Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon from the US Palestinian Community Network
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Not Quite “Ordinary Human Beings” — Anti-Imperialism and the Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon
Zero Authors’ Statement on Gilad Atzmon
By Lenin’s Tomb
We are writing to express our concern that Zero Books, a vibrant, radical publisher, has made a terrible error of judgment in publishing a manuscript by the Jazz musician Gilad Atzmon. The book, entitled The Wandering Who?, is a discussion of ‘Jewish identity’ in the light of global issues such as Israel-Palestine, and the financial crisis. But the nature of Atzmon’s political engagement on ‘Jewish identity’ makes him at best a dubious authority on such matters. His central concern is to describe and oppose “Jewish power”, as he sees it. Thus, in one piece complaining about the presence of Jews in the Clinton and Bush administrations, he argues:
“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? … 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, by proxy.”[1]
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“We have heard the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. I don’t like this comparison because I really think that Israel is far worse than Nazi Germany.”
Those are the words of Gilad Atzmon, a little known expatriate Israeli who divides his time between working as a jazz musician and campaigning against the Jewish community in all its manifestations. He has written that he not only opposes Israel and Zionism, but any Jewish collective enterprise, including even “Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist networks”. In fact, he describes himself as someone who is proud of being a “self-hating Jew”.
History teaches us that the most universally inspiring Jews, I mean, those who contributed something to humanity rather than merely to their own people or even just themselves, were motivated by some form of self hate. The first names that come to mind are Christ, Spinoza and Marx.
Of the Holocaust, Atzmon has written that he not only doubts it occurred as historians and survivors describe, he thinks that what did occur was justified.
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