I write in reply to Jason Cowley’s blog in which he referenced my Daily Telegraph blog about Jon Snow.

My blog claimed that Jon Snow has three illusions about Hamas: he thinks Hamas are a negotiating partner-in-waiting being ignored by Israel, but they aren’t; that Hamas grew as a popular reaction to the blockade, but it didn’t; and that the ordinary people Snow talks to in Gaza can speak freely about Hamas, but they can’t.

I also suggested that these delusions were rooted in some tendencies found on much of the liberal left – what US social democrat Paul Berman called its “rationalist naivete” and what Natan Sharanky identified during the cold war as its tendency to blur the line between democracies and totalitarian / authoritarian states and movements.

How did Cowley critique my argument? Not, I suggest, by meeting its full force and rebutting it, that’s for sure.

First, he “spun” the debate to make his opponent sound like an idiot and the argument very easy for himself. “It shouldn’t be a question of either you support Israel, no matter what it does, or you are on the side of the Islamists,” wrote Cowley. “Ah,” the reader is supposed to say, “this Johnson thinks everything Israel does should be supported and he is having a go at Snow because he is willing to criticise Israel – boo!”

The trouble with Cowley’s argument is that my blog was about Snow’s illusions in Hamas, not his criticisms of Israel. More: every issue of Fathom, the online journal I edit, carries criticisms of Israel. Fathom readers are introduced to sharply critical perspectives on the occupation and the settlements from Ahron Bregman, Raanan Alexandrowicz, Sayed Kashua,Dror Moreh the director of The Gatekeepers, the Palestinian activist Hitham Kayali and others. Fathom showcases the full spectrum of political views about Israel, including those of the peace camp. Cowley ignores that and pretends I am a crude Israel Firster.

Read the article in full at the New Statesman.