Harry's Place

Harry's Place is a British blog founded in November 2002 by 'Harry Hatchet' to support the invasion of Iraq that was then in the offing. Harry's Place has a strong pro-Israel orientation and its bloggers were later among the founders of the Euston Manifesto network, a key centre of the 'pro war left'. Its activities include mainly attacks on critics of Israel, with a special focus on the left and mainstream Muslim organizations. Its comments section licences -- even invites -- abuse against political opponents.

Zionist Orientation

The website has a strong Zionist orientation: it serves as a platform for individuals with strong pro-Israel views. Following judge Richard Goldstone's report on the war crimes committed during Israel's 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, HP blogger Gene Zitver republished an article by Moshe Halbertal from The New Republic that tried to discredit the report. In the preface he added:

Think about that. How many of the world’s armies– especially those engaged in all-too-frequent combat– are concerned enough about ethics to develop such a code, and to include philosophers in the process?

Now of course Israel’s enemies will claim it is all just for show– a PR stunt. Such people lack the most fundamental understanding of Israeli society. The difficult matter of balancing Israel’s security with the objective of minimizing harm to non-combatants is one that most Israelis take very seriously.

Zitver is of course talking about an army, which according to Goldstone, targeted the "people of Gaza as a whole" in a war that was designed to "humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. Nor is Zitver's view shared by many Israelis who actually participated in the assault. The website published several posts attacking the Goldstone report, including one in which Toube argues that the judge is wrong to conclude that police aren't legitimate targets. Zitver also posted the video of a speech by British Army veteran Richard Kemp who told a JCPA audience in Jerusalem: "the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare".

The website doesn't just publish apologia for the Israeli military, it also posts material celebrating the IDF. The website also used the occasion of the disaster in Haiti to plug the IDF's alleged humanitarianism. Perhaps conscious of the real agenda behind the initiative, Zitver tried to preempt criticism by adding: 'Perhaps the nefarious hidden purpose behind this will be discussed at Saturday’s Palestine: beyond the headlines seminar sponsored by Green Left and Socialist Resistance.' As it happens, the 'nefarious hidden purpose' was discussed in Israel's right-wing daily Ma'ariv which described the Haitian tragedy as 'good for the Jews'. The website has on occasion mentioned atrocities committed by US or UK, but only to complain why the media cut Israel similar slack. The website also attacked the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church for criticizing the Isreali occupation of Palestinian lands. For comparing Palestinians to ancient Israelites and Israelis to Romans, it insinuated anti-Semitism by accusing the churches of invoking 'Christ-killing imagery'. The website also served as a platform for the launch of CiF Watch, a website purportedly dedicated 'to monitoring and exposing antisemitism on the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ blog'. Like HP however, its main tasks appears to be to anonymously smear such anti-Zionists as Seth Freedman, Antony Lerman etc.

McCarthyite Tactics

The preferred mode of Harry's Place's operation is denunciation. This mostly takes the form of guilt-by-association, where targets are often traduced for the alleged actions of their acquaintances and associates. It is rarely stated if these actions are endorsed by the individual or organization being targeted. The hyperbolic language it uses to denounce targets was satirized in The Guardian's spoof "Norman Johnson" column.

The one thing all HP targets have in common is their critical attitude toward the state of Israel; others are attacked for being tolerant of or sympathetic to what HP broadly defines as 'Islamism'. Following is a mere sample of the numerous individuals and organizations daily attacked by its stable of mostly anonymous bloggers and commenters:

Amnesty International Amy Goodman Andrew Sullivan Ben White Cageprisoners Caryl Churchill Conor Foley Democracy Now! George Monbiot Glen Greenwald Hedy Epstein Henry Porter Howard Zinn

Human Rights Watch Islamic Forum of Europe Jenny Tonge Jeremy Corbyn John Pilger Ken Loach London Review of Books Mads Gilbert Mary-Kay Wilmers Mehdi Hasan Muslim Council of Britain Noam Chomsky

Osama Saeed Paul Rogers Richard Goldstone Robert Fisk Shlomo Sand Slavoj Zizek Seumas Milne The Guardian Tony Judt UCU Viva Palestina War on Want

The website coordinates its smears with other neoconservative fronts such as The Spittoon. Here is a more comprehensive list of individuals and organizations targeted by Harry's Place.

Pro-War Propaganda

According to Hatchet, the sites continuing interests include "the ‘anti-war’ movement, the Islamist far-right, the decline of the Marxist left, the rise of left anti-Semitism, the slow death of internationalism, Zionism and Anti-Zionism" and "issues relating to religion and secularism" as well as the Iraq debate.

Iraq War

Harry's Place 'was the venue for heated discussion of the Iraq war' which broke out in March 2003, according to Hatchett who wrote that the site "also always got on the nerves of many people - the Stoppers, the Gallowayites, the Livingstonians and the Islamists." This list includes much of the organised opposition to the Iraq War in Britain, a point which was reflected in one early post on the site:

The SWP lead the Stop The War Coalition, originally set up to oppose any attempt to take out the Taliban and al-Quada but now it seems a permanent committee against any attempt to deal with dictatorship and reaction. Their last ‘anti-war’ march saw them team-up with the Muslim Association of Britain, which openly declares itself as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic-fundamentalist party in the Arab world.

Hatchet later wrote of the site:

During the Iraq debate I found that I was often linking to the same writers - Nick Cohen, Johann Hari, David Aaronovitch and Christopher Hitchens. In time I built up a regular readership of people who generally agreed with the positions taken on Iraq by those writers and with the occasional original essays I produced. It was not my intention, but before long I found myself providing what amounted to an ad-hoc press review for pro-intervention lefties.

The earliest extant post on the site is a November 2002 critique of Media Lens on Nick Cohen:

For example, ‘heretics’ on the left such as Nick Cohen of the Observer, who has had the temerity to suggest Iraqis might be better off without Saddam Hussein, are roundly denounced and readers encouraged to complain to the bosses of individual journalists - which I find a bit snitchy.

Earlier that year, Cohen had written in the Observer, "I look forward to seeing how Noam Chomsky and John Pilger manage to oppose a war which would end the sanctions they claim have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of children who otherwise would have had happy, healthy lives in a prison state (don't fret, they'll get there)."

Media Lens had taken issue with this statement in a series of alerts which argued that there were ways of ending economic sanctions without resorting to war. As true believers, HP writers remain unconvinced that Blair misled the country into war eve after seven years of inquiries and damning revelations. The article references Nick Cohen's defence of Blair, who dismissed the idea that Blair could be indicted and added:

Sir Oliver Miles, former ambassador to Libya, has already predicted that the inquiry will be open to accusations of "whitewash" because two members of the Chilcott panel are Jews. He's not alone. I have had an allegedly left-wing journalist say the same to me. Once, he would never have allowed Jew obsessions to infect his thinking. Now, his battered mind was wide open to racial fantasies.

Next Cohen brings up the neoconservatives' favourite trope -- 'appeasement' -- with 'Islamists' in the role of Hitler:

The mental deformations appeasement brings should not be underestimated. People don't just placate their enemies, but become them by adopting their ideological mannerisms and foibles. For years, we've had the notion that democracies are the "root cause" of every Islamist atrocity accepted in polite society. You must now prepare yourself for the return of the Jewish conspiracy theory to supposedly honourable discourse. Indeed, if you look around, you will find it is already there.

The Euston Manifesto and the Pro-War Left

Harry's Place describes itself as part of the "democratic, secular, anti-fascist, liberal, anti-totalitarian left." Two Harry's Place bloggers, Harry Hatchet and David Toube, were among the original signatories of the Euston Manifesto in 2006.

In the New Statesman, David Clark decribed the manifesto's supporters as 'reminiscent of the early American neoconservatives':

They also shared a background in radical-left politics and became preoccupied with attacking their former comrades' supposed moral corruption on a great issue of war and peace (in their case, Vietnam). It was a journey that led most of them eventually to abandon the left for good...There are vague and slightly ritualistic expressions of concern about social injustice and global inequality, but nowhere are they confronted with the kind of passion that is devoted to attacking those considered guilty of appeasing terrorism by criticising western policy - nor is any attempt made to identify their cause.

In a 2008 article for the Guardian website Alan Johnson (editor Democratiya) rejected the term pro-war left, identifying instead "a progressive democratic internationalism set against both a hubristic neo-conservatism and a reactionary "anti-imperialist" left."

The intellectual and campaigning energies that created the manifesto continue to pulse. Go online and look at normblog, Harry's Place, Engage, Labour Friends of Iraq, Democratiya, and the work of all the contributing online journals, blogs, signatories, journalists and activists. Consider the success of Nick Cohen's book What's Left. Watch the Channel 5 documentary No Excuses for Terror, or the Euston-organised parliamentary seminars on humanitarian interventionism and the terror threat, or the Engage rally against the academic boycott.

Harry's Place's role in this milieu made it a subject of satire in The Guardian's spoof "Norman Johnson" column.

'Democracy Promotion' in Iran

On 5 August 2009 David Toube posted photos and videos of himself wearing a T-Shirt which reads 'I'm blogging for Iranian democracy' with a link to Harry's Place underneath. The website has been aggressively promoting Iran Solidarity, a new organization set up by Maryam Namazie of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain, with support from an assortment of New Atheist luminaries, neocons, and some British and international liberal voices.

Relying exclusively on Israel lobby's regime-change brigade (Kenneth Pollack, Patrick Clawson, Michael Rubin), Michael Ezra of HP tried to cast doubt on the legacy of Mohammad Mossadegh -- the popular Iranian prime minister overthrown in the 1953 CIA coup -- questioning his democratic credentials and the causal links between the coup and the Islamic revolution of 1979.

To Blair's Defence

During the Chilcot Inquiry, Harry's Place bloggers spent a lot of time defending Tony Blair. Few of these posts actually offer any arguments as to why Blair should escape scrutiny. Instead, the bloggers spent most of their time heaping scorn on anyone who suggests that Blair should be held accountable for his actions. However, it appears in this instance the bloggers are so isolated that besides Nick Cohen, the only person whose authority they could appeal to is Richard Madeley of Richard & Judy, the man who was once charged with shoplifting alcohol from Tesco (though later acquitted) and who boasts of having cheated on his wife 10 times.

Islamophobia

Harry's Place has been accused of Islamophobia by a variety of individuals and organizations.In its defense the website uses the classic petitio principii logical fallacy by arguing that it is only against 'Islamism', or 'radical Islam', not Islam per se. However, its definition of Islamism is so expansive that it includes everything from fringe groups such as al-Muhajiroun to mainstream Muslim organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). For HP presumably being a Muslim and being a terrorist are synonymous, since it has denounced FOSIS, the main association of Muslim students in the UK, as providing 'provide the mood music to which suicide bombers dance' without providing any argument or fact to support the charge. It even lumps individuals such as Tariq Ramadan, an advisor to the UK government on issues related to Islam, under its category of 'Islamism', which is equated with extremism and 'fascism'. As Arun Kundani has noted, this has been the general strategy of neoconservatives and liberal interventionists to impute to Islamism an immanent violent essence thereby erasing the 'different discursive strands within Islamism...articulated in specific contexts'. Kundani notes: 'The distinction between Islam and Islamism is important, for it insulates this discourse from the straightforward charge of Islamophobia'. He adds that this type of writing trades on the 'ambiguity over who are Islamists and what re their defining beliefs...By collapsing all these different dynamics into a singular threat, "Islamist" becaomes a term that designates any political appropriation of Islamic concepts as dangerous, effectively silencing most democratic forms of Muslim politics in Britain and elsewhere'.

It also serves as the preferred platform for journalists such as Nick Cohen for denouncing the coddlers of 'radical Islamism', which according to him include everyone from the BBC, Liberal Democrats, New Labour, 'the mainstream', to the Foreign Office. Also using the blog to attack 'Islamism' is Tom Gallagher who appears most interested in Osama Saeed, the Glasgow candidate for the Scottish National Party (SNP). Gallagher, who in another post on Harry's Place, has suggested parallels between SNP leader Alex Salmond and Adolf Hitler blurs the distinction between culture and politics in his writings about Muslims to equate religious observance with political immoderation.

Relationship with Quilliam Foundation

One contributor to HP George Readings now works for the Quilliam Foundaiton. Readings also joined members of the Centre for Social Cohesion as a blogger on The Spittoon. Quilliam members frequently receive positive coverage, and on occasion a platform, on HP. However, the relationship is not always rosy. Like Mellanie Phillips, Toube is friends with Quilliam only to the extent that they steer clear of criticizing Israel.

Comments section

Marko Attila Hoare has written of Harry's Place comments section that they are

frequently flooded by extremely nasty bigots who really do hate all Muslims. Their visceral expressions of chauvinistic hatred all too frequently seem to become the dominant theme in any discussion here. And to be honest, I think you’re far, far too reticent about tackling them.

Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch responded:

The failure of Toube et al to subject these repeated outpourings of hatred to any sort of moderation is certainly a disgrace. But perhaps the more fundamental question Hoare should address is why these Muslim-hating bigots are drawn like flies to Toube's site in the first place.

Conor Foley, who says he likes the blog's writers, has nevertheless suggested that 'shutting down Harry's Place website would be doing a great favour to the norms of rational debate', because it

provides a platform for below the line commenters who express 'vicious, racist, threatening' views, lie frequently in attacking people and hide behind anonimity when they do so...Racsit comments appear very regularly and - while sometimes they are eventually removed - sometimes this does not happen for several days, if at all.

I think that it is cowardly for people to express such views and make such attacks while hiding behind pseudonyms and cowardly of the wesbites to continue to provide a platform to them...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.

In an earlier comment he wrote:

the below the line anonymous commenters who infest that site with their racist, abusive - and frankly bizzare - views...[these] nutcases that they give a platform to need to be called out more often.

HP doesn't just license abuse, it openly encourages it. Following a BBC Question Time episode featuring George Galloway, a blogger using the pseudonym 'Brownie poste': "There’s a prize to the person who can come up with the best, non-libellous Galloway insult." Readers obliged with an impressive display of wit:

Django: 'Motherfucking fascist wankdog'; 'I think he and Short are tired and puffy because they were at it backstage before shooting started.'; Lovecat: 'Corrupt, Islamo-Nazi, Syphilitic Goat-Fucker'; Josh Scholar: 'assholes like George are a dime a dozen.'; badnewswade: 'I think Galloway is actually a psychopath.'; British Not Racist: 'All decent people should make his [George Galloway's] life hell.'; Nick (ex-South Africa): 'Not really interested in the especially nasty, fascist turd. Someone should have mentioned the Quality streets he gave to Saddam….Still I’d sooner hurl gratuitous insults at the toxic, deeply bile inspiring Cherie Blair...Clare Short was the one that was total batshit crazy.'; Mike: '[Melanie] Phillips and Galloway are going to have a wild night of passion after the show I think.'

Comments on Harry's Place

Mark Elf wrote on the Jews sans frontieres' blog:

I've done a few posts on Harry's Place, a hard right wing hate site that seems to promote a leftish image of itself. It's main man seems to be a chap who prefers anonymity so he calls himself David t. It looks like an impressive blog and has a large following if the comments are anything to go by. The comments are usually abusive non sequiturs aimed at anyone who dares challenge the HP orthodoxy. Readers of Melanie Phillips in the UK or random zionist hacks in the US will be familiar with the style and the content. I suppose it is a UK equivalent of the US's Little Green Footballs.

Conor Foley writes:

Above the line writers at Harry's Place spend a lot of time criticising the Guardian, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Liberty and other liberal organisations and also venting their disagreement with particular people who work for or associated with such organisations. The problem is that the attacks are often very sloppily written (once it was implied that I would oppose intervention to stop a genocide in Zimbabwe and another time that I did not want to get humanitarian aid into Burma) and are then used as 'red meat' for anonymous troll to then ramp up the attacks.

The end result of this is a site of trolls which spread falsehoods about people in an extremely unpleasant way.

Melanie Phillips has praised "the excellent Harry's Place" as "invaluable for its open-eyed critiques of the left, from the left".

Stephen Pollard backed the site in legal dispute with Mohammed Sawalha of the British Muslim Initiative, saying:

There are always good reasons for looking at Harry's Place, a site which does a sterling job at tracking and exposing the activities of the Islamist fellow travellers in the UK.

Contributors

Many of the website's contributors, including the eponymous 'Harry Hatchet', write anonymously because, they told the Guardian, 'they do not want to aggravate their employers'. The identity of David Toube, the other key figure behind the website, was revealed by Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb.

Gene Zitver David Toube writing under the pseudonym "David T" Edmund Standing Peter Tatchell Barry Rubin George Readings Gordon MacMillan Marcus Laughton Brett Lock Johann Hari (former contributor)

Nick Cohen Adam LeBor Tom Gallagher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Kenneth Bandler Sarah AB Marc Goldberg habibi Lucy Lips Gene

Readership

A table from the Harry’s Place Site Profile on Google Ad Planner. It shows a strong affinity with right-wing and neoconservative publications and blogs like Little Green Footballs, Standpoint and The Spectator

An analysis of Harry's Place's online affiliations and audience in October 2009 suggested that its readership and supporters range from liberal secularists to the neoconservative right. There was little evidence to suggest any leftist readership.

The table on the right was taken from the Harry’s Place Site Profile on Google Ad Planner on 5 October 2009. It shows the ten websites which visitors at Harry’s Place are most likely to also visit. The ‘affinity score’ next to each related website indicates how much more likely a visitor at Harry’s Place is to also visit that websites. For example Google estimates that a Harry’s Place visitor is over 5974 times more likely to visit the website of Standpoint than the average internet user.

The Google Labs product Google Trends provides a similar list of ten websites which Harry’s Place visitors are likely to visit. Numbers one to nine of that list are identical to those provided by Google Ad Planner but its lists the tenth most related website as being the website of the neoconservative Commentary Magazine (commentarymagazine.com) rather than city-journal.org.

Inlinks

A search of Yahoo’s Site Explorer conducted on 5 October 2009 returned 205,529 links to the Harry’s Place’s website. The first thousand were exported for further analysis. Those thousand inlinks were found to be from 144 separate domains. Of those 144, the ten domains with the most links to Harry’s Place are shown in the table below. The only inlinks from the mainstream media come from Oliver Kamm's Times column.

Domain title	Domain	No of links
normblog	http://normblog.typepad.com/	263
Michael J. Totten	http://www.michaeltotten.com/	173
Pickled Politics	http://www.pickledpolitics.com/	73
Reasons to be Impossible	http://impossiblist.blogspot.com/	51
Dr. Weevil	http://www.drweevil.org/	44
Media Backspin	http://backspin.typepad.com/	36
davidthompson	http://davidthompson.typepad.com/	22
Simply Jews	http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/	21
ZioNation – Progressive Zionism-Israel Web Log	http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/	20
Oliver Kamm (blog)	http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/	19
memeorandum	http://www.memeorandum.com/	19
Anorak News – Blogroll	http://www.anorak.co.uk/blogroll	14
Z-Word Blog	http://blog.z-word.com/	12
Oliver Kamm (The Times)	http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/	11
Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry	http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/	10
USS Neverdock	http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/	10

Affiliations

• Z Word (repost each others' materials)
• Euston Manifesto ('Harry Hatchet' and 'David T' are both signatories)
• Iran Solidarity
• The Spittoon (cross posts material from Harry's Place)
• Nothing British
• CiF Watch
• OneVoice

Sources

Neoconservative and Zionist writers and publications are frequent sources for HP material. The following sources are quoted approvingly:

• MEMRI
• Michael Totten
• Standpoint
• CAMERA
• Jeffrey Goldberg
• David Frum
• Just Journalism
• National Post (Rightwing Canadian daily)

Contact, References and Resources

Contact

Website: http://www.hurryupharry.org