Jim Denham: an apology

Oh no, this is terrible. In my previous post I posted the whole of the latest article on the Engage website. It was by Dr David Hirsh, the eminent sociologist, accusing the Guardian of an antisemitic conspiracy theory because they ran some articles on how the government had suppressed information on someone at the Foreign Office writing the word "Israel" in the margin of the first draft of what came to be known as the dodgy dossier. The thrust of Hirsh's article is that it is antisemitic to publish articles that show the government, any government, being underhanded about its dealings with Israel. I was sure that he would delete the article when he found out that the Jewish Chronicle had a run a very similar article on its front page, together with a leader comment. So I pasted the whole thing followed by the article that appeared on the front page of the Guardian. I then wrote below the Guardian article:

The first thing to note here is that there is not one word of theory here, just a statement as to facts followed by some opinion as what the Guardian and some of its writers think of those facts. Dr Hirsh, the sociologist, seems not to be able to distinguish fact from theory.

But what with the comments on Engage being almost as ludicrous as the article by Hirsh and the articles in the JC the post got too long so I deleted the Guardian article and put a link to it in the comment instead, thus:

The first thing to note here is that there is not one word of theory here, just a statement as to facts followed by some opinion as what the Guardian and some of its writers think of those facts. Dr Hirsh, the sociologist, seems not to be able to distinguish fact from theory.

But the link glitched and so when Jim Denham of the pro-war zionist "left" came to call he thought, or at least claimed to think, that I was claiming that Hirsh hadn't written any theory, just facts! Can you imagine, me accusing Hirsh of running facts? Oh please.

Anyway, let me be clear about what should have been clear from the headline of the post anyway, Dr Hirsh has accused the Guardian of an antisemitic conspiracy theory in that they reported that the Foreign Office had used a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act to withhold the fact that an unnamed FO officer had likened Israel to Saddam Hussein's Iraq in that the former has breached several UN resolutions and has nuclear weapons. The report was not a theory as Hirsh claimed, it was a fact.

Oi! Now go to bed Jim, I know I should.