Mearsheimer responds to Goldberg's latest smear

From Foreign Policy:

Ever since John Mearsheimer and I began writing about the Israel lobby, some of our critics have leveled various personal charges against us. These attacks rarely addressed the substance of what we wrote -- a tacit concession that both facts and logic were on our side -- but instead accused us of being anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists. They used these false charges to try to discredit and/or marginalize us, and to distract people from the important issues of U.S. Middle East policy that we had raised.

The latest example of this tactic is a recent blog post from Jeffrey Goldberg, where he accused my co-author of endorsing a book by an alleged Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer. Goldberg has well-established record of making things up about us, and this latest episode is consistent with his usual approach. I asked Professor Mearsheimer if he wanted to respond to Goldberg's sally, and he sent the following reply.

John Mearsheimer writes:

In a certain sense, it is hard not to be impressed by the energy and imagination that Jeffrey Goldberg devotes to smearing Steve Walt and me. Although he clearly disagrees with our views about U.S.-Israel relations and the role of the Israel lobby, he does not bother to engage what we actually wrote in any meaningful way. Indeed, given what he writes about us, I am not even sure he has read our book or related articles. Instead of challenging the arguments and evidence that we presented, his modus operandi is to misrepresent and distort our views, in a transparent attempt to portray us as rabid anti-Semites.

His latest effort along these lines comes in a recent blog post, where he seizes on a dust jacket blurb I wrote for a new book by Gilad Atzmon titled The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics. Here is what I said in my blurb:

Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of their 'Jewishness.' Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism (blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering (the threat of another Holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim. As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish. The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.

The book, as my blurb makes clear, is an extended meditation on Jewish identity in the Diaspora and how it relates to the Holocaust, Israel, and Zionism. There is no question that the book is provocative, both in terms of its central argument and the overly hot language that Atzmon sometimes uses. But it is also filled with interesting insights that make the reader think long and hard about an important subject. Of course, I do not agree with everything that he says in the book -- what blurber does? -- but I found it thought provoking and likely to be of considerable interest to Jews and non-Jews, which is what I said in my brief comment.

Goldberg maintains that Atzmon is a categorically reprehensible person, and accuses him of being a Holocaust denier and an apologist for Hitler. These are two of the most devastating charges that can be leveled against anyone. According to Goldberg, the mere fact that I blurbed Atzmon's book is decisive evidence that I share Atzmon's supposedly odious views. This indictment of me is captured in the title of Goldberg's piece: "John Mearsheimer Endorses a Hitler Apologist and Holocaust Revisionist."

This charge is so ludicrous that it is hard to know where to start my response. But let me begin by noting that I have taught countless University of Chicago students over the years about the Holocaust and about Hitler's role in it. Nobody who has been in my classes would ever accuse me of being sympathetic to Holocaust deniers or making excuses for what Hitler did to European Jews. Not surprisingly, those loathsome charges have never been leveled against me until Goldberg did so last week.

Equally important, Gilad Atzmon is neither a Holocaust denier nor an apologist for Hitler. Consider the following excerpt from The Wandering Who?

As much as I was a sceptic youngster, I was also horrified by the Holocaust. In the 1970s Holocaust survivors were part of our social landscape. They were our neighbours, we met them in our family gatherings, in the classroom, in politics, in the corner shop. The dark numbers tattooed on their white arms never faded away. It always had a chilling effect. . . . It was actually the internalization of the meaning of the Holocaust that transformed me into a strong opponent of Israel and Jewish-ness. It is the Holocaust that eventually made me a devoted supporter of Palestinian rights, resistance and the Palestinian right of return" (pp. 185-186).

It seems unequivocally clear to me from those sentences that Atzmon firmly believes that the Holocaust occurred and was a horrific tragedy. I cannot find evidence in his book or in his other writings that indicate he "traffics in Holocaust denial."

The real issue for Atzmon -- and this is reflected in the excerpt from his blog post that Goldberg quotes from -- is how the Holocaust is interpreted and used by the Jewish establishment. Atzmon has three complaints. He believes that it is used to justify Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians and to fend off criticism of Israel. This is an argument made by many other writers, including former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, historian Peter Novick, and political scientist Norman Finkelstein. Atzmon also rejects the claim that the Holocaust is exceptional, which is a position that other respected scholars have held. There have been other genocides in world history, after all, and this whole issue was actively debated in the negotiations that led to the building of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Whatever one thinks of Atzmon's position on this subject, it is hardly beyond the pale.

Finally, Atzmon is angry about the fact that it is difficult to raise certain questions about the causes and the conduct of the Holocaust without being personally attacked. These are all defensible if controversial positions to hold, which is not to say one has to agree with any of them. But in no way is he questioning that the Holocaust happened or denying its importance. In fact, his view is clear from one of Atzmon's sentences that Goldberg quotes: "We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place." Note that Atzmon is talking about "the holocaust" in a way that makes it clear he has no doubts about its occurrence, and the passage from The Wandering Who? cited above makes it clear that he has no doubts about its importance or its tragic dimensions; he merely believes it should be seen in a different way. Again, one need not agree with Atzmon to recognize that Goldberg has badly misrepresented his position.

There is also no evidence that I could find in The Wandering Who? to support Goldberg's claim that Atzmon is an apologist for Hitler or that he believes "Jews persecuted Hitler" and in so doing helped trigger the Holocaust. There is actually little discussion of Hitler in Atzmon's book, and the only discussion of interactions between Hitler and the Jews concerns the efforts of German Zionists to work out a modus vivendi with the Nazis. (pp. 162-165) This is why Goldberg is forced to go to one of Atzmon's blog posts to make the case that he is an apologist for Hitler.

Before I examine the substance of that charge, there is an important issue that needs to be addressed directly. Goldberg's indictment of Atzmon does not rely on anything that he wrote in The Wandering Who? Indeed, Goldberg's blog post is silent on whether he has actually read the book. If he did read it, he apparently could not find any evidence to support his indictment of Atzmon. Instead, he relied exclusively on evidence culled from Atzmon's own blog postings. That is why Goldberg's assault on me steers clear of criticizing Atzmon's book, which is what I blurbed. In short, he falsely accuses me of lending support to a Holocaust denier and defender of Hitler on the basis of writings that I did not read and did not comment upon.

This tactic puts me in a difficult position. I was asked to review Atzmon's book and see whether I would be willing to blurb it. This is something I do frequently, and in every case I focus on the book at hand and not on the personality of the author or their other writings. In other words, I did not read any of Atzmon's blog postings before I wrote my blurb. And just for the record, I have not met him and did not communicate with him before I was asked to review The Wandering Who? I read only the book and wrote a blurb that deals with it alone.

Goldberg, however, has shifted the focus onto what Atzmon has written on his blog. I discuss a couple of examples below, but I will not defend his blog output in detail for two reasons. First, I do not know what Atzmon may have said in all of his past blog posts and other writings or in the various talks that he has given over the years. Second, what he says in those places is not relevant to what I did, which was simply to read and react to his book.

Let me now turn to the specific claim that Atzmon is an "apologist for Hitler." Again, I am somewhat reluctant to do this, because this charge forces me to defend what Atzmon said in one of his blog posts. But given the prominence of the charge in Goldberg's indictment of Atzmon (and me), I cannot let it pass.

Plus, I see that Walter Russell Mead, who is also fond of smearing Steve Walt and me, has put this charge up in bright lights on his own blog. Picking up on Goldberg's original post, Mead describes Atzmon's argument this way: "poor Adolf Hitler's actions against German Jews only came after US Jews called a boycott on German goods following Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor. Gosh -- if it weren't for those pushy, aggressive Jews and their annoying boycotts, the Holocaust might not have happened!"

It is hard to imagine any sane person making such an argument, and Atzmon never does. Goldberg refers to a blog post that Atzmon wrote on March 25, 2010, written in response to news at the time that AIPAC had "decided to mount pressure" on President Obama. After describing what was happening with Obama, Atzmon notes that this kind of behavior is hardly unprecedented. In his words, "Jewish lobbies certainly do not hold back when it comes to pressuring states, world leaders and even superpowers." There is no question that this statement is accurate and not even all that controversial; Tom Friedman said as much in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago.

In the second half of this post, Atzmon says that AIPAC's behavior reminds him of the March 1933 Jewish boycott of German goods, which preceded Hitler's decision on March 28, 1933 to boycott Jewish stores and goods. His basic point is that the Jewish boycott had negative consequences, which it did. In Atzmon's narrative -- and this is a very important theme in his book -- Jews are not simply passive victims of other people's actions. On the contrary, he believes Jews have considerable agency and their actions are not always wise. One can agree or disagree with his views about the wisdom of the Jewish boycott -- and I happen to think he's wrong about it -- but he is not arguing that the Jews were "persecuting Hitler" and that this alleged "persecution" led to the Holocaust. In fact, he says nothing about the Holocaust in his post and he certainly does not justify in any way the murder of six million Jews.

Let me make one additional point about Goldberg's mining of Atzmon's blog posts. Goldberg ends his attack on me with the following quotation from a Feb. 19 blog post by Atzmon: "I believe that from [a] certain ideological perspective, Israel is actually far worse than Nazi Germany." That quotation certainly makes Atzmon look like he has lost his mind and that nothing he has written could be trusted. But Goldberg has misrepresented what Atzmon really said, which is one of his standard tactics. Specifically, he quotes only part of a sentence from Atzmon's blog post; but when you look at the entire sentence, you see that Atzmon is making a different, and far more nuanced point. The entire sentence reads: "Indeed, I believe that from [a] certain ideological perspective, Israel is actually far worse than Nazi Germany, for unlike Nazi Germany, Israel is a democracy and that implies that Israeli citizens are complicit in Israeli atrocities." This is not an argument I would make, but what Atzmon is saying is quite different from the way Goldberg portrays it.

Finally, let me address the charge that Atzmon himself is an anti-Semite and a self-hating Jew. The implication of this accusation, of course, is that I must be an anti-Semite too (I can't be a self-hating Jew) because I agreed to blurb Atzmon's book. I do not believe that Atzmon is an anti-Semite, although that charge is thrown around so carelessly these days that it has regrettably lost much of its meaning. If one believes that anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite, then Atzmon clearly fits in that category. But that definition is foolish -- no country is perfect or above criticism-and not worth taking seriously.

The more important and interesting issue is whether Atzmon is a self-hating Jew. Here the answer is unequivocally yes. He openly describes himself in this way and he sees himself as part of a long dissident tradition that includes famous figures such as Marx and Spinoza. What is going on here?

The key to understanding Atzmon is that he rejects the claim that Jews are the "Chosen People." His main target, as he makes clear at the start of the book, is not with Judaism per se or with people who "happen to be of Jewish origin." Rather, his problem is with "those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits." Or to use other words of his: "I will present a harsh criticism of Jewish politics and identity ... This book doesn't deal with Jews as a people or ethnicity." (pp. 15-16)

In other words, Atzmon is a universalist who does not like the particularism that characterizes Zionism and which has a rich tradition among Jews and any number of other groups. He is the kind of person who intensely dislikes nationalism of any sort. Princeton professor Richard Falk captures this point nicely in his own blurb for the book, where he writes: "Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from hard-core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity."

Atzmon's basic point is that Jews often talk in universalistic terms, but many of them think and act in particularistic terms. One might say they talk like liberals but act like nationalists. Atzmon will have none of this, which is why he labels himself a self-hating Jew. He fervently believes that Jews are not the "Chosen People" and that they should not privilege their "Jewish-ness" over their other human traits. Moreover, he believes that one must choose between Athens and Jerusalem, as they "can never be blended together into a lucid and coherent worldview." (p. 86) One can argue that his perspective is dead wrong, or maintain that it is a lovely idea in principle but just not the way the real world works. But it is hardly an illegitimate or ignoble way of thinking about humanity.

To take this matter a step further, Atzmon's book is really all about Jewish identity. He notes that "the disappearance of the ghetto and its maternal qualities" in the wake of the French Revolution caused "an identity crisis within the largely assimilated Jewish society." (p. 104) He believes that this crisis, about which there is an extensive literature, is still at the center of Jewish life today. In effect, Atzmon is telling the story of how he wrestled with his own identity over time and what he thinks is wrong with how most Jews self-identify today. It is in this context that he discusses what he calls the "Holocaust religion," Zionism, and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Again, to be perfectly clear, he has no animus toward Judaism as a religion or with individuals who are Jewish by birth. Rather, his target is the tribalism that he believes is common to most Jews, and I might add, to most other peoples as well. Atzmon focuses on Jews for the obvious reason that he is Jewish and is trying to make sense of his own identity.

In sum, Goldberg's charge that Atzman is a Holocaust denier or an apologist for Hitler is baseless. Nor is Atzmon an anti-Semite. He has controversial views for sure and he sometimes employs overly provocative language. But there is no question in my mind that he has written a fascinating book that, as I said in my blurb, "should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike." Regarding Goldberg's insinuation that I have any sympathy for Holocaust denial and am an anti-Semite, it is just another attempt in his longstanding effort to smear Steve Walt and me.

Pictures that speak a million words

Get ready for another Iraq whitewash

From Gilad Atzmon

The Jerusalem Post reported on 25 November that Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics [Sir Lawrence Freedman and Sir Martin Gilbert] to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

"It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

The former ambassador also said that having two historians in a panel of five "seems a lot" and also questioned the Jewish academics' credentials.

In December 2004 Sir Martin, while pointing out that the “war on terror” was not a third world war, wrote that Bush and Blair “may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill” – an eccentric opinion that would seem to rule him out as a member of the committee. Sir Lawrence is the reputed architect of the “Blair doctrine” of humanitarian intervention, which was invoked in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

To read the full article, click here.

Urgent statement by anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews

Statement by Neturei Karta: How long will Jewish and non-Jewish leaders who claim the mantle of civilization and morality remain silent in the face of the ongoing state terrorism practiced by the Zionist state against the Palestinian People, most visibly today in Gaza, where the Zionists believe they can starve the 
Palestinians into submission in violation of all tenets of international law, all religious values in general, INCLUDING the values of the Jewish faith???!!

Saying NO to the hunters of Atzmon

Note from the Editor of Redress Information & Analysis
We are publishing the article below in solidarity with our friends at Indymedia UK, who have been subjected to a vicious campaign of harassment by a narcissistic group of dysfunctional Judaeo-centric paranoids for refusing to censor the musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner Gilad Atzmon. The article was written by the Administrator of Indymedia UK and is also published here.

--

There has been a long running war of attrition by a group who operate under the banner of Jews against Zionism against Gilad Atzmon, who describes himself as “an Israeli born, ex Israeli, Ex Jew, Hebrew speaking Palestinian”.The war began after Gilad wrote an article, provocatively entitled The Protocols of the Elders Of London, which railed against the way some JAZ members had treated Israel Shamir.

In the essay, Atzmon outlined the behaviours that some members the group had employed against Shamir, and identified some of the leading protagonists. Since then the protagonists appear to have been out to get Atzmon, and those that they associate with him. They are using exactly the same tactics that Atzmon described:

They demand the cleansing of Shamir. They insist upon ruining his intellectual career or at the very least, his reputation. They would use any possible manipulative strategy to have him thrown out of DYR, which is the first step towards sending him beyond the pale.

In October 2007, I found myself inadvertantly involved in the conflict, as a fairly long term admin of Indymedia uk, a site which is part of the global Indymedia network, and is closely aligned to the anarchist and anti-capitalism movements in the UK.

I spent about 6 months in Nablus, as an ISMer during 2002/3, and since my return to London have had involvement with a number of groups who form part of the spectrum that makes up the Palestinian solidarity movement in the UK. I have met some of the protagonists, and have heard others speak at public meetings. I have been involved in campaigns with some. I have also tried to keep update with developments in Palestine, and to read progressive articles on the situation. In doing so, I became aware of the campaign being waged against Atzmon by the protagonists, and following on from that began reading articles by him.

I have never met Gilad, and it was only after the campaign came to Indymedia uk that I have had an exchange of emails with him. I guess that I didn’t really understand the full implications of the protagonists’ campaign until Tony Greenstein contacted Indymedia to demand that an article by Atzmon, which had been sitting on the Indymedia uk site without any comments or complaints for about 2 months. Prior to this he had left comments under the article itself.

This contact turned out to be the first shots in a new battle in the war of attrition that Tony Greenstein and his JAZ friends have been conducting against Atzmon. I intend to use the blog to archive as much relevant documentaion of this particular battle, so that it is easily accessible. I have a feeling that it might be useful to the next group or organisation that gets dragged into this war, and when that happens I hope they find this, and make use of it. It also gives me an opportunity to explain where I stand on matters, and to give my side of the story. I believe that there is every likelihood that Greenstein and his friends will seek to drag my name through the mud, will label me an anti-semite, will suggest that I am a holocaust denier, and many other horrible things.

At the end of the day, Tony Greenstein, like myself, Atzmon, and the rest of the cast of characters that you will meet as you refight the battle scene by scene, are all human, are all fallible, and all make mistakes. Some of us are aware that we have shortcomings, and try to reflect on our behaviour and to change it when we realise that we are doing destructive and hurtful things. That’s how I try to live to my life, and I think Gilad attempts to do so to. We don’t always get it right. I’ve yet to see any signs that Tony Greenstein does anything except rampage destructively and blindly through life, attacking anything and everything that he does not agree with. I think it sad that he does not realise how horrible the archive of efforts make him look.

So, let me be clear. I am against fascism and Nazism. I am against all forms of racism and discrimination. This includes any form of Judeaphobia, which I prefer to the term anti-semitism, because it seems to me that the charge of anti-semitism has been so abused that it is no longer a useful term. Essentially it has become a term that is used to attack opponents of “Zionism in practice,” the implementation of an ideology from a long ago era, which has resulted in the dispossession, incarceration and deaths of many Palestinians. Many Jewish people have died as a result of it as well.

In fact Greenstein himself noted in his first email:

On most occasions accusations of anti-Semitism, especially by Zionists against those supporting the Palestinians are a form of defamation. In this case they are unfortunately true.

I think the way in which Mr. Greenstein has conducted himself throughout his war of attrition makes it impossible to accept him as a neutral arbiter, and therefore I don’t think his judgement can be trusted. I think it is necessary for each individual who wishes to pronounce on the alleged antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon to read his arguments in their entirety and to make up their own minds.

I am aware that Atzmon is extremely provocative at times, and is quite capable of being offensive. I suspect he has regrets about the way that he has worded things, and I know of at leat one ocassion where he has edited his text, when he realises that it might be misread. He has also touched on some very sensitive subjects and not always in the most sensitive way.

He has discussed the issue of the pro-Israel lobby in terms that have caused some to accuse him of repetition of one of the canards of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is an issue that is impossible to discuss without having that accusation thrown at you, as the rather conservative academics Walt and Mearsheimer have come to discover. However, W+Ms work has forced the issue into the open, and as I have said in one of the emails relating to this discussion, I think that it has to be possible to reflect on the power of the pro-Israel lobby. It makes no sense to me to say that because some forgery from 1903 claimed that Jews were involved in a conspiracy to run the world (I have to admit I’ve never read the damn thing), that there can never be any study of the power structures of Zionism, which include organisations like AIPAC, the ADL and the AJC.

However, here Atzmon can be seen as extremely provocative and offensive:

Let’s review some current typical Zionist arguments:

The ‘Elders of Zion’ syndrome: Zionists complain that Jews continue to be associated with a conspiracy to rule the world via political lobbies, media and money.

Is the suggestion of conspiracy really an empty accusation? The following list is presented with pride in several Jewish American websites.

Jews in Bush’s Administration:

Ari Fleischer
White House Press Secretary
Josh Bolten
Deputy Chief of Staff
Ken Melman
White House Political Director
David Frum
Speechwriter
Brad Blakeman
White House Director of Scheduling
Dov Zakheim
Undersecretary of Defense (Controller)
Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary of Defense
I. Lewis Libby
Chief of Staff to the Vice President
Adam Goldman
White House Liaison to the Jewish Community
Chris Gersten
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and
Families at HHS
Elliott Abrams
Director of the National Security Council’s Office for Democracy, Human
Rights and International Operations
Mark D. Weinberg
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs
Douglas Feith
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Michael Chertoff
Head of the Justice Department’s criminal division
Daniel Kurtzer
Ambassador to Israel
Cliff Sobel
Ambassador to the Netherlands
Stuart Bernstein
Ambassador to Denmark
Nancy Brinker
Ambassador to Hungary
Frank Lavin
Ambassador to Singapore
Ron Weiser
Ambassador to Slovakia
Mel Sembler
Ambassador to Italy
Martin Silverstein
Ambassador to Uruguay
Jay Lefkowitz
Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy
Council

Let me assure you, in Clinton’s administration the situation was even worse. Even though the Jews only make up 1.9 per cent of the country’s population, an astounding 56 per cent of Clinton’s appointees were Jews. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

We have to ask ourselves what motivates American Jews to gain such political power. Is it a genuine care for American interests? Soon, following the growing number of American casualties in Iraq, American people will start to ask themselves this very question. Since America currently enjoys the status of the world’s only super power and since all the Jews listed above declare themselves as devoted Zionists, we must begin to take the accusation that Zionists are trying to control the world very seriously. It is beyond doubt that Zionists, the most radical, racist and nationalistic Jews around, have already managed to turn America into an Israeli mission force. The world’s number one super power is there to support the Jewish state’s wealth and security matters. The one-sided pro-Zionist take on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the American veto against every ‘anti-Israeli’ UN resolution, the war against Iraq and now the militant intentions against Syria, all prove beyond doubt that it is Zionist interests that America is serving. 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 (in fact Zionists) do control the world. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least. Whether the Americans enjoy the deterioration of their state’s affairs will no doubt be revealed soon.

The bit that I have quoted in bold is the bit that is usually quoted. Because that is one of the things that the protagonists do, they quote partially and out of context, and then the thing looks pretty damn rancid. In the context of the full article, I do not think it is intentional anti-semitism - and this is what I find when I trace back the more outrageous snippets that are constantly lumped together by his attackers. The fact that the out of context snippet could then be abused out of context by genuine anti-semites does not, in my view, invalidate the article. I find that when I try to understand the whole context the statements make some sort of sense. Sometimes the articles require several readings before I feel I’ve come to understand them - maybe I’m just really obtuse - and I haven’t found a way of judging Atzmon’s writings without some effort.

Now, to be honest with you, I do not know enough about the realities of American Lobbying (presumably only a very few lobbyists and politicians know the real truth of their own actions), so I cannot say that I agree with Atzmon’s thesis that the pro-Israel lobby is running the world by virtue of the power that they exert through powerful organisations such as AIPAC, the AJC and the ADL exert in Washington. I do know that the AJC ran an ad in the Financial Times:

The advert AJC posted in the FT showed a map of Europe, Africa and Asia centered on a blacked-out Iran and indicated the current and projected range of Iran’s missile capacity. It asked the question: “Suppose Iran one day gives nuclear devices to terrorists. Can anyone within range of Iran’s missiles feel safe?”

I can understand why Atzmon believes the Israel-Lobby is controlling the USA, but I don’t know if he is right or wrong. Perhaps now there will be a fuller public debate of the issue, so that it is possible to start deciding for oneself if Atzmon is close to correct, or way off beam on this one. It also seems to me that the Lobby is starting to target Europe for its activities, so we may discover more along the way.

I think that Atzmon should have the right to express his views on the matter, and that those views should be judged within the full context in which they are made.

In order to prevent this post becoming impossibly long, I’m not going to go through any of Mr. Greenstein’s long lists. Some of the other allegations are discussed in emails to follow.

Many of the emails I post are from the Indymedia UK features list, which is a publicly archived list where moderation decisions are made. Some are emails between myself and Mr. Greenstein and his fellow attackers. I actually don’t care whether they want them published or not. They weren’t private except for one sent to me by the editor of Jews sans frontieres and it is my view that it is indicative of the tactics this group is willing to employ, and brings into question Tony Greenstein’s claim that his war of attrition is political and not personal, and that “personal abuse is entirely Atzmon’s forte.”:

Its one thesis of his that is patently untrue.

Here is the email from Mark Elf - sent to me (Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:45:17 +0000 (GMT) ):

You “presume from the cc’s on Tony’s email that you are working
together as a group on this one.” Are you fucking mad? When you are cc’d into an email promoting viagra or penis enlargement, do you presume that you are working as a group with the sender?

You useless piece of shit. And you complain of bullying tactics whilst betraying a woeful ignorance of racism.

What a wanker you are, whoever you are, ftp.

FTP is a loyalist slogan by the way. It stands for Fuck the Provos. Since you host sectarianism (at best) you might think it a happy coincidence.

You useless wanker, honestly. I can’t believe what you claim to believe. I was going to copy all the other cc’s on this list but, since there are some on the list I don’t know, it wouldn’t be right. It would look like bullying, you wanker! Sorry to be repetitive but there’s nothing worse than an idiot who thinks they’re clever.

What a fuckwit. I’m trying to get my head around this. I blog but I don’t do much surfing. You run or speak for a site that claims to want to “free the people.” I take that to mean all people. You host an article by Gilad Atzmon that states that Israel should have learned from what it was that made Jews unpopular enough to get millions of Jews killed by the nazis. Atzmon’s beef used to be that non-religious people who identify as Jews are zionists since they are asserting, not an identity but, supremacy. But now apparently whatever it was that Israelis have to learn was what it was that made Jews unpopular enough for even those Jews who had converted to Christianity or other religions or who never claimed that they were Jewish, to be killed. So there you have a Christian sitting in church with his or her yellow star. Suddenly they are yanked out of the church by the gestapo and marched off to a concentration camp. They did something to make themselves unpopular?
And the colonial settler State of Israel should learn something from that?

Maybe the last of the colonial settler states has learned that it’s a jolly good idea to have people like Atzmon compare it to the Jews who perished in the holocaust no matter what they did, no matter how they behaved, no matter what they claimed to be, because then they can say that anti-zionism is antisemitism.

But then all that (not so) subtlety is going to be lost on a wanker who believes that people cc’d into an email must be working as a group with the sender.

There are two more specifics in your email that I would like to address since you have written to me out of the blue to complain of my bullying tactics.

You have pasted a copy of an email from a Steve Cohen. Cohen, you might know, is a Jewish surname. Not all people with that surname are Jews but it’s a safe bet usually that someone with that name is Jewish. That does not mean that other Jews are responsible for the email he sent nor are people who are cc’d by someone that also has a Jewish surname.

You quote Deborah Maccoby too. Another Jewish surname. You suggest that Tony Greenstein and all of those he cc’d are responsible for her email and are responsible for any hypocritical departure from what she said regarding “silencing” or not. Individuals who are Jews can still write as individuals.

I have to say that you are not only defending this “free the people” site’s duty to post antisemitic (arguably, you say) articles but you have given vent to it on your own account, at least twice in yoru ludicrous email.

I’m not seeking a reply from a useless piece of shit but just in case you do reply, keep it “off list” you big bully.

And I say that this is unacceptable behaviour. I’m not prepared to keep quite about Mark Elf’s abuse, I don’t respect it as a form of political action, and I have already informed him it will be published. Since I made it clear to them that I would publish what I like, when I like, the emails have stopped rolling in, so presumably they realise that this kind of action isn’t actually acceptable.

I say that it is time Moshe Machover, Tony Greenstein, Deborah Maccoby, Mark Elf and friends take a time for reflection, that they think long and hard about whether their war of attrition is serving any useful purpose, about whether it is in the best interests of the Palestinian solidarity movement that they act in this manner, and that they try and understand how it appears that the ideological mindset they seem to have adopted, seems to allow them to justify using using the exact same methods of intimidation that the zionist lobby uses to attack those that do not agree with the implementation of ‘Zionism in practice’ and the horrors that entails for Palestinians.

I also say that anyone who is, like I was, dragged into the war of attrition, should be aware that the group has used the same tactics as are commonly used by the zionist lobby in the past, and should be on the look-out for them happening again.

If the group cannot find a more reasonable way of dealing with groups that they say they are supportive of, if they do not stop hounding and attempting to banish and silence their political adversaries, then I say they can FUCK OFF! I want nothing to do with them. Hopefully others will take the same line.

Read on through the documents and make your own mind up about what is going on here.

To comment you have to register. This is to prevent anonymous trolls and to encourage everyone to take responsibility for what they say, and how they say it.

This post has gone on long enough. I’m aware that there is loads more I need to clarify, and once all the stuff is posted, I will write more.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized. .

Comment

• jblankfort | November 12, 2007 at 7:03 am
THIS IS A CORRECTED VERSION:

Those seeking to censor Gilad Atzmon are, as you suggest, no better than Abe Foxman because even though they claim to be “anti-zionists,” a claim I will accept, they are, like Foxman, Jewish tribalists at heart as Atzmon has previously identified them and that is why their collective and individual response to him for not accepting the official Zionist line on the Nazi’s Juedocide is identical to the vicious, spitting image of their brother tribalists who happen to be Zionists.

As for Gilad’s claim that the Jews are out to control the world, it should be clear to every thinking person –excluding your traditional Jewish Trotskyists–that the Zionist lobby AKA the American Jewish Political Establishment has clearly and long ago hijacked what is left of the American democratic political process and were, in fact, the big winners in the 2006 elections which, ironically, were against the war in Iraq that was orchestrated by Jewish neocons and the lobby on Israel’s behalf.

As a result of the vote, pro-Israel zealot, Nancy Pelosi appointed a Jewish pro-Israel hawk to the chair of every committee and subscommittee in the House that has anything to deal with Israel, the Middle East, or Foreign Aid, giving the lobby more power than it ever had before.
And who or what have been fiercely lobbying for an attack on Iran for more than a few years but the same cast that got the US into Iraq but because what passes for the Left is the US is so besotted with Trotskyists like Brenner and Ralph Schoenman as well as soft core Zionists, you have to read academics like Mearsheimer and Walt, or true radicals like James Petras to know it.

Funny thing, it was Lenni Brenner who first taught be about the Democratic Party and how it was controlled by the Zionists but I guess as he has grown old his tribal feelings have intruded on what once appeared to be a fine intelligence. Now, he is merely pathetic.

Losing focus

Peace and justice movement in Britain at crossroad*

By Ramzy Baroud

Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, it was a very familiar encounter: Israeli soldiers storming our house accompanied by shouts of terror and a barrage of insults. Such recollections make me shudder to this day. On frequent raids, as soldiers pounded on our door demanding entry, my father would always ask in a trembling voice, “Who is it?” The answer was always the same; “Yahoud,” they would say.

So naturally, I grew up making the association between “Yahoud”, the Arabic word for “Jews”, and the horror my family and I had experienced. When my cousin Wael was shot dead in his teenage years, while on his way to study with me — it was the “Yahoud” who killed him. When my childhood friend Raed Munis was shot repeatedly as he dug a grave for a neighbour of ours, shot just an hour earlier, he was killed by the “Yahoud”. When my mother was struck in the chest repeatedly by the butt of an Israeli soldier’s machine gun, a beating that led to her untimely death 50 days later, that too was carried out by the “Yahoud”.

Every inch of land that was stolen from Palestinians in the last 40 years of occupation was done in the name of the “Yahoud” and their security; every settlement erected on a poor Palestinian farmer’s orchard, every life that was taken, every brick of every wall that was built and continues to be constructed over confiscated Palestinian land in defiance of international law was also done in the name of the “Yahoud”. Palestinians, thus — most Arabs and Muslims and others as well — hold the “Yahoud” responsible for their plight, not out of their ingrained and inherent anti-Semitism, as some so shrewdly or naively choose to believe, but because on the basis of its Jewishness Israel has excused all of its inexcusable actions. If someone is to blame for this, it is Israel, not its detractors. It’s as simple as that.

But, of course, it’s not always as simple as that. When I moved to the US, I realized, correctly that the term “Yahoud” is not befitting, for the old connotations of the name cannot be accepted in Western societies where Jews have historically been a recurring victim, and where a large number of activists and fellow writers, of which many became close friends of mine, are also Jewish. A distinction between a Jew and a Zionist was indeed an imperative, though not always easy, for Israel extorts much needed financial, political, moral and other forms of support, relying primarily on Jewish constituents in North America and Western Europe. Many of the latter demonstrate their allegiance to Israel in more ways than one can recall. Unfortunately, in the minds of many, being Jewish requires one to unquestionably support the “Jewish State”. Most publications that define themselves as Jewish in the Western hemisphere seem more absorbed by Israeli politics, Israel’s security and so forth, than engaged in their own political and cultural realms. The relationship has in fact become so blurred that it’s becoming nearly impossible and most confounding to set apart the anti-occupation activist from the anti-Zionist from the anti-Semitic.

However, instead of confronting the Zionist scheme that has brought such untold harm to the image of one of the greatest and oldest monotheistic faiths by holding Israel and its associates to account, there is a growing and alarming trend where members of the peace and justice movement have themselves fallen into the ominous trap: engaging in most ruinous and consuming scuffles, isolating members and entire groups for allegedly being anti-Semitic. While taking a moral stance against racism in all of its forms is a requisite for any genuine peace and justice activist, the intense debate in some instances is reaching such grievous points that is threatening to tear apart the peace and justice movement.

A most notable example is the quarrel in the United Kingdom between members of Jews against Zionism and those of Deir Yassin Remembered; the former, accusing members of the latter of anti-Semitism, is endorsing a motion at an upcoming conference of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that would ostracize the Deir Yassin group from the peace and justice movement. Members of both groups have spoken out strongly against the maltreatment of Palestinians in the past and both have a lot to offer PSC and its various activities. However, the motion and the entire episode is a continuation of an alarming trend that began in the US several years ago, and has consumed activists, distracting them from the real fight. It also ought to be noted that, as far as Israel is concerned, any criticism of its occupation of the West Bank, no matter how polite or subtle, is an unforgivable form of anti-Semitism; thus there is no need for any member of the peace and justice movement to exacerbate the Israeli witch hunt. Indeed, Israel is more than capable of prolonging such campaigns on its own.

There are many Palestinian children who are still huddling inside their homes in fear of the encroaching tanks and the hordes of unforgiving soldiers, who continue to commit untold atrocities in the name of the “Jewish State”. It’s those depraved individuals and the government that has assigned them to their vile mission, who deserve to be isolated and labelled; it’s Israel who must be held to account, by Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and groups alike, to end its exploitation of the Jewish people and their religion.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 45 per cent of Palestinians in the occupied territories are food insecure; the Israeli wall is snaking around the West Bank at an astonishing speed; human rights violations are committed against vulnerable Palestinians with impunity in broad daylight with tacit or explicit support from various Western countries led by the United States.

There is no time to be wasted: all energies must be channeled in so prudent a way to stop Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians and to end the occupation. I plead to all of you, to work for peace, to redress injustice or at least to do nothing that would jeopardize the work of the peace and justice movement, either in Britain or anywhere else.

*This article was first published in Arab News.