Harry's Place

There have been protests in Hungary following its adoption of a new constitution, and a raft of new legislation. In Hungary itself dissent has come mostly from the centre left, opponents of Victor Orbàn’s governing Fidesz Party.  Grave concerns have also been expressed by many outside Hungary, including Hillary Clinton, whose letter to Orbàn is reproduced here.

Yesterday, one of the Times’s leader articles warned that Hungary was returning to autocracy, and asserted that ‘a disgraceful new constitution threatens Hungary’s democracy and basic liberties’. And here is a letter written by former Hungarian political dissidents protesting at these changes.

There are many different reasons why people are alarmed by events in Hungary. Limitations on media freedom are one problem, and here is a piece on just one manifestation of this development. Another anxiety is the socially conservative nature of the new constitution, its insistence that life begins at conception and that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.  Recently, another bill has been criticised because it excludes gay couples from the definition of a ‘family’.

As will be apparent from the links, I’d recommend Eva Balogh’s Hungarian Spectrum as an excellent source of news and analysis, and the The Contrarian Hungarian also has some interesting coverage.

At a time when many Israelis and friends of Israel have concluded that the best option with regard to the Arab world is a suspicious and defensive crouch, I am full of admiration for Ilan Grapel, a a dual US-Israeli citizen who was held in Egypt from June to late October on charges of spying.

He writes in The Washington Post:

When I went to Egypt to spend the summer working at a nongovernmental organization that provides legal assistance to asylum seekers from Sudan and Iraq, I was no stranger to the Middle East. I had studied Arabic in Cairo and spent more than two years in the Israel Defense Forces. I hoped that my summer would prove that my Zionist ideals could coexist with support for the right of human migration and sanctuary. I also hoped to convince the Arabs I met that my Zionism did not have to be antithetical to their interests and that we could work together for peace.

But in post-revolutionary Egypt, my attempts to educate and interact with the local population led to my arrest, to solitary confinement and eventually to the threat of five simultaneous life imprisonments for “espionage” and “incitement.”

On previous visits, the friendships I developed overpowered the omnipresent anti-Israel propaganda of the Arab world. Some former adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood actually wished me luck when I left to do reserve duty in Israel. Most Egyptians I met and chatted with over coffee ended our conversations by admitting to holding misconceptions about Israelis. This reinforced my hopes for common ground.

So during the summer I emphasized my Israeli background, even when I entered Egypt as an American. I identified as a Zionist Israeli to all of my Egyptian friends, taught them Hebrew and showed them Israeli movies. In return, I received lessons in Arabic, Islam and Egyptian culture.

Some who do not know me considered my actions peculiar or harmful. But that condemnation only underscores a particular abyss into which the Middle East conflict has descended since once-influential Zionists and Egyptians considered cooperation to be beneficial, as did the early Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and Dawood Barakat, the former editor of the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.
…..
People ask, “So what do you think of Egypt and your mission now?” My answer is constantly evolving. As my detention and recent events and repressions in Egypt make clear, the revolution brought only superficial change. The junta’s focus on external actors represents a desperate attempt to avoid culpability and abdication of power.

Hosni Mubarak’s notorious state security forces still arbitrarily arrest Egyptians without real charges or trials (as they did me), denying anything resembling due process. Prosecutors and judges go through the motions of court proceedings, but the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces really calls the shots.

Was my trip reckless or “wrong”? No. Despite the peril, the U.S. government sends Peace Corps volunteers to volatile regions because of the benefit of grass-roots diplomacy. Hasbara, the Hebrew term that refers to efforts to explain the Israeli viewpoint, has much to gain from such a strategy, given the pernicious myths about Israel and Jews prevalent in much of the Arab world.

My hasbara provided a viewpoint that changed the mentalities of former Muslim Brotherhood members, the prosecutor and my guards, whose last words were “Shalom, we hope you forgive us.” Israelis and Arabs can continue to maintain the status quo of mutual avoidance or they can dare to coexist. To those who wrongly held me, I say simply, I forgive you.

A while back I deleted my Facebook account. I simply couldn’t be bothered with it, just as I’ve never had any inclination to ‘tweet’. Over the last year, my interest in blogging and in reading blogs has likewise diminished greatly. At times I’ve gone for a month or more without reading blogs or getting round to writing anything. It’s not a case of falling into despair or anything like that. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve simply lost whatever it is that drives people to blog, mainly because I’m busily engaged in other things, largely in the ‘real world’ – and enjoying them. As a result, when it comes to blogging, I’m calling it a day.

The fact that I’m not an ‘activist’ type, nor involved in party politics, always made me something of an outsider within the political blogging world. I started blogging for one specific reason – to offer a small attempt at countering some of the BNP propaganda that for a while seemed to be helping that party to mainstream itself and to cover up its true ideology. This led to me becoming a blogger at Harry’s Place and to producing two reports on the far-right. I then diversified my blogging interests to include posting on anti-Western and anti-democratic ideologies such as those found amongst Islamists and their far-left fellow travellers. And at the same time, I also tried to put the significance and power of those groups into perspective and to counter the paranoia about ‘Islamisation’ that feeds into anti-Muslim bigotry. As far as that goes, I’m happy to have done my bit and have enjoyed the numerous writing-related friendships I’ve made along the way. However, I’ve really reached the end of the line on these topics. There are plenty of people doing excellent work in those areas, and I don’t feel in any way that I need to be writing any more.

Since I passed 30, bought a house in suburbia, and got married, I’ve very much made my peace with the mainstream, and unashamedly so. I enjoy gardening, photography, going for walks, reading up on local history, and have even started getting into cookery. It may seem like a shallow ‘white picket fence’ existence to some, especially those filled with rage and righteous indignation about all manner of issues, but I’m happy. Indeed, very happy.

I wish all of you well and want to thank the HP team for giving me the opportunity to be a part of what they do. I admire the work carried out by HP, but it’s no longer for me. In all honesty, if I never hear about the PSC, Gilad Atzmon, Andy Newman and ‘Socialist Unity’, the bitter cranks of groups like the SWP (and so on) again it won’t be soon enough. The same applies for reading the bizarre rants of obsessive commenters and internet oddballs who would no doubt benefit from getting out in the fresh air a bit more often.

So, to the many decent people I’ve encountered over the last few years of blogging, thank you. To the angry mouth-foamers and comment section obsessives, I hope life gets better for you and you can find a way to see through the darkness you perceive around you to the many wonderful things life has to offer. The world isn’t going to hell, any more than it was in each generation that people have proclaimed that it’s going to hell. On this, if little else, I find myself in agreement with the author of a well-known book of the ancient world.

Best wishes and farewell,

Edmund Standing

Last week on Harry’s Place, Rev. Nick Howard critiqued Stephen Sizer for linking to antisemitic websites and pushing antisemitic theories. Howard also took Sizer’s bishop, the Bishop of Guildford Christopher Hill to task, for not considering Sizer’s conduct to merit any disciplinary action.

Now Stephen Sizer has chosen to link to another racist website.

Says Sizer:

That is the provocative view of Uri Avnery, writing on the Redress website today in How Israel helped Islamist movements to flourish across the Middle East

The Redress website publishes articles by Gilad Atzmon such as “British Zionists’ hypocritical view of suffering and the Holocaust“ and “Yad Va’ Shame on You!”, pieces containing phrases such as:

For years Israelis and  Zionists have been pumping Shoah [Holocaust] into our veins by using every possible propaganda outlet: media, education, Hollywood, music, literature, billboards and so on.

Seemingly, they have been very successful: We are all properly “Holocausted”. We accept the suffering of the Jewish people – and we have even managed to draw a universal message from it all.

and:

Yehuda Bauer himself proves that the Hamas Charter is a genuine description of Jewish tribal activism.

The Redress website has published dozens of pieces in support of Atzmon’s new book, The Wandering Who, and frequently posts Atzmon’s writings. The Wandering Who claims that Fagin and Shylock accurately represent Jewish identity, the credit crunch was caused by the Jews, the Holocaust is a religion, and Hitler may be proved right about the Jews.

The Redress website has previously published the email contact details of people in the UK who are sympathetic to Israel, linking to Gilad Atzmon’s website for analysis about Anthony Julius. Religion blogger Richard Bartholomew wrote in 2009:

[A]s analysis it is a joke – people support Israel for all kinds of reasons, and the idea that they must be “Israel’s agents” is as nonsensical as the suggestion that anyone who is pro-Palestinian must be “Palestine’s agents”. Further, the claim that they are “of influence” is simply a meaningless assertion. Articles on the same site describe these persons as “Israel’s stooges”, and this abusive term is now popping up on some of the dimmer pro-Palestinian websites that have been impressed by the document.

Redress hosts an attack on Sizer’s fellow Anglicans who are pro-Israel, penned by Stuart Littlewood:

Read more »

Norman Geras has a published a wonderful blog post detailing a number of books that he will not be reading in 2012. If Norm cannot read certain books, I have thought that perhaps I can’t either. Compiling a list of books that I am determined not to read is not as easy as it sounds. One cannot simply not read any old book, one has to not read a book that is worthwhile not reading.  My top ten books not to read this year are detailed below. What are yours?

1. Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.  I own this book and I have used it as a reference on a number of occasions. It is the result of some four decades of research and two decades of writing. It extends to 1,172 pages and is clearly a masterpiece. It deserves to be read. I know someone who has done so and I am in awe that he managed it. But it is not going to be completely read by me, certainly not this year. This is a shame but an honest assessment.
2. James Joyce, Ulysses. Commenting on this book in 1955, John Greenway stated: “To read it with ease, one should have a Ph.D. in comparative languages and literature; to read it with difficulty, one should know the Odyssey, The Golden Bough, Joyce’s life and other works, E. K. Chambers’ William Shakespeare, and much about the history of English literature, the Celtic Renaissance, Irish politics, and Roman Catholic liturgy.” Greenway added that via demonstrating “a vocabulary of nearly 25,000 words, Joyce transcends the bounds of Webster’s International.” I think I shall pass.
3. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights,  Volume 1: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. This book has been a long standing book that I have been intending not to read. I expect that if I comprise a similar list next year, this book will also make a strong showing. It is a perennial favourite book not to read.
4. Tony Cliff’s four volumes on Lenin. You would have to be a diehard automaton from the SWP to bother with such rubbish. If anyone is interested in a decent biography of Lenin, they would do much better to read the biography by Dmitri Volkogonov.
5. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Despite the fact that there have been issues of these books with “adult” book covers, they were originally written for children. I am not providing any further explanation as to why the series will not be read by me in 2012.
6. Stephen Mulhull, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to  Heidegger and Being in Time. This book has been in my collection for some time and has not yet been read. Any guilt as to why I have not read it is assuaged by the argument of Emmanuel Faye whereby Heidegger’s books should be removed from the philosophy section of libraries and placed in the section dealing with Nazis.
7. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. I have not read any books in this trilogy and nor do I have much desire to.  Anybody who I know who insists that I “must” read these books risks me defriending them on Facebook.
8. Richard Seymour, The Meaning of David Cameron. Given I cannot be bothered to read the pages and pages of waffle that Seymour vomits onto his weblog, I am hardly likely to read one of his books.
9. Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who. I went to the book launch. Gilad Atzmon signed and personally dedicated to me a copy of this book which I had purchased, but that does not mean to say that I am going to read it. The book is not worthwhile reading: it is so bad, it is an insult to many of the books on this list included here.
10. Jens Malter Fischer’s biography of Gustav Mahler.  This book was recently provided to me as a present by someone who is aware that I very much appreciate the music of Mahler. Indeed, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) is one of my favourite pieces of music. While I very much thank the donor for the present, at 764 pages my interest in the composer simply does not stretch to donate the time to read this book.  If I do get the time to read about Mahler, I would far rather read the far more palatable 385 pages by Norman Lebrecht, Why Mahler? I have been fortunate enough to hear Lebrecht lecture and if the quality of his lecture is indicative of the quality of his book, then it would certainly not be a waste of time.

This  is a guest post by Anthony Cooper

If for every two Jews there are three opinions, it is hardly surprising that there is a distinct lack of unanimous support for any policy decision from any Israeliadministration. But, while most British Jews prefer to leave the public criticism to Israel’s many willing opponents, some feel the need to state their disagreements loudly and “as Jews”. Their apparent willingness to lend support to the complete delegitimisation of the Jewish state leaves the rest of us unsure how to respond and it is tempting to simply label them “self-hating Jews”. However, the truth is never so straightforward.

In many, perhaps most, cases the motivation to publicly denounce Israel is the desire to fight antisemitism. As the CST has observed, the number of antisemitic attacks in the UK is directly related to tensions and actions in the Middle East. Some believe that the support Israel receives from Britain’s mainstream Jewish organisations is a cause of antisemitism and the only way to fight that is to create Jewish anti-Israel organisations.

The founding declaration of Independent Jewish Voices, for example, places the fight against antisemitism at the heart of the organisation. Likewise, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) state that they “extend support to Palestinians trapped in the spiral of violence and repression” because they “believe that such actions are important in countering antisemitism”.

Unfortunately, these campaigns are naïve and counter-productive. Racists are generally not entirely rational people. The egg-throwing thug is unlikely to weigh up the probability that the man walking home from synagogue might disapprove of settlements. Nor is the desecrater of cemeteries going to check first that his victims haven’t signed an anti-Israel letter to the Guardian.

More likely is the attitude shown in a comment allegedly left by a member of the Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign on a website that “not all adherents to the Torah are enemies of humanity” because Neturei Karta are not. By opposing any and every action by Israel, the impression is given that anyone not joining the public denunciations is fully supportive of all these policies. Far from destroying the impression of Jewish support for Israeli actions, their opposition reinforces it. And all this is aside from the impact of delegitimisation on our fellow Jews in Israel.

Nevertheless, very few anti-Israel Jews are self-hating. We should recognise this and make sure to keep them within the big tent against antisemitism rather than making them pariahs. They may be opponents of Israel but they can be our allies in the struggle against antisemitism.

An example are the Jews of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). The PSC is a leading force in delegitimisation, using trade unions to advance its call to boycott all things related to Israel. Its public meetings are often attended by Labour MPs and it invited the banned Sheikh Raed Salah to speak at one such meeting to be held in the Houses of Parliament. Many believe the organisation is incapable of distinguishing between criticism of Israeli actions and antisemitism.

However, during 2011 there has been something of a mini-purge of the organisation with some previously important members forced to resign because of their antisemitism. Those effectively expelled include a former national chair, the chair of one branch, the secretary of another and the webmaster of a third. Behind all these resignations appear to be rank and file Jewish members with support from a Jewish member of the Executive Committee. While the PSC itself may be unable to work our what antisemitism looks like, its Jewish members certainly can.

We have enough enemies already that we shouldn’t be looking to create more.

So long as anti-Israel Jews retain their sensitivity to antisemitism we can be sure that they are neither self-hating nor hate us. They remain allies in our struggle against antisemitism and in some ways are capable of achieving results in it that the rest of us cannot. We should thank them for that. If we don’t make enemies of them, we may find that we have more friends than we thought. May 2012 be a year of reconciliation and greater unity in our small community. We will all be better off for it.

Joined by her friend Trout, who brought the nachos.

Probably as good a way as any.

Best wishes for 2012.

Earlier this week in Homs, citizen journalist Khaled Abu Saleh– one of many courageous Syrians who are documenting the Assad regime’s brutal and murderous crackdown on opposition protesters and providing the world with a view from Syria that foreign media are denied– confronted Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the Sudanese head of the Arab League’s monitoring mission.

(As The Sudan Tribune reports: “Dabi is believed to have been instrumental in the founding of the Janjaweed – a militia operating in Darfur which has been accused of committing multiple atrocities. His appointment to the AL position received widespread condemnation from human rights organisations.”)

Thanks to DaveM, here is a translation of their exchange:

Saleh: Let us tell you about the situation here. It’s because of that you recognise what you’re working here [what it is you're doing here]. The problem isn’t with you lot as people or as observers. The problem is with the initiative in and of itself. You came as observers to observe. You have to implement the initiative The initiative has a number of clauses but the very first one is to stop the killing. You lot were in Homs and the regime killed 15 people. I didn’t benefit in any way from the delegation being there. It didn’t protect the people who went into the street. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people went into the People’s Square

Dabi: I believe [saw] what happened yesterday and the evening the following day. But do you expect that all of what took place during six months, or nine months, or three months can be managed by one clause?

Saleh: Stop the killing!

Dabi: Calm down, we’re working to lead to a dialogue.

Saleh: How can I arrive at a dialogue while there are waterfalls of blood on the ground? Yesterday hundreds of thousands of protesters went out protesting and you were fine. You’re still in the square. The security forces said they will not open fire if the delegation of observers are present. Or if the president of the delegation is present. Sir, yesterday they [the security] killed 15 people. You were there and they showed you the child. That child was killed, the child was killed.

Dabi: I saw, I saw.

[people speak over each other]

Dabi: Anything that happens…

Saleh: Sir, a question: you all came here in order to stop the killing, that’s the first clause. But when you move to another area the regime comes back and opens fire in the [previous] place. The regime is laughing at us. It’s taking [not clear] in order to kill more people. You came here and yesterday you saw bread being distributed to the people? It was only because you were here did the people get bread. The people went for five days without bread. The people spent five days dying under siege, they were being fired at by artillery.

Second observer: That was the first day, and God willing… [not clear]

[clip ends]

As I wrote to Dave: “Abu Saleh is one brave dude. I fear for his safety now, but I guess he knew he was putting his life on the line by doing this.”

He may enjoy a measure of protection as long as the AL delegation is in Syria. But what will happen after they leave?

Another citizen journalist in Homs, Basil al-Sayed, was shot in the head and killed while documenting the regime’s repression. The video he was shooting when he was killed has been uploaded to YouTube.

“We have thousands of citizen journalists,” [activist Rami] Jarrah told NPR’s Deb Amos. “But Basil was one of those who stood out.”

Jarrah said al-Sayed filmed security forces opening fire directly at protesters, and that put him at serious risk.

“He was documenting stuff that no one could actually get hold of,” Jarrah said. “I don’t want to say this was expected, but he was always in those situations where you could expect something would happen to him.”
…..
Al-Sayed documented the uprising using a small Samsung camcorder that has a red body. He uploaded hundreds of hours of footage to YouTube. He has a brother and sister, and he was the youngest in his family. He worked at an aluminum plant in Homs.

In Bab Amr, the neighborhood that has come under a heavy attack by the security forces over the past few months, the role of al-Sayed was instrumental in relaying information and getting the word out, Jarrah added.

May the coming year see a blessed end to the wretched Assad regime and the beginning of a better life for the people of Syria.

As it’s the end of the year – perhaps HP readers would like to let us all know the best book you’ve read this year (not necessarily a new book – just new to you), best film, and best CD.

An observation on another thread that the comments on Harry’s Place seemed more ‘personal’ than those on Liberal Conspiracy has prompted me to think about the effects that the blogging – and particularly the commenting – physical interface can have on the tone of the discussions.

The front page of Lib Con is quite busy – you can see snippets of various recent posts, links to interesting stories elsewhere on the blogosphere, and a list of who has recently commented on what.  When you comment yourself, you are still aware of much of this other activity going on.  It’s there on the page in front of you as type.

On HP, by contrast, the emphasis is very much on the post you are reading at the moment  – and the effect, in the comments box at least, is very immersive.  ‘Cosy’ perhaps isn’t always the right word for HP-below-the-line, but there is something quite intimate about the atmosphere – by contrast with Lib Con’s interface which has the effect of reminding you that other people may be watching.

On some blogs – Bob from Brockley for example – if you want to leave a comment then you are whisked away from the post to a separate commenting space – I think this extra stage might incline commenters to be a bit more self-conscious and cautious – and I always seem to fail the ‘are you a bot test’ at least once, which fills me with Deckard-like anxieties.

Of course, there are many other more obvious factors which affect the tone of a blog – moderating policy, the presence or absence of a ‘recommend’ or brownie points function – but I hadn’t previously given much thought to the possible impact of a blog’s physical layout on how commenters express themselves, and wondered whether people could think of further examples.