Colin Bell - A good example of the anti-Semitism and Zionism of Gilad Atzmon's Supporters

'Go Back to Tel Aviv' the Zionism of Atzmonism

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Colin Bell but he wrote to me at an e-mail address associated with this blog, but which I rarely use. So there was a delay in responding. He asked me what I had to fear from Atzmon and I replied nothing but that wasn’t a reason for not opposing him. I have to admit I was brusque with him, since he has an obsession about ‘Jewishness’.

It is also clear, despite trying to teach him, that he knows nothing about Zionism if he queries whether Lord Shaftesbury, a key Evangelical Christian in Britain, was a Zionist. Herzl only held his conference in 1897 so he couldn’t have been! In fact the 1st Aliyah took place in 1882 following the Odessa pogrom amongst others in Czarist Russia in 1881 and the formation of Hovvei Zion by Leon Pinsker. In fact the first Zionist pamphlet was not Herzl’s der Judenstaat in 1895 but Moses Hess’s Rome & Jerusalem in 1862.

Of course there was no reason by Bell should know this but since he didn’t he should go off and read a little before spouting his Atzmonite nonsense. Zionism didn’t just spring out of Herzl’s head. It was a movement or political current that had been steadily growing throughout the 19th century, mainly at the urging of non-Jews.

There is a good chapter ‘The Forerunners’ in Walter Lacquer’s History of Zionism on the origins of Zionism. In 1839 a series of articles in The Globe, a London newspaper which was the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Foreign Office and Palmerston, advocated Jewish settlement in the region of Syria and Palestine. In 1862, quite by coincidence, another Zionist pamphlet Drishat was written by one of the first religious Zionists, Rabbi Kalischer. In 1870 the agricultural school of Mikveh Yisrael was formed, and was where a famous (photoshopped!) photograph of Herzl and the German Kaiser Wilhelm II was taken (see Desmond Stewart’s excellent biography of Herzl for details). In 1882 the first settlement of the Biluim, taken from the verse in the Bible ‘rise O house of Jacob.’

The point is that the religious intonation, ‘next year in Jerusalem’ said every Passover, was just a spiritual longing which meant, as Bernard Lazarre, the famous Dreyfusard and anarchist, who broke with Herzl, a desire to be free. It was given political significance by Zionism.

However if you are a simple Atzmonite then all this is besides the point. It’s all to do with ‘Jewishness’ and has no connection with the real world. So we have Colin Bell on the one hand wittering on about ‘Jewishness’ and how terrible Zionism is and the other hand telling me, like the good anti-semite he is, to ‘go back to Tel Aviv’ despite the fact that I’ve only been there once, over 40 years ago!

This is though a good example of how anti-Semitism and Zionism are like siamese twins, each dependent on the other.

Tony Greenstein


From: tony greenstein
To: Colin Bell

Colin Bell,

Your last comment, that I 'should go back to Tel Aviv' confirms that you are a racist and an anti-semite, since I have never lived in Israel. So being Jewish means I should 'go back' to Israel. This was of course the slogan of the fascists in the '30's and of course many Jews did exactly that. The consequence being the establishment of the Israeli state.
So, as with your mentor, Gilad Atzmon, when I scratch the surface out comes a Zionist who believes all Jews should 'go to Tel Aviv'. And like all Atzmon supporters you have nothing to contribute or say apart from your obsession with Jewishness.


I won't however return the compliment of accusing you of working for Mossad or under cover since it is obvious you are too thick for even the stupidest 'intelligence' agency to make much use of.

Your comments are a textbook example of how anti-semitism morphs into Zionism and so I shall distribute this widely in order that people can see a real living example and blog on it later.
Probably your only moment of fame in an otherwise useless life.

tony greenstein

From: Colin Bell
To: tony greenstein
Sent: Thu, 2 June, 2011 19:46:50
Subject: Re: zionism = racism

As a final word Mr Greenstein,
My interaction with you has confirmed to me that you are a fraud.
I think you are 'working under cover' ?
How do you afford the lifestyle you lead unless you are being financed by someone ?
Mossad perhaps ?
The positions you take up over Israel etc are very inconsistent.
Go back to Tel Aviv Mr Greenstein.
ASAP.

Yours sincerely

Colin Bell


On 31 May 2011, at 03:27, tony greenstein wrote:
I will answer in coloured print.

Mr Greenstein,

I will answer your questions and then finish !

In your previous response you said that you 'spoke as a Jew' at the Unison National Conferences of 2008, & 2009.

Why 'as a Jew' ? Why not as 'a concerned human being' ?

Because unlike you I wished to see the motion passed and to defeat the Zionists' arguments. It was a collective decision. It was rather a good way of visibly defeating Zionist accusations of 'anti-semitism.' Most conference delegates thought so too. Hence why it was done today at the UCU Conference where an extremely important motion (see blog) was passed. The difference between us is that you are more preciously concerned with abstract notions of what is proper rather than wishing to take the struggle forward.

Thuggery and brutality against the Palestinians is as nasty as thuggery and brutality against any group of people
your statement suggests it is somehow 'different', but that 'even a Jew' [such as yourself] is concerned at the level of suffering of the Palestinians
as if you somehow deserve 'extra kudos' for this [more than say if I were to express concern - as a non-Jew]

I am not interested in your interpretations, but they are nonetheless wrong

I am not wishing to enter into a competition with you

My perception is that Jewish people [typically] stress their Jewishness at every opportunity
why ?

Gilad seems to me to be questioning this 'separation mindset'

I think it needs to be questioned

see above

Your defence of anything 'Jewish' is extreme and aggressive

and sounds to me to be remarkably similar to the tactics employed by apologists for Israel

ie. NO-ONE is allowed to question anything Jewish - unless they themselves are Jewish.

I have never said that and my questioning is far more effective than your hero worship of Atzmon.

Isn't that 'setting yourself apart' ?

Do you believe that the state of Israel 'has a right to exist' ?

I don't accept that any state has the 'right' to exist. It's not a human being but I've never accepted the right of a 'Jewish' State to exist. That should have been obvious to you.

because if you do; you are a zionist [ of some sort]

I do not mean that I think Israel will suddenly just disappear

I am questioning its 'RIGHT to exist'

When one considers the way it came into being I do not accept that it has a right to exist
[I do nonetheless accept that it is a 'fact on the ground']

I am not questioning the right of Jewish people to co-exist in the land of Palestine

You like to enlist famous names Mr Greenstein

I am not quite sure what Bob Dylan has got to do with anything, he seems to be quite a 'free spirit' to me;

it seems that you are the Zionist since Dylan is and has been consciously aiding the Zionist movement, not least by his breaking of the cultural boycott, which Atzmon also opposes.

and

I am not sure that Lord Shaftesbury was really a zionist [I realize that some say he was]
unfortunately he died some 12 years BEFORE the political movement of zionism was created [ie. 1897] which creates certain problems when it comes to labelling him 'a zionist'.

Your ignorance creates no problem. The first Aliya (wave of immigration) to Palestine was that of the Biluim in 1882 and Hovvei Zion was formed in 1881 and Rishon Le Zion, the first settlement in 1871.

When extremist christians use christian symbols as their 'moniker', I think it is a reasonable question for someone to then ask "what exactly is meant by 'christian' ?"

No what you ask, if indeed you bother, is what THEY mean by Christian.

The same applies to 'Jewish'.

You are too defensive Mr Greenstein; you could 'loosen' a bit

Are you saying that Jewish people [typically] do not claim to be 'the chosen people' ?

In certain situations they might, just as the Afrikaaners considered themselves chosen and the Blacks were the people of Ham. The question is what situation. Try reading a bit more widely about colonialism and then you will find out that all colonists thought of themselves as superior and therefore chosen and it therefore has nothing to do with the Jewish/Protestant/Catholic badge but to do with material circumstance.

Gilad is a bit 'provocative' at times but that is not always such a bad thing I do not understand why that annoys you to the extent that it does ?

I have never heard [or read] Gilad say anything in favour of zionism.

Clearly you haven't read my essay or closely enough. Try the essay on the Bund, where he is consistently favourable to Zionism or his favourable commentary on Antony Julius's attack on Jewish anti-Zionists (now why would the new President of the Board of Deputies write a long essay in 2 parts attacking us? just try thinking)

Can I join the 'Jewish anti-zionist Group' [as a non-Jew] ?

No. You are sympathetic to a racist and don't even recognise racism when it stares you in the face. Jewish groups are there to maximise support for the Palestinians, nothing more. We work with non-Jews and don't question as to why someone defines themselves as Jewish. Which is why people like Ghada Karmi and Sue Blackwell, who are not Jewish, attended our founding conference as equals.

I suspect not; then surely you are 'setting yourselves apart' ?

see above

How can you give opinions 'as a Jew' when you contend that, as far as you are concerned, there is no such thing as 'Jewishness' ? I don't understand.

It's not the only thing u don't understand. Being Jewish isn't dependent on Atzmon's nonsensical racial formulation.

You say that Marx's writings on 'The Jewish Question' was 'a critique of the religion primarily'.
So presumably you are saying that 'there is more to 'Jewishness' than mere religion ?
Yet a few sentences before this you were asserting that "there is no such thing as 'Jewishness'", and that to suggest that there is is 'racist' !!?
Again, I do not understand.

You will understand more, assuming you understand it to begin with, if you read Abram Leon's 'Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation'. Then all your nonsense about 'Jewishness' and reducing being Jewish to an essentialist condition will fall into place. Religion reflects material surroundings and functions. The Jewish religion reflected the changed fortunes of Jews. As circumstances changed and the role of Jews changed, so did the religion. Try reading someone who knew something as opposed to an ignoramus like Atzmon who knows nothing.

What makes you feel so certain about 'how little aware Marx was of how the Jewish masses were becoming proletarianised and pauperised' ? How could you possibly know such a thing ?? Did you ask him ? [I am not quite sure what you mean by that anyway]

Because it is apparent from his essay that he only grasped this tenuously. There was no reason why he should have known anything about the mass of Jews in the Pales of Settlement. But Marxism is a form of analysis, a means of understanding the world, not in terms of bourgeois ideology or its fragments (like Jewishness). It isn't a bible. You quote Marx as if he wrote the Gospel but Marx always warned against this reification. Idolatry is for heathens.

Since I was mentioning the fact that Marx [the philosopher] was intrigued by the meaning of 'Jewishness' and you seem to hate Gilad for pondering the meaning of 'Jewishness' I don't see how my observation is 'out of context' it seems very relevant to me. If Gilad is worthy of hatred for his pondering; why not Marx ?

I don't hate Atzmon, I have contempt for him but that's different.

I don't agree with 'everything' that anyone says and that includes Gilad but I do not feel the need to hate them for expressing a different view than my own [I think that Gilad comes up with some very interesting observations] nor would I wish to 'intimidate them into silence' That smacks of 'fear' to me however much you wish to deny it.

I don't doubt that you find his meanderings interesting. I find them boring and unoriginal.

Finally, if you really do wish to see a secular state in Palestine for ALL the people then we are perhaps not so different.

I do not understand how the antics of you and your associates in attempting to 'close down' the talk on May 3rd in any way helped the Palestinian cause.

I don't recall trying to close down Atzmon's talk. All I did was expose the fact that a 'panel' to debate Atzmon's concept of Jewishness did nothing to support the Palestinians, quite the contrary and the academics on board seemed to agree.

Rather I think it attempted to re-inforce the notion that Palestine is a taboo subject
because the notion of 'Jewishness' is at the very heart of the project to colonize the land of Palestine Your thinking is too 'black and white' for me Mr Greenstein.

I suspect any thinking is a bit much for you Colin.

Colin Bell

On 28 May 2011, at 17:41, tony greenstein wrote:

I've never said I was different because I'm Jewish. Quote where I've said that. This is part of the Atzmon poison. To make people take their eye off solidarity with the Palestinians and concentrate on Jews per se. It's a political ignorance that ends up in the fatuous statement of Atzmon that Zionism and the Israeli state have 'absolutely' nothing to do with colonialism. Presumably AJ Balfour (if you've heard of him), Palmerstone, Lord Shaftesbury and all the other imperialists from the mid-19th century onwards, were supportive of the 'Jews return to Palestine' because they were genuine romantics at heart.

And because the focus is on Jews and 'Jewishness' and colonialism is excused, there is really no need for a Boycott of Israel because it isn't Israel that is really responsible but diaspora Jews who control Israel. Oh yes, it's all in Atzmon's turgid writings but I doubt if you've read them either.

Atzmon may be posing some questions, but they are the wrong ones, and he is not a disinterested party but one keen on dividing the PS movement up into Jewish and non-Jewish. Or maybe it's debate that he is really after. Perhaps a debate on wh ether the holocaust occurred or whether we should use terms like 'socialist jewnity' and other little racist quips. No doubt we can have a debate on the 'n' word while we are at it. I prefer debating over matters of importance, not the racial fantasies of your hero.

Yes I know I could have fooled you. It's like taking candy from a kid, hence why it's not worth the effort.

There was no proscribing of the meeting. I couldn't care if it took place. We simply suggested to those who did have something to say, viz. the 2 academics who pulled out, that sharing a platform with Atzmon wasn't compatible with support for the Palestinians or opposition to Zionism. They seem to have agreed but I doubt you really understand the issues since debating Atzmon's obsessions is more important to you than solidarity.

Since I've never talked of a 'Jewish perspective' there is not much point arguing with you, since you invent things to find something to say. You are really a complete idiot. Either try reading what I say or go and find someone else to listen to your drivel. For the last time, being Jewish to me is only important when opposing racism - be it Zionism or any other form of racism. Period. Got that? Sunk in to your thick head?

And the reason why I tire of fools like you is you achieve nothing except to set back support for the Palestinians. Other than that you do nothing because you represent nothing. When some of us try to build the BDS movement in the trade unions we have to pretend that people like you don't exist because otherwise we would have great difficulty in building such support. It's bad enough with Palestinian quislings like Abbas but you don't even have his excuses.

I'm well aware, as I've already said, of what Marx wrote in the 1840's and indeed what Moses Hess wrote in the 1860's. But surprising as it may seem the world has changed since then and Jews who existed then have disappeared. Indeed they were already disappearing as feudalism gave way to capitalism in Eastern Europe. So if you are clinging to Marx I'd think again, he won't provide u with a liferaft.

Yes Jews were opposed to Zionism until the holocaust that Atzmon questions. I guess the murder of millions somewhat changed things. Surprising isn't it? Any other insights?
tony greenstein

From: Colin Bell
To: tony greenstein
Sent: Sat, 28 May, 2011 11:41:47
Subject: Re: zionism = racism

Mr Greenstein,

I wish I could say that it was worth the wait. Unfortunately I can't. I never thought it would be so easy to dismantle your argument. Your response is unnecessarily convoluted, complex, and confused. This is why I contend that your whole position is actually a sham. You fail miserably to construct a coherent argument.

On the subject of 'Jewish identity'; the point is that you, and other Jewish people, set yourselves apart it doesn't come from me I am not saying that you are different because you are Jewish
you are the people who keep stressing the notion that you are so different and why are you different ? Because you are Jewish [according to you] Yet by some quirky thinking you come to the conclusion that everything is somehow coming from me !!?

In the talk on May 3rd Gilad was simply posing questions and seeking to debate possible answers That is how one conducts a discussion on anything or do you disagree ? Meanwhile you and your associates sought to 'proscribe' the meeting and yet you assert the idea that it is you and your friends who stand for 'freedom, and liberty' You could have fooled me.

At every turn you choose to interpret everything from 'a Jewish perspective' as opposed to the perspective of being 'just another human being' in other words from the confines of a 'closed club'
a club for which anyone who is not 'Jewish' is refused entry and you don't think that this is 'elitist' and 'racist' ? [I wonder; do you breathe 'Jewish air' ? or do you breathe the same air as the rest of us mere mortals ? we wouldn't want to contaminate you after all] Yet Gilad, because he questions this 'ghetto mentality' IS racist for doing so. I think you have got the 'cart before the horse' and if some previous speakers were so easily intimidated; that is their affair.
If most Jews opposed zionism [as you contend] there wouldn't be a 'Jewish state'.

Yes, I agree, zionism was/ is supported by other groups in the creation, and expansion, of their 'Jewish' project but these other groups don't run Israel do they ?

You profess to be an 'anti-zionist' and yet you use the self same language as the zionists in denouncing people who challenge your assertions. ie. 'Racist', 'anti-semite', and 'self-hater'.
Gilad wonders about the meaning of 'Jewishness' [as did Karl Marx] and you freely admit that you 'haven't got a clue' as to what 'Jewishness' is; yet you feel qualified to denounce him as a 'racist' for examining the possible meanings of such a concept !? That simply doesn't make sense.

[You seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that the 'raison d'etre' of 'project Israel' is that it is 'a Jewish state' so presumably 'Jewish' must mean something ? or do you disagree ?]
Marx wrote extensively on 'The Jewish Question' in 1843 and 1844, examining the meaning of 'Jewishness'. Among other things he questioned why mainstream christian society should concern itself with 'Jewish emancipation' when 'the inherent "partiality" of Judaism' is in complete contradiction with christian notions of 'universality'. Marx went on to conclude that 'the social emancipation of the Jew would be the emancipation of society from Judaism',
in other words Jewishness, by it's very nature, is both 'partial and exclusive' as opposed to 'universal and inclusive'.

That doesn't sound very different from what Gilad is saying to me. I think you need to re-read Marx [if indeed you have ever read him in the first place] Take down the barriers Mr Greenstein, we are not all savages out here. As for 'not suffering fools gladly'; I would stay away from the mirror !

Colin Bell

On 27 May 2011, at 02:30, tony greenstein wrote:

Colin

It is true that I don’t suffer fools gladly and I am therefore somewhat impatient with those who don’t get it or refuse to get it at times. No matter let’s deal with the substance of your argument, such as it is.

Firstly as I’ve already said, a reply to my googlemail account won’t be picked up for days or more You say that ‘There was absolutely nothing 'racist' in what Gilad had to say during that talk.’ I wasn’t at the talk and I’ve only watched 20 minutes of his video but he did ask rhetorically, after rejecting the idea that Zionism had anything to do with colonialism ‘Is Zionism what it is. Because ‘Jews’ are what they are?’

Now how can you identify a whole group by virtue of religion/race/ethnicity as subscribing to one particular ideology? Not Israeli Jews or even a part thereof but all Jews. The fact that most Jews opposed Zionism when it first began and its most vociferous supporters were Christian seems lost on him. See So that is racist and anti-Semitic for a start.

You say that I am ‘a zionist bigot’, but of course offer no argument in support of that statement. So why am I a Zionist? Having opposed Zionism for over 40 years what is your basis for this silly assertion? Maybe it was moving a resolution calling for a unitary democratic secular state at the 1977 NUS Conference was the action of a ‘Zionist bigot’? Or maybe co-founding Palestine Solidarity Campaign? Or maybe it was forming the Labour Committee on Palestine which successfully moved an emergency motion to the 1982 Labour Party conference supporting a democratic secular state in Palestine? Or the countless times I have argued on campuses, stalls, meetings etc. against Zionism? Or the policies of the student union where I was Vice President or that of Sussex University and many other educational establishments where I have spoken at Union General Meetings?

Or perhaps it was speaking as a Jew, quite deliberately, at the 2008 and 2009 UNISON national conference in support of Boycott? The decision that I should speak as someone Jewish was a decision of the movers of the motion as a group.

I realise that my record probably doesn’t stand comparison with your magnificent record but that’s how the cookie crumbles. So tell me. Why am I a Zionist for supporting Boycott successfully in my union and Atzmon, who opposed the academic boycott is an anti-Zionist? And if you didn’t already know his opposition to the academic boycott was because those supporting it in UCU also oppose Atzmon’s anti-Semitism because they know, living in the real world, that anti-Semitism means death to support for the Palestinians in anything other than your little gatherings of conspiracy theorists.

And calling me a Zionist when I'm a Jewish anti-Zionist is in itself anti-Semitic. I'm sure even you can work that one out.

Jewish identity politics are no more tribal than any form of identity politics. Zionism is clearly tribal but so is Wahhabism. Likewise the Afrikaaners (clue – they were also settler colonists).
I’m not aware that Jewish anti-Zionists do set themselves apart. They are part of the general Boycott movement. Jews 4 Boycotting Israeli Goods started off the Ahava protest and in that they were joined by many others, but clearly not yourself. There’s nothing elitist in that.
Yes the symbols of Zionism are Jewish. Just as the symbol of Protestant supremacy in Ireland were Christian and the symbols of the American settlers were cowboy hats and wagons. The fact that Zionism has used Jewish religious symbolism doesn’t mean that those symbols were responsible for Zionism. I know it’s a difficult argument but you see, as Bob Dylan observed, every state or nation at war uses god on their side.

The fact that Zionism claims that it represents all Jews, except the ‘traitors’ and ‘self-haters’ (like the protesters who got beaten up at the Aipac conference heckling Netanyahu a couple of days go) doesn’t mean it does. For one thing there is also a Jewish identity that looks to traditions of Jewish anti-racism. Zionism may be a majority current among Jews worldwide but its grip is slowly loosening. There are other currents and in that sense it’s signficant that Atzmon rails against the Jewish Bund which represented the Polish Jewish masses and which was anti-Zionist. Atzmon actually welcomes the triumph of Zionism within world Jewry which is reason enough to suspect him. Atzmon represents a reflection of Zionist racism and claims this as an insight!

I haven’t claimed to be of any ‘chosen people’ and therefore don’t know what you are talking about. Zionists may make such a claim but I don’t.

What is Jewishness? Haven’t a clue. Atzmon is the one who uses the term not me. I suspect he means a metaphysical substance that binds all Jews together. It is an ingredient of his racist outpourings but I don’t recognise that there is any such thing.

I’m well aware of Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question. It was firstly in the context of a debate with Otto Bauer about why Jews should be granted equal rights and be emancipated. It was a critique of the religion primarily. Marx was very little aware of how the Jewish masses were becoming proletarianised and pauperised. Mere quotes out of context say little or nothing.
I’ve said what I stand for – a democratic, secular state in Palestine for all who live there. The question is rather what you stand for.

I'm copying this to the J-Big list as an example of the muddle and confusion of Atzmon's supporters.

Tony Greenstein

Mr Greenstein,

What an aggressive attitude, and you are a 'friend' of Palestinians and a man who wants to make the world a better place ?? are you serious ? You are highly aggressive and extremely insulting to me, someone you have never met in your life I think you are a fraud. and I think you are 'pretending' to be anti zionist There was absolutely nothing 'racist' in what Gilad had to say during that talk only a zionist bigot [like you] would say otherwise

What Gilad is saying is that the 'tribalism' of Jewish identity politics leads them to consistently set themselves apart from everyone else. Everything is pretexted by 'Jewish' and there is a sort of 'elitism' involved in this. He questions why they feel the need to continually set themselves apart in this way ? As he said at the meeting, 'The symbols on the planes, tanks, etc., that bombarded Gaza, and the Lebanon were 'Jewish symbols' NOT 'zionist symbols'
or do you disagree ?

So to ask the question 'What exactly is 'Jewishness' ? seems like a fair question to me.
All this carnage is wrought in the name of 'Jewish' after all isn't it ? I think it is a very pertinent question; because if Jewish people continually stress the idea that they are somehow 'different' from the rest of us whilst simultaneously claiming to be the 'chosen' people .... they shouldn't be surprised when people view them as being different and a threat. [They seem to me to 'want to have their cake, and eat it' !!] This view of being different [never mind superior] is a form of 'class division' as far as I am concerned and I notice that the man most famous for his opposition to 'class division' [Karl Marx] wrote extensively on 'The Jewish Question' and the historic problems associated with Jewish 'partiality'; in both 1843 and 1844.

Marx questioned the notion of the 'effectively self-centred , internally cohesive, practical-empirical partiality of Jewishness'. He went on to equate 'the spirit of Judaism' with being 'the spirit of Capitalism'. My point is that Marx [as a radical philosopher] was intrigued by the 'meaning of Jewishness' in these writings. [check it out you leftie !!]

No doubt if Marx were alive today you would be accusing him of being 'dim', 'anti-semitic', and a 'racist' ? Yet you claim to be a 'man of the Left' ?? I think you [and many of your chums] are actually closet fascists; you want to tell everyone what to think. Well, not me Mr Greenstein.
I think what I want to think whether you like it or not. I look at and question whatever I want to look at and question; I do not take any notice of people like you. Why don't you 'come out of the closet' and reveal where you really stand ? What exactly is it that you are opposed to Mr Greenstein ? [or perhaps even more importantly; "What exactly do you stand FOR ?"]

Colin Bell
PS. It took you long enough to respond.

You mistake fear for opposition. Both academics involved in the academic pulled out from speaking with this racist. A couple of minor figures were added but we didn't much care as we had made our point. No one with any reputation to defend will associate with a racist because people who are not as dim as you will understand that racism is not something likely to be of benefit to the Palestinians.

It is unfortunate that Atzmon's supporters are so thick

Tony Greenstein

Dear Mr Greenstein,

Just for information; I attended the talk with Gilad Atzmon last night and ALL 3 of the billed panellists turned up, the debate went on for the whole of the alloted time and there were so many people at the meeting that some couldn't sit down (plus as we left we bumped into 4 people who hadn't been able to find the event - due to the fact that it had moved - there were probably more)

It was a very interesting discussion.

Perhaps you should buy Gilad's book 'The wandering who ?' Then you might understand what he is saying. Don't live your life in fear.

Yours sincerely
Colin Bell

UNISON Boycott of Histadrut Sabotaged by PGFTU's Shaher Saeed

Once Again Shaher Saeed Sabotages Solidarity Action Abroad

Once again the unelected leader of PGFTU has been allowed to sabotage solidarity action in other countries. Saeed is the trade union version of Mahmoud Abbas, always willing to dance to Israel's tune. The question is how long Palestinian trade unionists are prepared to allow a quisling to head their union and allow him to get away with undermining solidarity work.

I've written on Saeed's actions before but this time they have had a decisive effect in undermining the patient work of activists within Britain's second largest union UNISON.

Following the decision of the 2010 UNISON Conference to suspend relations with Israel’s racist ‘trade union’ Histadrut a delegation was sent to Israel and Palestine from 27th November to 3rd December 2010. What prompted this was Histadrut’s support for the murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and its previous support for Operation Cast Lead, the genocidal attack on Gaza.

The delegation met members of Histadrut and its two public service affiliates. It also met the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions and other mixed unions and workers’ organisations within Israel. On the basis of talks between the delegation and Shaher Saeed, Secretary General of PGFTU, the delegation has recommended a resumption of relations with Histadrut in order to put pressure on them to take a more vocal public stance against the occupation and the settlements.

Although the report does not describe UNISON’s discussion with PGFTU there is little doubt that Shaher Saeed did not support a boycott of Histadrut for the simple reason that he never has supported a boycott. When fellow union members have pressurised him he has made statements to that effect, but gone back on them as soon as convenient.

This time Saeed has effectively undone the work of pro-Palestinian activists in UNISON by supporting the maintenance of relations with Histadrut. Although it is understandable that PGFTU has such relations, given the position it is in, there is no reason (apart from Histadrut threats) for it to oppose trade unions in other countries from implementing a boycott. When this arose earlier this year, PGFTU had to issue a ‘clarification’ of what Saeed had previously said. This time no amount of clarification will undo the damage that Saeed has done. As long as Palestinians are content to allow Saeed to operate as Secretary-General of PGFTU, although he has not been elected, then they will bear the consequence of having this stooge at their head.

The UNISON Report is quite clear.

‘The PGFTU in particular said that UNISON should maintain links with the Histadrut so that we could specifically put pressure on them to take a more vocal public stance against the occupation and the settlements.’

There is no doubt that this is what they were told and there is little point in quibbling about it. The points to make is that Shaher Saeed is no different from Mahmoud Abbas and the quislings running the Palestinian Authority whose security forces are specially trained by the USA with the purpose of repressing and torturing their own people.

Histadrut in the Report state that:
· They did not take a stance on wider political issues;
· They feel international relations with other trade unions should only be based on trade union related matters;
· They are unwilling to alienate members of theirs who do not support negotiations with the Palestinians; and,
· They fear international pressure on Histadrut would be used against them by the right wing in Israel.

Of course this is disingenous. Histadrut’s ex-building company Solel Boneh (all its enterprises were sold off in the 1980s and 1990s) helped build the settlements. It takes very political positions – support for Israel’s attack on other countries for example. It is true that they are unwilling to ‘alienate’ their own members who for the most part are even more racist and backward.

The Report proposes ‘critical engagement’. This seems very reminiscent of the ‘constructive engagement’ that Chester Crocker proposed and Thatcher and Reagan accepted for dealings with the Apartheid regime. It was founded on the belief that the Apartheid authorities would willingly dismantle the structures of racism. It was however not engagement, but Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment which persuaded white South Africans that their time was up.

A recent development has been a conference held in Ramallah on 30th April which founded the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The statement they issued is here.
This makes it clear that the Palestinian trade union movement syupports a full boycott of Israel. It put relations with Histadrut in that context and called on international trades unions to sever all links.

It is accident that UNISON Executive have taken this opportunity not to rock the boat internationally. Motion 89 from the National Executive therefore advocates the same ‘critical engagement’ that Thatcher and Reagan pursued with South Africa (it was called ‘constructive engagement’ but the meaning is the same). It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Racists don’t understand reasoned argument. The only thing that persuades them is pressure and force. Motion 89 can be read here.

Picket Dylan On June 18th in London

Remind Dylan That Money Doesn't Talk It Only Swears

Further to my previous report on Dylan’s performance in Israel, there is news of his only concert in Britain 2 days before. Dylan is the headline act of the first day of Feis 2011 Festival in Finsbury Park. See

Yael Khan reports that they are planning a protest and want as many as possible to come.
We planning a protest - can you come? Help organise?

There are number of campaigns against Dylan’s concert in Israel. For example:
"BOB DYLAN BOYCOTT ISRAEL"

and
"Bob Dylan - Please Don't Play for Apartheid Israel"

We also created
"Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday: Tuesday, May 24"

University & College Union Rejects EUMC-Zionist Definition of Anti-Semitism

UCU Defies Threats and Blackmail

Wonderful news from UCU. The European Union Monitoring Committee Report on Anti-Semitism, which came from the American Jewish Committee, a group which opposed another Boycott in the 1930’s – the trade union & Jewish labour movement boycott of Nazi Germany - has repeatedly been used as a weapon deployed against all critics of Israel, including Jewish anti-Zionists.

It is no wonder that the Zionist Community Security Trust, presided over by Gerald Ronson, the far-right owner of Britain's biggest private company, Heron Ltd., David Hirsch, to say nothing of the EDL supporting, Muslim hating, Harry’s Place have complained so bitterly about this rejection.

What does the EUMC actually say? That 'antisemitism; includes:

'Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour'

Now this is strange. Accusing the Jews of being one people was always an anti-Semitic notion. It was the anti-Semites who held that a Jew might be Polish but s/he belonged elsewhere 'Jews to Palestine' was their favourite slogan. The idea that Chinese, British and Argentinian Jews, all of whom speak different languages and hold to different customs, are members of the same people was a shorthand for race.

So we have the absurd position whereby a definition of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic!!

The EUMC definition goes on to hold that ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ is also anti-Semitic. But who is it who regularly makes comparisons between Israel’s actions and the Nazis if not the Zionists. When Matan Vilnai, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister promised a ‘bigger Shoah (Holocaust)’ for the Palestinians of Gaza he was as good as his word when a few months later1,400 civilians were murdered including 400 ‘terrorist’ children. But noone accused him of anti-Semitism.

The EUMC definition wasn’t deployed against Vilnai. It was used exclusively against Palestinians and their supporters who compared Israel’s actions to that of the Nazis, in particular the Warsaw Ghetto. In Brighton this included a Police attack on a demonstration.

When retired Israeli Judge Ben-Itto stated how 'We must learn from the Nazis'
I can’t remember the outcry about anti-Semitism. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is reserved solely for Palestinians and the victims of Israel’s barbarism, not against its perpetrators. The EUMC is merely a propaganda weapon in Israel’s arsenal. Even the hapless Richard Goldstone was accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ by Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz for his Report on the genocide in Gaza.

And the final irony of this absurd and pretentious report, beloved by cold war warriors and Zionists like Dennis McShane MP is ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.’ Now who holds Jews responsible for Israel’s actions and labels those of us who are anti-Zionist Jews as ‘traitors’. Please do tell. Ah yes, those who helped formulate this report!

I can’t remember Zionists protesting when on 9th January 2009 the Jewish (read Zionist) Board of Deputies of British Jews decided to hold a demonstration in Trafalgar Square to back Israel’s War on Lebanon under the title "Community to Show Support for Israel at Trafalgar Square Rally." Strange that. A definition that is only partially applied is not a definition but a propaganda weapon. Today the EUMC has all but been dropped such is its obvious bias.

At a time when the fascist English Defence League demonstrates alongside Zionists in support of Israel and every far right party of significance in Europe, apart from the Hungarian Jobbik Party, supports Israel and Zionism, it is clear that whatever else its purpose, the EUMC definition isn't about anti-Semitism but defending Israel. No better supporters are there than Michel Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party, who opposed the Polish state apologising for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in 1941 at Jedwabne, burnt alive in their synagogue and not forgetting Robert Ziles of the Latvian Freedom & Fatherland Party, which commemorates the butchers of the Latvian SS every yeaer. But the EUMC Definition of Anti-Semitism never seems to apply to these people!

Well done UCU and in particular Sue Blackwell, Mike Cushman, Tom Hickey and all the other stalwarts in Bricup who proposed this. Note how the Zionist threats that ‘Jews’ will resign now from UCU doesn’t ever seem to include anti-Zionist Jews! Zionists and racists are always welcome to resign when they can’t accept democracy.

Below is the resolution which was passed:

70 EUMC working definition of anti-semitism - National Executive Committee

Congress notes with concern that the so-called ‘EUMC working definition of antisemitism’, while not adopted by the EU or the UK government and having no official status, is being used by bodies such as the NUS and local student unions in relation to activities on campus.

Congress believes that the EUMC definition confuses criticism of Israeli government policy and actions with genuine antisemitism, and is being used to silence debate about Israel and Palestine on campus.

Congress resolves:

1. that UCU will make no use of the EUMC definition (e.g. in educating members or dealing with internal complaints)

2. that UCU will dissociate itself from the EUMC definition in any public discussion on the matter in which UCU is involved

3. that UCU will campaign for open debate on campus concerning Israel’s past history and current policy, while continuing to combat all forms of racial or religious discrimination

HAIFA and the Nakba

As the Mayor asked them to stay Haganna bombed the Market

The story below speaks for itself. I grew up, as the son of an Orthodox Rabbi, in a religious Zionist family. When the original fable of the Arabs running away, rather than being expelled, was first told, I can remember it being emphasised that the Mayor of Haifa even begged those wicked Arabs to stay and they wouldn’t. Later it turned out that as the Mayor was asking them to stay, Haganna loudspeakers were telliing them to get out if they valued their lives.

In fact the Irgun militia were rolling bombs down the hills into the Arab quarters and as Ilan Pappe documents in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine the Arabs of Haifa were indeed driven into the sea (the normal Zionist retort to what will happen if Israel becomes democratic) and some drowned. Now the story has been told of how Haganna also participated in the shelling of Arab Haifa and the market, although Ha'aretz has not translated the article into English.

Tony Greenstein

By Shai Fogelman, Haaretz – 26 May 2011

Why did the Arabs of Haifa flee in 1948? Didn’t Haifa’s Jewish mayor ask them to stay? Maybe because Haganah (the primary pre-state Jewish military organization in Palestine) mortar rounds shot at the midst of the civilian crowds in the market, spoke another language. Here is a story that Israeli historians do not like to tell. (HEBREW)

David Cameron Resigns as Patron of the JNF

Greenwash will no longer wash away the Crimes of the Jewish National Fund

They must have hoped that no one would notice. One day the JNF listed David Cameron as a patron and the next day he was gone! If only all our victories could come as sweetly as this! Of course, as Cameron’s spokesperson explained, the problem was ‘time constraints.’ Quite. Presumably the previous 2 Prime Ministers, war criminal Tony Blair and Gordon ‘no more boom & bust’ Brown had so little to do that they wandered around trying to find organisations prepared to accept them as patrons!

Founded in 1901 as the principal land settlement wing of the Zionist Organisation, the JNF role has been the equivalent of a money launderer, except that it dealt in stolen land rather than stolen money. The Israeli government, through a plethora of laws: the Absentee Property Law 1950 and the “Jewish National Fund (Keren Keyemeth Le Israel Law Law)” (1953) which granted it special status and set up a new JNF company, the JNF became in effect a quasi-governmental organisation administering policies the government couldn't be seen to openly administer.

These were coupled with the later Basic Law - Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law; Israel Lands Administration Law of 1960 The Covenant between the Government of Israel and the JNF, 1961 and the Agricultural Settlement (Restriction on Use of Agricultural Land and Water) Law, 1967 (which made it a criminal offence for a lessee of the JNF to lease land to non-Jews). The JNF and the Israeli Lands Administration had in effect joined forces and between them controlled 93% of Israeli land.

Although originally the JNF purchased land, usually from absentee landlords, in order to create its Jewish-only settlements, less than 7% of land in Palestine had been purchased by 1948, albeit that the land was of better quality than the average or as with the kibbutzim, strategically situated . After 1948 the JNF took possession of 35% of confiscated Palestinian land. Nearly 2.4 million dunumes was transferred to the JNF between January 1949 and October 1950.

The Memorandum of Association, effectively the constitution of the JNF Association Ltd. was quite explicit. Article 3 (a) stated that the purpose of the JNF was ‘To purchase, acquire on lease or in exchange, etc.,. . . in the prescribed region (which expression shall in this Memorandum mean the State of Israel in any area within the jurisdiction of the Government of Israel) or any part thereof, for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties." (Government Gazette No. 354, 10.6.1954).

But this situation, whereby a Zionist organisation administered on behalf of the Israeli State, land which Arab citizens of Israel could not use, or when it was leased to them by the ILA, the JNF was 'compensated' by other state land, could not continue. After having prevaricated for 10 years

In its response of December 2004, to a petition filed by Adalah to the Supreme Court of Israel – HC 9205/04) in the Kadan case the JNF stated quite explicitly that ‘“The JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel. Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel... The JNF, in relation to being an owner of land, is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”

But it is recent events and the repeated demolition of the peaceful bedouin village of Al Arakhib in the Negev, for the sole purpose of ‘Judaification of the Negev’ which has brought the Greenwash politics of the JNF under the spotlight. The village has been repeatedly demolished, some 21 times, by JNF bulldozers, which in the past two weeks have finally beaten a retreat. The publicity may have become too much.

The JNF has promoted itself as a ‘Green’ organisation, planting forests and parks, omitting to say that its ‘green’ credentials have come about because of its desire to eradicate all trace and mention of the former occupants of the land it is planting, such as the establishment of Canada Park over the ruins of 3 Palestinian villages including the ancient Immwas in the West Bank. The decision by Scotland Friends of the Earth to oppose the JNF and all its racist works is welcome and we look forward to a similar stance by other environmental and green organisations.

The result is that the JNF has now become a toxic brand. Only New Labour it seems values an association with it although even Ed Miliband has kept his distance from this apartheid organisation (whilst refusing to answer questions on whether or not he would sponsor the organisation like his predecessors). See

On 7th October 2010, 50 of us wrote urging that Miliband not become a patron of this apartheid organisation. On 20th October, in response to a lying letter from the Chairman of British JNF, Samuel Hayek, who had the effrontery to say the JNF didn’t discriminate on grounds of religion, when all he had to do was look at its name(!), both Barry Stierer and myself of Brighton PSC had letters printed by the Guardian. Hayek didn’t reply to them this time around.

Now we have the final humiliation, with David Cameron deciding to cut his links. The time is rapidly approaching when the Charity Commission is going to have to decide that the JNF no longer fulfills charitable objectives and therefore should not qualify for tax exempt status. In a report by the Jewish Chronicle of 26th May 2011, we learn that:

JNF UK has declined to say why Prime Minister David Cameron's name has disappeared from its list of honorary patrons.

Twelve days ago the pro-Palestinian Stop the JNF campaign wrote to Mr Cameron, reiterating a previous request for him to withdraw as patron of the charity.
Mortaza Sahibzada, of Stop the JNF, said: "His name has been taken off the list and that is significant. Someone has decided to take it off and I doubt whether it was JNF." Mr Cameron became an honorary patron of JNF five years ago, whose other patrons still include Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

In its latest letter to Mr Cameron, Stop the JNF complained that the JNF British Park was planted on the ruins of two Palestinian villages after the 1948 war.
But Downing Street said that a review of all the Prime Minister's links with charities had been made when the coalition came into office. A number had been dropped, including JNF, the spokesman said, citing time constraints on Mr Cameron.

Friends of the Earth Scotland endorses call for action against the JNF

28 May 2011

Scotland's leading environmental campaigning organisation votes unanimously to support the campaign to Stop the JNF.
Stan Blackley
Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland

"Our members at today’s AGM voted overwhelmingly to endorse the international call to stop the JNF. At today's land rights conference the activities of the JNF were brought to the attention of our members, supporters and interested members of the public. Our organisation is pleased to join the call for the revocation for the JNF's charitable status in the UK and to help raise awareness on this little known issue."
Andy Wightman
Author of 'Who Owns Scotland' and 'The Poor had no Lawyers', independent writer and researcher on issues of land and democracy. Keynote speaker ('Land rights in Scotland and Palestine') at 2011 Friends of the Earth Scotland Conference Land Rights Conference in Edinburgh.

"I am delighted that Friends of the Earth Scotland has voted to endorse the call to stop the JNF. The JNF has played a central role in the expropriation of Palestinian land and it is high time that it was exposed for the crimes it has been complicit in committing."

Challenge the JNF: Stop the JNF Campaign Workshops, London, 4 June 2011

The campaign to Stop the JNF calls on human rights supporters, refugee rights and environmental justice campaigners to take action in support of the right of Palestinians to return to the homes and villages they were driven from. We invite individuals and organisations to participate in the June 4th workshop on the JNF and how to challenge its support and collusion in illegal occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Date: Saturday 4 June 2011
Venue: LSE, Houghton Street, London
Jointly hosted by: LSE Palestine Solidarity Society & Stop the JNF Campaign
Registration: £5
Contact details: gb@stopthejnf.org

AGENDA
Registration: 10-10.30am
Welcome: 10.30-10.45am

Session 1 - What is the JNF: 10.45am-12.15pm
The JNF and its role in ethnic cleansing and in establishing and maintaining apartheid.
Lunch: 12.15-1.15pm

Session 2 - The JNF and the environmental justice movement: 1.15-2.45pm

Session 3 - How to fight the JNF: 3-4.30pm
The Stop the JNF Campaign: founding; international co-ordination and partnerships; strategies to challenge the JNF; results and prospects.

Session 4 - The next practical steps: 4.45-6.15pm
Feedback from workshop sessions. Organising & break-out sessions: lobbying, informing the public and media; direct action; collaboration with other campaign networks, i.e. anti-racist, environmental, trade union, students.

Stop the JNF Campaign
gb@stopthejnf.org
www.stopthejnf.org

Bob Dylan’s Nightmare – Israel June 20th

I have to make a confession. I’ve been a Dylan aficionado for most of my life. Together with the Beatles, Stones and Simon and Garfunkel he defined the ‘60s musically for me. He was the child of the civil rights movement, who played at the Washington March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, the year of Alabama’s last stand.

Unfortunately the older he has grown, the more foolish and greedy Dylan has become. It is as if the elder Dylan was determined to act out the worst caricatures of his younger self, a form of self-castigation. Who for example could imagine back in 1964 that Dylan would allow a song of his (Forever Young) to appear in a commercial for Pepsi Cola? The line about ‘money doesn’t talk, it swears’ and the stanza from one of his greatest but simple songs, It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding comes to mind:

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

I know that people are inclined to talk up his more recent work but for me the last great albums were from the 1970s –Blood on the Tracks and Street Legal in particular. There then followed his Christian period and the truly atrocious Slow Train Coming. Dylan was thought to have reached the bottom of the pit when he told his audience in 1980

"I told you 'The Times They Are A-Changin' and they did!" he told a crowd in New Mexico. "I said the answer was ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and it was! And I'm telling you now, Jesus is coming back, and he is! And there is no other way of salvation."

In 1971 he had declared, in an interview in Time magazine, that the Neo-Nazi Zionist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was ‘"a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together.’ One can only assume that it is Dylan’s ignorance and political idiocy which prevented him from understanding that the very segregation he once opposed was at the heart of Kahane’s philosopy, and worse.

Today Dylan is ploughing the same furrow that has guided his career – a love of the money that he lyrically disdains. It should therefore come as no surprise that he is playing in Israel on June 20th. An Israel which maintains a brutal occupation in the West Bank, bombs and murders in Gaza and which treats its Arab citizens in the same way as South Africa treated Black people under Apartheid. But no doubt the money is good. The fact that at 70 years of age Dylan is already fabulously rich and shows no signs of wishing to spend his fortune in retirement, one can only assume that it is a love of money for its own sake that is his guiding principle.

As to whether or not to try and dissuade him from going I disagree with Lenni Brenner. Of course Dylan will no more listen to the voices of Boycott than he did to those who asked him to speak out against the Vietnam War. But the call for Dylan not to go to Israel is aimed primarily at those who still fondly imagine that the Dylan of 1963 bears any resemblance to the old man of today.
Dylan is a pastiche of his former self. His lyrics are often borrowed wholesale from others, without acknowledgement and the songs themselves are dark and broody for the most part. They represent the depths to which Dylan has sunk since his visit to a dying Woody Guthrie, an idol of whom no more is spoken.

The words of one of his most underrated songs, Masters of War, come to mind when one thinks of Dylan taking blood-soaked shekels whilst he fawns in front of an almost completely Jewish audience.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

Below is an article by Lenni Brenner, the Jewish anti-Zionist who wrote Zionism in the Age of the Dictators about the collaboration between the Nazis and Zionist movement and also an article on his racist pro-settler song ‘Neighborhood Bully’. As the right-wing Jerusalem Post noted Neighborhood Bull was ‘Dylan’s 1983 Likudnik paean to Israel and the Jewish people. Chances? None. He has never performed it.’Has-Been Bob Dylan's May 24 Birthday

By Lenni Brenner

Hi folks,

I recently received a request from an Irish anti-Zionist to try to get Bob Dylan to cancel his upcoming June 20 engagement in Israel. Below are my answer to the Irish comrade and an article I wrote in 2003 on how I triggered off Bob's song writing career in 1961. The Dylan of that era was a genius, but today he's such an obvious intellectual has-been that his playing in Israel in 2011 will end up being an embarrassment for Zionism.

*********************************************

Hi comrade,

There are two reasons why people shouldn’t waste their time trying to get Dylan to boycott Israel.

1 - He’d play in Hell if he could make money at it.

2 - All intelligent Americans, Jew or gentile, see today’s Dylan as a crackpot.

Below is an article I published in 2003 in CounterPunch re me and Bob. I ended it by declaring that

“His radical songs will live on. But “do a good deed and throw it into the sea.” His later theological trapeze act, swinging between Jesus and the late Lubavicher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, can only be described as the all-time-most-pathetic American Jewish tragi-comedy shtik.”

Bob was born into a Jewish family, but the Bob I met in 1961 had become an atheist lefty who went on to write the political anthems of that age. Then he became a Jesus-freak and, later yet, he topped that folly by reconverting to Orthodox Judaism. And within Orthodoxy he hangs in with the Lubavicher sub-sect, whose followers believe that Schneerson was the messiah, who will - any minute now - rise out of his coffin and save his followers.

Let me put this in its real world sociological context. Orthodoxy is Israel’s official religion. But no more than 10% of America’s Jews are Orthodox. Every day, Orthodox males say, as part of their morning prayer, “Thank you God for making me a man, not a woman.”

About 40% of American Jews belong to either the Conservative or Reform Jewish sects. They have dropped that male chauvinist manure and now have women rabbis and gay rabbis. The other 50% have completely abandoned any type of Judaism.

So now we have a unique situation. Bob is one of the most famous people on the planet. But his fame is due to songs he wrote in his leftist period. When he got into Christianity he discredited himself intellectually with 99% of Jews, from Orthodox to atheist. We may disagree on everything else, but we all believe that Christianity is a fairy-tale, and that any Jew who converts to any form of it is sick in the head. The result is that when he got involved with the Lubavichers, most Jews didn’t cheer, not even most Orthodox, except for the Lubavichers, who are ridiculed even by most Orthodox. We all saw his reconversion as another chapter in his mad autobiography.

Since all of this is from a Jewish perspective, it may be hard for Irish folks to understand. So let me give you an Irish analogy. Imagine if Bob O’Dylan was born into a Catholic family. Then he became an atheist leftist and a great songwriter. Then O’Dylan joined Paisley’s Protestant church. Later he reconverted to Catholicism, studied hard and became a priest. Who on the Island - atheist, Catholic or Protestant - would respect Father O’Dylan?

American Jews have the highest income and education of any ethnic or religious stratum in the U.S. That means that they are the most travelled. But the Israeli government admits that more adult American Jews go to Britain than Israel. So I suggest that you just ignore his Tel Aviv gig, or else play with it. Something like

‘Only American Jewish fools like Bob Dylan go to Israel. Educated Jews go to Shakespeare’s home town. So what is the new Dublin government doing to get them to come to the land of Joyce and Yeats?’

Stay well, give 'em hell, Lenni

*************************************************************

How Dylan Found His Voice

May 3, 2003

Big Joe Williams, the East Village, Peyote and the Forging of Dylan's Art

By LENNI BRENNER

I don't say I was Bob Dylan's room-mate. Calling some-one your room-mate means that at least one of us paid rent. It was the winter of 1961. I was crashing at banjo-picker Paul Shoenwetter's pad on East 4th Street between Avenue C and D, in what is now called the East Village, but which we knew as the Lower East Side, along with Vince Hickey, a jazz drummer, and Tom Condit, a socialist buddy, when St. Paul brought in yet another stray.

Vince married black, to the daughter of Victoria Spivey, an ol' timey blues singer. He was an encyclopedia on ragtime. Tom and I were up to our asses in the civil rights struggle. Bob, at 19, going on 20, 4 years younger than me, was our junior colleague. He couldn't be expected to say much that was new or interesting or amusing to us worldlings. However we recognized a marvelous musician, and welcomed him into our fraternity of the rebellious, brilliant and crazy.

The highpoint of one chat is chiseled into stone. Peyote was still legal. The problem was that it tasted like tiger piss going down. Then it upsets your stomach. But that's the best news it ever had. That means the veggie was kickin' in. It gave me spectacular eyes-closed color visions and the tummy-ache vanished.

Tom processed some. He ground-up a batch of dried up fist-sized buds, and put the powder into gelatin caps. That solves the taste problem. He laid 50 caps on me and split. I took 30 and was waiting for them to come on, when Bob walked in. I gave him the 20. He downed them, told of a near-by party and left. After my technicolor show came on, I walked over.

I vote the winter of 1961 as New York's greatest. Four fulsome blizzards had left huge mounds everywhere, and then, on Friday night-Saturday morning, February 3-4, another storm dumped 17.4 inches on the city. The total accumulation was the greatest ever. For the first time, the mayor had to ban non-essential traffic so plows could clear a lane down the side streets, with many parked cars buried for months under humongous glaciers. For me, high, those streets, with icicles as big as they get, hanging off tenement fire-escapes, were the once-in-eternity Siberia-in-the-Apple, well past any piddling prophet's paltry Paradise.

The party was at the home of Village Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Bob was adding whiskey to the peyote, as he, Mark Spoelstra and other folkies played in a back room.

After dawn on Sunday, the 5th, I left for Paul's. I was alone when Bob came in, 20 minutes later. We chatted about the night, and I got on him about a southern song they sang, Just lookin' for a Home. "Bob, you never saw a boll weevil. Mark never did. None of us have. If one flew in the window, or crawled in under the door, or whatever the hell they do, we wouldn't recognize it. Stop singing about boll weevils and sing about your own life and times."

He was slouched on a couch. In a hot second he was upright, his smiling young face suddenly electrically alive: "That's what Joe Williams told me!" His new maturing face mirrored his thinking as the implications of what we said sank in. Others have that experience. Someone tells us something but it doesn't click until someone else slams it in.

It is idle to speculate as to whether Bob could have eventually figured out by himself that he had to do his own thing. I say with certainty that Big Joe and I were, in life, the agencies that propelled him to his destiny. I remember nary another word. But his expressions were unforgettable. Here was the most gifted young musician-poet of his time and place suddenly getting his act together as an adult and performer.

For at least the first minute, almost two, after his exclamation, his thoughts put themselves spontaneously onto his face. His initial reception of my statement was followed by a series of self-induced facial shocks as he silently cooked our old/new ideas in his pot. Then he regained his composure, leaned towards me with his elbows on his thighs and we talked for a few more minutes. Then, as we had been up for a heap of hours, we crashed. There was no doubt that both of us thought a profound thing had happened to him.

Of course I had no idea that he would make such an impact on the world. But that visual scene was hardly one that anyone could forget, even if it happened with a nobody. To be sure, it wasn't quite as if the scales immediately fell from his eyes and he received sight forthwith and arose and was baptized, as with Saul becoming Paul. But thru his cogitations he did spring up and go. The few words remembered and circa 10 minutes forgotten are how the mind sometimes turns events into memory. A highlight stands in for a whole conversation. The physical details are so vivid because the night was so spectacular and my vision was keyed up by peyote.

As his career took off shortly after, in the full bloom of our friendship, I had further reason to think about that morning, and lock in the incident. I'm sure that he saw it the same way. For the next two years, I was his wise buddy, who pulled his coat on a crux matter for him as a poet and person. In any case, we got up in the Winter dark. We had no food. Bob cleared out first, saying "I have to do some writing." Yea verily, a bright young fellow came into that pad, a full man went out.

I never asked him what Big Joe actually said. But we get the spirit of it in Robert Shelton's No Direction Home. Williams' recalled that "Bob...wrote me thanking me for the advice I had given him about music. What he earned, what he done, he got it honest. They ask me: 'Is he real?' And I tell them that they should let him live his own life."

Being in on the pad's chats, he understood my "sing about your own life and times" to be more ideologically loaded than Williams' "live his own life." I was also able to musically critique him because I had heard many of the best folksingers of the day and had listened to thousands of folk songs on records. In that period, Dave Van Ronk introduced me to Allen Lomax, the great field-collector. After listening to them, I read Lomax on the complex stylistic evolution of American folk music. It was obvious to me that what we call the folk music tradition was actually innumerable singers doing the old songs and making up new ones about their lives and times.

The ideological level varied from none to highly political. It is a myth that folk singers were all poor and illiterate or nearly so. And some were musically highly cultured via their churches. Accordingly, Bob welded our notions together because I added the obligation that his art should reflect our times - his, Mark's, mine - its experiences and demands, to Williams' down-home blues sagacity.

Yet note again how the kingly power, chance, plays with us. If I had to be ahead of time to drink with Woody, I had to be the 2nd to hit Bob like the sun, moon and stars falling on him. We ran into each other over the next two years, at Gerde's Folk City and other hangouts, notably Dave and Terri Thal's crib. Terri was Bob's first manager. They were fellow Trotskyists. Bob was there, sometime after his return from his 1962 trip to Europe. Boll weevil Bob told me how he didn't like to work in clubs for pay because "the people I want to play for can't afford the admission."

He ground on, all about how his record company took advantage of his youth to screw him financially, and how he had to make bootleg British records as Blind Boy Grunt. Management atrocity tales were boring old news to a seasoned red, so I tried to get him off himself. "That's very deep Bob." He shot back: "How deep is deep? Forty inches? Six feet?" With him completely wrapped up in his career, my like-it-is sarcasm zipped over his self-centered head. But his verbal facility was evident even in that answer that ain't an answer.

I bumped into him on 6th Avenue and Waverly in the Village in the Spring of 1963. I offered to pay the bill for a coffee. I explained that I had sold a silver goblet boosted from a Reformed Jewish Temple. He smiled and we went to what was then a plain American greasy spoon, now the Waverly Restaurant, got us a table and enjoyed the fruits of what we knew was a crime.

My ex-Christian ex-gal had taken me to a Village Episcopal church. After the ceremony, I went up to the alter and did for to partake of my first communion, without benefit of clergy. I took a wafer from a vessel. Yea, verily, Jerusalem Slim's body is like unto a Napoleon pastry. So, in return for certainty on a subtle point of Christian ritual that had perplexed Jewish minds for centuries, I led her thru the open doors of an empty sanctum we happened upon in those innocent, pre-crime wave days, down the aisle and onto the raised rabbi's platform. The ritual goblet held some of what looked like wine, except that it didn't smell of alcohol. Coke, in a sacred vessel before an altar, is, by American law, a religion, to be protected from desecration. Good. Even great. I'm describing a legal transgression that doesn't merit repetition. But, in the real American 20th century, that Temple wasn't Judaism. And in the 21st century Reform ain't even religion. Its what a minority of Jewish kids grow up doing if they live in our secular Coke present, but are hung up on their parents' ancestral religion. A book of proverbial truths, spiritual fantasies and barbaric war stories, also reduced, in the physical world, from the perpetual miracle of intoxicating wine, down to flat soda, in an empty shrine.

Bob approved of the double miracle, the conversion of a profaned vessel into capitalist lucre, and then into coffee and snacks, because he also had a contemptuous familiarity with Reform's instant platitudes.

I don't remember every word that passed between us. I told him I was heading back to the Bay Area and its politics. After maybe an hour, he felt "a song coming on." "You know I love to hear you say that." I left my buddy, pen in hand.

Shortly after I took off for Berkeley. We've had no contact since. If history records me, it will be as a historian and political activist. Beyond that, my advice to Bob that winter morning will be seen as my proudest artistic contribution. His radical songs will live on. But “do a good deed and throw it into the sea.” His later theological trapeze act, swinging between Jesus and the late Lubavicher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, can only be described as the all-time-most-pathetic American Jewish tragi-comedy shtik.

Lenni Brenner, editor of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Bob Dylan’s Racist Song
Ellis Sharp

What! Bob Dylan? Bob Dylan write a racist song? The Bob Dylan who wrote ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ and ‘Hurricane’ and all those other great songs about racism and injustice? Surely not!

But I’m afraid it’s true. And I think it says a great deal about the complacent and unquestioning culture in which we live that Bob Dylan’s racist song has attracted no serious attention at all.

Even a smart Marxist Dylanologist like Mike Marqusee loses all sense of critical perspective in the face of the song. But the far-right fanatics and sectarian bigots who benefit from the song know its worth to them and proudly celebrate its propaganda value, as you can see if you check out the website which displays the lyrics.

‘Neighborhood Bully’ appeared on the 1983 album Infidels and is generally passed over by commentators as musically a poor song from a disappointing album. In the best of all the Dylan biographies (Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan), Howard Sounes simply remarks that “ ‘Neighborhood Bully’ seemed to support Israel in its battles with its Arab neighbours.” In his book Chimes of Freedom, Mike Marqusee says that the song is about the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

In fact only the third and fourth lines of the fourth stanza are. Since ‘Neighborhood Bully’ consists of eleven five-line stanzas that leaves 53 lines, which are NOT about Osirak. I would argue that what the song is really about is this.

The third stanza identifies the Jews as a people who for centuries have been oppressed and driven into exile, the victim of prejudice and religious persecution. All the other stanzas are much more specific in their focus, and describe Israel. Israel is personified as a man who is abused as a bully but who bravely fights back against his enemies. Alone in a hostile world, this solitary yet heroic individual is mercilessly persecuted. Friendless, he lives just to survive.

It’s not hard to see why the lyrics are an artistic failure. The personification of Israel as a male fighter doesn’t work because he’s a cartoon figure. A fighter who can defeat a million enemies clearly isn’t in the real world but exists in the realm of fantasy or folk tale. The fighter’s enemies and critics are vague and ill-defined.

But ‘Neighborhood Bully’ is much more than just a song in praise of Israel in its conflict with other Arab states. It is, in every aspect, quite specifically a Zionist song. It contains a number of assertions which lie at the heart of Zionist mythology. Israel, the song asserts, is the innocent victim of irrational and vicious persecution. Israel struggles just to survive in a hostile world. Israel has made a garden of paradise in the desert sand. It took crumbs and made wealth. Israelis have no place else to go. They are unfairly accused of being on their neighbour’s land. Israel fights alone, struggling just to exist, using obsolete weapons, with no allies.

'Neighborhood Bully' evades the core issue of the conflict, which is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and the fifty year history of Israel’s ferociously violent suppression of any form of Palestinian identity or statehood. The dream of right-wing Zionism is to expel all Palestinians from Israel and create a pure Jewish Greater Israel; in that sense Dylan’s song formally enacts that aspiration, as imaginatively it liquidates the Palestinians. They simply have no existence in the song. As a Zionist song, it erases their tangible, historical existence.

As a reproduction of the Zionist master narrative ‘Neighborhood Bully’ is a song crammed with demonstrable historical lies, which it is worth identifying and rebutting. Its most blatantly dishonest line is at the start of stanza six: ‘He got no allies to really speak of.’ But of course Israel, notoriously, is financed, armed and protected by the world’s only superpower, the U.S.A. It is supported at every level - financial, military, diplomatic and ideological. Historically, the success of the Zionist project has always depended on the support of the most powerful and reactionary forces in the world– originally Britain, latterly the U.S.A, and even, in 1948, Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Dylan asserts that hostility to Israel is utterly irrational, and says it’s as if Israel was guilty of doing something as fantastic as change the course of rivers. Ironically, this is precisely what Israel has done. Arab citizens of Israel have been expelled from their villages to clear the way for water diversion projects. This happened to some 3-5000 Arabs in 1951. Five years later, in classic ethnic cleansing, they were forced out of their new homes, over the border into Syria. Today, Israel controls all water resources in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The average Israeli consumes 350 litres of water per day, but the average Palestinian is permitted only 50 to 70 litres. In refugee camps Palestinians sometimes only manage to obtain 19 litres of water per day. Nearby stand illegal Israeli settlements to which water resources are diverted and used for gardens and swimming pools.

The occupation also serves to negate countless other Palestinian rights. In the Oslo period alone, when Israel was supposedly negotiating to end the occupation, 35,000 acres of Palestinian land was stolen for Israeli settlements. During the first year of the first largely non-violent Intifada 500,000 Palestinian fruit trees were uprooted by settlers and soldiers.

What has attracted no comment at all is Dylan’s language in this song. He says that ‘every maniac’ is given ‘a license to kill’ Israel. These maniacs form ‘a lynch mob’. In other words, opponents of Israel are violent, prejudiced and irrational. But lynching, historically, is a form of sectarian violence associated with white American racists. It is a curious sleight of hand that makes Arabs equal to white American racists, especially when those Arabs are resisting Israelis, some of whom are white American racists. As a defence of ethnic cleansing ‘Neighborhood Bully’ is truly remarkable, as it turns truth and justice on its head. What’s more historically the violence and terrorism of Zionism has always greatly exceeded the retaliatory violence and terrorism of its victims.

As for prejudice: religious discrimination is institutionalised in Israel. It is a state which privileges Jews, with a wide range of discriminatory practises against non-Jews. Bob Dylan has the “right” as an American Jew to buy a home in Israel; a Palestinian refugee, whose home still stands inside Israel, neither has the right to reclaim property stolen by Jewish terrorists, nor even has the right to return to his homeland. In a powerful echo of apartheid South Africa, Palestinians who marry Israelis are not permitted to live in Israel. How apt that the artwork for the Infidels album shows Bob Dylan on a hill outside Jerusalem, exercising his sectarian privileges.

Finally, in claiming that opponents of Israel are “maniacs” Dylan dehumanizes them. He doesn’t engage with critics of Israel; he simply hurls abuse.

It gets worse. In the penultimate stanza, Dylan asserts that the enemies of Israel wait “like a dog waits to feed”. They are now not maniacs but dogs. This is the language of the racist and, historically, the language of Zionism. Noam Chomsky, for example, has noted how the Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan referred to Arabs as “roaches”; how on one occasion Palestinian prisoners were made “to crawl on all fours and bark like dogs”; how Israeli guards told Palestinians “You are a nation of monkeys”; how Gideon Hausner, prosecutor of Adolf Eichman and chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocuast Memorial Center, referred to the Palestine Liberation Oraganisation as “the centre of a cancerous growth which has metastized all over the world”; how one Israeli Defence Force officer remarked of Palestinians: “There are two alternatives, to live with them or to destroy them. Personally I hate them. They stink. They do not share our culture. They sleep with goats. It is necessary to vaporize them, to turn them to a gas.” Moshe Dayan, the Israeli military leader, suggested that Palestinians be told that “we have no solution, and you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever prefers – may leave…” (Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Pluto Press, Updated edition 1999, pp.130, 240, 254, 354, 481)

Finally, no Dylan commentator has ever considered the context of ‘Neighborhood Bully’, which was recorded in New York in the spring of 1983. This was a time when Israel’s standing was at a very low ebb internationally after its invasion and occupation of the Lebanon. This was a very strange time to be asserting that Israel was a victim and releasing what is essentially a crude musical rant in defence of Zionism.

Fortunately Zionism was an allegiance that Bob Dylan maintained only very briefly in his music. But ultimately I think this song stains Dylan’s oeuvre in much the same way that anti-Semitism stains the achievement of T S Eliot, but in a way that is worse. Eliot’s anti-Semitism pre-dated the Holocaust. It was the kind of sniffy anti-Semitism which was very common among the English upper classes of the period, and also among many English novelists who were not conservatives like Eliot (there are derogatory references to Jews, for example, in the fiction of Graham Greene and Patrick Hamilton). But none of those writers, as far as I’m aware, produced malign representations of Jews after Auschwitz. Whereas the music of ‘Neighborhood Bully’ muffles the recent screams, and the memory, and the continuing unfulfilled need for justice of the victims of this.

Bob Dylan intended his song title ‘Neighborhood Bully’ to be ironic. But the irony was subtler and sharper than he intended. ‘Bully’ originally meant ‘hired ruffian’ and that is precisely what Israel today is – the local thug hired by the biggest world bully of them all.