More comprehensive list of individuals and organizations targeted by Harry's Place

Following is a partial list of individuals and organizations targeted by Harry's Place

Targets of HP attacks

Amnesty International

In early 2010 HP started a relentless campaign against Amnesty International ostensibly for its collaboration with Cageprisoners, an organization headed by former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Beg to campaign for the rights of other detainees. The campaign has included near daily attacks on Amnesty UK, and is joined by other Israel lobby figures such as Denis McShane, his partner Joan Smith, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Terry Glavin, Martin Bright along with individuals such as Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, etc. (Given the timing and the common arguments and sources used by Amnesty's detractors, it is hard not to suspect coordination. So, at least, is what one reader of Cohen's attack in the Observer suspects.) However, the likelier source of HP's anger was revealed by its Israeli-American blogger Gene Zitver, who reproduced the standard Israel lobby meme that Amnesty is 'obsession with Israel while virtually ignoring countries with far worse human rights records'. Likewise, the blog attacked AI for hosting the British, journalist, writer and anti-occupation activist Ben White.

Amy Goodman

Writing on HP, David Adler denounces Amy Goodman as 'a hack posing as a toughminded media critic' for the crime of hosting journalists John Pilger and Glen Greenwald. In the same post, which is also reproduced on the American Jewish Committee's Z-Word blog, he also denounces Pilger as an anti-Semite.

Andrew Sullivan

Shortly after Leon Wieseltier of the leading Israel lobby publication The New Republic attacked Andrew Sullivan as an anti-Semite, HP produced an endorsement of Wieseltier's charge by a blogger using the pseudonym Sophia. S/he derided Sullivan for his 'turn against Israel' and his 'dreadfully OTT [presumably 'over the top'] comments'. The portrayal of Israel as a 'goliath', she notes, is 'part and parcel of antisemitism, and I see it as part of a war against the Jews that wiped out most European Jews only 60 years ago'. Sullivan, she insists, 'is flirting with antisemitic memes – and he does in fact either support the Mearsheimer/Walt view of an ultra-powerful “Israel Lobby” in the US, or simply doesn’t see what’s wrong with their point of view.'

London Review of Books

Zitver and LeBor used the publication of a profile of Mary-Kay Wilmers as an occasion to launch an attack on the London Review of Books editor. Both took issue with her criticism of Israel, and LeBor declared that she has 'no shame' The website reproduced an attack on the London Review of Books by Daniel Johnson of the neoconservative StandPoint magazine. As with most of their targets, it is criticism of Israel that earned the publication HP's ire. Beside providing platform to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the charge against LRB editor Mary-Kay Wilmers was summed up thus (the Jewish Wilmers is accused of publishing 'overtly or covertly anti-Semitic propaganda'):

On Israel, however, she finds condemnation is all too necessary, having been converted by Edward Said. A list of her contributors reads like a roll-call of the anti-Zionist, anti-American Left, from Tariq Ali to Slavoj Zizek, from Eric Hobsbawm to Tom Paulin. Virtually the only Tory to have written regularly for the LRB was the late Sir Ian Gilmour, who hated Israel and Margaret Thatcher in equal measure. In an interview with Anne McElvoy, Wilmers was at least frank about her prejudice: “I’m unambiguously hostile to Israel because it’s a mendacious state.”

Commenting on an earlier post, Toube writes: 'There is a section of the “mainstream left” that has gone absolutely mad. Its home is the London Review of Books. Am I right in thinking that the LRB receives a public subsidy? If so, I hope that this government, or the next, will take it away.' Though, as Conor Foley has suggested, the posts on Harry's Place serve 'as "red meat" for anonymous troll to then ramp up the attacks'; the real abuse against Wilmers only appears in below the line comments. Earlier LeBor recycled a claim by Bernard Avishai that his review of a book about King Hussein of Jordan by Avi Shlaim was killed by Wilmers to replace it with another which was about 'Israelis shooting up Gaza'. LeBor's post was in turn reproduced by Harry's Place blogger Ben Cohen on the American Jewish Committee's Z Word blog. Both failed to mention that the article's contents were described even by The Jewish Chronicle as 'a little starry-eyed', and it was dropped, according to LRB editor Adam Shatz, 'because we felt the piece didn't merit the space'.

Tony Judt

Michael Weiss used the occasion of a profile of Tony Judt published in the Chronicle of Higher Education to launch an attack on the acclaimed historian for 'becoming a lesser specimen oneself'[sic] through his criticisms of Israel. He called Judt's protest at being disinvited from an event at the Polish embassy under Israel lobby pressure his 'narcissistic agonies' which see 'dark hand of conspiratorial Semitic censorship'. He adds:

To what pasted-together philippic against the legitimacy of Jewish statehood has Judt not lent his imprimatur?

The crimes he lists include writing favourable reviews for Mearsheimer & Walt's bestseller The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy and Israeli historian Shlomo Sands's The Invention of the Jewish People. (The book was a bestseller in Israel). He goes on to declare Judt 'coarse and unreliable' in his treatment of current affairs citing an article that Judt wrote in the London Review of Books criticizing liberal hawks who had supported the Iraq war. Earlier Adam L (Adam LeBor?) posted an excerpt from an article about 'Tony Judt’s hypocrisies' by Mitchell of Dissent. Judt's fault? His suggestion that 'the link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is newly created'

John Pilger

On 6 March 2010, the blog gave platform to Mark Gardner of the CST to smear journalist John Pilger as an anti-Semite (Gardner argues that anti-Zionism is a cover for anti-Semitism, and any references to Jewish power are akin in spirit to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

Sabiha Iqbal

When the National Youth Agency established a Young Muslims Advisory Group the website led a smear campaign against one member, the 17-year-old Sabiha Iqbal, a Leeds University student, writer, musician and volunteer charity worker. 'But what is this woman doing amongst them', wrote David Toube, noting that her YMAG profile lists her as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. According to Toube, the SWP is an 'extremist party' which 'aspires to overthrown the elected government, and replace it with a dictatorship' and promotes 'Islamist extremist groups - Jamaat e Islami, Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah'. He then went on to equate the party with the BNP, noting that 'the parallel with the BNP is a strong one.' The story was picked up the next day by the Daily Mail, which reproduced some of the HP language, while adding 'intelligence experts', who according to the story greeted the 17-year-old's selection with 'incredulity' (the only 'expert' it quotes is terrorologist Anthony Glees, author of an alarmist report). The Daily Express also covered the story as a scandal the next day, although it did quote Hazel Blears defending the selection..

Toube subsequently declared that he was 'impressed by the Daily Mail’s coverage', and expressed the hope that 'liberal left papers would similarly take on board the need to exclude members of a Jew baiting party, that lies to Muslims about there being a “War on Muslims”, and which parades terrorists and anti-semites around the country, from positions of political influence.' More than a year later a Harry's Place blogger using the pseudonym 'Lucy Lips' resumed the attacks on Iqbal, this time accused of organizing a fundraiser for the British charity for needy Palestinians Interpal. Typically false and inflammatory, the post presented the twinning of the Islamic University of Gaza and the University of Bradford Student's Union as 'Twinning with Hamas'.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky has long been a neoconservative hate figure. In January 2010 Andrew Anthony of the Observer resurrected an old accusation against Chomsky that he had minimized atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. These accusations were duly publicized by HP bloggers in subsequent days. Curiously absent from the posts is any reference to a lengthy rebuttal that one of HP's present heroes, Christopher Hitchens, had written in 1985.

Howard Zinn

HP's treatment of ideological opponents frequently crosses the borders of propriety into spiteful callousness. On the death of US historian and peace activist Howard Zinn 'Alan A' published a post headlined 'Zinn dead' with two words in the body the body of the post: 'oh well'. (As usual the post was followed by below-the-line commenters by the usual stream of abuse)

Mads Gilbert

During Israel's Operation Cast Lead which eventually killed nearly 1,400 Gazans Toube launched an attack on Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian doctor who had famously issued a desperate call for help. Toube described Gilbert as a 'shill for terrorism' and as 'a perfect example of the convergence of the extreme Left and jihadism'.

Henry Porter

The website denounced the Guardian columnist Henry Porter for suggesting that Tony Blair should be held accountable for his illegal invasion of Iraq. It presented the question of the legality of a war as a debate between lawyers such as 'Elizabeth Wilmshurst and Sir Michael Wood who agree with the majority of Guardian journalists that the Iraq war was “illegal”', and 'other lawyers like Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and the Lords Falconer and Goldsmith who didn’t agree with this interpretation'. Of course, the comment deliberately falsifies the well-known fact that Judge Goldsmith is on record doubting the legality of the war.

Seamus Milne

Harry's Place bloggers have frequently attacked Guardian journalist Seamus Milne (whom they refer to as 'Shameless Milne') Toube mounted a particularly strong attack on Milne over his response to the 7/7 bombings in July 2005:

These people are, to put it bluntly, Quislings and traitors. They are deliberate fellow travellers of theocratic fascist politics and they know it. We should state it clearly, and we should fight them as we fight fascism itself.

Milne is a key example of such a fellow traveller

In August 2006, Gordon MacMillan speculated on what a reported shake-up at the Guardian might mean for Milne's post as Comment Editor. When Milne was replaced by Georgina Henry in December 2006, David Toube commented: "Good bye Seamus Milne. And good riddance.":

Milne has effectively run the Comments Pages of the Guardian as an updated version of the Communist Party’s “Straight Left” newspaper: an entryist project in the Labour Party in which Milne served as Business Manager.

In March 2007, Toube wrote:

A year or so ago, I found myself sitting next to Seumas Milne at a meeting. When questions from the floor were called for, I asked Milne why the Guardian had become a soap box for the Islamist far right, and accused him of having inflated the stock of a tiny clique of clerical fascists who are supported only by a fringe of British muslim society, and whose prominence is the product of a hapless coalition with his section of the extreme Left.

Ken Loach

The celebrated British film-maker is another frequent target of HP attacks. However, on 25 January 2010 it used rather curious logic to attack Loach. After reporting that Loach had pulled out of the Iranian Film Festival responding to a call by Iranian film makers in protest against the government's crackdown on dissidents, Zitver suggested Loach used double-standards since he boycotted Israel even though no Israeli film maker had issued a call for boycott. The point apparently eluded Zitver that the boycotts in both cases were a response to a call from the repressed. In Israel and the territories it occupies it is the Palestinians, not Israeli film-makers who are repressed. The post generated the usual flood of abuse: the ejaculations of a commenter named 'Django' are typical of the kid of calumnies the website tolerates: 'Disgusting, evil little anti-semite. The little shitsqueak can’t even condemn the Iranian regime without mentioning Israel. Fucker.'

Caryl Churchill

The website ran several attacks on playwright Caryl Churchill for her acclaimed play Seven Jewish Children, written in response to Israel's assault on Gaza. Toube wrote a post (filed under 'antisemitism') in which he denounced the play, comparing it to Nazi propaganda, and chided the Guardian for staging it. The website subsequently publicized a play by Richard Stirling written as a riposte to Churchill which according to the author presented 'the tragedy of the Palestinian child as a victim of a distorted education about Israel'.

UCU

The website has on many occasions accused the University Colleges Union (UCU) of 'anti-Semitism', most recently for inviting COSATU's International Relations Secretary, Bongani Masuku to one of its events. In a controversial decision the South African Human Rights Commission had charged Masuku with 'hate speech' even though the subject of his remarks were specifically militant supporters of Israel's occupation (The decision has been challenged by COSATU, the PSC and UCU). From this Harry's Place has extrapolated Masuku's anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, a charge it has extended to his hosts in UK, the UCU and War on Want. On other occasions the website has accused the UCU of anti-Semitism without actually providing evidence as to why. Jonathan Hoffman of the Jewish Chronicle used HP's pages to declared a meeting at SOAS 'anti-Semitic' because of the very presence of Masuku. The website subsequently alleged that under pressure from 'the well funded anti-Zionist lobby', the BBC removed from its website references allegations that someone at the meeting had shouted down Hoffman calling him 'Jewish'. It also posted the same video it had posted earlier claiming that someone can be heard calling Hoffman 'Jewish'. However, the video shows no such shouting. The BBC report was based on a false claim by a tory activist Raheem Kassam and was subsequently removed once the lie was exposed.

Paul Rogers

For attending an event during the Palestine Awareness Week HP accused Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, of 'lending legitimacy to Hamasniks and the Islamic University of Gaza'. The odd accusation was levelled based on a guilt-by-association chain that is several links too long. One of the backers of the event, the post notes, is the Palestinian Return Center, which according to a previous post is not hostile to Hamas, hence 'pro-Hamas' (the same post also accuses Sweden of being 'Hamas-friendly'!), and the Islamic University of Gaza -- and institution which caters to over 20,000 students, and was destroyed by Israel during its 2009 assault on Gaza -- was founded by the late Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It is not clear, however, why HP doesn't level the same charge at event co-organizer The Bradford University Students Union, or participants such as the CND, Amnesty International, UBU Peace Society or the NUS BlackStudents Campaign

George Monbiot

Another frequent target has been ' the apocalyptic Guardian columnist' George Monbiot who has come in for censure for his anti-war position. Several of these attacks are written by 'admin1'. (After approvingly quoting Bush's neoconservative speech-writer David Frum in one of the articles, 'admin1' laments why antiwar protesters won't accept that Bush is about to bring about a 'global democratic revolution'. He adds: 'many people simply refuse to believe that Bush and his administration do actually believe that they need to support a democratic revolution in the Middle East and support liberty elsewhere. That is why the ‘left’ scoffed at the idea of liberating Afghanistan and Iraq.')

Hugo Chavez

Hugo Chavez has also been a favorite target of the website. For his criticism of the US militarization of aid in Haiti, Chavez was compared to right-wing shock-jock Rush Limbaugh (It is worth bearing in mind that the same criticism of the US approach has been made by Medicins Sans Frontieres among others; and whereas Venezuela provided aid and human resources, Limbaugh had advised his audience against sending aid to the Haitians) In its attempts to present Chavez as a buffoon the website ran a false story alleging that the Venezuelan president had blamed the US for causing the earthquake (it later posted a retraction once the story was exposed as a lie)

Dilpazier Aslam

In July 2005 after the Guardian website carried an article by trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam Harry's Place and blogger Scott Burgess led the charge against Aslam highlighting his links to Hizb’ut Tahrir. The Guardian subsequently terminated its contract with Aslam, after he refused to repudiate Hizb'ut Tahrir. On the same day, the Guardian Media website reported that Aslam had been targeted by "rightwing bloggers from the US", and that Scott Burgess had been an unsuccessful applicant for the trainee position which he held.

Soraya Tehrani

In October 2008, The Guardian's Comment is Free website dropped Soraya Tehrani as a contributor after a complaint by Toube which noted that some of her previous comments on the site had been moderated for anti-semitism.

Global Peace and Unity Event

In October 2008, Harry's Place attacked the Islam Channel's Global Peace and Unity Event using Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism as a source to accuse it of inducting British Muslims 'into political and religious extremism'. He attacked the government for 'both encouraging and endorsing this politics'.

Owen Hatherley

In December 2008, Toube attacked the New Statesman for printing a review of Richard Seymour's The Liberal Defence of Murder by Owen Hatherley, who he described as the "New Statesman's Dilpazier Aslam". He alleged that Owen Hatherley was affiliated to the Socialist Workers’ Party, a claim he subsequently backpedaled from.

Mehdi Hasan

In July 2009 the blog started a campaign against Mehdi Hasan, senior political editor of the New Statesman, with a series of three posts written by an anonymous 'Channel 4 Insider'. The first article accused Hasan of attacking "all atheists and “disbelievers” as being “cattle” and “of no intelligence”?"

Hasan responded to the campaign in two posts on his New Statesman blog.

He stated:

In the section from the speech quoted prominently (and, once again, out of context) at Harry's Place, I seem to refer to atheists as "kafirs", as "people of no intelligence" and as "cattle". In fact, I am quoting from the Quran - where the word "kafir" simply means "non-Muslim" or "non-believer" and it is in this sense (in fact, in its atheistic sense), and no other, that I used it.

A similar analysis was offered by Sunny Hundal, who accused Harry's Place of running a smear campaign:

It looks obvious his comments are being taken out of context. Hasan is specifically relating what the Koran says. There’s a matter of what he believes in himself, and another matter of how he interprets the religious allegories.

Hundal went on to add:

The full speech is actually more critical of Muslims than the west – and uses the word ‘cattle’ of unthinking Muslims.

The campaign against Hasan was tacitly endorsed by the former New Statesmen editor and Harry's Place supporter Martin Bright, who linked to the post on his new blog at The Spectator..

Sunny Hundal said of this:

This is especially odd since only a couple of months ago when a group of us challenged Nick Cohen’s attempts to malign the liberal-left, Martin Bright said we were trying to get him fired and said that was wrong. These are unequal standards being applied here..

Conor Foley

Comment is Free writer Conor Foley sought an apology from Harry's Place in December 2006 after a commenter on the site claimed he ‘denied anti-semitism in the name of Palestinian rights’. A month later Foley criticised a claim by Harry's Place that an IDF attack on red cross ambulances in Qana was a hoax.

In May 2008, Harry's Place corrected a post by Neil D which mentioned an article Foley wrote on Burma, after he left a comment saying:

The article (which was written 10 days ago) actually says “Junta-ruled Burma is a dilemma for aid agencies. But in the wake of such a devastating cyclone, they must act fast to save lives”. This is the complete opposite to your view that I think we should “do nothing in practical terms”.

Foley accused Neil D of misrepresenting him again in another post in June 2009:

Neil: this is the second time that you have done that in the last few weeks. You quoted from an article I had written about Zimbabwe to imply the complete opposite of my views about the humanitarian crisis in Burma. Now you are quoting from an article about Kosovo and Afghanistan to imply what I think about Zimbabwe!

In the thread below the post, commenter 'Morgoth' accused Foley of a "tendency towards ludicrous borderline anti-semitic conspiracy theories of the Fisk kind over Hezbollah ambulances. "

Subsequently on the same thread, Morgoth added:

Is it me or is Foley turning into another Robert Fisk? Should we arrange for some Pashtuns to beat the shit out of him?

Despite these differences, Foley wrote a sympathetic response to two articles by David Toube on the left and anti-semitism in April 2009.

Of Toube's first article, which accused Socialist Action and the Socialist Workers Party of being soft on anti-semitism, Foley wrote, "while I would never associate with that ‘part of the left’, to which he is referring, I think that it does describe a worrying body of opinion."

Foley added that Toube's second article "requires a more considered response because it is more closely focused on the part of the left to which I do belong – the centre-left. I think his critique here is marred by weighing into an argument between Sunder Katwala and Nick Cohen over the latter’s poorly researched and offensive accusation that the Fabians had been ‘betraying liberal Moslems’ by refusing to publish a pamphlet by Shiraz Maher." Foley nevertheless said that " I think that David is making a serious point about the centre-left, which I recognize from some of the post-Iraq debates that are taking place."

Foley remained strongly critical of Harry's Place's modus operandi. In June 2009, he wrote that the site was "notorious for its ad hominem attacks and the gross distortions that it puts on other people’s views. Reading the comments beneath some its articles is like contemplating the contents of an un-flushed toilet. "

In an August 2009 comment on the Guardian website, Foley said that Harry's Place regularly hosted racist comments:

Describing the website as a 'nest' for such views is accurate because the above the line writers do not express or hold such views (I would hope that they find them abhorrent) but the site shelters and feeds them. Often the comments have been prompted by articles attacking people or organisations in extremely unpleasant ways, which have not been fact-checked before they are printed. I have never seen an apology on the website even when the attacks have been clearly inaccurate.

Due to these practices, which are criticised in the above article, in my opinion, shutting down Harry's Place website would be doing a great favour to the norms of rational debate.

This comment led to several threads on Harry's Place in response.

David Toube responded:

Conor’s charge dates back to an email exchange just over a year ago, which resulted from his wife finding a comment in a discussion on a thread from a reader who suggested that “we should arrange some Pashtuns to beat the shit out of him” when he was in Afghanistan. This statement had upset his wife, who was reduced to tears.

He added that "People being rude is unfortunately one of the products of expressing opinions on the internet" but that " to suggest that a comment on a message board, in English, and aimed an an Anglophone audience could incite Pashtuns to attack Conor is just… odd."

The tensions between Harry's Place and liberal-left or centre-left figures like Foley and Sunder Katwala are arguably distinct from the site's outright hostility to further left antiwar groups. In some respects they resemble the tensions between liberals and ex-communists in the anti-totalitarian movement of the early cold war. Indeed both Foley and Katwala have drawn attention to the number of ex-Trotskyites and ex-Islamists in the ranks of the Decent Left.

Osama Saeed

The website has served as a frequent platform for attacks on one of the SNP's Glasgow Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, Osama Saeed. These attacks have been mostly written by Tom Gallagher and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens who has described himself as one of the 'Saeed watchers'.