But you don’t , you can’t and instead you have to resort to anonymous individuals on website comments or vague tittle-tattle.

I think there are two separate issues here:

1. A long forgotten feud from student politics
2. My sensitivity to being wrongly accused of antisemitism and your sensitivity to people hurling false claims that they have been accused of antisemitism around.

To deal with the first point, Alan Johnson is a friend of Brian Brivati and at some point they had a conversation about me in which Alan said some things that were factually untrue. I am guessing that he attrbuted opinons to me that I never in fact had based on our very limited contact when we were both students at Manchester. Brian subsequently described that to me as being ‘heavily briefed by supporters of the Euston Manifesto’. At the same time, soon after I started writing at Comment is Free a number of fairly stupid and childish accusations began appearing about me at both Harry’s Place and DSTFW – which, from the context, were clearly written by people who were in the same Trotskyist organisation as Alan (and you). I obviously can’t name names because most people write under pseudonyms, but if you trawl through the comments of the DSTFW (yuk) you will be able to find one exchange I had with Simon Pottinger about our respective views on Northern Ireland in the 1980s in which he finally confesses to ‘memory loss’.

The second point is more serious. I have been accused of antisemitsm dozens of times in various comment threads. It is a stupid accusation and I have learned to ignore it. I agree with you that most of the people who make it are lone nutters. However, I disagree with your comment that:

‘But i think your examples of people throwing around the accusation of antisemitism are pretty weak. I think you need to look at pro-Israeli and Jewish communal organisations and you won’t find examples of people throwing around the accusation of antisemitism with regard to just being pro-Israeli. [sic]‘

The HP article that I link to throws exactly that accusation at Unison. Look at the thread here and you can see why the argument is so weak. I completely agree that Unison were wrong to ban the TUFI stall, but immediately accusing them of being antisemitic for doing so is a knee-jerk response. You see it again and again in the comments at CiF and HP. I was once the subject of a targeted letter writing campaign because I had placed an advert describing the shelling of Qana refugee camp in 1996 as an ‘atrocity’. At least half the letters (all of which I politely replied to) accused me of antisemitism. It is a deeply offensive accusation and a cheap debating trick.

your examples of people throwing around the accusation of antisemitism are pretty weak.

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/dstpfw/117028320997486969/?a=22977

If people read the thread they will see you made false allegations that EM people had called you an anti-semite. They hadn’t and you were wrong.

Keep digging Conor.

You are delusional. Look at this thread, look at any thread on this subject.

Presumably you are going to apologise for your your previous point about the idiot liars who wrote the Euston Manifesto?

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/come-to-the-fringe-meeting-unison-tried-to-ban/

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/come-to-the-fringe-meeting-unison-tried-to-ban/

As for ‘would you let the fash in?’ well, no. This is because most trade unions already have a robust set of procedures that allow them to ban active purveyors of organised racism from actual membership, which ought to be enough to get them banned from having a stall. They do not, nor should they, impose a similar test with regard to foreign policy positions like this.

If we follow your logic, then in order to delay complaints until its too late to overturn their duff decisions, all the leadership needs to do is sit on their explanation for a few weeks.

While I’m in the conversation – Gabor, if you are reading this, I think that you need to remember that the Internet is for life, not just for the early hours of the morning. There’s a reasonable chance that your MA tutors (your potential PhD supervisors?) are going to read those amazing rants above. They are less likely to take issue with their basic political positions (since it takes all sorts to fill a university) than with their breathtaking disregard for fact and logic. In 2019, perhaps your father-in-law will find this thread and cut you out of his will. In 2035 your promotion committee might read it and decide that you are too crazy to keep.

If you’re planning on staying this crazy, angry, ignorant and stupid for the rest of your life, then keep it up. If, on the other hand, you want to leave space to moderate at least one of those faults in the future, it might be worth shouting at the screen a bit more and bashing the keyboard a bit less.

See 40.

I’m not going to protest without hearing the case for the decision. Event organisers are responsible for the safety of attendees and exhibitors. Can you imagine what would happen if the BNP where allowed to have a stall at conference? In principle everyone should be allowed to state their opinions. In practice it gets a bit tricky. I don’t condone bans, boycotts or violence but we have to accept the reality of the risk of things turning ugly. Additional security is certainly an option. Perhaps NHQ are factoring in the potential for adverse publicity?

If there are members of Unison threatening, or implying the threat of, violence toward TUFI I want to know what measures NHQ are taking to identify and reprimand those members.

And i think it’s only fair to point out that TUFI do not make any claims of anti-semitism in their public statement. They refer to a “discriminatory decision”.

To take Chris’s point up, maybe we should do something to try and persuade Unison to re-think its position.

Perhaps Gabor and Will are the same person.

Why the fuck would you come to a country you regard as no better than Nazi Germany except out of masochism?

In my experience, anyone who uses the word ‘sir’ as incontinantly as you do has probably been institutionalised from a very early age.

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/michael-cushman-and-the-jew-free-ucu-congress/

[I am now completely sure that either Gabor's taking the mick, or some poor sods at QMUL are in for a very tough time.]

Rgds , Max.

Schactman, the problem with Hirsh is that he’s suspended his critical faculties and decided that people who don’t agree with him over Israel/Palestine are ‘not Jews’. This seems pretty crazy to me, to the extent that I find it very hard to take anything that he says seriously. YMMV.

Anyhow, I’m not in Unison, but are any Unison members attempting to protest against this decision to exclude TUFI? If so, they need our support against the union leadership. The excuse that the TUFI stall might be a focus for violence is piss-poor. Hire more security, then. Make clear to all members that the conference hall is a place for debate not intimidation, and sling out anyone who misbehaves. These things can be managed.

Two useful books / papers to read on antisemitism on the left. STeve Cohen’s book was written just after the 1982 Lebanon war. Steve had been active protesting against the war and started to write a book on it. However after reading much of what the far left wrote he ended up writing a book on left antisemitsm (while still remaining highly critical of Israel and zionism)
Sadly Steve passed away earlier this year (there’s going to be a one day memorial for him very soon)

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/thats_funny.pdf

For a recent paper on antisemitism Hirsh’s paper is worth reading (long but well worth it).

http://tinyurl.com/232n3u

Interestingly enough neither paper apologises or defends Israeli policies or actions.

What actually happened was that an anonymous comment was posted on Harry’s Place website accusing me of a 20 year history of lying about various issues, supporting the IRA and being an an antisemite. The comment was posted under a pseudonym and removed after I threatened legal action. At around the same time Brian Brivati posted a comment about me at CiF in which he also said that I was previously a supporter of terrorism. When I asked him why he had said that (given that it is not true) he said he had been ‘heavily briefed against me by organisers of the Euston Manifesto. I can’t think of any reason why he would have made that up.

I know a few supporters of the Euston Manifesto from student politics days when they were members of a Trotskist group called Socialist Organiser (I think you also used to be a member of this). One of them is Simon Pottinger – who sometimes posts comments at the DSTFW – another is Paul Gamble who was a year above me at Manchester University. Another is Alan Johnson who co-wrote the EM and was doing a post-graduate at Manchester when I was a first year student.

The DSTFW has ran occasional abusive pieces about me in which Will repeats the same sort of shit. Simon pops up in the comments there and at Harry’s Place and also makes silly insinuations. Sometimes I respond to them and sometimes I can’t be bothered.

As I think I have previously explained the last time I saw Simon, Paul and Alan was over 20 years ago at the time that Socialist Organiser was ‘changing its line’ on the issues of both Ireland and Israel/Palestine. When I had first met all of them they took a fairly standard ‘Trot position’ on these issues and so I have always find it slightly weird that they attribute views to me which I never had but which they used to.

Thanks for the David Hirsch link.