AN APOLOGY TO BOB FROM BROCKLEY
I have been thinking about whether I made a mistake recently in my article “SRI LANKAN SUFFERING CYNICALLY USED FOR PROPAGANDA BY ZIONISTS”
I do think that my general point is true, that some supporters of Israel are quite cynical in using the events in Sri Lanka simply as a stick to beat the Palestinian Solidarity movement.
But on reflection I was wrong to criticise Bob from Brockley in the way I did.
I have no reason to believe that Bob himself was cynical, and though his blog is generally far too sympathetic to Israel for my liking, it is probably slightly inaccurate to describe him as an actual Zionist. Bob seems like a reasonable sort, and I regret having offended him.
Unlike others always good to apologise Andy
we dont have a monopoly on ideas, views or getting things wrong
unlike some sects think
Comment by Tim — 29 April, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
Don’t be a moron. Bob From Brockley should have his ankles severed.
Comment by lenin — 29 April, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Good on you for saying sorry even if the said utterance that is the opposite of love, is conditional on Broccoli Robert. Fact is much more Tamils in Sri Lanka have been killed this year than Palestinians in Gaza. Fact also is the British Tamil community has over the last month maintained a stupendous and peaceful demonstration in Parliament Square against that slaughter, including a full third of that community showing up for a one hundred thousand person march. Another fact is the Tamils’ London demonstration has had almost no solidarity from the British Left. Israelis, their supporters and others beyond quite rightly question this anomaly not least as both above mentioned conflicts are legacies of imperial Britain.
Comment by Hugh — 29 April, 2009 @ 11:45 pm
Hugh, you state: Another fact is the Tamils’ London demonstration has had almost no solidarity from the British Left.
This is false.
The Socialist Party put significant resources into supporting, and in some places organising, protests about the war in Sri Lanka. It, along with its sister organisations in Sri Lanka and India and elsewhere, has initiated a campaign called “Stop the Slaughter of The Tamils in Sri Lanka”, which has held protests in twenty countries so far.
I can’t speak on behalf of other sections of the left, but I do know that other groups have also sent delegations to protests and have covered the issue in their publications.
Comment by Mark P — 30 April, 2009 @ 12:37 am
Well done Andy. Now how about apologising to me! Just kidding. Being from a commune I have a lot of sympathy with Zionists because they set up communes in Israel around the turn of the 20th century. What have you got against them?
Comment by Moha — 30 April, 2009 @ 2:18 am
#4 I believe Respect has also put out and distributed a leaflet calling for an immediate ceasefire and condemning the killing of Tamils.
Comment by rachel trickett — 30 April, 2009 @ 5:16 am
Indeed - Respect activists have been involved with the protests.
Comment by external bulletin — 30 April, 2009 @ 8:36 am
“Being from a commune I have a lot of sympathy with Zionists because they set up communes in Israel around the turn of the 20th century. What have you got against them?”
Are people still going to argue that this isn’t a troll?
Comment by external bulletin — 30 April, 2009 @ 8:37 am
If Bob isn’t a Zionist, what is he precisely?
The suffering in the Congo is worse than Sri Lanka or Gaza. The reason why Palestine is the issue is that British involvement in its destruction and replacement by a vicious sectarian settler state is central to British foreign policy and Western imperialism. The atrocities carried out against the Palestinians are done so with British weaponry and complete British state support. Palestine is a British issue in a way that Tibet, Darfur, Sri Lanka or the Congo aren’t.
Zionists are always keen to change the subject because they seek to defend the indefensible. They pretend to be reasonable liberals but Zionism is much closer to fascism than other ideologies. The triumph of Zionism is that having successfully obtained imperialist sponsorship, it managed to enlist the support of many obtuse liberals. The sort of people who whine about academic boycotts but aren’t too concerned about the bombing of universities and mosques.
Comment by Still Crazy — 30 April, 2009 @ 9:10 am
External BULLSHITTER
Can’t make up your mind! First I’m this and them I’m that and them I’m this again. What’s wrong with you?
It’ a straightforward question. What exactly is wrong with Zionists??? In our school we were taught that kibbutzes set up by the Zionists are very much like or own commune.
I’m not well up on communism but people have told me that the kibbutz system is perfect Communism. And who set the kibbutzes .. the Zionists. What have you got against them???
Comment by Moha — 30 April, 2009 @ 9:26 am
I think you should let someone else in your commune use the computer Moha.
Comment by Duncan — 30 April, 2009 @ 9:36 am
Actually each family have their own. So unless you want one of my young kids have a go …
How about you answering the questions Duncan?
Comment by Moha — 30 April, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Moha,
You were fun when you seemed to be just a soppy but likeable hippy - now it’s clear you’re an arsehole.
Even zionists don’t call themselves zionists - fuck off
Comment by S&D&R'N'R — 30 April, 2009 @ 10:51 am
I’m not calling myself a Zionist all I’m saying is what’s wrong with Zionists.. they’re the ones that started the kibbutz . the original communists.
What’s with all the heavy stuff .. why can’t you just answer the questions?
Comment by Moha — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:07 am
Its the fact that Kibbitzes excluded Palestinian Arabs.
Thats Racism.
Comment by green socialist — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:12 am
And the fact that the KIbbutzes were built of land stolen from other people at gunpoint - that’s colonialism.
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Moha, I’ll have a go at answering your question. There’s nothing socialists would object to about the kibbutz system in the abstract, the problem is that their establishment in Israel is based on the dispossession of the Palestinians. If your commune had obtained the land for its foundation by kicking out the locals it would be in much the same position.
Actually in recent years the kibbutzes have become much less communal, with individual homes having cooking facilities and TVs. Communal living may be a happy lifestyle for those who want to engage in it, but doesn’t have a universal attraction when capitalism and imperialism dominate the world.
Maybe I’ll get an apology from Andy Newman someday for dragging my family into his attacks on me, and the months of personal attacks by “Respect” supporters on his site (I’m not holding my breath).
Comment by skidmarx — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:36 am
Skidmarx, I only mentioned that you had a brother who lives in Spain, becasue we were discussing the expereince of migrants and new immigrants, and I thought that your arguments were singularly uninformed by the day-to-day realities, and that if you reconsidered your position by empathising with the type of experience an Engliahman in Spain might have, then you might change your mind.
There was nothing disrespectful or rude about my comments, and I did not drag you familly into it, nor indeed make any attacks upon you.
As such i have nothing to apologise for.
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:50 am
Today’s issue of “Newsline” has extensive coverage of the Sri Lanka Tamil issue, including the 23rd day of Parameswaran Subramaniyan’s hunger strike outside Parliament.
Comment by Faust — 30 April, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
Moha#10: ‘It’ a straightforward question. What exactly is wrong with Zionists??? In our school we were taught that kibbutzes set up by the Zionists are very much like or own commune.
I’m not well up on communism but people have told me that the kibbutz system is perfect Communism. And who set the kibbutzes .. the Zionists. What have you got against them???’
I suspect you’re a troll, but let’s make the effort…
As people have already covered, a community that excludes, does so on a crude basis of race, and is a wedge for inter-communal dominance is not communist. As a matter of information - your school failed you in this - kibbutzim were attached to broader political movements from the outset, not all of them zionist, but the fact of zionism as the dominant ideolgy in Israel means that all kibbutzim must sustain the racism that may not be of their own making. So, if the kibbutz produces oranges, as some still do, the factories that process them are likely to have a low-paid, Palestinian workforce (when they can get to work). Kibbutzniks are not exempt from military service, so have taken part in all the wars, from the big ones (Six Days, Yom Kippur, Lebanon, Gaza, etc) to the more attritional ones, like those waged for Golan and Southern Lebanon over the decades. I’ve discussed with good friends the firing (ie with flame-throwers) of the houses of the innocent - they were/are kibbutzniks, they hate what they did, but they did do it.
That’s what I have against Zionists. And, to be honest with you, communes as a social organisation are irrelevant in the face of such things.
Comment by richsw — 30 April, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
I’ll avoid getting involved in the kibbutz debate, and just say thank you Andy.
Comment by Bob — 30 April, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
i think the issue is the british left have a hierarchy of solidarity
yes some may have done a little but in compared to the university occupations over Gaza very little really
Comment by Jon — 30 April, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
“Bob should have his ankles severed” - Lenny “Seymour” Lenin.
Symour is a reactionary idiot whose windpipe should be seveed, in the interests of coherent discussion on the left. The man is a buffoon and an igmoramous, not fit to wipe the boots of Bob from Brockley.
Comment by Jim Denham — 1 May, 2009 @ 12:20 am
What utter nonsense about the history of the kibbutz. There was no occupation of land by gun point. All the land was bought with money. The first kibbutzes were set up by Jews escaping persecution by Europeans. They bought, yes bought, land from sheep and goat farmers, and turned them into productive crop land through hand labour and irrigation. Their efforts brought prosperity. Get your facts right.
Comment by Callum — 1 May, 2009 @ 2:49 am
It’s funny that an anonymous person, the identity of whom is unknown to over 99% of posters, would bristle at someone mentioning that they had a brother.
It’s a testament to the depth of skidmarx’s sectarian nastiness that he even considers this an issue.
For some reason, skidmarx didn’t have a problem with jj/ll going on about Andy’s schooling. He didn’t have a problem with his comrades bullying less sophisticated activists on this blog. He didn’t have a problem with the lies his comrades spread about posters here.
Andy is a named individual and personal information about him could cause him real grief.
Skidmarx, on the other hand, is anonymous. As such, people can say whatever they want about his family so long as it doesn’t expose who he is. And given how many people have family in Spain, it’s not even close.
Andy’s exact posting was this: “Ask your brother, has he tried to learn more about Spanish culture, and try to have a network of acquaintances in Spain outside the British ex-pat community? I am sure that he would have a richer and more rewarding experience of spain if he has done.”
It gives nothing away. It is not “dragging” someone’s family in. It could apply to half my family, and where I work, about 10 people have homes in Spain.
Comment by external bulletin — 1 May, 2009 @ 8:31 am
#18 “There was nothing disrespectful or rude about my comments, and I did not drag you familly into it, nor indeed make any attacks upon you.”
Andy Newman you are a liar and a hypocrite. The comment in question begins:
“You really are a scum bag”. Are you really trying to claim that this is not disrespectful or rude?
How exactly were you not dragging my family into it by mentioning information that was both personal and private and which had been published by nobody prior to your deciion to do so?
“Reading you on this is like reading “migrations watch”,, but with an ultra left spin to their anti0immigrant positions.” So this isn’t making an attack on me.
“My big “ethical” problem with pseudonums has always been the asymmetry between those who use pseudonyms and those who don’t.
Some people are responsible about this, and use theiri pseudonyms just to cover their identity for perhaps well-founded security reasons; or becasue they don’t want their identity ( and baggage!) to itself become the focus of discussion.
But others, like Skidmarx, use their anonymity to remove inhibitions and feel able to lie, insult and distort using their psedonymous personna.
I find that unaccetable.” Are you psychic? How do you know that I don’t have well-founded reasons for using a pseudonym? Where have I lied insulted and distorted. Why is it that you have felt free to expose the real names of such as johng and adamski on your site, yet feel no such need with the likes of external bulletin?
“And please, don’t get on the ethical high horse after Skidmarx has been hiding behind anonymity to make terrible accusations about named individuals for months.” Do you want to identify these terrible accusations?
“Now in fact Skidmarx’s own identity was an issue that he personally put into play when he made several personalised references to other comrades that he claimed to know, giving information that actually did identify him to those he was referring to.” I think I was identifiable to some of those from the first contribution I made to your site. I believe Kevin Ovenden responded to that comment by claiming that I’d always been too abstract. This makes a further nonsense of the idea that I’m hiding behind a pseudonym. As far as I’m aware I have only made reference to what he and others have said that was public, and not particularly damaging. If you really want me to exercise the nuclear option and release infromation that could wreck several political careers, you are going the right way about annoying me.
#25 “For some reason, skidmarx didn’t have a problem with jj/ll going on about Andy’s schooling. He didn’t have a problem with his comrades bullying less sophisticated activists on this blog. He didn’t have a problem with the lies his comrades spread about posters here.”
I believe it was Andy Newman who chose to place information about his schooloing in the public domain. I didn’t choose to use it to attack him, but if he is no respecter of internet ethics perhaps I should start. What lies? What bullying? I see that at the same time as the comments about me were being made (and I could always produce a list of personal dishonest attacks on me on this site going back many months) you and your comrades were bullying Michael Rosen off the site, so I realise nobody is safe from your sectarian nastiness.
Comment by skidmarx — 1 May, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
#26 Why not give it a rest? You’ve made your point several times over.
Comment by Ferrier — 1 May, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
#27 Because I have been attacked in ways that step well beyond acceptable internet ethics, while there is a constant refrain from supporters of the Respect(minority) that any questioning of them is a sectarian personalised nasty attack, whereas you are the ones who hide behind pseudonyms to drag the discussions on this site away from politics with your continual abuse of anyone remotely connected to the SWP. It’s understandable that an organisation with no real justification for its existence and a sharply downward future should do so, but the level of doublethink involved is astonishing, and when I am repeatedly on the end of such abuse it seems reasonable to object to it and ask for a correction. Thus far I haven’t even mentioned how Kevin called me a liar over at liammacuaid.wordpress.com and refused to withdraw the accusation when it was comprehensively refuted. Andy Newman was happy enough then to point out that I had misidentified Ed D as a Respect supporter, but when I found quotes from tonyc and Phil [whose surname I know, but I won’t put it here because I don’t want to descend to your level] that made my point, he was completely silent. Again hypocrisy, and I’m still waiting for an apology for that.
Comment by skidmarx — 1 May, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
Skidmarx, you’ll not get any apologies from anyone until you take a good, long look in the mirror and realise that you’ve been a continually nasty, sectarian piece of work for a long time now, doing your best to stir shit against Respect members and supporters, lying about them, smearing them, sneering at them. Your behaviour is weirdly obsessive, and your friends in the SWP find you an embarrassment, never more so than when you find common cause with those on the right to attack Galloway - even they have stopped doing that now.
You spend so much time playing the victim, but the truth is, you’re poison on the blogs. You can’t talk about hypocrisy, cos you embody all the hypocrisy we’re seen from the SWP and other ultra-left sectarians since they first decided to smash Respect up.
Comment by external bulletin — 1 May, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
Please turdmarks, stop the whinning.
Don’t dish it out, if you can’t take back.
You last posting a case in point.
For example, just so you are quite clear
(and that a little bit of insight could go such a long way in your case)
If every time you use the phrase ‘Respect(minority)’ as if saying this enough convinces us that we have been deceiving ourselves and others.
Don’t be surprised when people misunderstand your limited ‘wit’ and take it as an insult.
As far as I can work out, over the several months that I and many others have observed your posts. You have nothing positive to contribute, apart from bile.
You do not demonstrate examples of activity that we could learn from, apart from snide posts
Plus you do insist on this daft name.
Comment by Richard Searle — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
skidmarx’s real identity: Lt. Hiroo Onoda
Comment by Andy Newman — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
“skidmarx’s real identity: Lt. Hiroo Onoda”
Shit. I knew his brother wasn’t really in Spain.
Comment by external bulletin — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
#30 “If every time you use the phrase ‘Respect(minority)’ as if saying this enough convinces us that we have been deceiving ourselves and others.”
How many of you are there?How many members of the SWP are there?
Four nasty sectarian posts in a row. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
Comment by skidmarx — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Four nasty sectarian posts in a row. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
Yep !
Comment by Richard Searle — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Callum #24: ‘What utter nonsense about the history of the kibbutz. There was no occupation of land by gun point. All the land was bought with money. The first kibbutzes were set up by Jews escaping persecution by Europeans. They bought, yes bought, land from sheep and goat farmers, and turned them into productive crop land through hand labour and irrigation. Their efforts brought prosperity. Get your facts right.’
You’re essentially right, Callum, on the narrower point - the early kibbutzim were agriculturalists, often socialists, and they didn’t take the land at gunpoint. Nor did they do so when zionism became a strong current within the kibbutz movement, but at that point you need to be more polite and do some more reading. Zionism always intended Palestine for the Jewish state, and some of the zionist kibbutzim took part in the drive towards one, in which violence and occupation were intentional. Beyond the achievement of this (ie 1948), whatever the political allegiance of a kibbutz, it was implicated in the occupation of Palestinian land, wars, etc. On the question of buying the land, which is true, this was simply a precursor to occupation and statehood - like saying the US would be right to occupy Britain because Vauxhall is losing money for GM.
Comment by richsw — 1 May, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
#34 Pride cometh before a fall
#32 I don’t insist on this daft name. I started using it partly to indicate a lack of self-importance, and continued so as to provide consistency. If you have alternative suggestions, Surly Dickhead, I’m willing to listen.
Actually thinking twice, they weren’t really four nasty sectarian posts. Andy Newman sort of told a joke; I guess I’ve got used to the use by Respect(minority) supporters of these terms without any content and fell into their bad ways.
“Keep repeating the mantra: ‘We are the best’.”
“It’s a lifeform. I don’t think it’s intelligent. What is its point in the universe?”
…No it isn’t. It’s a man who’s never been the leader of Respect on last night’s TSWC talking about Gordon Brown and H1N1 respectively.
Comment by skidmarx — 2 May, 2009 @ 12:00 pm