How appalling to use this horrific situation to prepare a convoluted, self serving attack on "apologists" because they are are expressing sympathy and solidarity. What on earth is the New Statesman thinking of. Shame on you.

The attack on Owen Jones here is a disgrace. Owen's first tweets were "Solidarity with Norway" followed up by "Solidarity with the Norwegian people and Norwegian socialists in their darkest hour"
He then also criticised Tom Harris for his appalling tweet that put the blame on "islamists". In response, Dan has not one of criticism to Tom Harris but tweeted to Owen
"As I say you're the guy waving the red flag over the bodies of 80 dead children"
So no criticism for Tom, a pathetic bash at Owen and Dan goes all sanctimonious saying this is no the time for political expressions of solidarity. Pass the sickbag.

Gideon Polya: Everything bad is Zionist motivated
Julia Harris: Everything bad is Islamic motivated

Why don't you two get together and sort out your differences?

Fair enough, Daniel.

Stiles, I think Dan's critiscism of Tom Harris was fairly implicit-wasn't it? And I think that political solidarity is inappropriate here. The people who died were all human, and their opinions on economies and society are completely secondary to that. I dislike the implication that a sense of belonging or not belonging to a particular group increases or decreases one's ability for empathy when that group is attacked. I doubt if socialists anywhere were any more appalled by Friday's events than liberals or conservatives or communists. Anyone-irrespective of their ideology-who tries to make political capital of the work of a hatefilled psychopath should hang their head in shame.

It's desperately sad that Dan Hodges, a journalist of considerable quality when he wants to be, has nothing better to do with his column this week than pursue petty (and inaccurate) vendettas against people on his Twitter feed who happen to catch him in a bad mood one day. Using the New Statesman for retaliatory ad hominem attacks on Owen Jones and Eoin Clarke is about as low as you can get. Shameful, Dan. Shameful.

The Norway tragedy concerns everybody and it was an attack on all. Anti-Semitism became replaced with islamophobia and it is the pro-Israel right that incites terrorism on a state level and poisons young minds with hysterical prophecies. It is not surprising that the Norwegians suspect an involvement of Mossad. The murdered was educated by American Zionists (Bolton, Geller, Pipes and such) and by EDL which is run, ironically, by Zionists as well.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-was-the-massacre-in-norway-...
http://www.mpacuk.org/story/060909/exposed-edl-and-its-zionist-connectio...

Couldn't agree with you more thinkov.

Cheapo Conan Danny Hodge Barbarian is a utter disgrace to Us on the left.

He can only take cheap shots on Us of the Left standing in solidarity against the forces of right wing evil.

Us on the Left do not moralise in any shape or form unlike the Danny Hodggy Barbarian who is constantly taking cheap shots and killing lefties with his cheap things.

I the Leader of Us on the Left is with you thinkov forever and dearly.

Agree with Hal Berstram, Dan you are a good journalist but wasting time with this petty point scoring. Everyone agrees the attacks in Norway were horrendous, de-constructing tweets is pointless and frankly irrelevant.

Dan - I can't find a tweet on Owen Jones timeline which says anything remotely related to what you have said - specifically on the issue of class - he talks principally about fellow socialists. I'd be happyto be proved wrong - so perhaps you could demonstrate the tweet by providing a direct link to it, then you wouldn't need to worry about it.

I think it's sad that you feel the need to make the situation about the problems with Islam and consistently put forward a dichotomy of all terrorism in Europe as falling along these lines - most terrorism in Europe is about control of space and union or not with one country or other - Corsica, The Basque and Northern Ireland mainly - everything else is small fry by comparison.

Perhaps if Dan had been involved with ECOSY and IUSY he would understand that those of us in the international socialist youth movement know each other well. We've been to each other's summer camps and to think that a person could come to one of those events with the intentional to murder young people makes us feel sick to our stomachs. Forgive us, Dan, for wanting to express our solidarity with our Norwegian comrades. Some of us knew people on Utoya.

Funny - how the left 'feel' for their own.
In Blighty ? Thirteen years of left rule, five wars, and not a tear-drop from them.
HYPOCRITES.

Dan -- After the attacks of 11 September 2001, many people said things like, "We are all Americans", and they interpreted the terorism as an "attack on America". These are obviously political sentiments, so I'm curious: was your response then to people saying things like this to leap into print and denounce these as "political responses" in which "politics obscured humanity"? If not, why not, given what you say in this article?

To my mind, when terrorism is obviously politically motivated, as this attack was, it seems odd--wilfully perverse, in fact--to slam people who take notice of the political element when they respond with their expressions of sadness, distress, sympathy and--yes--solidarity.

"When I am attacked as a Jew", Hannah Arendt wrote, "I defend myself as a Jew". These young social-democrats were murdered *because they were social-democrats*, and there's nothing disgraceful, let alone anti-human, about social-democrats, whether in Norway or elsewhere, acknowledging this point in their thoughts and tweets on the subject.

"...That's the same Hamas that launched a rocket attack on Israeli schoolchildren in April. I tried to find Dr Clarke's condemnation of that attack, but couldn't......But please, let's not grasp for the tragedy and the horror, and try to claim it as our own."
Hipocrisy, the biggest problem in modern British journalism, however an ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Mr. Hodges,
The killer was a follower of English Defense League (http://englishdefenceleague.org/) a rabidly Islamophobic, pro-Zionism right-wing organization. You showed great virtuosity in not naming this British organization.
The whole article looks like a custom-made product of white-washing and protecting the Friends of Israel and such from the questions regarding their Islamophobia.
The killer targeted Norwegian teens involved in the campaigning for Boycott Israel. He was very specific in selecting his victims.

As I've just pointed out, Dan, it isn't even an accurate quote from the Tweet. And it is willfully taking me out of context.

Even when accurately quoting (which you haven't) a fraction of what people say, it doesn't mean you're actually accurately conveying what they're saying if you strip it completely of context.

It seems pretty clear that Dan Hodges owes Owen Jones an apology. This is simply an appalling article.

Mea culpa, I meant to say that an anagram for "Israel" is appropriately "e-liars".

"In reply to the initial bombing, author Owen Jones took the opportunity to point out that "working class Norwegians have just been slaughtered". Of the dead and dying of the Norwegian middle and upper classes there was no word."

This is deliberately misleading, as even a brief read of Jones' tweets shows. Trying to cobble together some sort of trend from a few tweets is weak journalism at the best of times, but deliberately taking them out of context is very poor.

The EDL may well be 'pro-Zionism' but surely that's one of the few good things one could say about about them. Would you prefer that they were pro-Islam? What is it that you like so much about Islam Maria?

Perhaps you can at least empathise with the EDL's hatred; Islamophobia for them and anti-Zionism for you.

Owen has just explained the context of the tweet but Dan doesn't care, he just wants to score a cheap political point while all the time pretending that he is against people making political capital out of this tragedy. Tom Harris MP has tweeted that this article is a "great post" by the way. Obvious that Dan and Tom are mates.

As Gavin says "Perhaps if Dan had been involved with ECOSY and IUSY he would understand that those of us in the international socialist youth movement know each other well."

That *does* put some of us in a different situation to the general public. To try to censor down the idea that people might feel that way fails to take any account of the nature of the grief concerned.

It's either mind-numbingly stupid or grossly insensitive.

I could have been at this camp, I know somebody who was shot personally, I know that it was all done for political reasons, and my mind has been transfixed on the thing for the whole weekend.

This is as much a blow to a group of individuals (AUF, Arbeiderpartiet, ECOSY, IUSY) as it is to other friends and relatives, and there is nothing wrong in the slightest with the context of those relationships being taken into account.

Last of all, I am pretty sure Owen Jones deserves multiple clarifications, or a retraction. I hope he gets it.

This thread has descended into a particularly depressing farce. The number of responses seeking to use Friday's events for political posturing is staggering.
Whose violent allies did you refer to at 11:53, Yonmei? You seem to give the impression that the world is divided into two camps-those who agree with you, and those who don't. Nuance really is an alien concept to you, isn't it?
You don't seem to have a grip of the concept of reason or politeness-only self-righteous conviction. Have you never noticed that certainty often goes hand in hand with profound stupidity?

It's lovely that people are able to get to the heart of the matter regarding these attacks - namely that they give yet another excuse for some people with massive egos to engage in endless point-scoring.

I have my views on who is 'right' in this of course, but I think everyone involved needs to take a step back. You're engaging in a petty, personal argument stemming from the deaths of scores of people. It looks terrible and reflects badly on everyone. I hope someone has the good grace to stop it.

Gideon: You've got acronyms on your mind! That sentence was an anagram of 'you're out of your mind go back to the seventies'. Don't you realise that peolea re starting to see you as an acronym mad cartoon character who mentions Zionist in every post? I have this image of you driving down to Barwon Heads on the weekends in your Volvo pointing at people, "He's Zionist, she's a Zionist, they are all Zionists (ZZZ)'

Maria: I wouldn't be surprised if Julia Harris was one of those pro-Israeli bloggers you are talking about. But perhaps you and Gideon are Iranian paid bloggers to discredit Israel.

How come I'm not getting any money? Or perhaps I am and I'm just pretending I'm not!

Talk about conspiracy theories gone mad.

The political-left created this monster.