Now we've established that Stew doesn't want Holyrood to have any say on foreign affairs (meaning by definition that he opposes independence), can he clarify whether he agrees with his own retweet that Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of the Arab town of Bethlehem was "the liberation of Bethlehem"?

As mentioned in the previous post, my devoted Somerset stalker "Stew" has been continuing to fire off tweets about me over recent days, faster than I can really keep up with, even though in some cases he has been directly demanding responses from me.  And this is the guy who just a few months ago innocently claimed to mention me on Twitter only a couple of times a year at most.  One might almost be tempted to say that he's finally dropped the pretence, although actually that's not true, because in most cases he's still doing his usual thing of making clear by indirect means that he's referring to me but without mentioning me by name.  He repeatedly does the same thing on his blog - the idea being that in a few months' time he can successfully shove what he's been doing down the memory hole by inviting his readers to search Wings or his Twitter account for my name, and say "You see?  I've barely even mentioned the guy!"

While I have a few spare moments, I may as well work my way through a few 'highlights' of his tweets about me from the last week or so, although frankly there aren't enough hours in the day to deal with all of them.  First up, there's a multi-tweet thread in which he critiques the question I asked of Anas Sarwar the other night.  You'll be dumbfounded to hear that he's not a fan of it.

Look, Stew, I'm truly sorry if I dismayed you by asking a question that departed from the women-with-beards issue.  Like all of us, I do know the lyrics of the reworked Elton John cover I Guess That's Why They Call It The Stew off by heart: "time wasted asking non-women-with-beards-related questions could be time spent asking women-with-beards-related questions".  Very true.

Leaving aside my blasphemy in neglecting the Sacred Topic, however, I'm rather surprised that Stew was so unhappy with my question, because I saw him earlier in the week imploring anyone who attended the Swinney/Sarwar event in Edinburgh to ask the two leaders whether there were any policy areas that divided them apart from independence.  I had already submitted my question by then, but I was confident that what I had put forward fulfilled a very similar function, because Gaza has been one of the points of difference between the SNP and Labour.  "Give us points of difference, but not THAT one" seems to be Stew's message.  "Don't even mention that one, because Bibi must be allowed to get on with the genocide in civilised peace and quiet."

So here's the remarkable thing. I asked Anas Sarwar whether he thought the Scottish Government should think small, "get back to the day job", and stop talking about foreign affairs.  His answer on all three of those points was essentially "no", and he promised to speak out about foreign affairs if he becomes First Minister, because he said his social justice values do not end at the Scottish border.  So having set out to find a dividing line between Mr Swinney and Mr Sarwar, the irony is that I ended up finding a dividing line between Mr Sarwar and Stew instead.  Despite opposing independence, Mr Sarwar believes, or at least claims to, that the Scottish Government should not be restricted to concerning themselves with the limited number of devolved powers imposed on them by Westminster.  Whereas Stew absolutely thinks they should be restricted in that way, and that they should stop getting ideas above their station, which is an extraordinary worldview for any self-styled 'independence supporter' to hold.  But there again, it's a statement of the obvious that if you don't think foreign affairs should be the province of the Scottish Government, you don't actually support independence at all.  

Let's stop pretending black is white, shall we?  Stew probably was a genuine independence supporter eleven years ago, but he no longer is.  He's a unionist now, and a devo-sceptic unionist at that, albeit one who ties himself up in knots trying to convince people that he still supports independence in some sort of convoluted, upside-down manner - because he knows he would lose readers otherwise.

Aw, bless.  You gotta love Stew, he's apparently convinced himself that his latest cosplay "psephologist" blogpost was some sort of killer effort that has left everyone totally stunned and that no-one can think of a response to.  Stew, I don't know how to break the news to you, dear heart, but apart from the first few sentences I haven't even read your precious blogpost yet.  I deliberately didn't read it, because I knew I might not have time to respond for a few days and I didn't want my mind cluttered up with gibberish while I was getting on with other things.  But rest assured I will find the time to read it and respond at length.  A little patience, if you please.  Although I do love the fact that you've clearly been frantically hitting the refresh button over the last week in the hope of seeing my reply.  A proper stalker badge is on its way to YOU, my friend.

This one isn't a Stew tweet about me, but instead a Stew retweet of a Stephen Daisley tweet about an anonymous comment on this blog.  What's deeply disturbing about it is that Daisley presents screenshots of a Spectator article he wrote about Winnie Ewing's supposed ties to Israel, and in which he describes Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of Bethlehem as "the liberation of Bethlehem".  

Long-term readers of Scot Goes Pop will know I've made numerous references to an extraordinary article that Daisley wrote many years ago, long before he was even employed by STV, in which he similarly said the 1967 invasion and conquest of East Jerusalem was "the liberation".  But to talk of the liberation of Bethlehem is even more offensive, because throughout modern history Bethlehem hasn't been a Jewish town at all.  The censuses in the 1920s and 1930s found literally just two Jewish people in the whole town.  Traditionally the population was overwhelmingly Arab Christian, and more recently has been overwhelmingly Arab Muslim, ie. Palestinian.  The vast majority of countries in the world regard Bethlehem as part of the sovereign (but illegally occupied) territory of the State of Palestine, and the minority that don't recognise the State of Palestine instead regard Bethlehem as part of the 'Occupied Palestinian Territories'.

The only way of making sense of Daisley's barmy claim that Bethlehem was liberated in 1967 is that he means it was promised to Israel in the Bible thousands of years ago, and therefore it needed to be annexed and its population expelled or exterminated, so that the rightful ethnoreligious owners could take over.  Now, we all know the standard disclaimer that "retweets are not necessarily endorsements", but if I was retweeting content that contained such an outrageous claim, I would go out of my way to make clear I disagreed with it.  Stew very noticeably did not do so, and I think we could do with some clarity from him about whether he agrees with Daisley about Bethlehem or not.  Even if he read Daisley's words and didn't think they were controversial, that speaks volumes too.

Elsewhere, Stew's newest obsession seems to be retweeting derogatory comment about Zohran Mamdani, the progressive and rather wonderful Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York...

Presumably Stew was cheering on the disgraced and God-awful "centrist" Andrew Cuomo in the primary, and in November will be keeping his fingers crossed for the Republican incumbent Eric Adams.

There's also this immigrant-bashing dog-whistle of a retweet, presumably preparing the ground for Stew's inevitable endorsement of Reform UK next year...

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