You would be hard pushed to find a more virulently anti-Semitic site than The Radical Press of Canada. Jewish conspiracy theories ooze from every pore.
There is for example Brother Daniel’s incisive article entitled (what else?!)
AMERICA IS RUN BY JEWS
By Brother Nathanael KapnerBrother Nathanael bronathanael@yahoo.com
AMERICA IS NOW A JEW-RUN NATION. Here is a list of the prominent Jews who run America:
I’ll skip the list but I think you’ll get the message.
Elsewhere we learn that ‘Judaism is a "chameleon" culture/religion. It "becomes" whatever is necessary in order to deceive and trick non-Jews’
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
Or take another of the endless articles about Jews:
Hate and Endless Anathemas Upon All Our Goyim Heads
By Patrick Grimm
February 16, 2008
From this tome of wisdom and wit we learn that
‘As much as Jews try to pretend they subscribe to a "free to be you and me" type of multi-culti Kumbayah group-hugging Politics of Meaning, this is only a façade, a mugging for the cameras, to obscure the deep and abiding unspoken hate and endless anathemas they daily declare upon ALL of our Goyim heads. As an escapee from the Jewish prison cult of haughty, hooked-sixer-schnozzed personalities, Israel Shamir explains, Jews see non-Jews as "children of a lesser God." In other words, we are throwaways, we are urchins and ratty ragamuffins…. Understand one thing. Jews have not been victimized more than non-Jews. They just own all the newspapers so that they are able to tell the world if one of their own gets a paper cut or nicks himself with a knife and blames it on a Muslim or spray-paints a swastika on a Jew’s headstone or leaves a ZOG on a Jew day center and pins it on the nearest white person, and God help that Caucasian if he is racially aware. But be that as it may, any anti-Jewish action will be blamed on the Other, always, even after it has been discovered to have been staged.’
And in case this is not enough, then there is plenty more of this fare. There are articles about anti-Semitism, Jewish Porn Industry, Jewish Lobby, Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution, Alternative Media, Zionist Jews in Russia, Germany, Jews, Ernst Zundel, Jewish Banking Cartel, Jewish Holocaust Industry, Human Rights/orgs, Israel Shamir/writer, B'nai Brith, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jewish Media Monopoly, Canadian Jewish Congress, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
What is interesting is that the site quotes from Israel Shamir. Apart from being an open holocaust denier (Israel Shamir denies that Auschwitz was an extermination, it was merely an ‘internment camp’) he has also come out as a supporter of paedophillia in an article defending Catholic priests who abuse children in their care. Darkness from the West. Note the following disgusting and obscene comments.
‘I do not feel sorry for these late claimants. Why did they wait for 20 years? If a boy or a girl is being attacked, he or she may scream and run to parents or to police. If they did not do it, just forget it. Consider it a clumsy pass, an unpleasant experience, a result of misunderstanding. Blame yourself for indecisiveness. Proceed with your life. Join mankind: every one of us, even your mommy and daddy, suffered an unwanted kiss or an undesired embrace. The laws should be reasonable, - allowing 20-year old claims for such events is not reasonable. Only an immediate complaint should be considered valid, and 24 hours is as long as should be allowed, in some extreme cases.’
So a child, who may feel shame, embarrassment, guilt or simply not understand what is happening to him/her, who does not report abuse within 24 hours should be ignored. Shamir makes it clear, in his own words, that ‘I do not feel sorry for these late claimants’. And that is true. He feels sorry for the perpetrators – the abusers. The British House of Lords has just ruled that a woman who was a victim of rape 20 years ago can sue because it, being a civilised body, understands why victims of abuse often take years to report what has happened.
And what does this creature Shamir write?
‘The Americans over-simplify the question of sex with minors, when they present it as something monstrous. This is not so…. The Americans and the Brits invented a silly concept of "statutory rape" as if a state prosecutor knows better than boys and girls what they want… ‘
Of course Shamir is not only an anti-Semite but a supporter of the most racist Zionist party of all, Yisrael Beteinu. And why? Because it is Russian like himself!! Seriously, a party whose leader Avigdor Liebermann openly supports transfer of the Palestinians and called for the execution of Arab Israeli MKs is apparently the ‘least racist’ of Israeli Zionist parties!
‘As a matter of fact, the YB is the least Jewish nationalist party in the Knesset outside the Arab block, as it is the party of the Russian, heavily non-Jewish community in Israel.’
Israel Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman called for the execution of any Arab MKs who meet with representatives of the Palestinian Authority's Hamas-led government during a speech delivered to the Knesset plenum on Thursday.
"World War II ended with the Nurenberg trials," Lieberman said. "The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in [the Knesset]." 4.5.06.
Now Mary Rizzo, Atzmon’s lapdog naturally defended The Radical Press when it put its name to the petition that Rizzo and Atzmon drew up complaining that I had unfairly criticised them (all criticism by definition is unfair according to these two):
Post 242
'THIS is what I wrote in support of Radical Press:Jan 17, 2008
Dear Editor,
The issue of peace in the Middle East is far too important for anyone to attempt to think it can only be dealt with between other "more important" issues such as sporting events and what Paris Hilton is doing these days. Yet, I do understand (as I am a journalist myself) that people do like to read things they already agree with that don’t challenge anything they think they already know, and especially, they don’t get encouraged to think out of the box.
At any rate, The Radical Press presents thought-provoking and intelligent information and analysis. It is absolutely NOT anti-Semitic, but many who might not agree with its harsh critique on Israel might try to label it as such, so that people will create confusion between the two, and things never change.
I hope you realise that it is a valuable resource, and any campaigning made to insinuate that it is a racist site is not at all accurate.'
Mary Rizzo
Uh… where do I endorse Anti-Semitism Goodwind?
When it was pointed out to Rizzo that even by her definition, The Radical Press was anti-Semitic, she began to backtrack:
‘The Radical Press had come under pressure by some people who wanted it to be closed down. Knowing who most of these people are, it was easy enough for me to assume they were considering things in a way that was jaundiced. It was odd that it was Anti-Zionist Jews doing it, not Zionists…’
Why is it odd that anti-Zionists criticise a racist site? If you oppose Zionism shouldn’t you oppose all racism? Rizzo however was in a tight corner.
‘This happens far too often for me to believe it is simply accidental.’
It’s a conspiracy theory in other words.
‘The Radical Press explained to me that they were an anti-Zionist site and that they were dedicated to the Palestinian cause. So, I went to the site, took a look, not deeply, basically into a few issues on Palestine that were good, because I don’t have all the time Tony, andy and Goodwin have, and it looked fine to me…. I defend the rights of bloggers dedicated to the Palestinian cause to do what they do, who come under attack far too often. If they are being forced to change because of pressure, I will defend them to NOT have to endure pressure. I don’t see Tony running around to close ZIONIST blogs and sites, not in the slightest, so I am not going to campaign to have Pro-Palestinian ones shut down…. Why should I feel ashamed to defend an editor in a site? I can’t vouch for the entire site, and why should I? Who am I, the thought police? I can find Brother Kapner’s article a total piece of shite, and it probably is, but I am not about to waste time to investigate every article on Jews, nor read them because someone wants me to express some opinion. It simply is not that interesting to me. I look at the value of a site in how they are able to express the Palestinian cause as being the result of Zionism and of the lack of awareness as to what Zionism is. I am not going to delve into the rest, because my time is limited.
Comment by thecutter — 12 February, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1706#comments
In fact I haven't tried to close any sites down, although I'd be quite happy to close down both holocaust denial and Zionist sites which print this racist rubbish. All I was doing was to point out how vile this signatory to the Rizzo/Atzmon petition was and how strange that Rizzo sees them as supporters of the Palestinians and jumps into bed with them. However even Rizzo, who is not the world's brightest spark, knew she was on a loser and was forced to eat some humble pie.
‘In fact, now you can dance around claiming victory because I tell you I didn’t read the whole site and my views were expressed on the articles that are relevant to Zionism and Israel, which is what I am interested in. If there are things that are questionable, I regret that I defended a site I do not know like the pockets of my jeans, knowing that anything and everything will be used by those trying to attack me who have nothing to do all day but plug my name in on Google. It is tiring being stalked guys, you can stop now, unless you think this is political activism. I think it is sick in the head and deranged….’
[And more self-pity by the poster of more anti-Semitic nonsense than one can keep up with]
Comment by thecutter — 12 February, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
But the point is that even Mary Rizzo has her limits. Even she can recognise that there are some sites beyond the pale. She therefore, belatedly, removed the Radical Press from the list of signatories to the Petition that she and Atzmon drew up supporting themselves against the persecution of anti-Zionists, and which she got a couple of Palestinians to front. She even removed a link to David Duke of the KKK's 'nowars' site.
But Atzmon is made of sterner stuff. Having now come out as a holocaust denier he is deliberately posting to The Radical Press. And why not? After all he is on record as stating that
‘Because ‘antisemite’ is an empty signifier, no one actually can be an antisemite and this includes me of course.’ And if there is no such thing as anti-Semitism then how can The Radical Press be anti-Semitic? Indeed how can anyone, from Paul Eisen to Israel Shamir to Horst Mahler and David Duke be anti-Semitic? Clearly noone can.
Therefore it is no surprise to see the following on the RFP site:
Gilad Atzmon - The Primacy of the Ear
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
[Thanks to Gilad for sending along this wonderful article. Ed.]
——Gilad Atzmon - The Primacy of the Ear
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2008/01/gilad-atzmon-primacy-of-ear.html
Chief rabbi thanks Bush for ‘war against Iraq’
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
[Thanks to Gilad Atzmon giladatzmon@mac.com for sending this along. Ed.]
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m39971&hd=&size=1&l=e
It is touching to see The Radical Press acknowledging that for all Rizzo’s previous guff about not linking to Holocaust denial sites, Atzmon actually posts his drivel to them!
Tony Greenstein
22 February 2008
Indymedia Update - Atzmon beats a retreat
Sad to say, but Atzmon has now written to Indymedia UK saying he doesn't want any of his stuff up there anymore! It appears we are of one mind, albeit for different reasons. Below is what our old holocaust denial friend had to say.
If one reads between the lines what he is trying to say, in his normal convoluted way, is that since IM UK hasn't been able to give him a clean bill of health, because there is no single voice or hierarchy, he has become fed up and is therefore going to throw his toys out of the pram.
IM UK should seize the opportunity to get rid of his anti-Semitic nonsense from their wires.
It would seem that with the collapse of the 'petition' supposedly written by and for Palestinians but in actual fact run by Mary Rizzo and Atzmon (who did all the deletions of embarrassing signatories like The Radical Press) coupled with their setback on the Cork PSC website and the removal of any traces of Atzmon from British trade union web sites, that Atzmon is sulking in his tent!
From: "Gilad Atzmon" giladatzmon@mac.com
Date: Thu, February 21, 2008 2:32 am
To: imc-uk-moderation@lists.indymedia.org ---------------------------------------------------
Dear IM UK Moderators.
I welcome your decision not to surrender to the endless pressure of Mr Greenstein and his ilk. However, for the last 3 months I have been following your editorial conducts and your decision-making procedures. I am now convinced that I cannot allow you to circulate any of my writings. I do believe in hierarchic editorial clear cut decisions and as sad as it may be, i do not approve any form of ideological collectivism. I believe in freedom of the spirit and freedom of speech. Thus, I would ask you to remove all my writings on your site within 48 hours and to make sure that you never publish any of my thoughts or writings without my consent. All the Best Gilad Atzmon
If one reads between the lines what he is trying to say, in his normal convoluted way, is that since IM UK hasn't been able to give him a clean bill of health, because there is no single voice or hierarchy, he has become fed up and is therefore going to throw his toys out of the pram.
IM UK should seize the opportunity to get rid of his anti-Semitic nonsense from their wires.
It would seem that with the collapse of the 'petition' supposedly written by and for Palestinians but in actual fact run by Mary Rizzo and Atzmon (who did all the deletions of embarrassing signatories like The Radical Press) coupled with their setback on the Cork PSC website and the removal of any traces of Atzmon from British trade union web sites, that Atzmon is sulking in his tent!
From: "Gilad Atzmon" giladatzmon@mac.com
Date: Thu, February 21, 2008 2:32 am
To: imc-uk-moderation@lists.indymedia.org ---------------------------------------------------
Dear IM UK Moderators.
I welcome your decision not to surrender to the endless pressure of Mr Greenstein and his ilk. However, for the last 3 months I have been following your editorial conducts and your decision-making procedures. I am now convinced that I cannot allow you to circulate any of my writings. I do believe in hierarchic editorial clear cut decisions and as sad as it may be, i do not approve any form of ideological collectivism. I believe in freedom of the spirit and freedom of speech. Thus, I would ask you to remove all my writings on your site within 48 hours and to make sure that you never publish any of my thoughts or writings without my consent. All the Best Gilad Atzmon
19 February 2008
The Hornets' Nest and the Stick: an Indymedia UK update
Indymedia UK is limbering up for yet another whack at the hornets' nest. A near final draft of a feature on how it became a haven for racist scum is knocking about their system.
Yet again, it shows all the tactical nous of a sniper with Tourettes. Yet again, what they are saying is blinder to what is going on around them than Mister Magoo with cataracts:
There is nary a mention of connections to holocaust deniers like Eisen, Zuendel (whose website carries Atzmon) to the extreme right like David Duke; of virulent Antisemitic hate sites like Radical Press, whom Atzmon personally contributed at least one article. Nor of links with crackpot paedophile apologist Israel Shamir.
http://www.zundelsite.org/german/news/070206_Atzmon_Weltkrieg.php
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=640
http://www.radicalpress.com/?cat=120
http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html
This isn't journalism. It is whitewash and spin that would make Alistair Campbell wet his gusset:
https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkFeatureAtzmon
Moreover, yet again certain internal factions are going to sully the name of Indymedia UK with a rehabilitation of persons who make a virtue of soiling support for Palestine with anti-Semitism and holocaust denial.
We await a final version to appear on their site before we take the text to task. Besides, we can hardly believe they really are going to be that bloody stupid.
Yet again, it shows all the tactical nous of a sniper with Tourettes. Yet again, what they are saying is blinder to what is going on around them than Mister Magoo with cataracts:
There is nary a mention of connections to holocaust deniers like Eisen, Zuendel (whose website carries Atzmon) to the extreme right like David Duke; of virulent Antisemitic hate sites like Radical Press, whom Atzmon personally contributed at least one article. Nor of links with crackpot paedophile apologist Israel Shamir.
http://www.zundelsite.org/german/news/070206_Atzmon_Weltkrieg.php
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=640
http://www.radicalpress.com/?cat=120
http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html
This isn't journalism. It is whitewash and spin that would make Alistair Campbell wet his gusset:
https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkFeatureAtzmon
Moreover, yet again certain internal factions are going to sully the name of Indymedia UK with a rehabilitation of persons who make a virtue of soiling support for Palestine with anti-Semitism and holocaust denial.
We await a final version to appear on their site before we take the text to task. Besides, we can hardly believe they really are going to be that bloody stupid.
17 February 2008
Israel Shamir - The ‘Unique & Advanced Thinker’ Behind Gilad Atzmon
People often ask me, how did the campaign against Gilad Atzmon and his supporters actually start. Actually it began in the early part of 2005 when a group of us around Jews Against Zionism became aware of the resignations of Lea Tsemel & Michael Warschawski, and Jeff Halper, from the Board of Deir Yassin Remembered. [DYR]
In their joint letter of May 5 2005 Tsemel and Warschawski wrote, regarding a recent decision to appoint one Israel Shamir to the Advisory Board of DYR:
"There is no room for a racist in an institution aimed to fight for the memory of the Deir Yassin victims of Ethnic cleansing and massacre. We therefore ask you to clarify whether or not Israel Shamir is indeed part of DYR."
Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, in his resignation letter wrote that:
"The entire point of DYR is to honor the memory of the Palestinians massacred by pre-Israel Jewish militias and to draw critical conclusions from that shameful event.’
He pointed out that the conclusions from the Deir Yassin massacre included trying to
‘universalize the Deir Yassin massacre, to identify those elements that exist globally (racism, militarism, fanaticism, perhaps nationalism and more) in order to denounce, resist and ultimately expunge them wherever they appear in the world.’
Halper spoke of how Shamir:
‘deflects the discussion from the essentials of Deir Yassin onto the supposed characteristics of the perpetrators. To cast all "Jews" as perpetrators of such heinous crimes… is racist, absolutely unacceptable and deflects entirely from the issue of Deir Yassin itself.’
Of Paul Eisen, British Director of DYR’s pamphlet he wrote that:
"THE Jews" is a construct just as false, simplistic, racist (biologically so, it seems) and unacceptable as any other ethnic label used to tar all members of that group with -- inevitably negative characteristics." and that ‘The innane discussion that has come to characterize the DYR discourse is not even sophisticated racism; its just plain old-fashioned stupid racism. That's enough to get me to leave.’
‘To turn the Deir Yassin tragedy into a discussion of Jewish racial characteristics, to dirty it with racist discourse, ... raises serious, fundamental questions. When I hear diatribes of non-Palestinians against the Palestinian Ali Abunima because he raises concerns over Shamir's racism and the entire tone of the DYR discussion, a red light goes off. Has Deir Yassin been hijacked by a cult more intent on pursuing hate campaigns against the fictive "Jews"...'?’
We soon became aware of an article, Serious Concerns About Israel Shamir by Ali Abunimah & Hussein Ibish written in 2001:
'We do not have any need for some of what Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian rights, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European anti-Semitic rhetoric.’
It was on this basis, and having looked at a number of articles on his site, in particular his advocacy of working with white supremacists that we issued a call to ostracise DYR from the Palestine solidarity movement. Shamir argued that:
‘For as long as Richard Perle sits in the Pentagon, Elie Wiesel brandishes his Nobel Prize, Mort Zuckerman owns the USA Today, Gusinsky bosses over Russian TV, Soros commands multi-billions of funds and Dershowitz teaches at Harvard, we need the voices of Duke, Sobran, Raimondo, Buchanan, Mahler, Griffin and of other anti-bourgeois nationalists. If we accept their exclusion from discourse, Jewish bigotry will be tolerated while anti-Jewish bigotry is removed. Then, the middle ground for Joe Public will be 'a little bit of Jewish bigotry', or 'Zionism lite', in the words of my dear friend Bob Green.’
Subsequently Shamir criticised David Duke of the KKK for being too pro-Jewish and berated the BNP for not being anti-Semitic enough!
'I do not feel at ease accusing you and your comrades of betraying the Britons and joining with the Jews, but if I'd keep mum, stones won't.’
It was then that we came into contact with Gilad Atzmon, who penned a delightful little article entitled The Protocols of the Elders Of London. Modelled on the anti-Semitic forgery of the Czarist secret police, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it began:
'In a very small segregated cyber shtetl somewhere in the north west side of yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk/), a tiny cell of so-called ‘liberal’ Jews meets in the wee small hours. Night after night they are trying to save the Palestinian people from those who devote their lives to the Palestinian cause. There is one man who they really detest, his name is Israel Shamir (http://www.israelshamir.net/). An ex Jew, Shamir is a very civil and peaceful man and probably is the sharpest critical voice of ‘Jewish power’ and Zionist ideology.
Among Israel Shamir’s many sins, he is a member in the Board of Advisors of DYR,… DYR is engaged in promoting reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. The liberal Zionist cell, as we are going to read, cannot really take it. 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.’
We were accused of seeking to place Shamir ‘beyond the pale’. When I sought to clarify Atzmon’s views, he confirmed, in an e-mail (12 Jun 2005) that
‘Indeed I correspond with Shamir occasionally. I find him an extremely charming man and rather entertaining. But more to the point, my ties with Shamir are merely intellectual. I regard Shamir as a unique and advanced thinker.’
In a subsequent article, Shamir argued that Auschwitz was just
‘Another go of Zionist propaganda. The camp was an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US internment centre in Guantanamo). If it were bombed, the internees would die – or as a result of the bombing, or due to starvation for the supplies would not arrive... This idea of "bombing Auschwitz" makes sense only if one accepts the vision of "industrial extermination factory", and it was formed only well after the war.’
Since our first encounter Atzmon himself has embraced holocaust denial politics.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1559#comment-35911
In June 2005 Jews Against Zionism picketed an SWP/Bookmarks meeting, which featuring Atzmon talking about his favourite philosopher, Otto Weininger of whom Hitler once said, "Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day when he realized that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples" - Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier. 1941-1944, ed. Werner Lochmann (Hamburg. 1980), 148.
If there is any doubt as to whether or not Atzmon's positions have changed in the past 3 years one only need note his comments of 13.11.07 in response to the criticism of Indymedia UK for hosting his ‘Hunters of Goliath’ article:
'As we all know, the extreme form of this very binary opposition leads towards crucifixion. As sad as it may sound, the group of people who assault you at the moment are doing nothing but nailing intellectuals and Palestinian solidarity institutions to the wood. They did it to Jeff Blankfort, one of the prominent American Palestinian Solidarity activists, they do the same to Mary Rizzo, probably one of the most adorable activists in Italy, they did it to Paul Eisen and Israel Shamir, these people have managed to crush DYR, probably the most successful Palestinian gathering in this country. These people had tried to divert the Palestinian solidarity movement and to turn it into a Judeo centric witch-hunt crusade. They believe that fighting anti-Semitism is a Palestinian priority.
As the exiled former member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara rhetorically asked:
‘What possible Arab or Islamic interest can it serve to even offer to exonerate Europe of one of the blackest pages in its history?’ in Al Ahram of 21-27.12.06.'
But what of Shamir himself? The spider at the centre of the Atzmon/Rizzo/DYR web has not been idling away his time. A recent article Darkness from the West by this ‘unique and advanced’ thinker breaks new ground:
"Who is the enemy?' He asks. And the answer of course is obvious:
‘In the famed tract, they were called the Elders of Zion. Others call them Illuminati. I called them the Masters of Discourse, the operators of the integrated machine of public disinformation and indoctrination, from the Wall Street Journal to the Wikipedia. Thousands of networks, newspapers, journals, books, films and ideas are being united and guided by their invisible hand, while free thought still survives in the far reaches of the web. The fearsome AIPAC is just the visible tip of the iceberg, below which are miles and miles of solid ice: media lords, chief editors, their pundits– in short, the Masters of Discourse.’
And in a completely new way of understanding the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church we learn that this is also the fault of the Jews!
"It actually started while Sharon was besieging Bethlehem and destroying Palestine in 2002.'
Note the alleged coincidence in timing. This is highly relevant!
'Then, all of a sudden, hundreds of men and women in their forties had remembered that they were abused some twenty years ago . . . Our enemies and the enemies of the Church concocted, through their control of the media, a phantom of "abusive priests" and succeeded in convincing the LA Bishops to take the bait of "final settlement". Very soon the bishops will discover that nothing is final when you submit to their wishes. Surrender gets you nowhere. They could learn from the Germans, who agreed to settle all Jewish claims for $1 billion (as described by the chief Jewish negotiator Nahum Goldmann in his book The Jewish Paradox, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), eventually paid $60 billion to find out that they still own $180 billion…’
Clearly the evidence is overwhelming. And it's not just the Jews, it’s the feminists too:
"Girls are being pushed into military service, they become hard as nails; and as a result, more and more men turn to other men, and naturally to younger men, or boys. Priests are probably no exception. The ultimate guilt is not that of the church, but of the feminist and lesbian movement which supports women’s military service; and of the media that promotes this attitude."
Shamir, who has obviously never heard of vicarious liability (where an employer is responsible for the actions of an employee) informs us that:
‘If a man abused a boy, while being a priest, this is still his crime, and he should bear responsibility… Likewise, if a man abused a boy while serving in the army, or working in the fire brigade, the responsibility is his, not of the army, nor of the fire prevention services. The bishops had no right to agree to such a suit;… The bishops are not the church, nor are the clergy: the Church is the mystic body of all worshippers, the Bride of Christ, and she is not a subject to any suit for misdeeds of individual believers. The Church is always right, though her bishops, priests or laymen may be wrong individually.’
And anyway, it’s the question of sex with children is not so simple:
‘The Americans over-simplify the question of sex with minors, when they present it as something monstrous. This is not so. Are you revolted by Romeo and Juliet? As a good American citizen, you should be; Juliet was 14, and thus Romeo today would be tried and locked up as a "paedophile"…. Prophet Muhammad married a nine year old Aisha, but Jacob, a Biblical patriarch, bettered him and married Rachel who was 7. In modern world, Jacob and Muhammad would be hunted down, extradited and jailed. It is possible that even better placed persons would not fare well facing our most enlightened justice: the Mother of our Saviour was just 14 at Annunciation…'
The real source of the guilt for something which apparently is not monstrous anyway are the gays. It’s them who should be sued, not the Church!
'Indeed, almost all cases of alleged abuse are homosexual; the alleged victims should sue the gay rights organizations rather than the Church. But the Church is not allowed even to utter these words. They can’t say "pederasty", they should pretend this is "paedophilia". They may not defrock a homosexual priest, for they would be attacked for their "homophobia". … The taboo on "being less than fond of homosexuals" (homophobia) may stand next to the taboo on "being less than fond of Jews" (antisemitism). … two secondary offences have been created, "racism", an antisemitism spill-off, and "paedophilia", a homophobia spill-off.’
You will remember this 'less than fond of Jews.' It is reminiscent of Atzmon's quip about his friend Knuckles: 'is it a crime not to love Jews.'
And just in case you wondered, homosexuality too is the fault of the Jews!
‘In Israel we feel there is no better way to show allegiance to American democracy and liberalism than to emasculate the man and de-womanise the woman. In our smaller Jewish state, in Israel, things have changed since the macho days of Six Day War, when homosexuality was banned, the one-eyed Defence Minister Dayan screwed every female conscript and the Israeli army kicked three Arab armies in a week. Now the gay tendency is no snag, ministers are sued for kissing a girl, and the army is beaten up by a few bearded Lebanese.’
Gone are the good old days of Moshe Dayan. Now we have the disaster of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And homosexuality is to blame, as it was of course for the fall of the Roman Empire!
‘Once Israeli girls served in the army as non-combatants. Their main job was to look smart and cheerful, and thus encourage the boys to fight well. Now they follow the example of Judith and Jael, don helmets, do combat duty and look like East German swimmers on anabolic steroids.
After ending her tour of duty, with scalps of Palestinians at her belt (instead of their foreskins, as was Samson’s wont) this new breed of a female sabra is unsuitable for normal mating; and she ends up in the growing lesbian colony of Tel Aviv.’
We are told that Tsippi Livni, the Foreign Minister ‘passed millions' of dollars to gay organisation’. The result?
‘Traditionally over-independent, Jewish women became even more so as they now serve in the combat units, earn as much as men do, are protected from a flirtatious look by ever-alert police. They grew balls and became like men but even more so…’
One thing is to be sure. In a crowded field for nutty ideas Shamir has cornered the market. Certainly he is unique. Whether, as Atzmon argues, he is ‘advanced’ we’ll leave to the judgement of our readers.
Tony Greenstein
In their joint letter of May 5 2005 Tsemel and Warschawski wrote, regarding a recent decision to appoint one Israel Shamir to the Advisory Board of DYR:
"There is no room for a racist in an institution aimed to fight for the memory of the Deir Yassin victims of Ethnic cleansing and massacre. We therefore ask you to clarify whether or not Israel Shamir is indeed part of DYR."
Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, in his resignation letter wrote that:
"The entire point of DYR is to honor the memory of the Palestinians massacred by pre-Israel Jewish militias and to draw critical conclusions from that shameful event.’
He pointed out that the conclusions from the Deir Yassin massacre included trying to
‘universalize the Deir Yassin massacre, to identify those elements that exist globally (racism, militarism, fanaticism, perhaps nationalism and more) in order to denounce, resist and ultimately expunge them wherever they appear in the world.’
Halper spoke of how Shamir:
‘deflects the discussion from the essentials of Deir Yassin onto the supposed characteristics of the perpetrators. To cast all "Jews" as perpetrators of such heinous crimes… is racist, absolutely unacceptable and deflects entirely from the issue of Deir Yassin itself.’
Of Paul Eisen, British Director of DYR’s pamphlet he wrote that:
"THE Jews" is a construct just as false, simplistic, racist (biologically so, it seems) and unacceptable as any other ethnic label used to tar all members of that group with -- inevitably negative characteristics." and that ‘The innane discussion that has come to characterize the DYR discourse is not even sophisticated racism; its just plain old-fashioned stupid racism. That's enough to get me to leave.’
‘To turn the Deir Yassin tragedy into a discussion of Jewish racial characteristics, to dirty it with racist discourse, ... raises serious, fundamental questions. When I hear diatribes of non-Palestinians against the Palestinian Ali Abunima because he raises concerns over Shamir's racism and the entire tone of the DYR discussion, a red light goes off. Has Deir Yassin been hijacked by a cult more intent on pursuing hate campaigns against the fictive "Jews"...'?’
We soon became aware of an article, Serious Concerns About Israel Shamir by Ali Abunimah & Hussein Ibish written in 2001:
'We do not have any need for some of what Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian rights, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European anti-Semitic rhetoric.’
It was on this basis, and having looked at a number of articles on his site, in particular his advocacy of working with white supremacists that we issued a call to ostracise DYR from the Palestine solidarity movement. Shamir argued that:
‘For as long as Richard Perle sits in the Pentagon, Elie Wiesel brandishes his Nobel Prize, Mort Zuckerman owns the USA Today, Gusinsky bosses over Russian TV, Soros commands multi-billions of funds and Dershowitz teaches at Harvard, we need the voices of Duke, Sobran, Raimondo, Buchanan, Mahler, Griffin and of other anti-bourgeois nationalists. If we accept their exclusion from discourse, Jewish bigotry will be tolerated while anti-Jewish bigotry is removed. Then, the middle ground for Joe Public will be 'a little bit of Jewish bigotry', or 'Zionism lite', in the words of my dear friend Bob Green.’
Subsequently Shamir criticised David Duke of the KKK for being too pro-Jewish and berated the BNP for not being anti-Semitic enough!
'I do not feel at ease accusing you and your comrades of betraying the Britons and joining with the Jews, but if I'd keep mum, stones won't.’
It was then that we came into contact with Gilad Atzmon, who penned a delightful little article entitled The Protocols of the Elders Of London. Modelled on the anti-Semitic forgery of the Czarist secret police, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it began:
'In a very small segregated cyber shtetl somewhere in the north west side of yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk/), a tiny cell of so-called ‘liberal’ Jews meets in the wee small hours. Night after night they are trying to save the Palestinian people from those who devote their lives to the Palestinian cause. There is one man who they really detest, his name is Israel Shamir (http://www.israelshamir.net/). An ex Jew, Shamir is a very civil and peaceful man and probably is the sharpest critical voice of ‘Jewish power’ and Zionist ideology.
Among Israel Shamir’s many sins, he is a member in the Board of Advisors of DYR,… DYR is engaged in promoting reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. The liberal Zionist cell, as we are going to read, cannot really take it. 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.’
We were accused of seeking to place Shamir ‘beyond the pale’. When I sought to clarify Atzmon’s views, he confirmed, in an e-mail (12 Jun 2005) that
‘Indeed I correspond with Shamir occasionally. I find him an extremely charming man and rather entertaining. But more to the point, my ties with Shamir are merely intellectual. I regard Shamir as a unique and advanced thinker.’
In a subsequent article, Shamir argued that Auschwitz was just
‘Another go of Zionist propaganda. The camp was an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US internment centre in Guantanamo). If it were bombed, the internees would die – or as a result of the bombing, or due to starvation for the supplies would not arrive... This idea of "bombing Auschwitz" makes sense only if one accepts the vision of "industrial extermination factory", and it was formed only well after the war.’
Since our first encounter Atzmon himself has embraced holocaust denial politics.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1559#comment-35911
In June 2005 Jews Against Zionism picketed an SWP/Bookmarks meeting, which featuring Atzmon talking about his favourite philosopher, Otto Weininger of whom Hitler once said, "Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day when he realized that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples" - Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier. 1941-1944, ed. Werner Lochmann (Hamburg. 1980), 148.
If there is any doubt as to whether or not Atzmon's positions have changed in the past 3 years one only need note his comments of 13.11.07 in response to the criticism of Indymedia UK for hosting his ‘Hunters of Goliath’ article:
'As we all know, the extreme form of this very binary opposition leads towards crucifixion. As sad as it may sound, the group of people who assault you at the moment are doing nothing but nailing intellectuals and Palestinian solidarity institutions to the wood. They did it to Jeff Blankfort, one of the prominent American Palestinian Solidarity activists, they do the same to Mary Rizzo, probably one of the most adorable activists in Italy, they did it to Paul Eisen and Israel Shamir, these people have managed to crush DYR, probably the most successful Palestinian gathering in this country. These people had tried to divert the Palestinian solidarity movement and to turn it into a Judeo centric witch-hunt crusade. They believe that fighting anti-Semitism is a Palestinian priority.
As the exiled former member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara rhetorically asked:
‘What possible Arab or Islamic interest can it serve to even offer to exonerate Europe of one of the blackest pages in its history?’ in Al Ahram of 21-27.12.06.'
But what of Shamir himself? The spider at the centre of the Atzmon/Rizzo/DYR web has not been idling away his time. A recent article Darkness from the West by this ‘unique and advanced’ thinker breaks new ground:
"Who is the enemy?' He asks. And the answer of course is obvious:
‘In the famed tract, they were called the Elders of Zion. Others call them Illuminati. I called them the Masters of Discourse, the operators of the integrated machine of public disinformation and indoctrination, from the Wall Street Journal to the Wikipedia. Thousands of networks, newspapers, journals, books, films and ideas are being united and guided by their invisible hand, while free thought still survives in the far reaches of the web. The fearsome AIPAC is just the visible tip of the iceberg, below which are miles and miles of solid ice: media lords, chief editors, their pundits– in short, the Masters of Discourse.’
And in a completely new way of understanding the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church we learn that this is also the fault of the Jews!
"It actually started while Sharon was besieging Bethlehem and destroying Palestine in 2002.'
Note the alleged coincidence in timing. This is highly relevant!
'Then, all of a sudden, hundreds of men and women in their forties had remembered that they were abused some twenty years ago . . . Our enemies and the enemies of the Church concocted, through their control of the media, a phantom of "abusive priests" and succeeded in convincing the LA Bishops to take the bait of "final settlement". Very soon the bishops will discover that nothing is final when you submit to their wishes. Surrender gets you nowhere. They could learn from the Germans, who agreed to settle all Jewish claims for $1 billion (as described by the chief Jewish negotiator Nahum Goldmann in his book The Jewish Paradox, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), eventually paid $60 billion to find out that they still own $180 billion…’
Clearly the evidence is overwhelming. And it's not just the Jews, it’s the feminists too:
"Girls are being pushed into military service, they become hard as nails; and as a result, more and more men turn to other men, and naturally to younger men, or boys. Priests are probably no exception. The ultimate guilt is not that of the church, but of the feminist and lesbian movement which supports women’s military service; and of the media that promotes this attitude."
Shamir, who has obviously never heard of vicarious liability (where an employer is responsible for the actions of an employee) informs us that:
‘If a man abused a boy, while being a priest, this is still his crime, and he should bear responsibility… Likewise, if a man abused a boy while serving in the army, or working in the fire brigade, the responsibility is his, not of the army, nor of the fire prevention services. The bishops had no right to agree to such a suit;… The bishops are not the church, nor are the clergy: the Church is the mystic body of all worshippers, the Bride of Christ, and she is not a subject to any suit for misdeeds of individual believers. The Church is always right, though her bishops, priests or laymen may be wrong individually.’
And anyway, it’s the question of sex with children is not so simple:
‘The Americans over-simplify the question of sex with minors, when they present it as something monstrous. This is not so. Are you revolted by Romeo and Juliet? As a good American citizen, you should be; Juliet was 14, and thus Romeo today would be tried and locked up as a "paedophile"…. Prophet Muhammad married a nine year old Aisha, but Jacob, a Biblical patriarch, bettered him and married Rachel who was 7. In modern world, Jacob and Muhammad would be hunted down, extradited and jailed. It is possible that even better placed persons would not fare well facing our most enlightened justice: the Mother of our Saviour was just 14 at Annunciation…'
The real source of the guilt for something which apparently is not monstrous anyway are the gays. It’s them who should be sued, not the Church!
'Indeed, almost all cases of alleged abuse are homosexual; the alleged victims should sue the gay rights organizations rather than the Church. But the Church is not allowed even to utter these words. They can’t say "pederasty", they should pretend this is "paedophilia". They may not defrock a homosexual priest, for they would be attacked for their "homophobia". … The taboo on "being less than fond of homosexuals" (homophobia) may stand next to the taboo on "being less than fond of Jews" (antisemitism). … two secondary offences have been created, "racism", an antisemitism spill-off, and "paedophilia", a homophobia spill-off.’
You will remember this 'less than fond of Jews.' It is reminiscent of Atzmon's quip about his friend Knuckles: 'is it a crime not to love Jews.'
And just in case you wondered, homosexuality too is the fault of the Jews!
‘In Israel we feel there is no better way to show allegiance to American democracy and liberalism than to emasculate the man and de-womanise the woman. In our smaller Jewish state, in Israel, things have changed since the macho days of Six Day War, when homosexuality was banned, the one-eyed Defence Minister Dayan screwed every female conscript and the Israeli army kicked three Arab armies in a week. Now the gay tendency is no snag, ministers are sued for kissing a girl, and the army is beaten up by a few bearded Lebanese.’
Gone are the good old days of Moshe Dayan. Now we have the disaster of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And homosexuality is to blame, as it was of course for the fall of the Roman Empire!
‘Once Israeli girls served in the army as non-combatants. Their main job was to look smart and cheerful, and thus encourage the boys to fight well. Now they follow the example of Judith and Jael, don helmets, do combat duty and look like East German swimmers on anabolic steroids.
After ending her tour of duty, with scalps of Palestinians at her belt (instead of their foreskins, as was Samson’s wont) this new breed of a female sabra is unsuitable for normal mating; and she ends up in the growing lesbian colony of Tel Aviv.’
We are told that Tsippi Livni, the Foreign Minister ‘passed millions' of dollars to gay organisation’. The result?
‘Traditionally over-independent, Jewish women became even more so as they now serve in the combat units, earn as much as men do, are protected from a flirtatious look by ever-alert police. They grew balls and became like men but even more so…’
One thing is to be sure. In a crowded field for nutty ideas Shamir has cornered the market. Certainly he is unique. Whether, as Atzmon argues, he is ‘advanced’ we’ll leave to the judgement of our readers.
Tony Greenstein
15 February 2008
Achtung Wendy!
Some hours after our piece on the hilarious nonesense of the PeacePalestine petition stumbled onto the web...
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/02/case-of-great-peacepalestine-petition.html
... the KKK link was FINALLY removed from the site's favoured links, and the doodoo of having Radical Press, Canada as a signatory swept under the rug. Just so it doesn't go down MiniTruth's memory hole we'll post some screenshots soon for sentimental value: "Ah those days when you could defame the Holocaust without some PC liberal dogooder hounding you". Yup, those days are well over.
But the mirth isn't over yet. Despite ditching the Duke and redacting the Radical, PP just couldn't bear to wave goodbye to "Wehrmacht Wendy" (Campbell), pinup girl to many an Oklahoma militiaman.
Instead of shuffling her off under a travel blanket out of the backdoor. She was treated to some free advertising for her company via the addition of a weblink.
There is an interesting note tacked to the front door of her site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Campbell
Well, the "subjugated of the World" will give a sigh of relief to know that their saviours haven't totally given up on lining the pockets of Holocaust deniers.
There are few other things that still pong a bit over there. But we'll get round to those soon.
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/02/case-of-great-peacepalestine-petition.html
... the KKK link was FINALLY removed from the site's favoured links, and the doodoo of having Radical Press, Canada as a signatory swept under the rug. Just so it doesn't go down MiniTruth's memory hole we'll post some screenshots soon for sentimental value: "Ah those days when you could defame the Holocaust without some PC liberal dogooder hounding you". Yup, those days are well over.
But the mirth isn't over yet. Despite ditching the Duke and redacting the Radical, PP just couldn't bear to wave goodbye to "Wehrmacht Wendy" (Campbell), pinup girl to many an Oklahoma militiaman.
Instead of shuffling her off under a travel blanket out of the backdoor. She was treated to some free advertising for her company via the addition of a weblink.
There is an interesting note tacked to the front door of her site:
PLEASE NOTE: Wikipedia, which is dominated by racist Zionist Jews, Judeo-Fascists, Israel-firsters,& fascist elements of the CIA and Mossad
periodically makes completely false claims about Wendy Campbell, slanderously claiming that I have any ties whatsoever to "neo-Nazi" and " white supremacist" groups or individuals. As for the racist group Stormfront, I have never ever had any contact with them and I think that they are probably a front group for Zionists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Campbell
Well, the "subjugated of the World" will give a sigh of relief to know that their saviours haven't totally given up on lining the pockets of Holocaust deniers.
There are few other things that still pong a bit over there. But we'll get round to those soon.
Battle dress
Battle dress
Below is an article from Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily, about a Palestinian Israeli lecturer who has been victimised because he refused to allow soldiers uniforms or weapons in his class. Bear this in mind when anyone says that they support academic freedom and that is why they oppose the academic boycott of Israel:
Tony Greenstein
By Tamara Traubmann and Yuval Azoulay
About 15 students, most of them Jewish, were waiting for the filmmaker Nizar Hassan when he got to the restaurant outside Sderot. They hugged and kissed him. Their relations seemed open and warm - a far cry from the image of the aggressive and contemptuous lecturer that has clung to Hassan for the past few months, since he reportedly threw an army-reservist student out of his class for showing up in a uniform.
The students met with Hassan last Wednesday, after demonstrating on his behalf, along with other students and a few lecturers, on the campus of Sapir Academic College in the western Negev town of Sderot. Right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir and a group of young followers of the late ultranationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane gathered for a counter demonstration, which the students had organized in support of reserve soldiers. Numerous journalists were on the scene as well, but Hassan chose to keep his distance from them. In his opinion, the Israeli media not only published erroneous information about what happened during the lesson, but also prejudged him in their militaristic discourse.
Hassan did not, in fact, eject student Eyal Cohen, a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces reserves, from the classroom. Rather, he told him: "I am absolutely unwilling to have people bearing arms and in uniform - whether of the police, of Fatah or of Hamas - come to my class." However, since November, when the mistaken reports were first published, Hassan has been under public attack by senior IDF officers and politicians, and behind the scenes by senior staff and students at the college, where he has worked for the past four years.
The Knesset's Education Committee passed a resolution condemning the lecturer who "refused to teach a student because he was in IDF uniform and armed." A disciplinary procedure was launched against Hassan and he was suspended even before the procedure was concluded. Someone stuffed a photograph of him with a swastika scrawled across it into his mailbox.
An ultimatum had been given Hassan by the college's president, Prof. Ze'ev Tzahor: Apologize to the student and declare that you respect the uniform of the IDF, or you will be fired. But by last Thursday, when the ultimatum expired, Hassan had neither apologized nor made the declaration. On Monday the college published a statement that it had started the process of terminating his employment and said that he would be required to attend a hearing on the matter in the future. Hassan himself learned about this from the press. "I will not apologize," he says in a first interview to an Israeli paper since the start of the affair. "I prefer to beg in the streets of Nazareth and eat crumbs.
From the moment this became a political issue, there is no possibility of apologizing. And they turned it into a political issue by not saying from day one that the story is a lie and by not leaving it as a matter between teacher and student."
'Teaching human beings'
Nizar Hassan, 47, a documentary filmmaker, grew up in the village of Mashhad, in the Lower Galilee. He lives in Nazareth and is married and the father of two children. His films (which include "Ejteyah," 2003, about the defense put up by the Jenin refugee camp during the IDF's Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and "Cut," 2000, about the Sephardi Jews of Moshav Agur) are screened at international film festivals. He is a well-known director outside Israel.
"I have had inquiries from all over the world," he says. "At the moment everything is at a standstill. I don't want to exploit the incident or even talk about things like that."
Hassan meanwhile is considering an appeal to the Labor Court. "What happened here is unacceptable - it infringes on my rights. It will not end here. I will take it to every place in the world to prove that I am right."
The incident occurred last November 8 during a workshop entitled "Script and Research in a Documentary Film," he says: "I enter the classroom and see the legs of a soldier, the lower part of the body. I see a hand sliding across a pistol or something like that - I can't tell one weapon from another. I didn't recognize him, maybe because of the uniform. I asked him who he was, and he replied, 'What do you mean, who am I?' I thought maybe he wasn't one of my students, because never in my life did I imagine I would ever teach a student like this. I ask him, 'Are you a student of mine?' He says he is and I ask what his name is. I see he is registered. For a moment I thought to myself that there was even something comic about this whole extraordinary situation.
"I said, 'I am absolutely not willing to have people attend classes with weapons and in uniform - any uniform.' One of the students said, 'That's the way it is everywhere in the world.' I decided that I didn't want to open the issue to discussion, because it was a new class. I said, 'It's not acceptable to me. I will not tell anyone not to come or to leave - you should understand that you don't come here in uniform and with a weapon.' I turned to the student and said, 'Because you didn't know that and I didn't mention it, you can stay.' He said, 'I came straight from reserve duty, and I came like this because it says in your syllabus that a student is allowed to miss only one class.' I told the class, 'You are allowed to miss up to three classes, and the college allows a student in the reserves to miss more.' Then I started the lesson."
How long did that exchange take?
Hassan: "Maybe three minutes."
Hassan says he then went on to talk about Hollywood, which produces formulaic films, and on the freedom of thought which a director needs. "I said that a director must not think in terms of 'Yes, commander!' A director cannot accept a 'Yes, commander' mentality." (Eyal Cohen, the student, told the committee that he felt this was aimed directly at him, to humiliate and mock him.)
In another context, when the lecturer explained that a good director knows his remarks are not sacrosanct, a discussion developed in which one of the students went back to the issue of the uniform and asked, "And if a woman wearing a head-covering entered the classroom, how would you react?"
What did you reply?
"I asked what that had to do with it. [I said:] 'I respect the belief of every person, whether they wear a skullcap or a veil, or any other faith. I am not an 'Arab teacher' and you are not Arab, Palestinian or Jewish and Israeli students. You are students and I am the teacher, and I teach human beings! I do not want to see weapons here, I do not want to see uniforms, and I request very much that you not bring the war into my class. I teach human beings.'
"Then the student said, 'I am a human being, too.' I told him, I do not teach uniforms, not of policemen, not of soldiers, not of Hamas and not of Fatah, not of anyone ... I added, 'Because I am afraid of not being fair with you, when you come next time' - some say I said 'when you come next time, without the uniform' - I will first give you 10 minutes to say what you want.' And that was the end of the affair."
Why didn't you let him speak then?
"In the messy situation and pressure that was created, I thought it would be better if everyone would go home, calm down and start over next time. It was my decision as a teacher not to generate chaos in the class."
From that moment, the class proceeded. As it ended, a "color red" rocket-attack alarm sounded and everyone, including the lecturer, ran for cover.
The committee asserted that there could be no invalidation of the legitimate presence of people in uniform in the college. "Reserve service in Israel is inseparable from the fabric of civic life," the committee stated. "This is a basic fact that cannot be denied or repressed, and it undoubtedly sets apart Israeli reality and way of life. Its roots are even deeper than the security constraints in which Israel has found itself since its inception. The IDF is a citizen army in every sense of the word."
Hassan does not share this sentiment. According to his logic, weapons and uniforms do not enter the classroom, "and with all due respect to Israeli logic, uniforms are a symbol of violence. Maybe some Israelis have begun thinking of their weapons like their children, or the extension of one of their organs - I am sorry to say that, and I say it with extremism to shock people a little. There is nothing like this anywhere in the world. I also do not accept the view that 'we here are in a special situation.' Even if there is a special situation, we have to change it."
You made the decision to work in an Israeli academic institution - you know the rules of the game.
"No."
Can you lay down rules in the classroom even on a nonacademic matter?
"First of all, I have every right to argue with every rule and fight for rules that are appropriate for me. Compromises between people are exactly the name of the game, and the game is to be open. Israel has not yet emerged from its fixed ideas. Just say that you are a militaristic society that cannot live without weapons and uniforms, and that will be the end of the story. What do you want from me? Take me out of the game. Build yourselves a college in your image, a Jewish-Zionist college, with values like those the committee talks about, where a condition for teaching will be a declaration of respect for uniforms. Even if I return to Sapir, it will still be unacceptable to me for a student to enter my class in uniform and with a weapon ... [If] I decide to stay, it is my right to wage a bitter battle, together with my colleagues and students, so uniforms will not be allowed. Not because of my feelings of frustration, as the committee said, but because I believe a complete separation is needed between the arenas. Even if I were in Syria, I would insist that no weapons or uniforms enter the classroom."
But you know - everyone knows - that the army is everywhere in Israeli society.
"I know no such thing. I went out into the Israeli street and did not see what you are describing. And even if it were the case, so what?"
Were you surprised to see a uniformed soldier in your class?
"It surprised me, and how. Everyone keeps saying 'uniform' as though we were talking about a piece of cloth. It is not some rag. Is it convenient for everyone to say it's just a piece of cloth? Fine, live with your illusion."
'From the soul'
Hassan doesn't answer to any conventions. He is critical of everyone, including the ostensibly radical left, the Ashkenazi-liberal, Arab-loving, provincial-patronizing left, and the self-important colleagues from the film and art world. Nevertheless, many of his students took his side. His supporters, and some opponents, too, spoke admiringly of a "tough" and critical person, who spurs his students to achievements and gets them to do things they didn't believe they had in them - a teacher who does not give up on any student.
"He teaches from the soul," says the student Sivan Petel, who describes herself as "extreme right wing." "He is a type of Nietzsche, someone who murders all the gods and laws we were raised on, and opens your mind to other things. Not everyone is capable of studying with him; there are some people who will never understand him."
The impression gleaned by the committee from the testimonies of student Eyal Cohen, the dean of students and senior college staff is that Hassan is an "outstanding" lecturer, who has an "impulsive character" and imposes a "regime of fear" in the class. The college does not have a formal set of disciplinary regulations or a charter concerning the behavior of students and teachers. According to Prof. Tzahor, the committee acted on the basis of a decision of the internal academic council and according to the academic ethos, which he summarizes as: "Politics - only as far as the classroom door." Tzahor and the committee maintain that a lecturer is forbidden to bring politics into his classes or to force his ideological opinions on the students.
But it turns out that there is plenty of politics at Sapir, and not only in Hassan's classes. Students Rotem Azoulai and Elad Zamir describe other cases in which teachers offended students, or where lecturers talked about politics and expressed their opinions, but were not subjected to disciplinary action. The head of the college's Film and Television Department, Avner Faingulernt, told the committee that one lecturer told her class why her son would not join the "occupation army." Tzahor says he was unaware of that case.
In another incident, Dr. Shlomit Tamari told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering because it is an element of suppression. No disciplinary action was taken against her, either. "I told the student that I hadn't intended to insult her," Tamari says. "I told the college that I have academic freedom, and I can talk about that subject and I am continuing to do so."
Tzahor says in response that the college administration "does not have a double standard." He says that "a first case is treated more leniently, but in Hassan's case it keeps recurring": The lecturer was warned in the past not to bring politics into his classes. Tzahor adds that in the present case an official complaint was filed (see box), which required steps to be taken. Hassan asserts that, "I didn't want to assume the role of a 'member of the minorities,' asking for special consideration in the wake of a personal problem he has with the IDF uniform. Nothing would have happened." But because Hassan refused to conform to Israeli convention, he paid a steep price - and not only in terms of losing his and his family's livelihood.
Hassan: "I was slaughtered. Incorrect reports were published and no one stood up and said 'It's a lie!' People tried to take advantage of the case. There were a great many personal slanders and gossip on the part of people who were interviewed on condition of anonymity. Someone wrote that I said yehudon [kike] - a word I had never even heard of until then. People didn't even ask for my response. How can Ze'ev Tzahor not be ashamed to condemn me in the Knesset, before the committee even made a decision? How can you condemn behavior before you know what happened?"
Tzahor says he expressed his opinion about Hassan's remarks only after he clarified the facts. As for his comments in a meeting of the Knesset's Education Committee, Tzahor says: "I said that if Nizar made those remarks it was a grave act." The word "if" does not appear in the transcript of the committee's meeting.
Crossing red lines
The IDF was outraged by the incident and several senior officers including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi spoke to Tzahor about it. While talking about other matters, "the question of what we intended to do about it was raised [by Ashkenazi]," Tzahor recalls. "I replied that we would make an announcement upon taking action. I explained to him what I had explained to everyone: Everything will be done according to the academic ethos."
In a letter he sent Tzahor when the incident first became known, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, Major General Elazar Stern, threatened to terminate the army's cooperation with the college - which would mean a loss of revenues from tuition and budgeting for hundreds of soldiers who go there. Stern's impression was that the college had not taken the "measures that are called for" against Hassan and "did not behave with the proper determination." He added that "in the name of the IDF," he expected a "sharp, public, official condemnation": "At least," Stern wrote, "the college administration should demand that Hassan apologize to Lieutenant Cohen as a condition for his continued employment."
Three days after the first media report, the Sapir administration convened the internal academic council. Its members, who are lecturers, denounced Hassan's remarks and said that "measures" had to be taken. The council decided to establish, for the first time in the college's history, a committee chaired by Prof. Uri Regev, and including Prof. Yigal Elam and lecturer Yehudit Morag.
The council did not ask to hear Hassan's version of the events before deciding to create the committee, nor was he invited to its meeting. The decision was made on the basis of a report submitted by Tzahor, who says he clarified details of the incident with Cohen and Hassan, and found no significant contradictions. "At first I didn't realize it was a hearing. I thought it would be a proper committee of inquiry, to investigate the lie," Hassan says.
When the storm broke, he was in Paris editing his new film, about the Shi'ites in Lebanon, which has since been aired widely on European television stations. In his view and that of his lawyer, Ester Livni, the incident did not mandate the establishment of a committee, but should have been dealt with internally in the department. "The very fact of the committee's existence, like Nizar's suspension, was a surrender to pressures," Livni says. Tzahor maintains he did not encounter any pressure from the army and that the college's action was transparent and orderly.
Department head Faingulernt was also abroad at the time. He told the committee that if he and Hassan had been in Israel, matters would have been worked out satisfactorily - without a disciplinary procedure. "Things would have calmed down, because there have already been worse cases," Faingulernt says. However, the committee took a different view. Its report, issued at the end of last month, stated that Hassan "crossed red lines of rules of behavior." He was instructed to apologize to Cohen.
The committee stated that Hassan's "behavior and militancy toward the student is totally unacceptable and deserves the sharpest condemnation," and that "if behavior of this kind recurs," Hassan will be fired. In a letter to Hassan, Tzahor added that he must declare his respect for the IDF uniform. According to Tzahor, a "softened version" was afterward proposed to Hassan, which he also rejected.
Hassan is particularly incensed at the committee's conclusions. "Nizar tried to cloak himself" in a viewpoint that describes a separation between the military and civilian arenas, the committee wrote. However, "we find [that viewpoint] utterly groundless, and we also doubt that this was what influenced his behavior in the face of the student's appearance in a reservist uniform." In his behavior, "Nizar abused his status and his authority as a teacher to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member of the Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a 'humane' and 'universal' garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated a stance of brute force bearing a distinctly nationalist character, completely symmetrical to crass nationalist outlooks which are also widespread, it must be said, in Israeli Jewish society."
Hassan: "To begin with, I am not a member of a minority: I am a Palestinian, and proud of it. Second, on what basis did they decide that I do not have humane values and that this was not a position of principle? They did not even ask me about my attitude toward Jordanian or Lebanese or French soldiers, or any soldier as such. The committee did not have a shred of doubt that I was motivated by frustration. How can they talk about what they claim is the experience of the Arab minority in Israel without having a clue about it? After all, they do not even know Arabic. But still they reject absolutely the possibility that I have universal values that were my reason for acting."
"Maybe so," says committee chairman Regev in response. "It's clear that he has arguments, but a situation like this is not pleasant. That is why we wrote that that is how he and his lawyer see it, and this is how we see it. There can be nothing more natural than different people forming different impressions. I think the report is balanced, as far as we were able to be balanced. We took into account all the considerations. I definitely thought, as we all did, that our recommendations strike a balance between his crossing of red lines and his excellence as a teacher."
Below is an article from Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily, about a Palestinian Israeli lecturer who has been victimised because he refused to allow soldiers uniforms or weapons in his class. Bear this in mind when anyone says that they support academic freedom and that is why they oppose the academic boycott of Israel:
Tony Greenstein
By Tamara Traubmann and Yuval Azoulay
About 15 students, most of them Jewish, were waiting for the filmmaker Nizar Hassan when he got to the restaurant outside Sderot. They hugged and kissed him. Their relations seemed open and warm - a far cry from the image of the aggressive and contemptuous lecturer that has clung to Hassan for the past few months, since he reportedly threw an army-reservist student out of his class for showing up in a uniform.
The students met with Hassan last Wednesday, after demonstrating on his behalf, along with other students and a few lecturers, on the campus of Sapir Academic College in the western Negev town of Sderot. Right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir and a group of young followers of the late ultranationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane gathered for a counter demonstration, which the students had organized in support of reserve soldiers. Numerous journalists were on the scene as well, but Hassan chose to keep his distance from them. In his opinion, the Israeli media not only published erroneous information about what happened during the lesson, but also prejudged him in their militaristic discourse.
Hassan did not, in fact, eject student Eyal Cohen, a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces reserves, from the classroom. Rather, he told him: "I am absolutely unwilling to have people bearing arms and in uniform - whether of the police, of Fatah or of Hamas - come to my class." However, since November, when the mistaken reports were first published, Hassan has been under public attack by senior IDF officers and politicians, and behind the scenes by senior staff and students at the college, where he has worked for the past four years.
The Knesset's Education Committee passed a resolution condemning the lecturer who "refused to teach a student because he was in IDF uniform and armed." A disciplinary procedure was launched against Hassan and he was suspended even before the procedure was concluded. Someone stuffed a photograph of him with a swastika scrawled across it into his mailbox.
An ultimatum had been given Hassan by the college's president, Prof. Ze'ev Tzahor: Apologize to the student and declare that you respect the uniform of the IDF, or you will be fired. But by last Thursday, when the ultimatum expired, Hassan had neither apologized nor made the declaration. On Monday the college published a statement that it had started the process of terminating his employment and said that he would be required to attend a hearing on the matter in the future. Hassan himself learned about this from the press. "I will not apologize," he says in a first interview to an Israeli paper since the start of the affair. "I prefer to beg in the streets of Nazareth and eat crumbs.
From the moment this became a political issue, there is no possibility of apologizing. And they turned it into a political issue by not saying from day one that the story is a lie and by not leaving it as a matter between teacher and student."
'Teaching human beings'
Nizar Hassan, 47, a documentary filmmaker, grew up in the village of Mashhad, in the Lower Galilee. He lives in Nazareth and is married and the father of two children. His films (which include "Ejteyah," 2003, about the defense put up by the Jenin refugee camp during the IDF's Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and "Cut," 2000, about the Sephardi Jews of Moshav Agur) are screened at international film festivals. He is a well-known director outside Israel.
"I have had inquiries from all over the world," he says. "At the moment everything is at a standstill. I don't want to exploit the incident or even talk about things like that."
Hassan meanwhile is considering an appeal to the Labor Court. "What happened here is unacceptable - it infringes on my rights. It will not end here. I will take it to every place in the world to prove that I am right."
The incident occurred last November 8 during a workshop entitled "Script and Research in a Documentary Film," he says: "I enter the classroom and see the legs of a soldier, the lower part of the body. I see a hand sliding across a pistol or something like that - I can't tell one weapon from another. I didn't recognize him, maybe because of the uniform. I asked him who he was, and he replied, 'What do you mean, who am I?' I thought maybe he wasn't one of my students, because never in my life did I imagine I would ever teach a student like this. I ask him, 'Are you a student of mine?' He says he is and I ask what his name is. I see he is registered. For a moment I thought to myself that there was even something comic about this whole extraordinary situation.
"I said, 'I am absolutely not willing to have people attend classes with weapons and in uniform - any uniform.' One of the students said, 'That's the way it is everywhere in the world.' I decided that I didn't want to open the issue to discussion, because it was a new class. I said, 'It's not acceptable to me. I will not tell anyone not to come or to leave - you should understand that you don't come here in uniform and with a weapon.' I turned to the student and said, 'Because you didn't know that and I didn't mention it, you can stay.' He said, 'I came straight from reserve duty, and I came like this because it says in your syllabus that a student is allowed to miss only one class.' I told the class, 'You are allowed to miss up to three classes, and the college allows a student in the reserves to miss more.' Then I started the lesson."
How long did that exchange take?
Hassan: "Maybe three minutes."
Hassan says he then went on to talk about Hollywood, which produces formulaic films, and on the freedom of thought which a director needs. "I said that a director must not think in terms of 'Yes, commander!' A director cannot accept a 'Yes, commander' mentality." (Eyal Cohen, the student, told the committee that he felt this was aimed directly at him, to humiliate and mock him.)
In another context, when the lecturer explained that a good director knows his remarks are not sacrosanct, a discussion developed in which one of the students went back to the issue of the uniform and asked, "And if a woman wearing a head-covering entered the classroom, how would you react?"
What did you reply?
"I asked what that had to do with it. [I said:] 'I respect the belief of every person, whether they wear a skullcap or a veil, or any other faith. I am not an 'Arab teacher' and you are not Arab, Palestinian or Jewish and Israeli students. You are students and I am the teacher, and I teach human beings! I do not want to see weapons here, I do not want to see uniforms, and I request very much that you not bring the war into my class. I teach human beings.'
"Then the student said, 'I am a human being, too.' I told him, I do not teach uniforms, not of policemen, not of soldiers, not of Hamas and not of Fatah, not of anyone ... I added, 'Because I am afraid of not being fair with you, when you come next time' - some say I said 'when you come next time, without the uniform' - I will first give you 10 minutes to say what you want.' And that was the end of the affair."
Why didn't you let him speak then?
"In the messy situation and pressure that was created, I thought it would be better if everyone would go home, calm down and start over next time. It was my decision as a teacher not to generate chaos in the class."
From that moment, the class proceeded. As it ended, a "color red" rocket-attack alarm sounded and everyone, including the lecturer, ran for cover.
The committee asserted that there could be no invalidation of the legitimate presence of people in uniform in the college. "Reserve service in Israel is inseparable from the fabric of civic life," the committee stated. "This is a basic fact that cannot be denied or repressed, and it undoubtedly sets apart Israeli reality and way of life. Its roots are even deeper than the security constraints in which Israel has found itself since its inception. The IDF is a citizen army in every sense of the word."
Hassan does not share this sentiment. According to his logic, weapons and uniforms do not enter the classroom, "and with all due respect to Israeli logic, uniforms are a symbol of violence. Maybe some Israelis have begun thinking of their weapons like their children, or the extension of one of their organs - I am sorry to say that, and I say it with extremism to shock people a little. There is nothing like this anywhere in the world. I also do not accept the view that 'we here are in a special situation.' Even if there is a special situation, we have to change it."
You made the decision to work in an Israeli academic institution - you know the rules of the game.
"No."
Can you lay down rules in the classroom even on a nonacademic matter?
"First of all, I have every right to argue with every rule and fight for rules that are appropriate for me. Compromises between people are exactly the name of the game, and the game is to be open. Israel has not yet emerged from its fixed ideas. Just say that you are a militaristic society that cannot live without weapons and uniforms, and that will be the end of the story. What do you want from me? Take me out of the game. Build yourselves a college in your image, a Jewish-Zionist college, with values like those the committee talks about, where a condition for teaching will be a declaration of respect for uniforms. Even if I return to Sapir, it will still be unacceptable to me for a student to enter my class in uniform and with a weapon ... [If] I decide to stay, it is my right to wage a bitter battle, together with my colleagues and students, so uniforms will not be allowed. Not because of my feelings of frustration, as the committee said, but because I believe a complete separation is needed between the arenas. Even if I were in Syria, I would insist that no weapons or uniforms enter the classroom."
But you know - everyone knows - that the army is everywhere in Israeli society.
"I know no such thing. I went out into the Israeli street and did not see what you are describing. And even if it were the case, so what?"
Were you surprised to see a uniformed soldier in your class?
"It surprised me, and how. Everyone keeps saying 'uniform' as though we were talking about a piece of cloth. It is not some rag. Is it convenient for everyone to say it's just a piece of cloth? Fine, live with your illusion."
'From the soul'
Hassan doesn't answer to any conventions. He is critical of everyone, including the ostensibly radical left, the Ashkenazi-liberal, Arab-loving, provincial-patronizing left, and the self-important colleagues from the film and art world. Nevertheless, many of his students took his side. His supporters, and some opponents, too, spoke admiringly of a "tough" and critical person, who spurs his students to achievements and gets them to do things they didn't believe they had in them - a teacher who does not give up on any student.
"He teaches from the soul," says the student Sivan Petel, who describes herself as "extreme right wing." "He is a type of Nietzsche, someone who murders all the gods and laws we were raised on, and opens your mind to other things. Not everyone is capable of studying with him; there are some people who will never understand him."
The impression gleaned by the committee from the testimonies of student Eyal Cohen, the dean of students and senior college staff is that Hassan is an "outstanding" lecturer, who has an "impulsive character" and imposes a "regime of fear" in the class. The college does not have a formal set of disciplinary regulations or a charter concerning the behavior of students and teachers. According to Prof. Tzahor, the committee acted on the basis of a decision of the internal academic council and according to the academic ethos, which he summarizes as: "Politics - only as far as the classroom door." Tzahor and the committee maintain that a lecturer is forbidden to bring politics into his classes or to force his ideological opinions on the students.
But it turns out that there is plenty of politics at Sapir, and not only in Hassan's classes. Students Rotem Azoulai and Elad Zamir describe other cases in which teachers offended students, or where lecturers talked about politics and expressed their opinions, but were not subjected to disciplinary action. The head of the college's Film and Television Department, Avner Faingulernt, told the committee that one lecturer told her class why her son would not join the "occupation army." Tzahor says he was unaware of that case.
In another incident, Dr. Shlomit Tamari told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering because it is an element of suppression. No disciplinary action was taken against her, either. "I told the student that I hadn't intended to insult her," Tamari says. "I told the college that I have academic freedom, and I can talk about that subject and I am continuing to do so."
Tzahor says in response that the college administration "does not have a double standard." He says that "a first case is treated more leniently, but in Hassan's case it keeps recurring": The lecturer was warned in the past not to bring politics into his classes. Tzahor adds that in the present case an official complaint was filed (see box), which required steps to be taken. Hassan asserts that, "I didn't want to assume the role of a 'member of the minorities,' asking for special consideration in the wake of a personal problem he has with the IDF uniform. Nothing would have happened." But because Hassan refused to conform to Israeli convention, he paid a steep price - and not only in terms of losing his and his family's livelihood.
Hassan: "I was slaughtered. Incorrect reports were published and no one stood up and said 'It's a lie!' People tried to take advantage of the case. There were a great many personal slanders and gossip on the part of people who were interviewed on condition of anonymity. Someone wrote that I said yehudon [kike] - a word I had never even heard of until then. People didn't even ask for my response. How can Ze'ev Tzahor not be ashamed to condemn me in the Knesset, before the committee even made a decision? How can you condemn behavior before you know what happened?"
Tzahor says he expressed his opinion about Hassan's remarks only after he clarified the facts. As for his comments in a meeting of the Knesset's Education Committee, Tzahor says: "I said that if Nizar made those remarks it was a grave act." The word "if" does not appear in the transcript of the committee's meeting.
Crossing red lines
The IDF was outraged by the incident and several senior officers including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi spoke to Tzahor about it. While talking about other matters, "the question of what we intended to do about it was raised [by Ashkenazi]," Tzahor recalls. "I replied that we would make an announcement upon taking action. I explained to him what I had explained to everyone: Everything will be done according to the academic ethos."
In a letter he sent Tzahor when the incident first became known, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, Major General Elazar Stern, threatened to terminate the army's cooperation with the college - which would mean a loss of revenues from tuition and budgeting for hundreds of soldiers who go there. Stern's impression was that the college had not taken the "measures that are called for" against Hassan and "did not behave with the proper determination." He added that "in the name of the IDF," he expected a "sharp, public, official condemnation": "At least," Stern wrote, "the college administration should demand that Hassan apologize to Lieutenant Cohen as a condition for his continued employment."
Three days after the first media report, the Sapir administration convened the internal academic council. Its members, who are lecturers, denounced Hassan's remarks and said that "measures" had to be taken. The council decided to establish, for the first time in the college's history, a committee chaired by Prof. Uri Regev, and including Prof. Yigal Elam and lecturer Yehudit Morag.
The council did not ask to hear Hassan's version of the events before deciding to create the committee, nor was he invited to its meeting. The decision was made on the basis of a report submitted by Tzahor, who says he clarified details of the incident with Cohen and Hassan, and found no significant contradictions. "At first I didn't realize it was a hearing. I thought it would be a proper committee of inquiry, to investigate the lie," Hassan says.
When the storm broke, he was in Paris editing his new film, about the Shi'ites in Lebanon, which has since been aired widely on European television stations. In his view and that of his lawyer, Ester Livni, the incident did not mandate the establishment of a committee, but should have been dealt with internally in the department. "The very fact of the committee's existence, like Nizar's suspension, was a surrender to pressures," Livni says. Tzahor maintains he did not encounter any pressure from the army and that the college's action was transparent and orderly.
Department head Faingulernt was also abroad at the time. He told the committee that if he and Hassan had been in Israel, matters would have been worked out satisfactorily - without a disciplinary procedure. "Things would have calmed down, because there have already been worse cases," Faingulernt says. However, the committee took a different view. Its report, issued at the end of last month, stated that Hassan "crossed red lines of rules of behavior." He was instructed to apologize to Cohen.
The committee stated that Hassan's "behavior and militancy toward the student is totally unacceptable and deserves the sharpest condemnation," and that "if behavior of this kind recurs," Hassan will be fired. In a letter to Hassan, Tzahor added that he must declare his respect for the IDF uniform. According to Tzahor, a "softened version" was afterward proposed to Hassan, which he also rejected.
Hassan is particularly incensed at the committee's conclusions. "Nizar tried to cloak himself" in a viewpoint that describes a separation between the military and civilian arenas, the committee wrote. However, "we find [that viewpoint] utterly groundless, and we also doubt that this was what influenced his behavior in the face of the student's appearance in a reservist uniform." In his behavior, "Nizar abused his status and his authority as a teacher to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member of the Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a 'humane' and 'universal' garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated a stance of brute force bearing a distinctly nationalist character, completely symmetrical to crass nationalist outlooks which are also widespread, it must be said, in Israeli Jewish society."
Hassan: "To begin with, I am not a member of a minority: I am a Palestinian, and proud of it. Second, on what basis did they decide that I do not have humane values and that this was not a position of principle? They did not even ask me about my attitude toward Jordanian or Lebanese or French soldiers, or any soldier as such. The committee did not have a shred of doubt that I was motivated by frustration. How can they talk about what they claim is the experience of the Arab minority in Israel without having a clue about it? After all, they do not even know Arabic. But still they reject absolutely the possibility that I have universal values that were my reason for acting."
"Maybe so," says committee chairman Regev in response. "It's clear that he has arguments, but a situation like this is not pleasant. That is why we wrote that that is how he and his lawyer see it, and this is how we see it. There can be nothing more natural than different people forming different impressions. I think the report is balanced, as far as we were able to be balanced. We took into account all the considerations. I definitely thought, as we all did, that our recommendations strike a balance between his crossing of red lines and his excellence as a teacher."
14 February 2008
The Case of the Great PeacePalestine Petition Swindle
Recently a petition appeared on notorious anti-Semitic site PeacePalestine.
In case you missed it she is also associated with IHR:
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/
The amusing thing about their exercise is the obvious misdirections, deceptions, manipulations and duplicity it displays.
Firstly it implies that Rizzo and Atzmon are being hounded by Zionists. This they know to be a lie. Which they indirectly admit by usage of the phrase "They have been attacked by Zionists for a long time, but they are also being attacked by certain other people who are in the movement for Palestine.”
So why all the hoohah about Zionism if it isn't Zionists attacking them? The only conclusion can be a deception. To the uninformed reader it looks like they are signing a petition against Zionist false charges of anti-Semitism. The people carrying out the campaign are declared anti-Zionists
The text makes an appeal for solidarity with "two outstanding personalities who are also great fighters for the implementation of freedom and liberty to all the subjugated peoples of the world", well all except the collective 'Untermenschen' ("subhumans") under the 3rd Reich.
Their appeal startlingly fails to address what they are being charged with: anti-Semitism and the distribution of Holocaust Denial literature.
Witnesses for the Defence
Now instead of issuing more condemnation we shall let the players concerned speak for themselves on their innocence:
Gilad Atzmon:
"'I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act."
"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. Seemingly, it is the personification of WW2 and the Holocaust that blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalising the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led towards their destruction in the first place."
"The idea that Zionists have taken over America might sound bizarre in the first instance but we must remember that this kind of strange scenario does happen."
“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 theelder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy… I would suggest that perhaps we should face it onceand for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon#Other_work
http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/saying%20NO.htm
http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/protocols.html
http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/onanti.html
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1559
And here is a site that is linked on Rizzo's Peace Palestine (in the links down the left of the site):
http://www.nowarforisrael.com/
It's run by the KKK a.k.a David Duke
Administrative Contact:
Manager, Domain webmaster@davidduke.com
PO Box 188
Mandeville, LA 70470
US
985-626-7714
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=nowarforisrael.com
And if you are new to this topic and don't know who David Duke is:
http://www.davidduke.com/general/no-war-for-israel_4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke
This has been known to her for over a month and here is her reaction to a complaint:
“Oh, Didn't know No War For Israel was Duke's site, if it indeed is. Seems you know a lot more about Duke than I do. But, please, don't let facts stand in the way of your preconceived ideas about the racism of my blog. Carry on.”
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2008/01/12/hilarity_at_peacepalestine.php
So concerned has Rizzo been about this 'oversight' that the link is still there.
Character witnesses
The sham petition exercise then shoots itself in the foot spectacularly:
"We declare that he [Mr Greenstein] does not speak for us or in our names when he attacks these and other activists."
Now, let's hear from some esteemed friends and supporters from the list of signatories speak in defence of their friends' good character:
Paul Eisen:
'Ernst Zundel was once involved in the publication of a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, but Ernst Zundel was not the only German who loved Hitler and is probably not the only German who still loves Hitler. Millions of Germans loved Hitler who for twelve years impacted on them as no German has or probably ever will, and, though they never sayso, must, deep down still cherish his memory.’
http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html
Note who is being discussed and is hosting this article, Ernst Zuendel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel
Atzmon distributed this very "great text" from his mailing list and describes its author as his "friend"
(Editor's note: Eisen was great choice to write this piece as his depth of understanding of the 3rd Reich seems to stop just short of knowing that Hitler was Austrian and not German.)
Radical Free Press, Canada
Where do you start with this vile cesspit of racial hatred? Well here's just a taster:
"HOW DO WE STOP THE JEWISH CONTROL OF AMERICA?
Here are 3 options:
* Convert to Judaism and be part of the Single-Party political system in America.
* Convert to Judaism and be part of the Jewish-Takeover of former Christian America.
* Don’t convert to Judaism. Instead call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to grow a revival of Christianity in America.
~Only when America is a Christian nation once again will the Jews lose their power to lead us all by our noses as sheep to the slaughter!"
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
But be sure to check out the edifying topics such as:
# Jewish Banking Cartel (83)
# Jewish Holocaust Industry (78)
# Jewish Lobby (113)
# Jewish Media Monopoly (106)
# Jewish Porn Industry (51)
# Jews (149)
# Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution (47)
You will be unsurprised to learn that the site is under investigation by the Anti-Hate Team of the Canadian Human Rights Comission:
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=629
Here is Rizzo's response to a complaint about the blatantly racist site:
“The webmaster, who is not even the author of the piece wrote me telling me they were a site that was anti-Zionist and defended Palestinian rights. “
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1706#comment-42889
In case the signature and link disappear their existence is recorded here:
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391057.html
Hmm, sounds like a couple of people who “we know well” that also peddle racism and claim they are just “anti-Zionists” and that they “defend Palestinian rights”. Makes you wonder if they see one as a pre-requisite for the other.
Wendy Campbell:
"The Holocaust has been made into more of a religious dogma than historical fact, since there exists no original source materials to back up their claims which are all based on conflicting eye-witnesses. "
http://www.countercurrents.org/campbell240108.htm
Look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Campbell
In case you missed it she is also associated with IHR:
They still openly disseminate the long discredited fraudulent Leuchter Report that concludes:
“After a thorough examination of the alleged execution facilities in Poland and their associated crematories, the only conclusion that can be arrived at by a rational, responsible person is the absurdity of the notion that any of these facilities were ever capable of, or were utilized as, execution gas chambers.“
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/inside.shtml
And offer some real gems that are a companion to any anti-racists library:
Out-Of-Print Books
Keith Stimely's Revisionist Bibliography — 1981
Theodore Kaufman's Germany Must Perish!
Paul Rassinier's The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses (former title: "Debunking the Genocide Myth")
David Hoggan's The Myth of the Six Million
Michael Connor's Dealing in Hate
Current Books
Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die?
Fred Leuchter's Forensic Examination and Engineering Report on the alleged Nazi gassing facilities at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek (aka The Leuchter Report)
Duplicity
You will note that the large volume of their text isn't about the two individuals concerned. It sidesteps the case against them completely, thus lending the impression that their support for Palestine is the issue. Instead it comprises largely of a sizable chunk of ranting about Zionism; a short bit about Rizzo and Atzmon with no background to the issues whatsoever; and then comes the worst misdirection: it interpolates a call for solidarity with the people in Gaza.
So what exactly are people signing up for? Support for holocaust denial and anti-Semitism? A polemic against Zionism? Or outrage at the dreadful situation in Gaza?
It is impossible to determine since the plea makes a hash of them all, but given the scant focus on the two people mentioned and the charges against them, they cannot honestly claim all those numbers as supporters.
We will leave the reader now fully equipped with a representational summary to decide whether the charges stated are true or false.
13 February 2008
Palestine not Vanity – A Question of Honesty: A reply to Paul Rooij’s Snakes in the grass
One of the Atzmon/Rizzo clones to have recently surfaced is 'writer' Paul Rooij. Fresh from trying to deface the Cork PSC site he is an editor for, he has penned a delightful article 'Beware of the snakes in the grass'.
Brendan Behan wrote that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, apart from one’s own obituary. But in the case of Paul Rooij I’ll make another exception. What, you may ask was the point of a 1700+ word personal attack on me? How did it advance the cause of the Palestinians or the struggle of the oppressed? Indeed whose cause did it serve?
Rooij uses the adjective ‘vile’ no less than four times. I’ve written a ‘vile’ article about him and made ‘vile’ accusations of anti-Semitism against Atzmon and Rizzo [AR]. He spends a lot of time saying very little. I am also ‘contemptible’. But what Rooij doesn’t do is explain what lies at the heart of the present controversy over Gilad Atzmon and his acolytes.
Granted that Rooij doesn’t like my article, what he doesn’t explain is why. And that is characteristic of his whole article. Here is a nasty person, Tony Greenstein, attacking the freedom loving AR. The only question missing is why, hence the profusion of adjectives such as ‘contemptible.’ Ad-hominem as a substitute for reason is hardly the basis of Voltaire, still less John Stuart Mill. It is the hallmark of the wannabe tabloid journalist.
It is also a question of honesty. The background is quite simple. As a writer about Zionism the UCC Cork PSC database has a collection of my articles and an introductory page of author details. http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=367 Paul Rooij, as an editor, decided to abuse his position so that his personal attack on me took for criticising Atzmon etc. took over the page. It was clearly insulting and therefore unacceptable. There was no reason why he should have pride of place on a page which introduces my articles. Rooij’s comments are now on a link from the front page. Of course I complained to Ireland PSC about this and mindful of the fact that they want to build solidarity with the Palestinians, and most people with their heads screwed on don’t want to associate with holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, PSC ensured that Rooij’s comments were relegated and he wasn’t able to succeed with his act of intellectual vandalism. You see trade unionists don’t go a bundle on anti-Semitism and fascism, and both of those things Paul Eisen, to whom I’ve been ‘uncivil’ subscribes.
But despite his synthetic outrage, what Rooij didn’t explain was that Eisen wrote Holocaust Wars http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html which can be found on the site of a neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel. Since this pamphlet is an uncritical tribute to Zundel it isn’t a question of a far-right site borrowing his material without permission.
And what does Eisen’s pamphlet actually say?
The Hitler we loved and why…
'Ernst Zundel was once involved in the publication of a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, but Ernst Zundel was not the only German who loved Hitler and is probably not the only German who still loves Hitler. Millions of Germans loved Hitler who for twelve years impacted on them as no German has or probably ever will, and, though they never say so, must, deep down still cherish his memory.’
Quite what does this apologia for the leader of German fascism have to do with support for the Palestinians? Leaving aside that Hitler was a mass murderer, hated by the German workers and also an imperialist, who was careful not to support the Arab uprising 1936-9, because he thought the British Empire was a wonderful institution, what possible purpose can be served by these pro-fascist sentiments?
Or the following apologetics for holocaust deniers or ‘revisionists’ as Eisen terms them?
‘But they do deny the Holocaust narrative as we know it in three specific areas.
· They deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe.
· They deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers;
· They deny the figure of six million Jewish victims of the Nazi assault and claim that the actual figure was significantly less.’
This is a pretty good summing up of the case for holocaust denial. The fact that the evidence is overwhelming – documentary records, eyewitnesses, admission by the perpetrators – you name it, no evidence is acceptable to those who are in denial. In fact the only historian with any reputation amongst them, David Irving, was not only trounced in the libel action he brought against Penguin Books but he accepted that gas chambers were used everywhere but Auschwitz, and then it depended on whether one could see holes in the roof where the gas pellets were dropped!
But again, what has this to do with the Palestinians? Atzmon distributes Eisen’s pamphlets and now signs up to all the above nonsense. Read Gilad Atzmon – Now an Open Holocaust Denier.
Interestingly Atzmon didn’t even bother to deny the thrust of the article, that he is now a holocaust denier. More and more evidence from Germany is coming to light that Atzmon has explicitly declared that he doesn’t believe that there is any forensic evidence for the holocaust. He describes the Socialist Unity site as ‘socialist Jewnity’. Is this the kind of statement designed to elicit support for the Palestinians? It resembles the ramblings of his hero, Israel Shamir, who with Eisen he has vigorously defended, who ended up describing the party of Avigdor Liebermann, the nakedly transferist Deputy Prime Minister of Israel thus:
‘Even less substantiated is Makdisi’s weird claim that YB is a "racist party" and for them, "non-Jews are not welcome". As a matter of fact, the YB is the least Jewish nationalist party in the Knesset outside the Arab block’ It was our criticism of Shamir that prompted the The Protocols of the Elders of London article that Rooij thinks so highly of.
When Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists oppose anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement we don’t do so because we think that Eisen and Atzmon are a threat to Jews in the West. They are not. We do it because their antics, and those of their followers, are dangerous to the cause of the Palestinians. It really is that simple.
Rooij attacks the idea of Jewish organisations campaigning around Palestine. Yet it is no secret that western Jewish leaders support Israel as do many in the Jewish community. It therefore makes sense to have groups which are Jewish who aim to mobilise amongst other Jews against the Israeli state. Just as white groups also fought apartheid.
But according to Atzmon, and presumably Rooij:
‘by fighting Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity they approve Zionism…. To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy…. if we regard Jewish identity as a national definition then the label ‘Jew for peace’ or ‘Jew for human rights’ makes sense. … Jews cannot criticise Zionism in the name of their ethnic belonging because such an act is in itself an approval of Zionism.'
When the Boycott campaign was at its height last summer, what was the reaction of the Zionists of the Board of Deputies of British Jews? Did they stand in wonder applauding those Jews (Zionists according to Atzmon) who were active in the movement? According to the Jewish Chronicle (22.6.07.) at their monthly meeting ‘deputies also gave vent to their anger – particularly at Jews who supported the move (for boycott).’ Strange that.
But the whole point is that we don’t accept that Jewish identity and Zionism are synonymous. What Atzmon is saying is that if you are Jewish, not for national but political, cultural or whatever reasons, then you are a Zionist. But that is exactly what the Zionists also say! So for all the insightful, searching, thought-provoking analysis which Rooij says I am trying to censor, what it all boils down to is our criticism of the Zionist analysis of Gilad Atzmon.
Anyone with any knowledge or understanding of Zionism beyond the trivial and superficial waters in which Rooij fishes will know that it was anti-Semitism that gave birth to Zionism. If Rooij and co. knew anything about Zionism then they would know that from the very beginning Political Zionism made an alliance with anti-Semites. Theodore Herzl wrote that:
‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people.’ (Diaries pp. 83/4)
‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.’ (Diaries p.6)
At this very moment the Jewish Agency is scouring Jewish communities trying to increase the present low level of emigration to Israel. France, Germany, Britain, Russia all have them. What possible purpose does it serve to engage in anti-Semitic discourse? If it were successful it could only result in what the Zionists themselves want – increasing emigration of Jews to Israel. Which is why Zionism has never opposed anti-Semitism.
As A B Yehoshua said (Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.) ‘Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real antisemite must be a Zionist.’
If Rooij had got about a bit more in London he would know that Jewish organisations do anything but segregate themselves off. I don’t recall seeing Rooij at last year’s valentine day blockade of Carmel Agrexco for example. There were plenty of people from JAZ and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods there. But picketing Israel’s largest export outlet in Britain as part of Jewish groups is to be a Zionist according to Atzmon!! Clearly words have lost all meaning for these people.
Rooij describes me on the Cork PSC article as close to the anti-boycott Engage. But that is ironic since I have campaigned ceaselessly to support boycott. Unison, the second largest union in Britain voted to support boycott last summer. I spoke in favour of that position, as a Jewish member of the union, and it was passed by at least 80%. For that I am some form of racial segregationist?!! Get real Rooij.
Ironically, at the same time, Atzmon was denouncing the academic boycott as ‘book burning’ (and here).
The one semi-sensible question Rooij asks is what in American society produces support for Zionism. But the only answer his friends provide is ‘the Jews’. Apart from ignoring the much more numerous Christians for Zionism they totally fail to even begin to answer it. Yet it is not difficult to understand why the USA projects its power in the way it does – economic, military, imperial reasons – oil for example. But this means having an analysis of class society and imperialism, something Atzmon and friends explicitly reject. Its reminiscent of the Nazi explanation of capitalism – it’s all to do with the Jews. The problem was that capitalism survived without any Jews. Likewise the US would support Israel even if there were no Jews there because it is in its interests to do so.
Rooij alleges on the Cork PSC site that I am no longer an anti-Zionist. Not true and of course he could find no example to back this up, apart from criticism of Atzmon etc. In fact my hostility to Zionism is undiminished but so is my hostility to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
I helped found the Return magazine and Jews Against Zionism. I was a founding member of British PSC and the Labour Committee on Palestine which achieved support for a democratic, secular state at the 1982 Labour Party conference. I am a member of J-BIG, out on the streets over Gaza each weekend, campaigning in my union for Boycott. These are the acts of a Zionist?
There are a number of errors in Rooij’s article, eg. That I sent ‘defamatory letters’ to the venue where Atzmon was due to speak. Not true. I sent no letters. It was an article in the local press that alerted them to the meeting. Nor was it a church hall. But it is this attention to detail that marks out Rooij as the quality journalist that he is.
Rooij alleged that I had called Atzmon and Eisen ‘fascists’ or ‘Nazis’. I pointed out that was untrue, so what was his response? ‘Sue Blackwell is Greenstein's comrade, and together they have waged their vendetta against Atzmon, et al. Blackwell's website for some time carried a section on "Nazis" and Gilad Atzmon featured in that page.’
Yes Sue Blackwell, who led the academic boycott is my comrade. But surprising as it may seem, I am not responsible for her web site! This is what is usually called guilt by association. McCarthyism in other words.
Rooij warns us to be aware of ‘snakes in the grass.’ I can only suggest that he looks in the mirror because England has very few snakes, apart from the odd viper.
Tony Greenstein
Brendan Behan wrote that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, apart from one’s own obituary. But in the case of Paul Rooij I’ll make another exception. What, you may ask was the point of a 1700+ word personal attack on me? How did it advance the cause of the Palestinians or the struggle of the oppressed? Indeed whose cause did it serve?
Rooij uses the adjective ‘vile’ no less than four times. I’ve written a ‘vile’ article about him and made ‘vile’ accusations of anti-Semitism against Atzmon and Rizzo [AR]. He spends a lot of time saying very little. I am also ‘contemptible’. But what Rooij doesn’t do is explain what lies at the heart of the present controversy over Gilad Atzmon and his acolytes.
Granted that Rooij doesn’t like my article, what he doesn’t explain is why. And that is characteristic of his whole article. Here is a nasty person, Tony Greenstein, attacking the freedom loving AR. The only question missing is why, hence the profusion of adjectives such as ‘contemptible.’ Ad-hominem as a substitute for reason is hardly the basis of Voltaire, still less John Stuart Mill. It is the hallmark of the wannabe tabloid journalist.
It is also a question of honesty. The background is quite simple. As a writer about Zionism the UCC Cork PSC database has a collection of my articles and an introductory page of author details. http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=367 Paul Rooij, as an editor, decided to abuse his position so that his personal attack on me took for criticising Atzmon etc. took over the page. It was clearly insulting and therefore unacceptable. There was no reason why he should have pride of place on a page which introduces my articles. Rooij’s comments are now on a link from the front page. Of course I complained to Ireland PSC about this and mindful of the fact that they want to build solidarity with the Palestinians, and most people with their heads screwed on don’t want to associate with holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, PSC ensured that Rooij’s comments were relegated and he wasn’t able to succeed with his act of intellectual vandalism. You see trade unionists don’t go a bundle on anti-Semitism and fascism, and both of those things Paul Eisen, to whom I’ve been ‘uncivil’ subscribes.
But despite his synthetic outrage, what Rooij didn’t explain was that Eisen wrote Holocaust Wars http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html which can be found on the site of a neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel. Since this pamphlet is an uncritical tribute to Zundel it isn’t a question of a far-right site borrowing his material without permission.
And what does Eisen’s pamphlet actually say?
The Hitler we loved and why…
'Ernst Zundel was once involved in the publication of a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, but Ernst Zundel was not the only German who loved Hitler and is probably not the only German who still loves Hitler. Millions of Germans loved Hitler who for twelve years impacted on them as no German has or probably ever will, and, though they never say so, must, deep down still cherish his memory.’
Quite what does this apologia for the leader of German fascism have to do with support for the Palestinians? Leaving aside that Hitler was a mass murderer, hated by the German workers and also an imperialist, who was careful not to support the Arab uprising 1936-9, because he thought the British Empire was a wonderful institution, what possible purpose can be served by these pro-fascist sentiments?
Or the following apologetics for holocaust deniers or ‘revisionists’ as Eisen terms them?
‘But they do deny the Holocaust narrative as we know it in three specific areas.
· They deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe.
· They deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers;
· They deny the figure of six million Jewish victims of the Nazi assault and claim that the actual figure was significantly less.’
This is a pretty good summing up of the case for holocaust denial. The fact that the evidence is overwhelming – documentary records, eyewitnesses, admission by the perpetrators – you name it, no evidence is acceptable to those who are in denial. In fact the only historian with any reputation amongst them, David Irving, was not only trounced in the libel action he brought against Penguin Books but he accepted that gas chambers were used everywhere but Auschwitz, and then it depended on whether one could see holes in the roof where the gas pellets were dropped!
But again, what has this to do with the Palestinians? Atzmon distributes Eisen’s pamphlets and now signs up to all the above nonsense. Read Gilad Atzmon – Now an Open Holocaust Denier.
Interestingly Atzmon didn’t even bother to deny the thrust of the article, that he is now a holocaust denier. More and more evidence from Germany is coming to light that Atzmon has explicitly declared that he doesn’t believe that there is any forensic evidence for the holocaust. He describes the Socialist Unity site as ‘socialist Jewnity’. Is this the kind of statement designed to elicit support for the Palestinians? It resembles the ramblings of his hero, Israel Shamir, who with Eisen he has vigorously defended, who ended up describing the party of Avigdor Liebermann, the nakedly transferist Deputy Prime Minister of Israel thus:
‘Even less substantiated is Makdisi’s weird claim that YB is a "racist party" and for them, "non-Jews are not welcome". As a matter of fact, the YB is the least Jewish nationalist party in the Knesset outside the Arab block’ It was our criticism of Shamir that prompted the The Protocols of the Elders of London article that Rooij thinks so highly of.
When Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists oppose anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement we don’t do so because we think that Eisen and Atzmon are a threat to Jews in the West. They are not. We do it because their antics, and those of their followers, are dangerous to the cause of the Palestinians. It really is that simple.
Rooij attacks the idea of Jewish organisations campaigning around Palestine. Yet it is no secret that western Jewish leaders support Israel as do many in the Jewish community. It therefore makes sense to have groups which are Jewish who aim to mobilise amongst other Jews against the Israeli state. Just as white groups also fought apartheid.
But according to Atzmon, and presumably Rooij:
‘by fighting Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity they approve Zionism…. To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy…. if we regard Jewish identity as a national definition then the label ‘Jew for peace’ or ‘Jew for human rights’ makes sense. … Jews cannot criticise Zionism in the name of their ethnic belonging because such an act is in itself an approval of Zionism.'
When the Boycott campaign was at its height last summer, what was the reaction of the Zionists of the Board of Deputies of British Jews? Did they stand in wonder applauding those Jews (Zionists according to Atzmon) who were active in the movement? According to the Jewish Chronicle (22.6.07.) at their monthly meeting ‘deputies also gave vent to their anger – particularly at Jews who supported the move (for boycott).’ Strange that.
But the whole point is that we don’t accept that Jewish identity and Zionism are synonymous. What Atzmon is saying is that if you are Jewish, not for national but political, cultural or whatever reasons, then you are a Zionist. But that is exactly what the Zionists also say! So for all the insightful, searching, thought-provoking analysis which Rooij says I am trying to censor, what it all boils down to is our criticism of the Zionist analysis of Gilad Atzmon.
Anyone with any knowledge or understanding of Zionism beyond the trivial and superficial waters in which Rooij fishes will know that it was anti-Semitism that gave birth to Zionism. If Rooij and co. knew anything about Zionism then they would know that from the very beginning Political Zionism made an alliance with anti-Semites. Theodore Herzl wrote that:
‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people.’ (Diaries pp. 83/4)
‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.’ (Diaries p.6)
At this very moment the Jewish Agency is scouring Jewish communities trying to increase the present low level of emigration to Israel. France, Germany, Britain, Russia all have them. What possible purpose does it serve to engage in anti-Semitic discourse? If it were successful it could only result in what the Zionists themselves want – increasing emigration of Jews to Israel. Which is why Zionism has never opposed anti-Semitism.
As A B Yehoshua said (Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.) ‘Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real antisemite must be a Zionist.’
If Rooij had got about a bit more in London he would know that Jewish organisations do anything but segregate themselves off. I don’t recall seeing Rooij at last year’s valentine day blockade of Carmel Agrexco for example. There were plenty of people from JAZ and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods there. But picketing Israel’s largest export outlet in Britain as part of Jewish groups is to be a Zionist according to Atzmon!! Clearly words have lost all meaning for these people.
Rooij describes me on the Cork PSC article as close to the anti-boycott Engage. But that is ironic since I have campaigned ceaselessly to support boycott. Unison, the second largest union in Britain voted to support boycott last summer. I spoke in favour of that position, as a Jewish member of the union, and it was passed by at least 80%. For that I am some form of racial segregationist?!! Get real Rooij.
Ironically, at the same time, Atzmon was denouncing the academic boycott as ‘book burning’ (and here).
The one semi-sensible question Rooij asks is what in American society produces support for Zionism. But the only answer his friends provide is ‘the Jews’. Apart from ignoring the much more numerous Christians for Zionism they totally fail to even begin to answer it. Yet it is not difficult to understand why the USA projects its power in the way it does – economic, military, imperial reasons – oil for example. But this means having an analysis of class society and imperialism, something Atzmon and friends explicitly reject. Its reminiscent of the Nazi explanation of capitalism – it’s all to do with the Jews. The problem was that capitalism survived without any Jews. Likewise the US would support Israel even if there were no Jews there because it is in its interests to do so.
Rooij alleges on the Cork PSC site that I am no longer an anti-Zionist. Not true and of course he could find no example to back this up, apart from criticism of Atzmon etc. In fact my hostility to Zionism is undiminished but so is my hostility to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
I helped found the Return magazine and Jews Against Zionism. I was a founding member of British PSC and the Labour Committee on Palestine which achieved support for a democratic, secular state at the 1982 Labour Party conference. I am a member of J-BIG, out on the streets over Gaza each weekend, campaigning in my union for Boycott. These are the acts of a Zionist?
There are a number of errors in Rooij’s article, eg. That I sent ‘defamatory letters’ to the venue where Atzmon was due to speak. Not true. I sent no letters. It was an article in the local press that alerted them to the meeting. Nor was it a church hall. But it is this attention to detail that marks out Rooij as the quality journalist that he is.
Rooij alleged that I had called Atzmon and Eisen ‘fascists’ or ‘Nazis’. I pointed out that was untrue, so what was his response? ‘Sue Blackwell is Greenstein's comrade, and together they have waged their vendetta against Atzmon, et al. Blackwell's website for some time carried a section on "Nazis" and Gilad Atzmon featured in that page.’
Yes Sue Blackwell, who led the academic boycott is my comrade. But surprising as it may seem, I am not responsible for her web site! This is what is usually called guilt by association. McCarthyism in other words.
Rooij warns us to be aware of ‘snakes in the grass.’ I can only suggest that he looks in the mirror because England has very few snakes, apart from the odd viper.
Tony Greenstein
12 February 2008
Indymedia Capitulates To The Anti-Semites And Holocaust Deniers
Maybe it was a mistake to expect anymore of them, but Indymedia does describe itself as a ‘network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.’
It also has Guidelines which state under Discrimination:
posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination
may be hidden.
This guideline however has been completely ignored. It is inoperative. Some people, not myself, had high hopes that the two day meeting in Nottingham on 9-10 January 2008 would resolve these problems. Instead it led to the resignation of at least one more member and the entrenchment of the supporters of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial in the collective, led by ftp and jackslucid.
Most people know the story. Gilad Atzmon, a racist ex-Israeli has been allowed to post freely to Indymedia articles justifying the holocaust Say no to the Hunters of Goliath and legitimising revisionist historians Esther to Aipac. Those who have sought to respond to these articles have had their replies hidden by ftp with the acquiescence or worse of the collective.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389837.html
Instead the IM Collective has adopted a new category. Articles which some want to hide and some want to display openly are now ‘disputed’. On the night of 10th January the Hunters article was declared disputed and then readmitted and then disputed, with red slabs ‘disputed’ all over it. By the morning these had changed to feint pink! By the time this article had been written all that was left was a message saying the article was disputed but otherwise it could be read as if it were any normal article on IM.
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2007/08/378213.html?s=disputed
What is particularly outrageous is that the IM Collective decided to ban Tony Greenstein from posting, for being honest with the hapless mods., but when it came to Gilad Atzmon a ‘block’ was put on such a proposal by our old friend Free the Peeps (Roy Bard). In other words regardless of whether there is or is not a majority the proposal didn’t go through. Result? The person who complained about anti-Semitism is banned and the anti-Semite is allowed to continue posting. And these people want us to believe they take racism serious?
And if to emphasise that the complainant was the problem the following was put in extra big letters!
Agree that what Greenstein has done and his campaign has been disruptive. All agreed this was the case. This is not a personal problem, it is a political problem. Responsibility of the collective to discuss this.
And who are the people that IM are defending? The minutes, which hide more than they reveal, apart from an inability to spell, contain a couple of sentences which sum up the problem:
‘There was a discussion about the anti-Semitism issue and indymedia's definitions about what constitutes anti-Semitism.
Concern that this is a prelude to an increasing climate of hiding Palestinian articles or criticisms of Israel.’
And therein lies the rub. Zionists have for so long attacked supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists as anti-Semitic, that now that the real anti-Semites are coming out of the woodwork, the IM Collective, and to be fair not only them, have difficulty in telling the difference between the genuine article and the person that the Zionists have defamed. It is the problem of crying wolf. But although the IM collective has little in the way of political theory or ideology, it isn’t that difficult telling the difference between a false accusation of anti-Semitism and the real thing.
Let us take the petition in support of Mary Rizzo and Gilad Atzmon which has even been hidden by Atzmon’s servile dogsbody, ftp:
Mary Rizzo, the editor of the anti-Semitic ‘peacepalestine’ blog posted the following comments on the Socialist Unity site vouching for the bonafides of one of the signatories to the above petition – The Radical Press:
'The Radical Press presents thought-provoking and intelligent information and analysis. It is absolutely NOT anti-Semitic, but many who might not agree with its harsh critique on Israel might try to label it as such, so that people will create confusion between the two, and things never change.
I hope you realise that it is a valuable resource, and any campaigning made to insinuate that it is a racist site is not at all accurate.
Mary Rizzo
And indeed it is a valuable resource, albeit not for the reasons that Rizzo gives. It is valuable because it is instructive in the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And if anyone believes otherwise then they are welcome to dip their toe in its poisoned waters.
But what are the 'thought-provoking and intelligent information and analysis' that so impresses Mary Rizzo, who is not a woman to be easily impressed (except when it’s Atzmon who’s doing the talking)?
Well There are articles on the:
Jewish Banking Cartel (82) Jewish Holocaust Industry (77) Jewish Lobby (112) Jewish Media Monopoly (105) Jewish Porn Industry (50) Jews (148) Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
There is a delightful article by Brother Daniel on the same site. Entitled (what else?)
AMERICA IS RUN BY JEWS
By Brother Nathanael Kapner
Brother Nathanael bronathanael@yahoo.com
AMERICA IS NOW A JEW-RUN NATION. Here is a list of the prominent Jews who run America: [I wont bore you with the list]
Elsewhere we learn that ‘Judaism is a "chameleon" culture/religion. It "becomes" whatever is necessary in order to deceive and trick non-Jews’
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
"The Jew also believes he is destined to own and rule the whole world as a ‘master race.’"
"The Jews are not going to stop what they are doing to us! We are going to have to stop them, even if that means separating them from our midst permanently!"
"Jewish supremacists thrive and thieve more successfully in a country without a strong majority that is well-organized for its own self-interest, as whites used to be before the Jewish Trojan Hebrew Horse rode into town"
"the whole concept of "multiculturalism", the kind offered up like a steady dietary staple on a majority of college campuses, was created by Jews. In fact, as political dissident author Curtis Maynard explains, a Jewish woman actually wrote a whole primer to encourage and spread this alien ideology."
"Abortion is a modern and grisly Jewish death trade. Jews run 50% of abortuaries in America (though only comprising 2% of the population) and they make up the leadership of nearly every pro-abortion activist group…. the main impetus or stimulus for the Jewish abortion cheerleaders is to dramatically lower the white birthrate, thereby killing off their chief competitors and decreasing the white surplus population."
"Most teens in America have a far more favorable view of homosexuals than their parents or grandparents ever did. But this is the Jewish way. Brainwash, propagandize and then recruit, recruit, recruit like hell! But as Jewish homosexual organizations try to indoctrinate sexually confused young people into the gay death style there seems to be more at work here than simple "tolerance" or "diversity" issues. This is an effort to tear asunder the notion of "traditional family" that has been the bedrock of Western survival….Though not all homosexual enthusiasts are Jewish, their leaders surely are."
"All of these facets of the Jewish blueprint have one central theme. They impose sickness and social disease and degeneracy and death by constant fiat." [4] January 31, 2008
[1]http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681
[2] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=663#more-663 and
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=563#more-563
and http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=436#more-436
[3] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=683#more-683
[4] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=674#more-674
One wonders whether the IM collective would recognise the above as anti-Semitic? Chances are that ftp and the useful idiots who support him would no doubt think that it was just a case of exuberant anti-Zionism. One wonders whether the women (are there any women left?) on the collective recognise that a statement such as ‘Abortion is a modern and grisly Jewish death trade’ could come straight from Streicher’s Der Stuermer.
These are the sick people that the IM Collective have hitched their wagon to. Instead of junking FTP, Phunkee and Jackslucid they have instead decided to give a free pass to genuine fascists and anti-Semites.
Yes, after months of battling to get the Indymedia collective to bar holocaust deniers and anti-Semites from posting articles, we have a situation now, after their meeting at the weekend, whereby anti-Semites are welcome and their opponents are banned!
Below are 2 articles here and here which result from the fallout from the meeting in Nottingham at the weekend. Naturally they are hidden,
And If you want to know why Knuckles and her friend Atzmon are holocaust deniers just read
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1559#comments
The Indymedia fellow-travellers with racism and anti-Semitism are incapable of telling the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Some of them think they are doing Palestinians a favour by publishing this sort of garbage.
There is nothing the Zionists love better than to demonstrate that supporters of the Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Indymedia UK has now done all it could to prove them right.
Tony Greenstein
It also has Guidelines which state under Discrimination:
posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination
may be hidden.
This guideline however has been completely ignored. It is inoperative. Some people, not myself, had high hopes that the two day meeting in Nottingham on 9-10 January 2008 would resolve these problems. Instead it led to the resignation of at least one more member and the entrenchment of the supporters of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial in the collective, led by ftp and jackslucid.
Most people know the story. Gilad Atzmon, a racist ex-Israeli has been allowed to post freely to Indymedia articles justifying the holocaust Say no to the Hunters of Goliath and legitimising revisionist historians Esther to Aipac. Those who have sought to respond to these articles have had their replies hidden by ftp with the acquiescence or worse of the collective.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389837.html
Instead the IM Collective has adopted a new category. Articles which some want to hide and some want to display openly are now ‘disputed’. On the night of 10th January the Hunters article was declared disputed and then readmitted and then disputed, with red slabs ‘disputed’ all over it. By the morning these had changed to feint pink! By the time this article had been written all that was left was a message saying the article was disputed but otherwise it could be read as if it were any normal article on IM.
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2007/08/378213.html?s=disputed
What is particularly outrageous is that the IM Collective decided to ban Tony Greenstein from posting, for being honest with the hapless mods., but when it came to Gilad Atzmon a ‘block’ was put on such a proposal by our old friend Free the Peeps (Roy Bard). In other words regardless of whether there is or is not a majority the proposal didn’t go through. Result? The person who complained about anti-Semitism is banned and the anti-Semite is allowed to continue posting. And these people want us to believe they take racism serious?
And if to emphasise that the complainant was the problem the following was put in extra big letters!
Agree that what Greenstein has done and his campaign has been disruptive. All agreed this was the case. This is not a personal problem, it is a political problem. Responsibility of the collective to discuss this.
And who are the people that IM are defending? The minutes, which hide more than they reveal, apart from an inability to spell, contain a couple of sentences which sum up the problem:
‘There was a discussion about the anti-Semitism issue and indymedia's definitions about what constitutes anti-Semitism.
Concern that this is a prelude to an increasing climate of hiding Palestinian articles or criticisms of Israel.’
And therein lies the rub. Zionists have for so long attacked supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists as anti-Semitic, that now that the real anti-Semites are coming out of the woodwork, the IM Collective, and to be fair not only them, have difficulty in telling the difference between the genuine article and the person that the Zionists have defamed. It is the problem of crying wolf. But although the IM collective has little in the way of political theory or ideology, it isn’t that difficult telling the difference between a false accusation of anti-Semitism and the real thing.
Let us take the petition in support of Mary Rizzo and Gilad Atzmon which has even been hidden by Atzmon’s servile dogsbody, ftp:
Mary Rizzo, the editor of the anti-Semitic ‘peacepalestine’ blog posted the following comments on the Socialist Unity site vouching for the bonafides of one of the signatories to the above petition – The Radical Press:
'The Radical Press presents thought-provoking and intelligent information and analysis. It is absolutely NOT anti-Semitic, but many who might not agree with its harsh critique on Israel might try to label it as such, so that people will create confusion between the two, and things never change.
I hope you realise that it is a valuable resource, and any campaigning made to insinuate that it is a racist site is not at all accurate.
Mary Rizzo
And indeed it is a valuable resource, albeit not for the reasons that Rizzo gives. It is valuable because it is instructive in the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And if anyone believes otherwise then they are welcome to dip their toe in its poisoned waters.
But what are the 'thought-provoking and intelligent information and analysis' that so impresses Mary Rizzo, who is not a woman to be easily impressed (except when it’s Atzmon who’s doing the talking)?
Well There are articles on the:
Jewish Banking Cartel (82) Jewish Holocaust Industry (77) Jewish Lobby (112) Jewish Media Monopoly (105) Jewish Porn Industry (50) Jews (148) Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
There is a delightful article by Brother Daniel on the same site. Entitled (what else?)
AMERICA IS RUN BY JEWS
By Brother Nathanael Kapner
Brother Nathanael bronathanael@yahoo.com
AMERICA IS NOW A JEW-RUN NATION. Here is a list of the prominent Jews who run America: [I wont bore you with the list]
Elsewhere we learn that ‘Judaism is a "chameleon" culture/religion. It "becomes" whatever is necessary in order to deceive and trick non-Jews’
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681#more-681
"The Jew also believes he is destined to own and rule the whole world as a ‘master race.’"
"The Jews are not going to stop what they are doing to us! We are going to have to stop them, even if that means separating them from our midst permanently!"
"Jewish supremacists thrive and thieve more successfully in a country without a strong majority that is well-organized for its own self-interest, as whites used to be before the Jewish Trojan Hebrew Horse rode into town"
"the whole concept of "multiculturalism", the kind offered up like a steady dietary staple on a majority of college campuses, was created by Jews. In fact, as political dissident author Curtis Maynard explains, a Jewish woman actually wrote a whole primer to encourage and spread this alien ideology."
"Abortion is a modern and grisly Jewish death trade. Jews run 50% of abortuaries in America (though only comprising 2% of the population) and they make up the leadership of nearly every pro-abortion activist group…. the main impetus or stimulus for the Jewish abortion cheerleaders is to dramatically lower the white birthrate, thereby killing off their chief competitors and decreasing the white surplus population."
"Most teens in America have a far more favorable view of homosexuals than their parents or grandparents ever did. But this is the Jewish way. Brainwash, propagandize and then recruit, recruit, recruit like hell! But as Jewish homosexual organizations try to indoctrinate sexually confused young people into the gay death style there seems to be more at work here than simple "tolerance" or "diversity" issues. This is an effort to tear asunder the notion of "traditional family" that has been the bedrock of Western survival….Though not all homosexual enthusiasts are Jewish, their leaders surely are."
"All of these facets of the Jewish blueprint have one central theme. They impose sickness and social disease and degeneracy and death by constant fiat." [4] January 31, 2008
[1]http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=681
[2] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=663#more-663 and
http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=563#more-563
and http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=436#more-436
[3] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=683#more-683
[4] http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=674#more-674
One wonders whether the IM collective would recognise the above as anti-Semitic? Chances are that ftp and the useful idiots who support him would no doubt think that it was just a case of exuberant anti-Zionism. One wonders whether the women (are there any women left?) on the collective recognise that a statement such as ‘Abortion is a modern and grisly Jewish death trade’ could come straight from Streicher’s Der Stuermer.
These are the sick people that the IM Collective have hitched their wagon to. Instead of junking FTP, Phunkee and Jackslucid they have instead decided to give a free pass to genuine fascists and anti-Semites.
Yes, after months of battling to get the Indymedia collective to bar holocaust deniers and anti-Semites from posting articles, we have a situation now, after their meeting at the weekend, whereby anti-Semites are welcome and their opponents are banned!
Below are 2 articles here and here which result from the fallout from the meeting in Nottingham at the weekend. Naturally they are hidden,
And If you want to know why Knuckles and her friend Atzmon are holocaust deniers just read
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1559#comments
The Indymedia fellow-travellers with racism and anti-Semitism are incapable of telling the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Some of them think they are doing Palestinians a favour by publishing this sort of garbage.
There is nothing the Zionists love better than to demonstrate that supporters of the Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Indymedia UK has now done all it could to prove them right.
Tony Greenstein
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