There are no gatekeepers – just anti-racists
A guest post from Tony Greenstein about Gilad Atzmon
Indymedia are rightly known for the support of grassroots struggles against the forces of law and order, arms companies etc. That is why it is regrettable that, despite repeated requests from a number of people, Jewish and non-Jewish over the past 3 weeks, they have continued to put up on their web pages an article by Gilad Atmon that is deeply anti-Semitic, whilst at the same time refusing to even carry a right of reply.
Unfortunately at least 1 member of the Indymedia collective is part of the Atzmon fan club and has been responsible for putting up articles from Atzmon. Why is this important?
Well there are a number of other sites which display this article, including the Truthseeker holocaust denial site. Quite what Indymedia is doing hosting it beggars belief.
Last summer in Britain, a series of different union conferences – the National Union of Journalists, the University College Union, the public service UNISON and Transport & General Workers Union - passed motions concerning a boycott of the Israeli state and its institutions. This sent the Zionist movement into a frenzy. Starving the people of Gaza into submission is one thing, but interfering with the ‘academic freedom’ of Israeli academics is quite another. No matter that Israeli universities are complicit to the highest degree in the oppression of the Palestinians, that Dan Halutz, Chief of Israel’s Defence Staff and war criminal praised Haifa University, in its February 2006 newsletter, for tailoring its courses to meet the needs of the security services. and in its March 2007 newsletter Haifa boasted that the heads of all 4 security agencies were Haifa graduates.
The reason that there was wall to wall establishment opposition to a Boycott, with everyone from Alan Dershowitz to Tony Blair and George Bush denouncing the idea, was because it called into question a state that is built on giving privileges to its Jewish citizens and denying them to the Palestinians. For the first time ever 4 out of 6 Israeli University Presidents issued a statement, on the day of the academic boycott debate, calling for restrictions on Palestinian students to be lifted. The prospect of an academic boycott achieved more, in terms of getting Israeli academics to speak out, in 1 month than had been achieved in 40 years.
When I spoke at the UNISON conference in support of the Boycott. I spoke not just as a union member but as someone who is Jewish. Why? Because when the Zionists accuse supporters of the Palestinians of being anti-Semitic it makes sense for Jewish members to be the first to reject this libel. But according to Gilad Atzmon this was just another example of how it is ‘Jews and only Jews who engage in racially orientated peace campaigning.’ and even worse ‘since acting politically under a Jewish banner is in fact the very definition of Zionism, it is reasonable to deduce that all Jewish left activity is in practice not more than a form of left Zionism.’ It is a strange argument that says if Jewish people stand up and say they oppose Zionism, because they are Jews, they are actually Zionists!
The obvious implication is that all Jews are Zionists, which is just what the Zionists themselves say!
When Zionist accusations of anti-Semitism against their opponents have started to lose their impact, Mary Rizzo and Gilad Atzmon seem determined to prove that the Zionists are right after all. How else are we to judge statements such as “we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously…. …. American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world….”(Atzmon has replaced ‘Jewish people’ by Zionists but the meaning remains the same) or ‘it looks as if Zionist lobbies control American foreign politics. After so many years of independence, the United States of America is becoming a remote colony of an apparently far greater state, the Jewish state.’ http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/protocols.html. The idea that Israel, rather than being the watchdog of imperialism and its attack dog is in fact controlling US foreign policy smacks of Jewish conspiracy theories. Even the very term gatekeeper is derived from Atzmon’s assertion that Jews are holding back support for the Palestinians. ‘In spite of the fact that it is the ‘Jews Only State’ that we struggle against, we allow a bunch of self-appointed Jewish leaders and activists to become our gatekeepers.’ And these are but a few examples of Atzmon’s writings.
The notion that anti-Semitism has anything to do with solidarity with the Palestinians is absurd. Historically anti-Semitism was the other side of the Zionist coin. As Isaac Deutscher explained of the Jewish workers in pre-war Poland ‘To them anti-Semitism seemed to triumph in Zionism, which recognised the legitimacy and the validity of the old cry ‘Jews get out!’ The Zionists were agreeing to get out’. ‘The Non Jewish Jew ‘ & Other Essays- pp.66/7. But the founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl had operated on the basis that ‘the anti-Semites will be our most dependable friends… our allies.’ (Diaries, pp. 83/4). From Czarist Russia to Nazi Germany Zionism collaborated with anti-Semitism, which it saw as the natural reaction of non-Jews to the Jews in their midst. Without anti-Semitism there would have been no Zionist settlers. The only effect of a growth of anti-Semitism today would be a new wave of settlers emigrating to Israel.
This is the reason that I wrote to Indymedia, a radical, anti-racist and anti-imperialist site asking that Atzmon’s ‘Saying no to the hunters of Goliath’ be taken down. There are plenty of right-wing and conspiracy web sites, including Mary Rizzo’s PeacePalestine blog which regularly carry Atzmon’s anti-Semitic nonsense. But for radical sites like Indymedia to carry it is not only to give legitimacy to Atzmon’s views but also to call into question the Indymedia collective’s own commitment to its guidelines, which proclaim that racist and other chauvinistic material will be hidden. Atzmon’s article speaks of a ‘world Judaic view’ and explains that ‘the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago.’ This is apparently ‘the real meaning’ of the Nazi holocaust. It wasn’t fascism or crazy ideas of racial supremacy that led to Auschwitz, it was that the Jews and presumably the Gypsies, Slavs and gays were ‘unpopular’. By the same logic the Palestinian’s situation can also be blamed on their ‘unpopularity’.
The reason that Jews were allegedly ‘unpopular’ in Nazi Germany, (& this is arguable for anyone who has read any serious academic studies such as Ian kershaw’s Hitler Myth or Popular Dissent in the 3rd Reich) is because they were repeatedly targetted by the Nazis as the embodiment of both capitalism and communism.
To then blame the victims for their alleged unpopularity is to adopt the arguments of the oppressor. But this is no surprise. Atzmon has openly supported the Deir Yassin Remembered group, which includes holocaust deniers such as Board Member Israel Shamir who openly states that Auschwitz was ‘an internment facility’ as opposed to an “industrial extermination factory”…’ it is clear that there is another agenda here.
When the Boycott campaign was at its height, at the Board of Deputies of British Jews meeting ‘deputies also gave vent to their anger – particularly at Jews who supported the move (for boycott).’ the Jewish Chronicle (22.6.07.) ‘Blair adds his backing - The Boycott Battle ’ Just as in South Africa, where the apartheid regime detested white opponents of apartheid, so Zionist leaders villify their Jewish opponents as ‘self haters’. Yet ironically Gilad Atzmon seems to take a special delight in attacking Jewish anti-Zionists.
So when Mary says that the primary concern must be justice for the Palestinians I agree. But why, when the campaign for an academic boycott was forcing Israelis to come to terms with their actions, did Gilad Atzmon oppose that boycott? In an interview with Ms Rizzo, when asked whether he supported a boycott, he replied that: ‘Yet I have some serious reservations, which I am inclined to mention…. I truly believe in freedom of speech and oppose any form of Maccarthyism or intellectual censorship of any sort. Thus, interfering with academic freedom isn’t exactly something I can blindly advocate. Unlike some of my best enlightened friends, I am against any form of gatekeeping or book burning. But it goes further, I actually want to hear what Israelis and Zionists have to say. I want to read their books. I want to confront their academics.’
So there we have it. An academic boycott is ‘book burning’ and no doubt the hundreds of Palestinian orgnisations calling for a boycott were book burners too. Book burning, let it not be forget, was a speciality of the Nazi regime. The real reason for Atzmon’s opposition was that among the leaders of the Boycott campaign were those who had been most critical of Atzmon, such as Birmingham University lecturer, Sue Blackwell, or exiled Israeli Professor Moshe Machover of Matzpen.
Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo are entitled to indulge in anti-Semitic rhetoric. What they are not entitled to do is wage their battles in the name of the Palestinians. And incidentally Indymedia have not rejected the request to hide Atzmon’s Goliath article on their site. They have yet to make a decision.
Really interesting post, Tony.
” For the first time ever 4 out of 6 Israeli University Presidents issued a statement, on the day of the academic boycott debate, calling for restrictions on Palestinian students to be lifted. The prospect of an academic boycott achieved more, in terms of getting Israeli academics to speak out, in 1 month than had been achieved in 40 years.”
I had no idea there had already been a positive effect.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:56 am
I do actually think this debate is a diversion from the real issue, which is support for the Palestinians. I dont agree with Atzmon’s remarks stuff about Jewish culture, etc, but it is over the top to call these remarks anti-semitic in the classical sense, just as it is over the top to so characterise Hamas and Hizbullah’s sometimes use of similar rhetoric. What Atzmon and other Jewish dissidents of the same ilk represent is an extension of similar alienation fundamentally produced by Zionist terrorism to a layer of alienated Israelis of Jewish origin.
Their attitude to Jewish culture, their complete rejection of it as the culture of an oppressor people, even in some cases questioning the historical truth of the holocaust, is analogous to some leftists in Britain or the US who take delight in burning the Union Flag or the Stars and Stripes and regard, for example, American culture as ‘Amerikkkan culture’. The only difference is the reversal of fortune of a large subset of the Jewish people from oppressed people to oppressor people over the past half-century or so gives this view an unfortunate, paradoxical echo. It is as misguided to demonise Atzmon as an anti-semite as it is to so demonise Hassan Nasrallah or the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. As Zionism’s moral authority among progressive minded Israel Jews goes into terminal decline, there will be more Atzmons.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:07 am
You are wrong Ian, it is important to note that Atzmon is an anti-semite, ebcasue he attacks the very validity of Jewish identity itself. I have discussed this before.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=554
I refer to a Jewish nation. The question of whether the Jews are a nation is something that some Jewish anti-Zionists dispute, and that is a questioon of linguistic definition and the political issue of whether you can have national consciousness without a political movement for a nation state, so let us set that to one side as irrelevent to the current discussion - Jewish identity is however clearly a form on collective consciousness analogous to national conscousness.
Atzmon argues not only that there should be no Jewish state, but that Jews like Michael Rosen and Roland Rance must abandon theor self-identity as Jews and be “assimilated”. this is simon pure anti-judaic prejudice.
I also think it is no coincidence that the figure most associated in support of Atzmon in the SWP is Martin Smith, who has the same political attitude to forms of national consciousness – that they shouldn’t exist.
As I argued before: “It seems to be no coincidence that the SWP do not grasp how objectionable Atzmon is, because his attitude to Jewish assimilation is a reductio ad absurdum of their own understanding of national identity.”
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:24 am
Yes, and many new Leftist in America think that American national identity has no right to exist. The Revolutionary Communist Group have the same view of British National identity, which is why they burn the union flag. They are still part of the left. So is Atzmon, for similar reasons.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:27 am
If anything, this denial of the right to a national identity to oppressor peoples (Atzmon, by the way, celebrates Palestinian national identity) is an ultra-left position, not anything proximate to fascism. In any case, you still haven’t explained, if Atzmon is to be classed as an anti-semite, why Hamas (which explicitly approvingly cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its charter), should not also be characterised as in essence anti-semitic.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:31 am
I have never accused Atzmon of facsism, only of anti-semitism.
And you have to recognse the dual character of Zionism as BOTH a colonialist settler project AND a flawed stratgy for combatting/escaping anti-semitism.
Jews cannot simply be characterised as “an oppressor people”.
You do have a point though that it is the systematic ultra-leftism of the SWP over questioons of national identity that ends up with them in bed with Atzmon.
Hamas do indeed have the protocols in their constitution, we should recognise that there is a strand of deep anti-semitism in Hamas, and not idealise them.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:45 am
“Jews cannot simply be characterised as “an oppressor people”.”
Jews in general, certainly not. Israeli Jews, though, are an oppressor people.
“Hamas do indeed have the protocols in their constitution, we should recognise that there is a strand of deep anti-semitism in Hamas, and not idealise them.”
No need to idealise them. But their echoing of anti-semitic nonsense is a reaction to persecution and dispossession, and cannot be equated with classical anti-semitism as an imperialist ideology justifying the persecution of the Jews as an oppressed people. Ditto Atzmon, who as a Jew himself is (over)reacting against the persecution of Arabs by his own people, not advocating any oppression of Jews.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:57 am
And ian - you are wrong here:
“As Zionism’s moral authority among progressive minded Israel Jews goes into terminal decline, there will be more Atzmons.”
No, there may well be more Tony Greensteins, and Julia Bards, but there is no reason there should be more Gilad Atzmons.
The existance of Jewish identity and consciousness predates Zionism, and will survive it.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:59 am
Ian #7
The point about Atzmon, is that he attacks Jewish anti-Zionists.
He exactly does advocate that ALL Jews, (not just israeli Jews, which would be just as bad by the way) must abandon Jewishness.
he then attacks and belittles aspects of Jewish culture, and Jews who practice them is disgraceful terms, see his jibes about gefiltte fish, etc, etc.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
“No, there may well be more Tony Greensteins, and Julia Bards, but there is no reason there should be more Gilad Atzmons.”
There will likely be both. And misunderstanding and moralistic discussions aside (on both sides!), they will likely not be as far apart politically as they think they are!
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
“He exactly does advocate that ALL Jews, (not just israeli Jews, which would be just as bad by the way) must abandon Jewishness.”
Well, political confusion and moralistic responses to oppression and injustice often take confused form, in lots of different ways. And there are analogous left-wing currents in Europe and North America, who make similar demands about renouncing national identity, ‘white skin privelege’, etc.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Ian, do you support boycotting Atzmon when he comes to town?
I remember when the SWP invited Atzmon to speak at their bookshop in 2005, JAZ organised a picket of the event. I supported that initiative but couldn’t make the event.
Btw: Very good post by Tony.
Comment by Louise — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
No, I didn’t support that boycott.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
Andy - I think Indymedia collective is still discussing this and will be deciding at a forthcoming meeting. Most of the collective seem to be against Atzmon and agree his politics are dangerous crap. There has been quite a good discussion. Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the actual situation first. If you didn’t know already, you can see / join the debate here - and even volunteer to help out with Indymedia:
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-November/date.html
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/
Cheers!
Comment by Barry Kade — 20 November, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
Skimming though this indy-media debate there does seem a lot more tolerance for Atzmon’s anti-semitism than there is for other froms of controversial content on Indymedia
Comment by top tip — 20 November, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
It seems Ian D has a simple formula. If Hamas is anti-Semitic, it is at root the fault of the Jews. If Atzmon is anti-Semitic, it is at root the fault of the Jews.
Indymedia’s problem is that they have to work by unanimous consensus. That means that even a single person who tolerates Atzmon’s anti-Semitism can force the whole collective to tolerate it, even when most of the collective seems rightly appalled.
Atzmon seems like a constant experiment — how much anti-Semitism can he wrap in lefty lingo and still have the occasional leftist, if not agree with him, still defend him as a leftist?
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
I sometimes wonder whether Atzmon isn’t engaged in a sort of performance art project about Left anti-jewish racism.
A sort of Candid Camera type thing, with the aim of making the likes of Martin Smith and Ian Donovan look silly and nasty.
Comment by David T — 20 November, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
“It seems Ian D has a simple formula. If Hamas is anti-Semitic, it is at root the fault of the Jews. If Atzmon is anti-Semitic, it is at root the fault of the Jews.”
Why dont you get Brett Lock to do a cameo, then, where he can do his star-turn demanding the Israeli army machine-gun Palestinian women ‘unarmed combatants’ as he did not so long ago.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
Andy makes two comments which underline the importance of Tony’s excellent article - firstly, that Atzmon’s attacks are directed at ALL people who identify in any way as Jewish (if that isn’t anti-semitism, then what is???), and secondly that he reserves his heaviest fire for active, principled Jewish anti-Zionists. The pathological pronouncements of someone like Atzmon simply provide ammunition for the pro-Zionist lobby, and sow the seeds of disunity in the anti-Zionist movement. If he didn’t already exist, some smart-arse Zionist would have to invent him. No-one on the left should touch his poisonous ideas with a barge-pole, let alone promote them.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
I’m sorry that Ian Donovan should seek to whitewash and gloss over Atzmon’s anti-Semitism. He is not, in any case a ‘Jewish dissident’ – he doesn’t classify himself as Jewish but as a Christian.
Nor is the fact that Atzmon is a good example of what alienation can do any excuse, since he is well aware of what he is doing when he writes about ‘Jewish gatekeepers or Elders’.
I make a sharp distinction between Hamas and Hezbollah and Atzmon’s anti-Semitism in any case. Hamas and Hezbollah reflect anti-Semitism, and that is a product of political backwardness. They are not anti-Semitic organisations but reacting to the oppression that they and the Palestinians/Lebanese have experienced at the hands of the Israeli state, which claims it is acting on behalf of Jewish people. If Israeli soldiers demolish someone’s home, kill their children etc. all in the name of ‘the Jews’ as the IDF does, then it isn’t surprising that the victims will take them at face value. Just as people referred to the Nazis as ‘the Germans’. It is certainly a sign of political backwardness, not surprising in political Islam, that they then borrow European anti-Semitic documents like the Protocols to justify and rationalise their oppression. But they are not anti-Semitic, because they quite simply are not organisations whose goal is the destruction of Jewish people or their oppression.
Atzmon may be alienated, but he is not oppressed by those claiming to be Jews. His case is entirely different.
Nor is there any comparison between holocaust denial and burning the stars and stripes or union flag. This has nothing to do with leftism. Anyone in the West who denies that the Holocaust occurred is de facto on the right, and usually the neo-Nazi right. Anyone who denies the holocaust happened in the Arab world is almost certainly a reactionary, if not worse, as well as a fool and an idiot. Both the latter are symbols of imperialism and it is right that people burn them in protest at the murderous nature of British/US imperialism. That is not directed at British or American people per se.
Nor is there any comparison between Sheikh Yassin and Nasrallah and Atzmon. Nasrallah led a major war of resistance to the murderous attacks of Israel. That he isn’t a socialist is no surprise though Hizbollah has reached out to other communities and is not an anti-Semitic organisation. It was Israel’s allies the Phalange who attacked Beirut’s Jewish community, not Hizbollah. Likewise Hamas has not been known to attack Jews as Jews, whereas Atzmon delights in doing just that.
Andy is both right and wrong! He says ‘For Atzmon it is the recognition and identification of a Jewish nation that is Zionism, and Jews should abandon their Jewish identity.’ Yes that is true and that is why Atzmon’s hatred and detestation of Jews outside Israel mirrors, for all his alienation, key Zionist concepts of the ‘accursed Galut’. Zionism did grow up as a reaction to anti-Semitism, the most reactionary kind which took on board the ideology of anti-Semitism. In this it was not, of course, unique and similar separatist movements have done likewise e.g. Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey and his approach to the KKK. Where Zionism was different is that it took state power and formed an alliance with imperialism. Otherwise it might have been left to disappear as another marginal and cranky millenarian sect. And in so doing, as Andy rightly says, he equates ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’ in just the same way as the Zionists.
The point about Jewish identity is this. There is no one Jewish identity. Jews in different countries will have different identities as will Jews within each country. Identity is about what you do primarily, not about a reified otherness that looks back with rose tinted spectacles and inevitably ends up counterposing a supposed past identity to what people are doing in the here and now. That is why the Jewish feminist groups of the 1980’s became little more than a search for a justification, from a ‘feminist’ perspective of Zionism and Israel. Atzmon’s nonsense statement that ‘Identity is in fact nothing but Identification.’ Is a circular and tautological argument.
I’m not sure what Andy means by referring to the ‘dual character’ of Zionism as both a ‘colonialist settler project AND a flawed stratgy for combatting/escaping anti-semitism.’ Its latter feature, the escape from anti-Semitism involved an alliance with imperialism and hence settler colonialism. The two went hand in hand.
I’m not at all sure that it is the SWP’s ultra leftism over national identity that is the root of its dealings with Atzmon. From what I’ve seen, the SWP mouth slogans without ever understanding them re national identity. I fear that the alliance with Atzmon is a product of their super opportunism and their third worldist politics which mean that if you oppose an attack on Iran you can’t criticise the Iranian theocratic regime.
Thanks Louise for your comments and Barry is right to say that Indymedia are tolerating anti-Semitism when one would assume that they wouldn’t do likewise for other forms of racism. But saying that they have ‘hidden’ rather than delete a blog referring to ‘paki lover galloway’. In fact greying out the piece in question, it is still readable. I’ve suggested to Indymedia that either they scrap their Discrimination Guidelines or start implementing them seriously.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386089.html?c=on
I’m sorry that Ian Donovan feels the need to defend Atzmon. He doesn’t attack anti-Zionist Jews because of his dedicated support of the Palestinians or consort with holocaust deniers and provide them with support because of that support. He knows well enough that anti-Semitism is the best means of support of Zionism. He does it because of his reactionary, essentialist politics and his conflation of Jew=Zionist.
Don’t apologise for this racist Ian and sully your own politics.
Tony Greenstein
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
Tony,
Your analysis of anti-semitism is just as screwed as Ian Donovans. To paraphrase are you saying that hamas and hezbollah are not anti-semitic because they are too stupid to be? They’ve been duped by the Israeli state into beleiving that the IDF acts on behalf of all jews? Get Real.
Comment by martin ohr — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
Gilad is odd no doubt, and i don’t think his argument is correct but it is wrong to carectorise it as racist.
he does not reject jewish identity because he see’s something wrong with jewish people as an ethnic group nor because he thinks that it is a particularly negative religion/culture rather because he thinks that the notion of tribal identity full stop is negative and because he bellives that identifying in this way opens the space for people to claim special rights for their tribal group.
I think that his account of tribal identity is static and fails to acknowledge that their can be positive traditions as well as negitive ones but that doesn’t mean that he is a racist.
I agree with the flag burning analogies.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
Sorry Tony, I just dont see it. I have been periodically visiting Mary Rizzo’s blog (which publishes Gilad Atzmon’s work on an ongoing basis) for quite a while now, and followed the debates on it. It is not some kind of ultra-rightist blog, its whole political outlook is clearly a left-wing defence of the Palestinian people. That is evidently its main purpose.
I dont agree with the views on Jewish culture of this particular Jewish-derived political trend, but it is rather obvious that it does represent an idiosyncratic left-wing trend, not a right-wing one and certainly not one on the far right. That’s why Tony has been unable to convince the bulk of the Palestinian solidarity movement that Atzmon and co. should be shunned, simply because the arguments in favour of that don’t really add up. On this question, I don’t see how the SWP are in the wrong.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
Hi there
I suggest that you follow this link:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18721.htm
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
Gilad - I would have thought that with the mighty SWP promoting your gigs you’d be able to afford a decent therapist by now.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Gilad, have you asked David Duke to remove your works from his site? He’s America’s best-known racist and antisemite, and he has nothing but praise for you.
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
Andy: “ Becasue Gilad Atzmon wants the Jewish identity to be restricted only to religious Jews, he denies Jewishness any cultural or national aspect, which is why he is an anti-Semite.”
GIlad: Here we are, Andy quotes HIMSELF misunderstanding me. This is rather entertaining.
Andy, can you suggest where such an argument appears in my writing???
My argument is very very simple and I assume that every man with a brain can understand it.
Jewish secular identity is racially orientated. Thus, Jewish secular political identity is racially exclusive. You may want to ask Greenstein how many Goyim attend his JEWS Against Zionism meetings. In other words Jewish secular socialism is nothing but a form of ‘national socialism’. It celebrates a bond between socialism and a very particular race i.e. Jews…
I will try to be more specific. Jewish culture whether it is ‘chicken soup’ or Fiddler on the Roof is totally acceptable, yet, it doesn’t entail a political ( or ethical argument) . Moreover, I cannot see how to liberate the Palestinian people with chicken soup nor can I see how to bring Justice to Palestine with a fiddle.
Can Greenstein or Andy enlighten us on the subject?
However, as bizarre as it may sound, though many Jews have become leading humanists, there is no such a thing as Jewish secular universal ethical value system. If you think that I am wrong here, please suggest to me and others a reference to a such text or even a just a paragraph. Once you do so, I will rest my case immediately!!!
I assume that if you fail to do so, we are all entitled to guess that there is no such a text…
As annoying as it may sound, it was actually ‘left’ Zionists who tried to establish new Jewish secular ethical system but, as we know, they failed.
Many years ago, anti Semites where those who hate Jews, these days anti Semites are those the Jews hate. More specifically, those who do not agree with Greenstein’s racial exclusive political plot…
The argument is very simple:
If the crime against the Palestinians is a crime against Humanity, we better fight it as human beings rather than as racially orientated tribal political clans .
All the best
Gilad
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
And here is the latest deconstruction of Greenstein argument
on IM UK list…
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-November/1118-bj.html
I am touring this week … playing for the SWP (Culture of Resistence) , the PSC, giving 2 lectures in two major British academic institutes, London Jazz Festival and two other major concerts.
Hence, I want be able to contribute to your discussion…
I do realise that some of you are outraged but you ll have to accept it (sooner or later).
Your argument re me being a Racist is almost as pathetic as JAZ ‘s racially exclusive ‘socialist’ message to the world.
Peace
Gilad
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
Gilad: “Many years ago, anti Semites where those who hate Jews, these days anti Semites are those the Jews hate.”
That particular meme you quoted initially comes from a fellow named Joe Sobran, a former member of the editorial board of the hard-right magazine National Review, who was personally booted by editor William F. Buckley — for many decades dean of the American right — when his antisemitic rhetoric got too obvious.
And here’s Joe Sobran lamenting David Irving’s defeat in the Lipstadt case.
Thank you, Gilad, for providing a textbook example of how your antisemitism tries to draw right-wing racist rhetoric into the language of the left.
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:37 pm
#28 Gilad writes: I am touring this week … playing for the SWP (Culture of Resistence) , the PSC, giving 2 lectures in two major British academic institutes, London Jazz Festival and two other major concerts. Hence, I want be able to contribute to your discussion…
Ah, now I get it - you’re just promoting your latest tour. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Just don’t go dangling any babies out of windows, a la Michael Jackson…
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
# “…there will be more Atzmons”
…shit happens
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 5:54 pm
#17: “I sometimes wonder whether Atzmon isn’t engaged in a sort of performance art project about Left anti-jewish racism. A sort of Candid Camera type thing, with the aim of making the likes of Martin Smith and Ian Donovan look silly and nasty.”
Boratzmon?
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
Atzmonia: clinical depressive condition wherein the patient beats himself up, then does vaguely illegal things to himself with his saxophone (see report elsewhere on sex and bicycles…).
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
Atzmon writes; ‘Jewish secular identity is racially orientated. Thus, Jewish secular political identity is racially exclusive. You may want to ask Greenstein how many Goyim attend his JEWS Against Zionism meetings. In other words Jewish secular socialism is nothing but a form of ‘national socialism’. It celebrates a bond between socialism and a very particular race i.e. Jews…’
This assertion is simply nonsense. I am not aware of any secular Jewish organisation which regards Jews as a ‘race’. Whatever its validity or lack of it, secular Jewish identity is cultural.
Nor is it exclusive, either culturally or politically. I am not aware that any of the anti-Zionist Jews that Atzmon specialises in vilifying have ever defined their cultural identity as exclusively Jewish. Atzmon may claim to have an exclusively ‘human’ cultural identity, but most of us are happy to have a plural cultural identity, of which a Jewish strand is only one of many parts and facets.
Nor to my knowledge do the members of JAZ practice an ‘exclusively Jewish’ politics. I am not a member of that organisation but those I know, as well as members of the JSG, are usually also active members of national political parties, trade unions and campaigns.
What then is the point of such organisations, as well as of other groups such as JFJFP [of which I am a signatory] or the US ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’, which are either secular or not confined to the religious?
If the State of Israel were established purely for observant Jews there would indeed be no point in non-believers from a Jewish background publicly rejecting its claim to act on their behalf, as the state would not be making any such claim.
But Israel claims that its existence is an existential necessity for all those who are Jewish enough to be potential victims of antisemitism, and their only guarantee against another holocaust. It is therefore entirely legitimate for those who fall into that category and who reject that claim to state so publicly, as the claim is widely accepted, and wins understandable but undeserved sympathy for Israel.
As to whether there is any point in trying to preserve and transmit a distinct secular jewish identity, as opposed acknowledging and enjoying the fact that it is part of one’s individual cultural background; that is a legitimate subject for discussion. But I don’t see what particular relevance it has for the Palestinians.
All Palestinians need from Jews is for Jews to get off the Palestinians’ backs. What Jews then do with their identity need be of no real interest to anyone else as long as it doesn’t entail a belief in the need for a seperate discriminatory state estblished at someone else’s expense as the means of expressing or preserving that identity.
As someone said, if Herzl had established a Jewish state in Argentina, would anyone in the Middle East be interested in all this? Atzmon should take his obsession with Jewish identity somewhere else, and not use the Palestinians as a hook to hang it on.
Comment by Stephen Marks — 20 November, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
Stephan Marks: his assertion is simply nonsense. I am not aware of any secular Jewish organisation which regards Jews as a ‘race’. Whatever its validity or lack of it, secular Jewish identity is cultural.
Gilad: for sure you aren’t a race… just racially orientated. i.e racist
Will Mr Marks be kind enough and tell us about the Goyim who insist to operate under the J banner. I am dying to meet them….
By the way… can you Marks tell us what is your secular Jewish Ethical Bible?
is there such a thing?
Is there anything more than chicken soup?
P.S Mr Marks, my Pls brothers are very interested in my J identity project… just go for a google search … you will find my papers on every Pls/ Arabic journals, blogs, websites… Never seen Greenstein or you there….
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
Mr. Goodwin
Do you know what the word rhetoric stands for?
Here it is for you: Rhetoric is the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language
Goodwin, you better learn to differentiate between FACTS and Rhetoric
And here is your first lesson ( some facts to follow):
A while back there were some vicious people who stood up and said, “We do not like Jews”
These people were called anti Semitic (FACT)
Nowadays, I cannot think of any reasonable man who would come with such a statement. (this isn’t a fact by the way)
However, Instead, all we see is Jews trying to label people as an anti Semites. (read the article above…)
This isn’t rhetoric Mr Goodwin, it is a clear fact.
However, you may be right about one thing. Your failure to cleanse me from the so called ‘left; and the pls discourse may prove that you have lost lose grip on the so called left discourse…..
Clearly, I have never come with any statement against Jews (the people). Yet.
I am very critical of Jewishness. In my writings I say: it isn’t the JEWS (Yehudim), it isn’t JUDAISM (Yahadut)… it is Jewishness (Yehudiyut). I am critical of an identity and a political identity. I try to trace the metaphysical fundaments behind this identity.
Let’s face it; since Israel regards itself, as the ‘Jewish State’ our duty is to grasp what the word Jews and Jewishness stand for.
The more I learn about it, the more I realise why you try to stop me and others… I can promise you one thing, as far as I am concerned, you will have to try hard… as you probably realize… my views are receiving more and more attention, by the way, a lot thanks to Greenstein… and guess what, he is doing it all for free.
Shukran Comrade Greenstein
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
Gilad: you read Stephen Marks’ restrained piece and respond by calling him a ‘racist’, without citing any evidence to back up the charge, then embark on an incoherent rant about ethical codes and chicken soup. You come across as a deeply damaged individual, grafting your (no doubt real) personal guilt and pain onto a complex political issue which you seem to grasp only in a very fragmentary way. In the process you manage to create splits and divisions in the Palestine solidarity movement where none existed before. And for what? To trumpet loudly to the world that you’ve managed to slough off the mantle of ‘Jew’. Well good for you, if that makes you feel better. But I really do think that it’s a matter for the psychiatrist’s couch, not for a political forum.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:10 pm
# 37 Can’t you recognise a troll when you see one?
All he’s doing is targeting anti-imperialist Jews and isinuating they are actually racists, by using a series of buzzwords, then claiming that he’s some kind of anti-imperialist himself. LOL!
It’s a classic psy-ops technique
There’s absolutely no point trying to have a rational debate with him, he should be kept well away from left wing forums and events.
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
#36 Gilad Borat-zmon: [bathetic attempt at rejoinder put out of its misery]
Ah, Boratzmon, and here I thought you were going to be far too busy to reply. Such a busy man! Busy busy busy! What you meant, apparently, is that you were too busy to actually put any actual thought into a reply. So instead you simply pump up your previous answer with a little more air, hoping I suppose that the mere girth of your bombast will carry the day.
Please, Comrade Boratzmon, show us a copy of the email you sent to American’s best-known anti-Semite brownshirt to ask him to stop praising you so extravagantly and to remove your writings from his site.
Or are you simply as delighted to find yourself in such company as he is to have you?
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
Statement in Atzmonese: “I’m not against Jews, I’m against Jewishness.”
Translation from Atzmonese: “I don’t want to burn books, I only want to burn the words in them.”
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ6m0A5xBkw&feature=related
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
Mr Woolrich , assuming that you are a native English speaker (unlike myself) you should be able to read sentences within their lingual context. You should as well be pretty familiar with the English usage of the word ‘you’ in reference to an individual as well as a group of people.
However, here is your daily lesson Mr Woolich:
Stephan Marks says: …I am not aware of any secular Jewish organisaon which regards Jews as a ‘race’. Whatever its validity or lack of it, secular Jewish identity is cultural.
Gilad answers: for sure you aren’t a race… just racially orientated. i.e racist
Clearly Stephan Marks is an individual, he cannot be a race If you Mr Woolrich try to employ your gray cells, you may understand that the sentence refer to the Jewish secular political identity (which Marks foolishly succumb to)
It should be read as follows “you (Jewish secular political activists) aren’t a race… just racially orientated. i.e racist”
This statement doesn’t need any qualification (I hope)
Yep, as sad as it may sound you have erected an exclusive racist political identity. Seemingly, you don’t really know what to do it.
However, the fact that you now refer to me as a mental case doesn’t take me by surprise. I read enough about Stalinism to know where you come from.
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpzl5kr2JDM
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
“Can’t you recognise a troll when you see one?”
“It’s a classic psy-ops technique.”
“There’s absolutely no point trying to have a rational debate with him, he should be kept well away from left wing forums and events.”
Its pretty weird to accuse him of being a troll when the posting that kicked off this discussion was an attack on him. If people don’t want him involved in left-wing forums, then making him the topic of debate is not a particularly smart idea. Just an observation.
By the way, there are some real trolls intervening in this thread, in case people haven’t noticed.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
Any chance to learn about your Jewish cultural (Marks) ethical value system?
Stephan Marx is you going to tell us how to save the Pls with chicken soup?
Maybe Maza Balls could be more effective,
Bring it up comrades’ prove me wrong…
Bring up your JEWISH secular value system?
Just in case you don’t know
Lenin asked his Bundist the same question in 1903…
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
Gilad: Although your last post is quite incoherent (you need to take a deep breath and re-read your posts before you upload them), one point emerges clearly. You clarify your earlier comments as follows:
“you (Jewish secular political activists) aren’t a race… just racially orientated. i.e racist”
Now, a clear statement that Jewish secular political activists are by definition all “racist” is as open an example of anti-Semitism as one could hope to read. No doubt others here will take note of your position.
Incidentally, it’s interesting that you assume I’m Jewish…!
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
Incidentally, I wonder if Gilad’s jibes about matzoh balls, chicken soup and Fiddler on the Roof would be tolerated quite so happily were it not for his own (assumed) ethnic origin? I suspect that if this was all coming from an Anglo-Saxon he wouldn’t be given quite so much latitude. Ironic really.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Woolrich: “Now, a clear statement that Jewish secular political activists are by definition all “racist” is as open an example of anti-Semitism as one could hope to read. No doubt others here will take note of your position. Incidentally, it’s interesting that you assume I’m Jewish…!”
Gilad: This is exactly why, no one and I repeat no one takes the ‘Jewish Left’ seriously out of the Jewish cyber ghetto. They operate in an EXCLUSIVE Racially orientated political network . This is indeed nothing but ‘racism in practice’. Prove me wrong!!!
Woolrich in case you aren’t a Jew, would you join Jews Against Zionism?
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSMl8SpT6p0&feature=related
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
“Woolrich in case you aren’t a Jew, would you join Jews Against Zionism?” Well now - I’m in an interesting situation re my cultural/ethnic roots - sadly I don’t fit into your simplistic schema at all. But to answer your question - PERHAPS. It’s certainly been made clear to me that I would be most welcome.
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:43 pm
Here’s a little light reading about Atzmon’s biggest fan in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke
And Gilad, that endless, endless fountain of words, can’t manage to spare even a single one over the fact that the US’s best-known Klansman can’t get enough of Atzmon’s fulminations about The Jew.
Why, do you suppose?
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
Woolrich, why don’t you tell us what Jewish secular Culture is all about?
We know what Judaism is all about, we have God, we have a belief system but then, once you kill God , what is it exactly that you are left with?
please enlighten me?
Because as far as i can see, there is nothing beyond chicken soup and Maza balls, Tell me Mr Woolrich, is there Jewish secular radio station you can offer cos I am really dying to listen to some new Jewish secular Hip Hop?
You know what, I ll share with you a very sad truth, there is secular Jewish culture in a place called Israel. The Zionists are the only one to fill Jewish secular identity with content.
They are overtly racist and they are proud about it
This is why Zionism won and the Bund died.
We tend to agree that Zionism is as bad as it can be.
However, your friends amongst the JEWISH progressive seculars are no better, they are as racist as the Zionist yet they are far less creative or productive…
Indeed they don’t kill Arabs (thanks God)
They ‘just’ take care of the anti semites in the left
oy oy oy
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
Goodwin couldn’t see Atzmon there, can you ask wiki editor Roland Rance to pepper it with Atzmons so you may have an argument for your next post…:)
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
BLACKCATSABONE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ywKcwc5VQQ
Comment by Alex Nichols — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
Having difficulty following, are you, Gilad? No, you’re just evading.
And this is what you’re evading: http://www.davidduke.com/general/the-open-society-and-its-enemies-the-story-of-auschwitz_1930.html
Please tell us how gratified you are to have your work celebrated by the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Seems you and he are kindred spirits on this anti-Jewishness business. Perhaps you two could do a duet on your next album; he could bring a spare Klansman robe for you.
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
Last year Galloway pulled out of a gig with Atzmon after I phoned Rob Hoveman and told him of Atzmons anti semitism.
Jazz Racism and Resistance went ahead with Martin Smith.
Galloway told Gilad that he’d been delayed in the House of Commons voting on Iraq.
Gilad told lots of people that.
Of course,there was no vote on Iraq.
Gilads not the sharpest knife in the Stormfront box.
Don’t give him too much attetion.
The SWP and Martin Smith need to cut their links with this far right provocateur.
Comment by Tim — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
#52 Jewish secular culture - different things to different people. Culture and identity are necessarily fluid in the modern world. It seems to me that you’re the one that’s hung up about it. To claim that “Zionists are the only one[s] to fill Jewish secular identity with content” is risible. Anyway, enough for tonight!
Comment by Jay Woolrich — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
Goodwin, do you really want to know?
This very long paper was published in more than 600 sites. It was translated into 7 languages and was printed in several magazines and Journals…
It appeared under a few names: Re Arranging the 20th century,
Allegro Non Tropo, The Story of Auschwitz.
In my circulation list I do not have a single racist or a Fascist.
However, unlike my music and books that are sold for money in shops and over the net, my ideological papers are circulated freely on the net. I do want to make my thoughts available, I believe that this is my duty as an artist and a thinker. I believe that people should have the right to know. Unlike you guys, I have some followers…
I have never asked anyone to remove any of my papers and I do not plan to do so in the future. I do not believe in such a practice…
At the time I was surprised to find out that DD put it up because the paper actually expresses some clear criticism of the common form of H revisionism. A few of Dukes readers attacked me at the time and guess what,… I treated them with respect. I addressed their questions and criticism.
I believe that people should be treated with respect! Even right wing racist, even Zionists As you can see, I treat you guys with respect, i try to address your questions in spite of your total lack of manners. In spite of the fact that more than a few of you are clearly operating in some bizarre exclusive Racially orientated political cells (JAZ for instance). Unlike you guys I believe in free dialogue.
However, if you have any more concerns to do with the content of the paper, this is another matter and we can discuss it in the future assuming that you can take the intellectual challenge.
Anymore questions?
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
I have learnt that Duke lists Norman Finkelstein and Walt and Mearsheimer also on his site. It stands to reason, since he is critical of the Ultra-Zionist Lobby’s influence on US policies, that he would have all works that are critical of the policies of Israel as well as those that are critical of Zionism and ultra-Zionism listed. That does NOT make those authors proponents of anti-semitism.
I have studied some of Gilad’s work. He is very severe in some of his remarks but certainly not anti-semitic.
Comment by Gene — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
Tim
I have never heard a single criticism made by Galloway against me, my work or my writings.
Did you? Can you send us the link?
Rather often Respect activists try to recruit me to their party something I categorically refuse to do.
I love to be independent.
However, If the story that you are telling is true,
It actually proves that Galloway is easily surrendering to ‘Jewish pressure’.
I honestly prefer to keep Galloway above it all
Don’t you?
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:10 pm
#58 Gilad: “This very long paper was published in more than 600 sites.”
Yes, it’s amazing how much crap there is on the internet, isn’t there.
And one of those sites that pushed out your pseudoscholarship was the racist pseudoscholar David Duke, who not only published your bit, but was so enamored by it that he wrote a special foreword to it.
And you’re correct, David Duke wasn’t the only virulently antisemitic site to publish your article.
So that leads to two very simple questions.
One — what is it that fascists find so appealing about your fulminations about the Jew? Duke’s only one fascist who supports you on this, there are many more. As I’m sure you’re aware. Why do your works resonate in a way brownshirts find so thrilling they can’t help but post them for other blackshirts to see? What is it that David Duke finds in your writing about Jews that causes his eyes to light up with joy and celebrate you as a kindred spirit?
Two — now that you know that your essay is featured on the website of one of the world’s best-known crossburners, what are you going to do? Pretend it’s irrelevant?
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:29 pm
Blimey
I just got home and started deleting Tim’s comments as routine.
And then I noticed they were making sense, and he was criticising Atzmon and not Galloway. Blimey.
The one I deleted from Tim pointed out to Atzmon thet there was no vote in the commons on the night in question.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Andy,
This stuff from Atzmon is shocking. Free speech and all that, but if black people were the object of some of his bigoted jeering he’s be banned from this blog, and i presume from any links with the SWP.
Comment by paulm — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
It also pointed out that Rob Hoveman got a tip on Atzmons Racism.
George pulled out.
Atzmon peddled the lie that Galloway was in the house of Commons, either because.
a.Gullible & not bright.
b.embarrassed at Galloways dumping of him.
Matin Smith and the SWP should also dump this racist.
Comment by Pretend I'm not Tim — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
If Gilads got the balls he’ll post the thread from peacepalestine where he claimed time and time again that Galloway was in the Commons voting on Iraq.
Comment by Pretend I'm not Tim — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
Goodwin. you better read the paper,, it isn’t about Jews, it is about history..
and yep you are right, very many people like my papers.
Ask yourself why…
can you suggest to me what is your problem with the given paper?
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
Paul M.
I have banned people from the site for anti-semitism before (”the Sentinel”).
If Atzmon was sayijg this stuff in any other context I would delete it all straight away
BUt - he is repsonding to an article about him.
That woouldn’t be enough in itself to let him post here, but bizarrely the SWP do not regard his anti-semitism as a proble, and some socialists have even posted in this thread dsying he isn’t an anti-semite.
So I think that some of his postings here are self-exposing him for the bigot he is - and hopefully this will cntribute to a rethink by those socialists who consort with him.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
#66 “very many people like my papers”
To the bottom of their jackboots.
Comment by goodwin sands — 20 November, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
I wonder whether Atzmon is a little like a third-division Sting or Bono. He has a musical talent and a fan base, which makes him think he has an audience for his views, rather than his music.
Atzmon’s politics, like, say, Sting’s are inconsequential. Both suffer from the delusion that success in one field means they have some kind of mastery over others - in this case politics.
That the SWP promote the empty-headed, and confused anti-semite, Atzmon, is no surprise. He is a musical talent, and he makes superficially good enough sounding political comments.
He plays at SWP events. Job done. The SWP can bask in Atzmon’s talent.
My personal feeling is that Atzmon’s politics should be treated in the me way as, say, Noel Gallagher’s. They are cocky bastards with nothing of positive consequence to say.
Comment by Lobby Ludd — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
I suggest reading this:
http://freethepeeps.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/either-gilad-is-70-or-tony-is-a-fool/#comment-41
Comment by thecutter — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
Oy oy oy Andy
can you suggest where the anti Semitism is?
can you support your bizarre inerpretation of my writing?
can you offer a hint, where this secular Jewish value system is hiding?
What is the text and who is the author?
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:17 pm
sorry Ludd, it doesn’t work like that….
try something else
or just tell us yourself a thing about the Secular Jewish value system
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
Gilad Atzmon said:
“sorry Ludd, it doesn’t work like that….
try something else
or just tell us yourself a thing about the Secular Jewish value system”
I’m sorry, but that means nothing whatsoever.
Stick with the day job, Gilad. That’s what people like about you.
Comment by Lobby Ludd — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
I asked Woolrich to tell us all what Godless secular Jewish culture is all about and guess what he came with a ‘post modern answer’ ☺
Unlike the rest of you he tried, here it is:
“Jewish secular culture - different things to different people. Culture and identity are necessarily fluid in the modern world”
WOW
I see what he means, for some it is the chicken soup, for others it is the Maza balls and some it go as far as the chopped liver… gottya Woolrich..
I tell you the truth Woolrich, Michael Rosen had been there before, he was actually slightly more advanced than you, he was referring to Yiddish… almost a good answer but then I realized that his Yiddish vocabulary is limited to Tukhes and Grepzen pretty disgusting I agree.
When I asked him where Yiddish culture lives today, he didn’t have much to offer.. it was actually me who had to remind him of Bashevis Zinger…
To cut a no story short:
Woolrich and the rest of you, Seemingly, you cannot support your argument.
You do not have a Jewish Secular Culture that goes beyond a few Jewish jokes, lokshen and mazza balls.
(this is OK, yet it is far from a political/ethical argument…)
You do not have a unique moral value system.
You have nothing uniquely Jewish to offer to the left , humanity or the Palestinians.
(Again this is OK but just stop pretending)
In fact you have very little to offer beyond your constant repetitive Krechzen…
Ha Meine Got, how could I forget, you can always label Atzmon as an anti Semite, Though, no one really takes you seriously it keeps you busy, it keeps you together. And this is indeed very important for you as far as I can see…
Comment by Gilad Atzmon — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:31 pm
The belittling of national consiousness by the use of bathos to mock cultural identifiers by Atzmon, is a remarkably similar argument to that from his soul mate on national identity issues, Martin Smith of the SWP. And who introduced Atzmon to playing at SWP events?
Fortunately not all SWP members are as politically illiterate in the national question as Martin Smith, as I have written before:
But it does seem that the extraodinary level of anti-semitism of Atzmon mocking cultural identifiers of Jewish consciousness reflects an ignorance of how people construct their sense of identity. And of course the sub-text with Atzmon is that secular Jewish identity is actualy more worthless than other forms of identity.
He is a nasty jew hater.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
Andy,
I think his self exposure is completed.
Comment by paulm — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:42 pm
good point.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
I have reopened the comments, to allow Tony Grrenstein to reply, because he was away when the storm broke, and he was the author of the original article:
TONY GREENSTEIN WRITES
Comment by Andy — 27 November, 2007 @ 10:55 am
And therefore when goodwin sands berates him for the fact that David Duke praises him, I would [not?] consider that, in and of itself, as proof that Atzmon’s politics are comparable to those of neo-Nazis.
Missing word?
My stance is the walks-like-a-duck test, which in this case is the steps-like-a-goose test. The US’s chief self-described racist finds his stance on The Jew resonates so well with Gilad Atzmon’s that he cannot praise Atzmon highly enough. That in itself demonstrates the depth of the case Atzmon has to answer. Not to Duke, whose mind won’t be changed, but to every legitimate antiracist who sees the Atzmon/Duke pas de deux and is alarmed by how well their stances dance together.
What we get from Atzmon (and his sock puppets) instead is — “oh, so America’s most famous living cross-burner declares we’re sympatico. Is that supposed to, you know, bother me?”
Well, that depends, Gilad. Do you have a moral grounding on racism that’s any firmer than the average rotted grapefruit?
In an ideal world Atzmon would now do the kind of painstaking self-examination of his stance to discover just why his discourse makes him so beloved of the I-hate-the-Jews set. (He wouldn’t have to dig very far.) But does anyone honestly expect him to attempt this, or believe he has the intellectual maturity to carry it through?
The other possibility, natürlich, is that he’s just thrilled by the attention of famous people, even if they’re famous monsters.
Comment by goodwin sands — 27 November, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
The US’s chief self-described racist finds his stance on The Jew resonates so well with Gilad Atzmon’s that he cannot praise Atzmon highly enough. That in itself demonstrates the depth of the case Atzmon has to answer.
I’m with Tony on this one - I wouldn’t lean too heavily on evidence like this. I’ve seen a Holocaust-denial site which reprinted Lenni Brenner’s work and praised Brenner highly, with the caveat that Brenner persisted (alas!) in believing in the reality of the Holocaust. I don’t think that means Brenner has any case to answer.
Comment by Phil — 27 November, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
I am closing comments agina here becasue someone is posting libellous attacks on Tony Greenstein
Comment by Andy — 27 November, 2007 @ 6:13 pm