John Wight – Man of (Not So Much) Violence (?)

UPDATE – 9 JUNE. A number of comments have been left from an apparent associate of Wight casting doubt on the original blog-post at the Scottish Patient; which has now been removed. I cannot comment on it further, in that case.

In this missive, I discussed allegations made by Kevin Williamson of the Scottish Patient against John Wight of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, whom Williamson said had threatened an unnamed individual with extreme physical violence in the presence of witnesses and Police. The following response has been made by a poster called FrankEllisEurorailTicket:

Actually since Williamsons malicious attack, one of the witnesses, one of the “5 peace activists who heard the threat” has come forward on Socialist Unity to challenge Kevins version of events, and she is a friend of Williamson and a political enemy of Wight. This personal campaign is pathetic.

I am quite happy to make clear I do not endorse Williamson’s allegations if proof is provided to show they are inaccurate and that the testimony of this one witness outweights that of the four who potentially remain: hearsay from a third party in one blog comment is difficult to verify, though. Williamson stated that Police had been involved, so I would assume there is record of this. A good way of settling this would be with a repudiation from Williamson himself, and I have contacted him.

This would still leave, however, Wight’s documented comments against me in a heated exchange on an Internet forum, as well as his endorsement of CODOH literature and use of objectively antisemitic argument. Thus, as I said at the time, I would not be *surprised* if Williamson’s allegations turned out to be accurate.

One month after Williamson made his allegations – and, as far as I can see, during which time there was no response to them – the matter was discussed again at Shiraz Socialist. During this heated exchange, Wight denied… or was it refuted?… no, definitely denied… the allegations and stated that the unnamed individual was Williamson himself: whomever it was should have no bearing on the level of accuracy. Wight also stated that it had been [Williamson] who had promised to “see him later” during a discussion at the Socialist Unity blog. I requested verification of this, but none was forthcoming; so I assumed it was merely as the time Wight stated the only reason he did not sue David Hirsh of Goldsmiths College, UCL for defamation was that this open-and-shut case [in Wight’s favour] would cost too much.

Return to the quoted comment, and pay especial attention to the final sentance. As I have said before, in my experience, polemicists against the state of Israel often appear to be reluctant to have directed against them any inconvenience for their campaigns against private individuals seeking to promote their films or normalization of Israeli cultural and social activity in this country. As well as Tali Shalom-Ezer, director of Surrogate, this also includes the members of the Jerusalem Quartet emsemble – including a friend of Daniel Barenbaum, who borrows his cello – which Wight’s colleague at both the SPSC and Socialist Unity blog, Mick Napier, suggests are rifle-men. Does he think this is the Untouchables, with Uzis in violin cases?