Atzmon and his shadow

I quoted a couple of days ago remarks by the jazz musician Gilad Atzmon at the Socialist Workers’ Party’s ‘Marxism 2005’ jamboree last weekend. They’re so bizarre I’m not certain I could even summarise them: they are a bald statement of extreme political reaction. Atzmon is outraged at the notion that we have any business so much as favouring – let alone doing anything to accomplish - the overthrow of tyranny and the establishment of democracy overseas:

If Tony Blair isn’t a white supremacist how dare he is suggesting that Democracy is the right way forward for the Muslim world. How come he knows better than the Muslims what is good for them? When you come to determine other people’s lives you must believe that you know better. You must assume that you are better.

At least Atzmon had found the right audience. As I’ve pointed out before, the SWP explicitly favoured military victory for fascism in the Iraq War (evidently “daring to suggest” that democracy was not the right course for the Muslim world).

But the main contentious characteristic of Atzmon’s political agitation is, of course, his antisemitism. Since his speech at the SWP event, he has put on his web site a response to his critics entitled 1001 Lies about Gilad Atzmon - a witless title given that they aren't lies and there aren't 1001 of them. Still more predictably foolishly, they confirm precisely what it is he wishes to refute. He dismisses for example the “lie” that he is a “proponent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” with this response:

In fact it is the other way around. I argue that the Protocols are completely irrelevant. Zionist lobbies all over the world are manifestly engaged in global politics and international murderous tactics.

You will note that he does not say, of that notorious Czarist forgery (on whose history and place in pre-war antisemitic propaganda see Norman Cohn’s standard and evocatively-titled history Warrant for Genocide), that it is a malevolent pack of lies of catastrophic influence. He believes merely that the matter is “irrelevant”. Here is what he has said about the matter in an earlier article (On Antisemitism, 20 December 2003):

[W]e must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously. It is beyond doubt that Zionists, the most radical, racist and nationalistic Jews around, have already managed to turn America into an Israeli mission force. The world's number one super power is there to support the Jewish state's wealth and security matters. The one-sided pro-Zionist take on the Israeli¬ Palestinian conflict, the American veto against every 'anti-Israeli' UN resolution, the war against Iraq and now the militant intentions against Syria, all prove beyond doubt that it is Zionist interests that America is serving. American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least.

So he believes that any debate (debate! As if serious historians disagreed on the matter!) over the Protocols’ authenticity is beside the point because they do, in fact accurately describe the state of modern American politics. With that, never mind the rest of his record, we can safely say “case closed”. The man is a purveyor of hoary and pernicious accusations of covert and malign Jewish influence. He is an antisemite.

So how did the audience of Marxism 2005 respond to a man who counts among his associates the Swedish neo-Nazi “Israel Shamir” and propounds a conspiracy theory that has a direct continuity with Nazi propaganda? Well, according to a sympathiser who was there (and as posted to the authors of Harry’s Place by Atzmon’s amanuensis, one Mary Rizzo):

The audience was in agreement with Mr Atzmon, demonstrating this with a round of applause. Mr Atzmon acknowledged the audience's applause and continued speaking… Mr Atzmon wrapped up his talk to be greeted with riotous clapping and cheering. He had touched us all that night.

Quite.

It is disturbing that on some sections of the ostensible Left (in fact the extreme reactionary and xenophobic Right) the language of classic antisemitism is now not only tolerated but also popular. I have written of other instances and have every apprehension that it is a subject I shall return to. That is not the reason for the remaining observation in this post, which needs to be made in any case. But the cases are symmetrical.

I am a supporter of Israel and a longstanding sympathiser with the ideas of Labour Zionism. When I started this blog a couple of years ago a friend signed me up as a contributor to a large pro-Israel site with many contributors, which invited me on her recommendation to cross-post any relevant material I might write. I have never done that, because the site declared shortly afterwards a collective policy of campaigning against the Bush administration’s Road Map, and I did not feel that was a stance I wished to align myself with. I also thought it was a needlessly sectarian position for a broad pro-Israel cause to adopt, especially given that the principles of a negotiated territorial settlement between Israel and a future pacific Palestinian state command strong support among Israelis.

But that was still within the bounds of acceptable political debate, of which there is a great deal – not all of it especially genteel – within Israel. I noticed very recently that another broad pro-Israel campaigning site, called Think-Israel (which I don’t recall ever having subscribed to but which I receive regular notification of), has gone a substantial stage further.

The magazine reproduces articles, with permission of the authors, from the English-language press and other sources. The May-June issue of this online magazine is here. If you scroll down, you see that it reproduces an article from the early 1980s by one Rabbi Meir Kahane, denouncing the removal of Jewish settlements from Sinai under the terms of the Camp David Agreement with Egypt. The analogy the site wishes to draw is with the opposition of settlers in Gaza to the current Prime Minister’s disengagement plan.

Kahane has been dead (from an assassin’s bullet) for some years, but he was a disruptive and disturbing feature of Israeli politics in the 1980s. As the Anti-Defamation League describes him:

Kahane consistently preached a radical form of Jewish nationalism which reflected racism, violence and political extremism.

Kahane’s views were and are held by a minuscule minority of the Israeli electorate, and his Kach movement comprised mainly aggressive young members of his entourage from Brooklyn. The Israeli political establishment was so horrified at his views and malign influence that the Kach movement was banned from standing in elections in 1988.

So what is an established pro-Israel magazine on the Internet doing reproducing the material of a racist bigot? I put the question to its editor, Bernice Lipkin, who suggested I was being unfair to Kahane in describing him in that way and that his article was “very appropriate”. On that point, there is little further to discuss.

I have published just a couple of pieces in the UK press about Israel (here and here). They express sympathy for Israel’s security dilemma, opposition to the campaiging groups that offer ideological apologetics for terrorism, and support for the general position of the present government: cracking down on terrorist groups, withdrawing from Gaza, and aiming for a negotiated settlement with the creation of a Palestinian state. I expect I shall write more from that standpoint. I have forbidden Dr Lipkin from reproducing anything further I may write on this subject at any time. She is one friend Israel could do without.