Peter Reynolds

It astonishes me the bigotry, intolerance and crass stupidity demonstrated by so many who write for one side or the other on the terrible conflict in the Middle East.

Many of them are erudite and eloquent, passionate and caring – but only of their own cause.

I thought (maybe I’m wrong) that part of the idea of blogging was to comment on each other’s writing and participate in debate.

No chance!

So many of these obviously intelligent people censor comments that they disagree with and deem anyone who disagrees with them as a fascist, racist or xenophobe.   The vitriol I’ve attracted from some is almost unbelievable. They can’t understand that in one article I can condemn the evil behaviour of the Israelis and in the next I condemn the great evil that Islam has become. I can call some Israeli behaviour fascist.  I can call some Islamists perverters and defilers of Islam.

Some of these bloggers write (rant) at the most incredible length. They probably don’t have the benefit of my experience from which the most important thing I’ve learned is that even those people who agree with you will get bored if you go on and on and on and on and on…

It’s just a tip which you can ignore if you want but if you can’t get your point across in a couple of hundred words then maybe you should think again!

One individual (who I won’t embarrass by linking to), told me today that offering a link to my post on the subject was “an advert”, referred me to his “comments policy”, suggesting that I am a “xenophobic bigot”.

I explained to him that my comments policy is “please do”!