.

HP is a
place where any racist and any warmonger can take part with pride, just as long
as they support Israel.  That is why you
have the imperialist warmongers of the ‘left’ like Andrew Coates posting there.

Most of the
comments are combination of the juvenile, public school racism and the sheer malevolent, laced with a hefty dose of
anti-communism.  Reflex support for Israel
and an automatic demonization of any Palestinian or BDS is essential to
politics there.

I guess I should
be flattered that they reprint
a post I did on the Facebook group Palestine
Live, which was the subject of an ‘expose’ by far-Right Zionist blogger
David Collier.  ‘Lucy Lips’ devotes all its
attention to one phrase in particular:  ‘Antisemitism doesn’t hurt Jews but it does hurt the
Palestinians.’

How can this be the little neo-cons ask
themselves.  Surely he doesn’t mean
it.  In fact I did mean it as my response
below explains (I posted it to Harry’s Place but despite their banner motto
that ‘Liberty if it means anything means
the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear’ doesn’t seem to want
to extend it to me.  I was banned some
years ago and I guess the ban is still in force as my comment hasn’t appeared.  [I went back after posting this and this time it appeared – however my comments used to be blocked!  I guess it was just a right-wing gremlin!]

My point, which is a simple one, is that the
kind of anti-Semitism which occasionally graced the Palestine Live Facebook group, i.e. social media anti-Semitism doesn’t
hurt Jews but does hurt the cause of Palestinians.  Obvious actual anti-Semitism in the real
world does hurt people who are Jewish although even then, anti-Semitism prejudice
in the Palestine solidarity movement, occasional and rare as it is compared to
the virulent anti-Muslim racist of Zionists, hurts the Palestinian cause more
than the Zionists.

Response to Harry’s Place

Let me put
viewers of Harry’s Place out of their misery.  I don’t usually post here
but someone drew my attention to this absurd piece of nonsense.

Any fair minded person, anyone who is not interested in deliberate distortion
of someone’s views would see that I unequivocally condemn all manifestations of
antisemitism.  After all, unlike virtually all members of this site I have
actually put myself on the line in the fight against fascist groups. 
People here only talk about ‘antisemitism’ when they are defending the
apartheid society of Israel.

On the day of the death of Steven Hawking let us remember that he too, like
most reasonable anti-racist people, supported BDS and the Palestinians. 
After all how can anyone who is an anti-racist support a state where 93% of the
land is barred to Arabs or non-Jews, where Rabbis issue writs against leasing
land or apartments to Arabs (Safed etc.) of where there are marches chanting
‘death to the Arabs’.  All the circular wordplay on this site is devoted
to defending the greater racism and of course most people except the elites in
society and their echo chambers here know that.

What I meant about antisemitism not hurting Jews above is meant to be
understood in the context in which it was said.  Of course it has nothing
to do with the Holocaust, fascist attacks on the street etc.  It refers
solely to what I refer to as the ‘fruitcakes and loony tunes’ who post on
social media groups like Palestine Alive.  Social media anti-semitism,
unless it is used to organise attacks on Jewish people, is anodyne.  It
doesn’t hurt a single Jew.  It is nothing more than people venting their
frustration against Jews because of what the ‘Jewish state’ does in the name of
Jews against Palestinians.

Such people are politically backward and reactionary and I called out Atzmon,
Greta Berlin and Alison Weir.  My comments should not be understood as
meaning I agree in any way with them but t o simply point out that they aren’t
hurting Jews, which they might like to do, but the very people they are
purportedly supporting.

I suggest that if those who wish to ascertain ‘antisemitism’ in every crack or
crevice were to turn their attention to the vicious racism in Israel, racism
which people like Zeev Sternhell, a childhood survivor of the Holocaust, have
compared to the Nazi era, then I would take their witterings over
‘antisemitism’ seriously.

Instead most of the posters here are serially dishonest in that they defend
racism in the name of ‘antisemitism’, the new anti-communism.