, Alan Johnston, may have been murdered. Adloyada has more.
Mr Johnston’s reporting from Gaza has been criticised on this blog several times. Some commenters have said that they have little or no sympathy for him because of their opposition to his views.
After 9/11, so many people said that if this or that happened “the terrorists will have won” that the phrase became a laughing stock. But there was a core of truth in that phrase before it was damaged by over-use. If we fail, on political grounds, to feel sympathy for and outrage on behalf of a person who has been kidnapped and may have been murdered, it is a victory for the terrorists.
jb – “It’s not a conspiracy. It’s visceral. They think they are on the middle ground”, Jeff Randall former BBC Business Editor.
think i have an arguable point in saying that you tolerate murder when you say you have no sympathy for the victim.
jb | 19.04.07 – 1:42 pm
Please read what I actually say before responding next time:
Some things should never be tolerated; kidnapping and murder are two
I also repeated here:
kidnapping and murder are ALWAYS unjustifiable
I asked you a question too, please answer:
Can you see a difference between the cold blooded, and cold hearted murder of Leon Klinghoffer and the targetted assassination of Ahmed Yassin?
and i can’t help thinking that, despite all your noodling about and discourses on sympathy etc, you’d all be much more comfortable just saying it like AntiCitizenOne 17.04.07 – 2:42 pm.
jb | 19.04.07 – 1:42 pm
You’re the one “noodling about” sympathy etc. Why don’t you just say what you think?
Jb
I have every empathy with Mr Johnstone, family and friends for must be a horrible ordeal.
Criminal violence carried out in the name of political causes of whatever ideological stance should never be allowed to be accepted. ‘Terrorism’ should be should be allowed to ‘win’ however it must be noted that ‘terrorism’ is a tactic NOT a cause.
I have no sympathy with his predicament because ‘he knew the risks’.
I can only assume that the very words he wrote and the ‘political’ role he played in Gaza means he has chosen to play dangerously close to the ‘dark side’ in order to get a ‘story’ for his editors.
In his articles he appeared cavalier about the whole adventure, and rather than providing us with political insight he have given too many stories regarding the ‘voices’ who were in the end manipulating him.
Perhaps a less ‘gonzo’ style of reporting-fast on action, few on facts, big on personal profile just might have seen him returned safe and well. In addition, this shows the very poor relations with the IDF and other Israeli / Egyptian security forces who are the only ones who could make sure of his safety.
Through its ‘reporting’ the BBC has allowed itself to become a pawn in the power struggle within Islam and as well as an ineffective mouthpiece for the “West” (re-everybody else) and there values.
And now when Al Beeb needs sympathy-everybody is empty chairing it.
The savagery as seen in yesterday in Iraq give us a glimpse into the abyss, and IMVHO Al Beeb has helped get us into this position.
BioD-
Nor is it justified when middle-class ‘communists’ and ‘Marxists’ high jack planes AFTER binging on coke and fast cars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Baader
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
Oh jb – I would agree with you: if I had compared Alan Johnston to Goebbels, it would have been ‘extreme’ and unfair.
But I didn’t. It is scarcely a ‘caveat’ to state as I did that I was NOT comparing Alan Johnston to Goebbels. No ‘comparison’ was intended. It would also have been ‘extreme’ (not to mention bizarre) to have ‘compared’ him to the Yorkshire Ripper, but I didn’t – I used an attack on Sutcliffe as an analogy – and it’s revealing that you ignore that analogy, perhaps because you know it weakens your argument.
Anyone with a critical brain can tell the difference between an analogy and a direct comparison. You evidently cannot. This is not mere sophistry as you will insist – are we really to be barred from using analogies simply because some simpleton mistakes them for direct personal comparisons? I have so far used both the Yorkshire Ripper and Joseph Goebbels as logical analogies for certain situations or circumstances – not as personal comparisons. Do you really think I was comparing Alan Johnston to the Yorkshire Ripper? If you did, please go away and learn to read like an adult.
You really do need to start responding to what people write, rather than what you assume they mean, or rather, what you wish they meant. The use of an analogic metaphor is not extremist, and does not imply direct comparison of the subjects: I used Goebbels to illustrate that a mouthpiece sometimes bears some of the guilt for bloodshed even though he has personally not harmed anyone. Geddit? Is that really beyond your comprehension? There is no direct personal comparison, as I stated. Learn to read, fool.
Alan Johnston was a sympathetic mouthpiece on behalf of the Palestinians, (as everyone who is calling for his release is happy to admit! No-one is even pretending he was neutral anymore, he has been publicly acknowledged as an advocate for the Palestinian cause by literally dozens of figures from the media). To use another analogy (again, NOT a personal or morally equivalent comparison – d’uh!) Trotsky’s murder was horrific and evil, but we would be deluding ourselves if we classified him as being as innocent as the other victims of the fascistic system he helped to create.
Let me repeat this in capitals, so you can’t miss it (because you still haven’t addressed this very basic and important point, moron):
ALAN JOHNSTON WAS SO COMMITTED TO THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE THAT HE WROTE A PIECE OF WHITEWASHING PROPAGANDA CLAIMING THAT KIDNAPPINGS IN GAZA WERE HARMLESS REALLY, AND IN THIS PIECE HE MOCKED THE OVER-REACTION OF A FOREIGNER WHO THOUGHT HE WAS ABOUT TO BE KIDNAPPED. IN DOING SO, HE MADE LIGHT OF THE TERROR OF BEING KIDNAPPED AT GUNPOINT BY MASKED MEN. ONLY IN GAZA WOULD THE BBC CONSIDER KIDNAPPINGS A BIT OF KNOCKABOUT FUN.
GIVEN THESE FACTS, IT IS HARD (though I manage) TO FIND MUCH PERSONAL SYMPATHY FOR HIM, BUT I ABSOLUTELY CONDEMN HIS KIDNAPPING AND HIS KIDNAPPERS, AND IF THE WORST HAPPENS, HIS MURDER ALSO.
If you can actually engage with that point – that his apologetics on behalf of similar kidnappings makes him somewhat less innocent than other kidnap victims, and therefore more difficult to sympathize with – we can have a conversation. Otherwise, I have no interest in laughing any further at the absurd straw men that you set up, or your willfully ignorant misrepresentations of what I’ve written.
Bio wrote: “Your insistence that we must be compassionate even towards those who would murder us given half a chance.”
huh? you really have a queer view of things. i’m scratching my head, wondering where you got this from. then i realise, you just made it up, based on nothing at all. just like your previous comments directed at me, which you haven’t bothered to defend, i notice.
i did read what you wrote. i believe your logic is flawed. i can understand where natalie is coming from. i can understand where anticitizenone is coming from. but you and those similar to you are noodling around in between the two positions – i presume – just so you have something to whinge about.
by insisting that johnston doesn’t deserve sympathy (or deserves very little) because he worked for the bbc, and you don’t like the bbc, is utterly irrational. you have lost your sense of scale. in this, you are very similar to the islamists who believe targeting commuters on trains in london and madrid is justified because they all somehow gave their tacit consent to the subjugation of muslims in the middle east. you can’t disentangle your politics from your feelings of empathy and sympathy. that isn’t what makes you human, it’s what takes you dangerously close to a terrorist mindset.
the logical conclusion of your politics is to rejoice, like anticitizenone.
the logical conclusion of your ethics is that you should condemn johnston’s kidnap unconditionally and offer unconditional sympathy, like natalie.
but you seem unwilling or unable to do either.
my view is simple: i feel sympathy for johnston in the same way i would for anyone – jew, muslim, journalist, whatever – who suffers a horrible end to their life wholly out of proportion with any presumed wrong they have perpetrated. i have never met johnston, nor had i heard of him until recently. so my sympathy, while unconditional, is shallow, ephemeral and second-hand – as it is controlled by the media’s output on the story. in this, i am no different to most other people across the world.
it’s sad that your obsession with the bbc and middle eastern politics has confused you on this issue to the extent it has done.
as to your other question, i’ll get to it anon
jb:
by insisting that johnston doesn’t deserve sympathy (or deserves very little) because he worked for the bbc, and you don’t like the bbc, is utterly irrational.
I agree it would be irrational, but I have never said anything of the kind. I have never said AJ doesn’t deserve sympathy, I’ve simply said that he doesn’t have much of mine, and I’ve explained why – it’s not “because he worked for the bbc” – it’s because of what he has written and said. (that’s a full stop, or “period”)
you have lost your sense of scale. in this, you are very similar to the islamists who believe targeting commuters on trains in london and madrid is justified because they all somehow gave their tacit consent to the subjugation of muslims in the middle east.
Your moral compass is broke and your attempts at drawing comparisons are risable.
the logical conclusion of your politics is to rejoice, like anticitizenone.
According to your warped logic perhaps, but I’ve already said “I have never said I would approve of his death, from the start of this saga I have said that I am indifferent to his fate – I have never said anything like “he deserves what he gets” – I have said that if the worse is true then it would be ironic, not that it would make me happy or that it was just.”
the logical conclusion of your ethics is that you should condemn johnston’s kidnap unconditionally and offer unconditional sympathy, like natalie.
Plese don’t tell me what I should or should not do or think.
i feel sympathy for johnston in the same way i would for anyone – jew, muslim, journalist, whatever
I look forward to your answer to my question, although you’ve already answered it in a way with that splendid display of humanity.
it’s sad that your obsession with the bbc and middle eastern politics has confused you on this issue to the extent it has done.
I don’t believe I’m obsessed. I am very interested because it concerns me directly, my family, and those who would murder us, you included, but in my case it is a more immediate threat, as a Jew with family in Israel.
To you it’s probably no more than an intellectual mind game and an opportunity to feel good about yourself and the views you hold. To me it’s a matter of life or death – and that is not paranoia, obsession or even a question of empathy and sympathy – it’s a matter of survival. I’m not confused at all, I see things all too clearly, unfortunately.
jb, something approaching a reasoned argument from you at last! I’m not saying I buy your reasoning, but at least you’re trying! On that basis, I happily retract my various ‘moron’ and ‘idiot’ comments!
You write:
“my view is simple: i feel sympathy for johnston in the same way i would for anyone – jew, muslim, journalist, whatever – who suffers a horrible end to their life wholly out of proportion with any presumed wrong they have perpetrated”.
I love the way this starts out so absolute before the rather more fluid and highly subjective caveats and qualifications emerge at the close. Let’s look at what you say:
You make a link between the perpetration of wrongdoing and your ability to feel sympathy for the victim. You feel sympathy for anyone whose life ends with a horror that is out of proportion to their wrongdoing, and it would therefore seem to follow that there are those whose actions in life, you would agree, disqualify them from much sympathy. I presume that someone like Zarqawi would be one example.
So far so simple: we’re not so different. We feel sympathy for those who suffer undeservedly untimely and horrifying deaths. That’s part of being human. I share your feelings, as I’m sure does everyone on this site. We also probably agree that there are people who wreak such violence and hatred in this world that the world owes them no tears when they are sent from it.
That much is the easy part. It is, in fact, stating the obvious, which is all you did.
The question here is slightly more complicated however.
Mr Johnston has actively declined to report the true violence at the heart of the Palestinian Authority, he has done so with such absolute regularity, whilst underlining and capitalizing every perceived ‘brutality’ of the Israelis, that we can legitimately describe him as an apologist for the Palestinian cause rather than an impartial journalist. Again, if you want proof of this, read the words of scores of journalists and analysts who now have no qualms in describing him as a pro-Palestinian voice. When he is compelled to comment on such violence, he minimizes and excuses it, such as the now notorious article in which he described armed kidnapping as a bit of black comedy. If the NF or the BNP were guilty of similar offences, would he take a similar line? Would he blame it on poverty and boredom, or on racial hatred? Would he describe the kidnappings as ironic and comical? I think we both know the answer.
Let us not shy away from the truth: Alan Johnston is (as people now freely admit) the soft propagandist for a national culture that has murdered elderly Holocaust survivors in their wheelchairs, hijacked passenger planes, blown up airport terminals, blown up civilians on buses, blown up teenagers in discos, in pizza restaurants, that teaches children that martyrdom is glorious if it spills the blood of the Jews, that blows up a local bakery and three people in it, that launches an average of one rocket per day towards civilian towns and villages, that voted for a murder squad as its current government.
That is the culture Alan Johnston recently described as so friendly that indigestion was the worst thing a kidnap victim would be faced with.
The question of how much guilt a propagandist for such a culture deserves is open to question and debate. I don’t presume to know the answer, but I don’t find the slippery fluidity of your formulation convincing or useful.
In short, I can understand why some are so angry at Mr Johnston’s distorted pro-Palestinian stance that they find it merely ironic that he has now become its victim. For what it’s worth, I do not share the lack of sympathy that some have described, but to find some spurious moral equivalency between those who hold that viewpoint and those who murder others is entirely unwarranted, unsubtle, and one dimensional. It is also a recipe for sheer moral chaos: to see that there is a continuum between kidnapping and the journalistic excusing of kidnapping is NOT morally equivalent to terrorism. Your reasoning on this moral equivalence gives the illusion of being sophisticated, but in fact it’s simply muddled.
Somebody is taking the pi$$
Missing BBC reporter ‘alive’
Interesting account of the Gaza Kidnap Industry:
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=33722
[…]
Even though it is understood in Gaza that the abductions do not serve local interests, nobody is rushing to release Johnston. The reason for this is financial of course. When the media organization releases money, there are many partners in the pile of cash. Everybody wants to receive his cut; therefore, the negotiations are with many elements. The history of kidnappings in general teaches that when people from the PA, Hamas or any other influential body have an interest, the abductee is released quickly. “When the PA really wants it, the person is released within minutes,” says Yehezkeli, “When they kidnapped Dahlan’s friend Sufian Abu Zaide he was at home within 20 minutes because Dahlan sent a threatening message to Ismail Haniyeh. You understand, when they’re pressed to the wall, it’s possible. With journalists, it goes slowly but they are released in the end. One appeals mainly to Haniyeh and Dahlan. If the kidnappers want to make a certain person disappear, he doesn’t come back. These are not abductions with an ultimatum. Johnston’s case is a little strange because it is going over the legal limit for such cases.”
When the Johnston saga ends, we can expect to see a well-known scenario from previous cases. Johnston, after a shower, a shave and a good meal, will stand next to Abu Mazen and Haniyeh and warmly thank them for their great efforts to release him. It is possible that he will also be demanded to make some sort of statement on Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And then, when the 15th foreign journalist to have been kidnapped in Gaza is released, it is not certain that this fashion will stop. Everything depends on the economic needs of the Durmoush family and the big eyes of the local photographers. Reality shows that it does not matter how much money a person has, he always wants more. Thus, it is possible to prepare for the 16th kidnapping.
Superb article.
And people here will fall for it hook line and sinker. No-one will really notice (or mind) that they are offering soft support to a sectarian mafia-style regime.
These people are disgusting.
gharqad-tree | 19.04.07 – 4:51 pm
i’m glad you think i’m stating the obvious. that’s exactly what i’m doing. what’s obvious to most members of the civilised world seems to have utterly passed by many of the posters on this blog.
it’s not a moral equivalence i was proposing between these bloggers and islamists. it was psychological. it was the ability to see johnston as one of the enemy and worthy of little or no sympathy simply because he belongs to the bbc. just as the terrorists would see any one of us as the enemy and deserving of no sympathy because of our belonging to a Western civilisation.
as i said before, the ethics/morality of bloggers like biod would seem to make an unconditional sympathy for johnston likely. it is their politics that drags them into this awkward psychological place they find themselves.
jb | 19.04.07 – 6:16 pm
…. simply because he belongs to the bbc…
I’ve already replied to that false accusation.
Do you really not bother to read what anybody says to you?
I’m still waiting for you tell me that every life is sacred and the death of Leon Klinghoffer was morally/ethically/politically/psychologically equivalent to the death of Sheikh Yassin.
it is their politics that drags them into this awkward psychological place they find themselves.
jb | 19.04.07 – 6:16 pm
Purely out of interest, what do you assume my politics are?
Missing BBC correspondent ‘alive’
Missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston is still alive, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says.
“Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he’s alive,” Mr Abbas told reporters in Sweden.
…
Mr Abbas said he knew which group was holding Mr Johnston but did not give any details.
So what are you waiting for Uncle Abbas?
FREE ALAN JOHNSTON NOW!
Nobody is indifferent to his fate ‘because he works for the BBC’.
Idiot.
It’s because he has been an active ambassador for the Palestinian cause, and downplayed the armed kidnapping of innocent journalists.
Idiot.
You don’t grasp the difference even when it’s explicitly pointed out.
Idiot. Straw Man arguments. Dishonest arguments.
You refuse to address this basic issue: the level of sympathy owed to someone kidnapped in Gaza, who has previously tried to convince the world that armed Gazan kidnappers are comedic and essentially hospitable fellows (ignoring thereby the terror felt by other kidnap victims).
As you are incapable of addressing this issue, I shall not waste further time on your facile moral posturing.
Here are some unusual images of the objects of 100% of my sympathy:
http://www.x-rayproject.org/default.htm
Anybody who tells me I should feel empathy for the people responsible, or anybody who is themself sympathetic to those responsible, are morally, politically, and psycologically bankrupt.
I join gharqad-tree in wishing jb bon voyage, addios, ciao, good bye.
biodegradable – as a professional artist myself, can I just say thanks for that link – what an amazing project, and a wonderful site as well, one of the most excellent artist’s websites I’ve seen.
You hit the nail on the head. bj – or whatever his name was – really had no right to come here and demand that anyone actively feel sympathy for a Palestinian propagandist who tried to convince us of the funny side of kidnapping.
What kind of society is Gaza, when the President’s security forces can ‘confirm’ that a foreign hostage is alive and well, and yet he remains captive? Evidently they and many others know who has him and probably where he is, and if his life is not in danger, if his kidnappers are so hospitable, why do they not see to it that he is freed immediately?
Maybe Abbas isn’t ready for his photo op just yet.
What a shower of thugs. I know – give these people a state of their own! It’ll be like Gaza, but with full voting rights at the UN!
jb | 19.04.07 – 1:42 pm,
same goes for you brian. after saying you regard johnston as ‘one of the enemy’, you go on to make comparisons with zarqawi, then conclude: ‘I think it’s stretching it a little to feel sympathy for people who are pure evil when they meet their end. Relief, yes. Sympathy, no.’ it was a little ambiguous whether the ‘pure evil’ was directed at johnston as well as the others… i suspect it was.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I spell my name with a “y” and I thought it was perfectly clear from what I wrote that I don’t put Johnston in the Zarqawi camp.
Here’s a reminder: This is a site about BBC bias.
gharqad-tree | 19.04.07 – 3:28 am |
hippiepooter – I apologize. I regret writing that last paragraph.
That’s alright, we all get carried away from time to time, but (and certainly not in ‘internetland’) it’s not often someone has the grace to apologise for it. The time of night probably had something to do with it too!
gharqad-tree | 19.04.07 – 7:34 pm
as we’ve descended into the vocabulary of the playground, may i respond in kind? fool! nobber! berk! tit! arsehead!
i can almost see you hitting the keyboard in an artist’s fit of pique, face twisted with nobbly anger, fists clenched tight white, thinking ‘how many times do i have to tell this, this, this, IDIOT!’
try beater-blockers or valiums mate, i’m sure they’d calm you down.
anyway, now we’ve got the foreplay out of the way, it might not surprise you that i [like most of the rest of the sane world] totally disagree with your assessment of johnston’s role in the world. i think your arguments and those of your peers are disingenuous and invalid. your dossiers against him and your labelling of him as an “an active ambassador for the Palestinian cause” are cheap tricks to justify yours or anyone else’s lack of sympathy. i disagree fundamentally with your analysis, you disagree with mine. never the twain shall meet. and i’m glad about that.
Biodegradable | 19.04.07 – 7:10 pm
it’s good to see that you refuse to elaborate on those ridiculous accusations you made against me earlier on in this thread. presumably because you can’t. anyway, i’ll stick my neck out and call you a dogmatist, like all of your co-bloggers. you hate the bbc. you’re a sectarian, fiercely committed to zionism.
which is why, bryan, this blog is always going off topic, into so many dark tangents about the frickn middle east. because you’re all obsessed with it almost as much as you are with the bbc.
jb | 20.04.07 – 11:10 pm |
“i disagree fundamentally with your analysis, you disagree with mine. never the twain shall meet. and i’m glad about that.”
jb, I’m so glad you’re glad we disagree with you that posters here take pleasure in the kidnapping of Mr Johnstone. Maybe a still, small voice is crying for help beneath that morass of disreason you have embedded yourself in?
jb – you have it totally wrong. I feel no anger, no rage, just mild disappointment whenever I read your comments.
jb, I’ll keep it simple for you. Please tell me: in what other part of the world are armed kidnappings all but dismissed as ‘black comedy’, ‘ironic’, and ‘keystone’ by the local BBC correspondant?
If you can tell me where such a serious crime is discussed in such light-hearted tones, sanitised and whitewashed, then you may have a point.
If you can’t, then have the honesty to admit you can’t, and that his reporting on at least this one aspect of Palestinian criminal behaviour has been – let’s say, unusual.
There are many more aspects of his reports we could discuss. I’m happy to limit it to this one, because it is the most topical.
Here’s a hint, btw, when you reply, some actual substance, some specific detail – some quotes even (such as I have given above) will lend your response more credibility than the mere rhetoric you usually offer. For example, your entire response to me in your latest comment amounts to saying nothing more than ‘I disagree with you, because you’re wrong’. You say the entire ‘sane world’ disagrees that he has been an ambassador for the Palestinian cause – an easy assertion, easily made. Look – even I can do it: almost everyone now demanding Johnston’s release has highlighted the sympathetic way that he communicated the Palestinian side. Here is Kate Burton:
“He was telling your entire story to the world, piece by piece, and now there is no-one left to tell it.”
Note – not reporting impartially on competing narratives, but telling the Palestinian story in its entirety.
Kate goes on:
“Alan is one of you a thousand times over. We are tired. Khalas.”
How neutral! How impartial! Or are you saying Kate Burton is not part of the ‘sane world’?
David Walker writes:
“The idiocy of Alan’s kidnapping is that here is a man of integrity and skill, reporting the plight of the Palestinians in a way that can only benefit their struggle.”
Impartiality, or is that a fair description of partisan advocacy? Maybe David Walker is insane too!
Nikki writes:
“It is ridiculous that someone who is only trying to help the Palestinians and their cause is being treated in such a manner”
Oh, poor Nikki – clearly insane too! Only – ONLY trying to help the Palestinian cause. Here’s a newsflash jb – Alan Johnston’s job is not to help the Palestinian cause or ANY cause. It’s to report the news impartially. The BBC takes our money in return for a promise to operate under a charter obligation of neutrality and impartiality. It seems that quite a few people are happy for he and the BBC to break this obligation in Gaza!
Any other insane people out there? Oh yeah – here’s Penny Vine:
“Alan Johnston has a reputation of speaking for the ordinary/the invisible/the people of Palestine”.
What?! – Speaking FOR the people of Palestine instead of impartially reporting the facts?! Penny, you too must be insane!!
Guido, clearly insane, calls Johnston,
“a man who was only doing his job, and was a friend of the Palestinian cause.”
You hear that jb – another supporter of Johnston who calls him a friend of the Palestinian cause. Still think only insane people could think that?
There seem to be a lot of us out there…
Well, we’re on topic here. And if we are obsessed with the hot issue of the Middle East we share that obsession with the BBC and probably a billion other people. But we have been known to deal with plenty of other topics here and stick with them, not linking them back to the Middle East. On the main page currently ten or fifteen percent of topics are on the Middle East.
You are out of your depth here, jb. If you want to debate effectively and be takn seriously you have to provide evidence, not simply state that our take on Johnston is “invalid.” If you think he is not an ambassador for the Palestinians show us where, when and how he supports Israel. Many of the comments on the Johnston HYS
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=5911&&edition=2&ttl=20070420233923
elevate him almost to the status of a Mother Theresa, humbly moving about among the Palestinians and bringing knowledge of their “plight” to the world. Many of these comments are from Palestinians themselves and others in the Arab world. Some jealously guard the forum, insisting that Johnston’s kidnapping should in no way be linked to that of Gilad Shalit. And others darkly hint that Israel might be holding him.
And the BBC itself has dropped all pretence of Johnston’s objectivity in its push on all fronts to get him released.
hippiepooter – thank you. That’s very generous, and I appreciate it 🙂
it’s good to see that you refuse to elaborate on those ridiculous accusations you made against me earlier on in this thread. presumably because you can’t.
…
you’re a sectarian, fiercely committed to zionism.
jb | 20.04.07 – 11:10 pm
I made no ‘accusations’ against you, I’ve answered all the questions you’ve asked me but I’m still waiting for your reply to mine.
Yes, I’m a Jew, if you want to call that being sectarian, and I am a commited supporter of the State of Israel. But none of that describes my politics, does it?
as to your other question, i’ll get to it anon
jb | 19.04.07 – 4:08 pm
Well?