[Palsem09] Trop c'est trop. 2e roquette.

[Peter Drucker]

Dear comrades,

Note to the Anglophones: the long email that Chris De Hond just sent  
around announced his decision not to attend the Palestine seminar, for  
several reasons. I don't have the time to translate it, but I have to  
respond to two false accusations he has made against me.

> Les notes de  lecture hyper intéressantes, envoyées par Nicolas, ne  
> sont pas  incluses dans la liste officielle copiée pour tous les  
> membres du  séminaire et Peter Drucker a changé le titre du sujet de  
> Nicolas. Le  rôle de Peter Drucker était de rassembler et de  
> diffuser des textes  de discussion pour le séminaire. Il a  
> sélectionné les textes qui lui  plaisent (50% de textes d'Achcar +  
> Machover qui prône  l'altermondialisme comme solution pour les  
> Palestiniens) sous le  prétexte que les textes ne sont pas diffusés  
> en deux langues.

Chris says here that the reason I gave for not including Nicolas'  
readings in the reading material - that the texts are not available in  
the two languages - is a "pretext". This is false: this was a  
condition announced and explained in advance. Second, he says that I  
"picked the texts [I] liked". This is false, and Chris knows it is  
false, because I myself made the effort to find English translations  
of two French texts that he proposed, texts that clearly reflect his  
views and not mine, and included them in the readings. Furthermore, I  
made an effort, I think not without success, to find and include other  
readings that do not reflect my own views. Incidentally, Nicolas said  
in an earlier message to the list that I only used texts from Inprecor  
that everyone already knows; by my count, the French readings include  
1 text from Inprecor out of 13.

> En plus, Drucker a changé le titre du sujet que Nicolas devrait  
> donner:  le titre initial "growing influence of islamist  
> organisations and  the answers of the left" est
>  soudain devenu "The increasing role of Islamic fundamentalist   
> organizations and responses from the left." Drucker justifie ce   
> changement de titre dans son dernier mail en disant qu'il "s'oppose   
> a l'usage du terme "islamiste" parce qu'il est insultant pour les   
> musulman/es et pour les partis d'inspiration islamique." Drucker ne   
> faisait pas partie du groupe de travail de préparation et il prend   
> ici des décisions politiques tout seul en renforçant encore la   
> censure appliquée par le bureau de la IVe Internationale par rapport  
>  au séminaire sur le Moyen Orient.

Here Chris accuses me of changing the title of Nicolas' talk, a  
political decision that I took on my own even though I was not part of  
the preparatory working group. It was never my intention to change the  
title of Nicolas' talk; I was mainly trying to improve the English for  
the cover page of the reading materials, and didn't realize that the  
title had been agreed with Nicolas. As I explained in my first  
response to Nicolas' message on this point, I had and have no  
objection to Nicolas' speaking on the topic he was asked to speak on  
and wants to speak on. Incidentally, I thought I WAS part of the  
preparatory working group that the Bureau had designated; I think that  
I remember now (Penny has refreshed my memory) that the decision had  
been made, in response to my objection at an earlier stage to the term  
Islamist, to refer simply to "Hamas" and "Islamic Jihad" (though this  
slipped my mind as I was drawing up the list of reading materials);  
but I could be mistaken. In any event, I explained my objections to  
the term "Islamist" to the email list simply as a contribution to the  
discussion, not as a justification for changing the title of Nicolas'  
talk; I had already said that I could accept the earlier title for  
Nicolas' talk.

I will leave it to others to respond to Chris' many other accusations.  
But I believe that the IIRE staff and I and others have been making a  
sincere and considerable effort to organize a seminar in which he  
would have every opportunity to express his point of view, as I  
assured him in an earlier, personal message. I am very sorry that he  
apparently sees the opposite: efforts to silence or marginalize him.

Comradely,
Peter