‘This includes any reference to their wildlife’

  This is a guest post by Max Dunbar.

Following my post on the Manchester Leila Khaled controversy, a reader got in touch to share a marvellous Morning Star letter from Linda Clair, a Manchester PSC activist who was supposed to be hosting the Khaled event.

Not being a regular reader, I am unfamiliar with the Morning Star quiz. I’m not going for high-minded disdain. Maybe I really am missing out. A few weeks ago, the quiz apparently included a question about Israel’s national bird, the Hoopoe. This provoked letters from two readers, Linda Clair and George Abendstern, who complained that the question breached the anti-Zionist left’s academic and cultural boycott of Israel. I am not making this up.

I often wonder why so many of its readers find the Morning Star so exasperating.

Despite its condemnation of zionists it yet finds space to include an item in its daily quiz about Israel’s national bird.

Is the Star not aware there’s a cultural boycott going on?

And then, despite it’s condemnation of the Bahrain Grand Prix and rightly so, it then goes on to tell us who won.

For goodness sake comrades, get your act together.

George Abendstern

Rochdale

 

The Morning Star has always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians, so why of all the birds in the world did you choose the Israeli national bird to include in your quiz?

Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the International Solidarity Movement of BDS to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice – a demand that came from them originally.

This includes any reference to their wildlife.

Linda Clair

Rochdale

Full credit to the Star though, for publishing this whimsical response from another reader, Martyn Lewis. The signoff makes it.

As a shareholder and daily
Reader of The Morning Star
I find Abenstern and
Clair’s objections to a bird
Just bizzare. It’s a pity the
United Nations can’t get
The dove of peace flying in
For some birdsong. No doubt
My letter will hit the waste
Paper bin faster than a can
Of Spam!

Marytn Lewis
Leighton Buzzard

But Lewis’s playful riposte was, unfortunately, not the end of it as the Rochdale duo, with an apparent lack of any humour or self awareness, decided to write another letter about the bird quiz question:

Regarding Martyn Lewis’s dismissal of our objection to quiz questions on Israel’s national bird (M Star April 30), it’s not the bird we object to but what this bird represents – the racist and apartheid state of Israel.

We too are shareholders and daily readers of the Morning Star and the Daily Worker before it.

George Abendstern & Linda Clair

Rochdale

The Star’s letter page has a tagline saying ‘If you have enjoyed this article then please consider making a donation to the Morning Star‘s Fighting Fund’. For moments like this, I’m tempted.

Worker’s Liberty on Perdition

I remember reading Socialist Organiser (which became Workers’ Liberty) on Perdition at the time. It wasn’t long after Socialist Organiser had dropped their position of a single state as the solution to the  Palestine / Israel conflict,  changing to a 2 states position. At the time this was a brave decision for a Trotskyist organisation to take in the U.K., with only The Militant Tendency refusing to support the destruction of Israel. Those of us involved in Engage were at the time students and remember how Socialist Organiser was the only group on the left to support Jewish students when they came under attack at NUS Conferences. This led to the SWP refusing to continue publishing Socialist Organiser’s newspaper and Socialist Organiser suffered a fair amount of abuse for their principled opposition to anti-semitism and to absolute anti-zionism.

From Worker’s Liberty

In early 1987 there was a public controversy about “Perdition”, a play by Jim Allen, a radical writer with a Trotskyist background, which was scheduled to be directed by Ken Loach at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Critics claimed that the play, representing Zionists as collaborating with the Nazis in the massacre of Jews in Hungary, was anti-Jewish, and designed primarily to “delegitimise” Israel; defenders argued that it was being banned for highlighting awkward truths.

The Royal Court cancelled the production at a late stage. Later, the play, in an amended version, was published, and in 1999 it was performed at the Gate Theatre in London.

• Sean Matgamna’s critique of “Perdition” in Workers’ Liberty 6, arguing against the cancellation under pressure but contending that the play was indeed anti-Jewish
• Tony Greenstein’s first polemic
• Sean Matgamna’s first reply
• Tony Greenstein’s second polemic
• Sean Matgamna’s second reply

.

Dave Osler’s Review of Colin Shindler’s “Israel and the European Left”

Dave Osler’s blog  is one of the more interesting far left  blogs. I have serious disagreements with Dave with regard to his view that a single state  (albeit a bi-national state)  is the only solution (or any solution)  to the Israel – Palestine conflict. But none the less, Dave certainly doesn’t go in for the vulgar anti-zionism of much of the far left and he takes anti-semitism on the left seriously. So it’s unfortunate that when he posts a review (much of which i disagree with) of  Colin Shindler’s new book  “Israel and the European Left”, the comments section, instead of providing a forum for an interesting debate on an interesting subject, turns into what can only be described as a cess-pit of abuse. So i’m cross-posting his piece below and hope that there’s an interesting debate in the comments section here at Engage.

Book review: ‘Israel and the European Left’ by Colin Shindler

THE allegation of ‘delegitimization’ is a particular shapeless charge to find oneself having to plead against. Yet as the subtitle to this book indicates, such is the broad brush accusation facing all sections of the European socialist movement over the last century, with Colin Shindler making the case that leftists have been in the business of delegitimizing the state of Israel even before the state of Israel came into existence.

It is of course true that some of those in the dock do have form. Even so, I must direct any fair minded jury to acquit the bulk of the defendants.

This volume is largely written backwards from the final chapter, which documents the peculiarly British – and not, to my knowledge anyway, Europe-wide – alliance between some socialist traditions and offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK, which has often been accompanied by anti-semitic rhetorical flourishes.

Shindler’s essential contention is that, at some level, ‘twas ever thus. The troubled history of the relationship between Marxism and Zionism since the inception of both creeds is accordingly given a thorough airing.

But his definition of ‘delegitimization’ is never spelt out. At one level, any criticism of anything can be portrayed as delegitimizing its target. And there are many things that the state of Israel does that are surely worthy of moral opprobrium.

There are the illegal settlements on the West Bank, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the war crimes witnessed during Operation Cast Lead and the ‘separation fence’, to name just a few of the ignominies perpetrated by successive administrations. Professor Shindler seemingly doesn’t like to mention these things: for the left to leave them out of the equation would be an unforgiveable dereliction of duty.

Nor does it ‘delegitimize’ Israel to insist that the specific circumstances of its birth necessitate its reconstitution as a binational secular state. Israel exists and has the right to exist: what it does not have is the right comprehensively to dispossess Palestine.

Such was the position of much of the early Zionist left, as well as such luminaries as Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber. It remains the only basis for a just and durable settlement of the Israel’s manifest oppression of another nation.

This continues to be a coherent stance for democratic socialists. To use a quotation from Richard Crossman that Shindler highlights, there is no requirement for us to be ‘emotionally pro-Jew’ but rather ‘rationally anti anti-semitic’.

The Stalinist tradition, of course, could save the court’s time by at once entering a guilty plea. The evidence against it, from the Slansky Trial and the Doctors’ Plot on to the purges that swept Poland in the late 1960s, will be all too familiar to anyone who has read, say, Paul Lendvai’s instructive ‘Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe’.

That the Workers’ Revolutionary Party whored itself for the petrodollars necessary to sustain a daily newspaper is also a matter of record. But while it was a leading sect in its day, it was a sect, limited in influence beyond its few thousand adherents.

Nor do I care for some of the formulations in some of the literature published by the Socialist Workers’ Party since it discovered Islamism as a revolutionary force, somewhere around the time the WRP gave Healy the boot.

But let us not exaggerate the influence of an organisation that, in cahoots with wider forces, secured just 0.8% in the recent London assembly vote, and would get less than that nationwide were it even remotely capable of fielding a full slate in a general election.

Shindler’s work is obviously one of polemic rather than scholarship. This can be seen by its regular lapses into downright sloppiness: the dictatorial head of East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s was not Walter ‘Ulbrecht’, and the Indian National Conference went out of business long before 1940. There are also numerous grammatical infelicities that sometimes leave meaning unclear.

Sweeping assertions are made on the basis of secondary sources. I do not pretend special expertise on the political thought of early twentieth century Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer, but I would need substantiation before accepting that a sophisticated intellectual ‘understood Jewishness only in the imagery of the non-productive Jew and believer in religious supernaturalism in the poverty-stricken shtetl’.

But most of all I object to the obviously silly claim that Britain’s revolutionary socialists would have collaborated with Nazism had Britain been conquered by Germany in 1940. This nonsense is advanced in the very opening sentences of the foreword, presumably to set out the idea that these people were irredeemably tainted by anti-semitism.

The track record of Communists and Trotskyists in this regards compares favourably with that of the Stern Gang, which actually did propose alliance with the Nazis, and Rudolf Kastner, who came to terms with Hitler’s representatives, albeit under duress.

Let us not forget that the left led the resistance to fascism in occupied Europe, and many comrades bravely laid down their lives to that end. Frankly, they do not deserve to have the likes of Shindler spit on their graves for the sake of catchpenny advantage in British Zionism’s contemporary bust up with the SWP.

The Boys Who Cried the Boy Who Cried anti-Semitism

Cross posted from A. Jay Adler’s blog, the sad red earth.

One of the salient features of the evolving massively networked media environment is the readier production than ever before of manufactured realities. Enough people simply assert something to be true, enough people virally lift the assertion across the MNM and write about it as true, and the idea takes almost unshakeable hold in the minds of a sufficient number of people so that the manufactured reality is now a feature of reality itself – a contention, a belief that clings to circumstance and becomes a part of it. No situation in the world produces more of this than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last week, as an example, Paul Krugman, in an almost classic apophasis extended over three very brief paragraphs, managed, while pretending not to address the conflict – “But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect…” – to invoke as many as three of these manufactured realities. The first, announced in the title of his column, is that there is a crisis in Zionism. It has been said by some that if there is a crisis in Zionism, it is, in fact, a crisis in liberal Zionism, not Zionism per se. It might also be characterized that if there is any kind of crisis in Zionism, it is a crisis produced by those declaring that there is a crisis in Zionism. Said the man with the gun in his hand, “Don’t you understand – this is a life or death situation!” Well, if you say so.

But such perceptions, or their contrary, may merely be a matter of temperament.Okay, you deal with the crisis. I’m going fishing. Or, okay, you deal with the crisis – I’ll go deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

Next, while Krugman was feigning apophasistically (oh, I like that) not to address the crisis of Zionism in a column he titled “The Crisis of Zionism,” he also claimed of Israel that

the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide

and that

to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups…..

This is a pretty common – hell, this is a constant complaint of critics of Israeli policy: that they criticize Israel, quite dramatically and severely in many instances, and that – oh, my God – they get criticized quite dramatically and severely back. What the hell is going on around here?

This sentiment was echoed in an “open-letter” of encouragement to Krugman from that very sensitive dear, Jeremy Ben-Ami, who declared,

As the President of J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby, I am followed closely by my own personal buzzsaw.

The last time Ben-Ami supped with Barack Obama and George W. Bush he was heard to cry out, “You guys just have no idea.”

In the face of this brutal rhetorical assault, the likes of which has not been seen since way back during the pre-modern days of the last Rick Santorum anti-Obama ad, Krugman felt compelled – even though he really didn’t want to talk about all this stuff – to proclaim Peter Beinart “brave,” and Beinart’s book, titled, wouldn’t you know, The Crisis of Zionism, a “brave book.”

It is near impossible to measure the magnitude of the courage it takes to stake out a position on Israel basically that of the editorial board of the New York Times and of nearly every one of the regular international columnists of that paper. From Mearsheimer and Walt to Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Charles Freeman, Norman Finkelstein, Gunter Grass, Haaretz, the Guardian, many of England’s major unions, many scores or more of left campus organizations, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the World Council of Churches – may I stop now? It’s a lonely world out there. It’s a no man’s land, brother. The courage, the courage.

And what they suffer once they speak out – what they suffer.

What do they suffer?

Other people disagree with them. Vehemently. Why?

Says Beinart of Israel, it is

an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy

that is

sweeping the two-state solution into history’s dustbin.

More,

we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel

for it is guilty of

systematic oppression.

Beinart had previously written,

Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral

while

 in Israel today, this humane, universalistic Zionism does not wield power. To the contrary, it is gasping for air.

And get this:

Hebrew University Professor Ze’ev Sternhell is an expert on fascism and a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize. Commenting on Lieberman and the leaders of Shas in a recent Op-Ed in Haaretz, he wrote, “The last time politicians holding views similar to theirs were in power in post–World War II Western Europe was in Franco’s Spain.”

I think I’ll stop there. My aim here is not to argue any of these claims. My aim is to call attention to their nature. Their severity is hard to surpass without criminal accusation – hardly unusual against Israel in these confused times – and some of them even imply it. Yet these critics, such as Beinart and almost all like him, and now from behind a rhetorical device, Paul Krugman, take umbrage, cry foul, that people who feel and think just as deeply as they, but against their positions, argue back at them with just as great severity. Followed the contention between American Democrats and Republicans lately – from the Affordable Health Care Act to gun rights to contraception to who’s a card-carrying communist to who’s a war criminal? Strong views, strong language.

Maybe it should be different, but it’s all around us. For me to be called “shoeshine boy for Hitchens” is a penny found on the street. “Jew hack” is stronger stuff. And though readers who even recall might think that after this, this prime specimen had burrowed back into a wall post, I’ve spared him the attention of letting readers know that he occasionally likes to write and try to post comments calling meJudenrat. Worth knowing about him, more – for there’s a point in it – is that his was the voice that narrated The Goldstone Report video along with Ken Loach and Arundhati Roy. That is how it mixes together in the cauldron of Jewish modernity.

What contemporary critics of Israel are doing in their constant whining that the defenders of what they criticize are playing too rough – poor babies – calling them names, and it shouldn’t be allowed, is engaging in a form of special pleading. They want an exception made for critics of Israel. They get to say that Israel is losing its democracy and an acts as an oppressor, that Zionism is in a downward moral spiral, that Israel’s government bears comparisons to Franco’s Spain, but that their opponents, who believe all of these charges to be utter, slanderous crap, don’t get to slam these critics back just as hard. Why would these various voices think themselves so special – that they should be spared the equities of rhetorical combat?

For the actual anti-Semites amongst them – for the John Mearsheimers blurbing for the Gilad Atzmons – the meme of fierce, crushing retribution from the Zionists is just a continuation of the classic conspiratorial slander: speak out against the powerful Jew and his forces will rise up foully in repressive reaction. The well-intentioned critic of Israeli policy speaking nonsense – Krugman writing of “the narrow-minded policies of the current government” as if this protracted history of Arab enmity and rejectionism began only with the facilely-conjured bogeyman of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009 – repeats the same meme (“to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack”), and the blind alliance between the vile and the vain further poisons the atmosphere. Wherein lies their vanity? They are so convinced of the moral valor of their stand that they are astounded that the universe does not deliver to them a dispensation from the return volley. How brave they are to say shitty things about Israel; how simply awful and unfair that Israel’s defenders will say shitty things back.

The culminating appeal, the bathetic cri de Coeur is against a charge of anti-Semitism. Krugman, in his not writing about the crisis of Zionism, finds words to repeat this manufactured reality too, complaining of

organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.

You will, of course, find people making stupid, reflexive charges of anti-Semitism and self-hating Jew. There are enough bloggers and comments sections out there to allow any little teapot to pop its lid. The woodwork delivers up critters who squeal “self-hating Jew” in letters and emails just as it does those who squeak “Jew hack.” It is not, all that often, a very attractive world. What you will not find, however, is any record of his legitimate critics calling Peter Beinart anti-Semitic. I had the idea, but of course I was not the first, so when I Googled “Beinart” and “anti-Semite” together, among the hits I made on the first page was this from Jewlicious:

Search on any internet search engine for “Peter Beinart antisemite” or “Peter Beinart antisemitic” or “peter beinart antisemitism” as I just have and at least in the first pages of the search (I didn’t have the patience to go deeper, sorry) there were no articles or blogs, certainly not from any reputable sources, where Beinart is called anti-Semitic. In fact, you find supporters of his position and reasoned articles, pro and con, about his book.

What you may, indeed, find more of than anyone actually calling Peter Beinart or other mainstream liberal critics of Israel anti-Semitic is people, rather, objecting to critics of Israel being called anti-Semitic. At least in the public internet records of this debate, discussions of the prospect of the charge, and expressions of objection to the charge, are far more likely to be found than any actual leveling of the charge.

Jews have a long history of coping with manufactured realities. It isn’t over yet.

AJA

Steve Cohen

Last Thursday marked the third year since Steve sadly passed away.

Here’s how various people remembered Steve.

Here’s a few links to his writings on the boycott and left antisemitism :

Live Dangerous – Shop at Marks and Spencers.

I would hate myself in the morning.

Writing as a Jewish traitor – An imagined disputation with my comrades on anti Semitism.

And you can download the PDF version of “That’s Funny You Don’t Look Anti Semitic” here.

Norman Finkelstein’s Attack on the BDS Movement

A couple of hours ago I watched an interview with Norman Finkelstein on the BDS campaign. Finkelstein describes the BDS campaign as a little cult, lambasts it for being a one state campaign, as dishonest, etc. It’s well worth watching. It was here on You Tube but it was then made private and then removed. Anyway you can watch it here.

UPDATE 16/2.

Frank Barat’s facebook page gives the following explanation for the removal of the video from You Tube:

Final comment on removal of Finkelstein BDS video.

Norman Finkelstein contacted me (a common friend was also involved in discussion) and asked me to delete video from youtube account because “video did some harm” (his words). I agreed to do so because I think that, at the end of the day, video ended up creating a fuss/controversy but not much else and my intention was never to divert some people minds from what is really important: daily solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Wendy Robbins on antisemitism in the Middle East – and how it is ignored in the UK

Listen here to Wendy Robbins’ 3 minute piece.

Read the transcript here.

2011 Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic Slurs – according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Click here for the pdf from the Simon Wiesenthal Center

1. “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and the birthplace of Jesus Christ peace be upon him, to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people…”

- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his UN General Assembly address, September 23, 2011. Speaking to the world, Abbas omitted any reference to the Jewish people’s connection to the Holy Land. No reference to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, nor King David, King Solomon, or Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. READ SOURCE…

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2. “I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them?…. we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed… neitherTurkey nor the Muslims in the region have exerted such cruelty on Israel… Israel is inexplicably cruel, against innocent Palestinians, hiding behind the Nazi Holocaust and seeking victimhood…. Everybody knows what Israel is about.”

- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during CNN Interview with Fareed Zakaria, September 25, 2011. READ SOURCE…

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3. “Everything that happens today in the world has to do with the Zionists… American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece also.”

- Zorba The Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, winner of the International Music Council-UNESCO International Music Prize, also told Greek TV that he was “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic,” February 15, 2011. READ SOURCE…

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4. “I love Hitler…People like you would be dead.Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed,”

– The renowned Christian Dior fashion designer John Galliano was fired and later convicted in a French court for his anti-Semitic rants screamed at Jews in a Paris bar. Galliano later apologized. READ SOURCE…

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5. “I understand Hitler… He’s not what you would call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews… I am of course, very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass… I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer [Hitler’s Architect]… He was also maybe one of God’s best children… Okay, I’m a Nazi.”

- Director Lars Von Trier was thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival after this rant, May 18, 2011. He later apologized. READ SOURCE…

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6. “[Jews] want that sucker of Syrian blood to remain and continue to prey and suck blood.They not only want their security, but also to enjoy the sight of Syrian blood being spilled…. Asking myself why Jewish support of Bashar [Assad] increased after they saw the rivers of Syrian blood this mass-murderer spilled in Syrian towns, an old image leapt to my mind, of Jews bleeding people and using their blood to prepare matzas. Logic does not accept this, but the facts prove it.”

– Syrian writer Osama Al-Malouhi, an opponent of President Bashar Assad, posted on an opposition website, October 26, 2011, The Middle East Media Research Institute. READ SOURCE…

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7. “Not all the Jews in the world are evil….The ratio is 60-40. Sixty percent are evil to varying degrees, all the way to a level that words cannot describe, while 40 percent are not evil.”

– Tawfiq Okasha, a presidential candidate in post-Mubarak Egypt added that among the 40% of ‘non-evil’ Jews there is only one in a million who is blameless and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “one of those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology…one of the worst ideologies,” Al-Faraeen TV, October 31, 2011. READ SOURCE…

#6 and #7 originally reported in “Praise Arab Spring, Except for Anti-Semitism” by Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 28, 2011

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8. “The source that finances and incites all these international organizations… especially in the Arab world… are led by a single, evil organization, known as Zionism. It is behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils… Jesus Christ healed the sick among the Jews… and resurrected their dead. [How did they repay him?] “They strived to crucify him until he died…”

“Do the people of the opposition [today]… belong to Christianity or to Islam? No. They are deeply rooted in Judaism and in Zionism… Any intelligent person who reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion will see the extent of its influence on the politics of our region and the world.”

– George Saliba, Bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Lebanon, Al-Dunya TV, July 24, 2011. The Middle East Media Research Institute. READ SOURCE…

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9. “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! [“Arbeit macht Frei!”]Truth makes free!”

– Hermann Dierkes, leader of the Left Party in Duisburg, Germany, April 2011. Dierkes posted a flyer on the website with a swatiska morphing into a Star of David and called for a boycott of Israeli products, labelling Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger.” “Arbeit macht Frei!” is inscribed on the gates of Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz and Dachau. READ SOURCE…

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10. “The state of Israel is an illegal, genocidal place… to equate Judaism with the state of Israel is to equate Christianity with [rapper] Flavor Flav.”

– Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a speech to thousands of people, June 14, 2011, Baltimore, Maryland. READ SOURCE…

Click here for the pdf from the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Hope Not Hate refuse to be bullied

Nick Lowles writes at Hope Not Hate.

GILAD ATZMON: Supporting Holocaust Deniers and spreading hatred of Jews

Our decision to ask Raise Your Banners to withdraw its invitation to Gilad Atzmon has caused a lot of controversy from his small, but very vocal, band of supporters. In all the years of writing this blog I don’t think I have received as many abusive and angry emails as I have over this issue, though it must be stressed that many of the emails are from the same two or three people.

I’m sticking to my position – namely that Gilad Atzmon flirts with Holocaust Denial, has supported Holocaust Deniers and is a racist antisemite. I will not be bullied or threatened into silence. HOPE not hate stands for decency, tolerance and equality. I will speak up against racism and antisemtism just as I will campaign against fascism and anti-Muslim prejudice.

Gilad Atzmon supports Holocaust deniers and claims that the established history of the Holocaust is misleading. He attacks Jewish identity in a way that would clearly be recognised as racist if it were about any other minority identity, and claims that because of how Jews behave, in the future people might think Hitler was right about Jews. He tells crude antisemitic jokes and mocks any concerns about antisemitism.

Much of the criticism against our position stems from those who believe that we are part of some Zionist plot which seeks to silence criticism of Israel. Nothing can be further from the truth. To me, this has nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine conflict but merely opposition to a man who makes racist and antisemtic comments.

If David Irving or Nick Griffin voiced Atzmon’s opinions then the Left would be up in arms – and rightly so. Virtually no-one on the left supports Atzmon though most prefer to stay silent than speak out publicly. Even the most strident anti-Zionist Jews in Britain believe Atzmon is antisemitic. The Socialist Workers Party, who used to have an association with Atzmon, have long since distanced themselves from him and even the leadership of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have let it be known in the last few days that they want no public connection with him. I, however, am not going to stay silent. Wrong is wrong, from whatever quarter it comes from.

Let’s put aside the Israel/Palestine question (after all I have never once vocalised my opinion on this subject though my detractors are quick to accuse me of being part of a co-ordinated Zionist conspiracy) and let’s look at what Gilad Atzmon actually says:

Atzmon’s racism and antisemtisim

Atzmon targets “Jewishness” in his writings and not just Zionism or Israel. He writes about Jewish traits – as though every Jewish person is the same – in a way that is clearly racist. If someone wrote such generalised abuse of African-Caribbean’s then we would be rightly outraged. He claims not to be attacking all Jews, but then writes about Jewish identity and behaviour in a way that effectively treats Jewish people throughout the world as though they are one homogeneous group. We rightly attack the English Defence League for blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few so why should we turn a blind eye to Atzmon’s racism.

Here are a few of Atzmon’s thoughts:

“ Jewishness means supremacy and chauvinism and chosenness, and when it comes to Jewishness I am not a Jew because I am not a follower of Judaism…I deal mainly with Jewishness. What is Jewishness? Jewishness is different forms of tribally or racially oriented supremacy.”

 

“every single Jewish political discourse… is either already supremacist or on the verge of becoming supremacist.”

 

The idea of “Jewish supremacism” is most commonly associated with American neo-Nazi and former Klan leader David Duke, who wrote a book of that name. Duke has expressed his admiration for Atzmon’s writings.

Flirting with Holocaust Denial

Atzmon’s views border on Holocaust Denial. He certainly disputes the accepted Holocaust narrative and in doing so heaps praise on holocaust revisionists. Here are a few of his writings on the Holocaust (and these are separate quotes).

“It took me many years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one little anecdote to elaborate on:

If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?”

“When I was young and naïve I was also convinced that what they told us about our ‘collective’ Jewish past really happened. I believed it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust: the soap, the lampshade, the death march, the six million.

As it happened, it took me many years to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative for historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and politicians”

“I am left puzzled here; if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?”

Again, if Nick Griffin wrote such things we would be outraged. Why are people not outraged with Atzmon saying them?

Support for Holocaust Deniers

Atzmon has been linked to several leading Holocaust Deniers. This should tell us something about his politics.

“The Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive global financial network…this new religion is coherent enough to define its ‘antichrists’ (Holocaust deniers), and powerful enough to persecute them (through Holocaust-denial and hate-speech laws)…The Holocaust religion is, obviously, Judeo-centric to the bone…This new Jewish religion preaches revenge. It could well be the most sinister religion known to man”.

 

“If you look for instance at the Jewish academics looking into the notion of the Holocaust, the history of the Holocaust, the research is really lacking. I think that the Holocaust must be looked again and again and again and again and as it happens, actually the only people who are doing it are actually Revisionists.”

 

“the [Nazi] death marches were actually humane.”

 

Atzmon also distributed a Holocaust Denial article, “The Holocaust Wars”, written by Holocaust Denier Paul Eisen, which Atzmon has described as a ‘great text’. This great text is notorious for its defence and espousal of amongst others Ernst Zundel, the convicted Holocaust denier.

Another of Atzmon’s associates is the infamous Nazi Israel Shamir, another Holocaust denier with links to many white supremacist and Nazi groups. Atzmon has described Shamir as a ‘unique and advanced thinker’.

Here are a few more interesting Aztmon quotes.

 

* Antisemitic caricatures

 

“Some Jews are rather unhappy with Charles Dickens’ Fagin and Shakespeare’s Shylock, who they regard as ‘anti Semitic’…On the other hand, the British Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) has managed to plant Anne Frank within the British curriculum…Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the bloodthirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians seems to be just a further event in and endless hellish continuum.”

 

* In the future, people may think Hitler was right

Atzmon argues that the Middle East conflict may lead some people to conclude that Hitler may have been right about the Jews. For example, in the apocalyptic scenario of nuclear war between Iran and Israel:

“I guess that amongst the survivors of such a nightmare scenario, some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’”

* Crude racist jokes

At a recent talk in Norway, Atzmon told this joke:

“Nobody speaks about throwing the Jews to the sea.

 

["Nobody?"]

 

Nobody.

 

["Never?"]

 

“No no. No. And it’s not fair on the sea as well. I never thought of that one”

 

[laughter]

Atzmon called a chapter in his latest book “Swindler’s List”.

And finally, somebody noticed that Atzmon says on his website that he has played with Paul McCartney, and decided to wind him up: This is the email he sent with the reply from Atzmon:

—– Forwarded Message —–
From: Gilad Atzmon <giladatzmon@mac.com>
To: xxxx xxxxxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Sunday, 13 November 2011, 10:33
Subject: Re:

Send me his foreskin, once you chopped it .we ll look after it and re install it once he realizes what he is involved with

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Nov 2011, at 11:06, xxxx xxxxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Paul McCartney is to be made honoury jew at this meeting for is marriage to two jews and his support for Israel. Apparently he has given millions.

You’re All ‘Zionists’ Now

This is a cross-posted from the CST.

By Mark Gardner.

Raise Your Banners & Karl Dallas: You’re All ‘Zionists’ Now

Anti-Zionists usually deflect accusations of antisemitism by saying that they only criticise Zionists, not Jews. The ‘proof’ is usually provided by far left Jewish anti-Zionists: eagerly using their ‘Jewishness’ to all the better abuse the rest of the Jewish (ie ‘Zionist’) community, and the Jewish (ie ‘Zionist’) establishment in particular.

Now, the ex-Israeli Jew, Gilad Atzmon, threatens to destroy this long standing modus operandi.

Where Jewish anti-Zionists are disgusted at being vilified as ‘self-haters’, Atzmon wears the insult with pride, saying he is ‘a proud self-hating Jew’.

Where most Jewish anti-Zionists generally try to avoid abusing or diminishing the Holocaust, Atzmon does the opposite, even promoting Holocaust revisionists anddeniers.

Where Jewish anti-Zionists try to decouple notions of ‘Jewishness’ from Zionism, Atzmon’s unique selling point is precisely his attack on ‘Jewishness’: rather than Zionism and Israel. Indeed, anti-Zionists who promote their ‘Jewishness’ are Atzmon’s pet hate: because (he claims) they epitomise the secular and psychological depths of ‘Jewish identity politics’.

Unsurprisingly, Jewish anti-Zionists have reacted furiously to this cuckoo in their nest. They have condemned Atzmon every bit as loudly as the rest of their co-religionists whom they so commonly denigrate. For example, it now emerges that the Jewish Socialist Group first raised concerns about Atzmon playing in Bradford as long ago as last April.

Unfortunately, however, Gilad Atzmon is also a world class jazz musician and much of his audience, after decades of being told to hate those damned Zionists, is wide open to the harsh ‘truths’ that he claims to be revealing. Consequently, Atzmon’s anti-Jewish identity riff is drowning out the cacophonous discord from the Jewish anti-Zionists.

Take, for example, Tuesday’s Twitter message from one of the Raise Your Banners Bradford music festival performers, Karl Dallas, (also an activist within Bradford Palestine Solidarity Campaign), who tweeted:

Extraordinary Zionist virulence twds Raise Your Banners, Bradford, cos we’ve invited anti-Zionist Israeli jazzman Gilad Atzmon to play Fri.

The “extraordinary Zionist virulence” has been from many places: including local trade unionists, anti-racists, the mainstream Jewish community, and Jewish anti-Zionist groups. The concerns were not about anti-Zionism, nor premised upon the Zionist identity of the complainants.

This use of the word ’Zionist’ is the kind of stupid, debased, self-serving language that you get after so many decades of fervid distrust and hatred against the mythical Zionist bogeyman. If veteran Jewish anti-Zionists – some of whom have likely campaigned against Israel even at the expense of their own familial relationships – are now to also be branded as Zionists, then we have reached (yet) another absurd new low.