Rob Marchant, a former Labour party manager who blogs at The Centre Left, has written a piece for The Independent wondering why anyone would take seriously George Galloway as a politician or his Respect as a political party. Much of what Rob writes will be familiar to regular Harry’s Place readers.
Galloway responded the next day by, among other things, writing of Rob:
He’s a regular contributor to Harry’s Place [we have cross-posted some of Rob’s blog posts], whose contributors can be foully Zionist and borderline racist and whose targets have included John Pilger, the two Kens, Livingstone and Loach, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, as well as various Muslim organisations. Fine company I’d call it.
This is not the first time Galloway has attacked Harry’s Place, and the fact that he devotes such attention to us is flattering in a way. The phrases he uses to describe us in this instance are a case study in how he operates.
We do in fact support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to defend itself against its enemies, and we denounce those who call for its elimination. At the same time we criticize Israeli policy on settlements in the occupied territories and support the creation of a Palestinian state in those territories. Apparently this make us “foully Zionist” (as opposed to fairly Zionist?). Galloway’s point, of course, is that Zionism (i.e., support for the State of Israel as the Jewish homeland) is by its very nature foul.
As for “borderline racist”: that’s a rather cowardly way of putting it. If he thinks Harry’s Place is racist, why doesn’t he flat-out say so? Because then he might have to prove it?
As for the Harry’s Place “targets” Galloway cites: readers are invited to use the search engine at the upper right to find out exactly what we’ve said about each of them, and to draw their own conclusions.
Update: Rob Marchant has responded to Galloway here.
