Having issued a response to the issue of Gilad Atzmon, an open anti-Semite being able to post articles, without let or hindrance on Indymedia, the Collective’s response (if that is what it is) has managed to avoid any substantive political comment in favour of what appears to be little more than a collective gripe over ‘process’.


Their reply is not only politically insubstantial, it is fundamentally dishonest in never once coming to grips with the heart of the problem viz. the inability to distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Instead it is portrayed as the ‘Atzmon-Greenstein affair’.



This may be how Atzmon perceives it. The right-wing always portrays political disputes as personal ones. Anyone who remembers the attacks on Arthur Scargill during the miners strike or indeed the attacks on Hugo Chavez now or Castro yesterday will understand that. But the dispute with Atzmon and those around Deir Yassin Remembered is about racism, not about me or any other ‘personality’.

The reply states that ‘It goes without saying that Indymedia stands firmly against all forms of racism’. The problem with Atzmon's above-mentioned article, however, is that not all IMC UK moderators seem to agree that it -or the author himself, for that matter- is anti-Semitic. Fair enough. I wouldn’t expect people to agree with something just because I say it. It needs maybe a process of discussion. That was why I offered to write a paper for the Nottingham meeting and/or to meet with Moderators rather than communicating by e-mail. Those attempts at reaching out were contemptuously rejected and when discussion was banned on the features list there was no other way to communicate other than to e-mail people individually.


The article cites Seth Farber to the effect that Atzmon rejects explanations based on biological racism. But even were that true it would be irrelevant. Biological racism is a dying phenomenon, even among the most died-in-the-wool racists today. The BNP base their racism on culture, colour and religion. The racism of US warmongers is based on the ‘clash of civilisations’ not race. Cultural, linguistic, religious racism is to the fore, precisely because race is a discredited notion with no scientific basis.


Yet ironically, despite his protestations, Atzmon does base his argumentation on the question of Jewish race. He writes, and Peeps (a moderator) quotes him on his own blog thus: ‘Jews and only Jews who engage in racially orientated peace campaigning.’  http://freethepeeps.wordpress.com/ How can people who are not a race engage in ‘racially orientated peace campaigning’? Clearly they can’t and this is one more example of Atzmon playing fast and loose with concepts he doesn’t even understand himself.


Yes it it true that ‘Atzmon rejects the whole concept of anti-Semitism as used by his critics’. It’s not surprising since Atzmon also rejects the concept of anti-Semitism!


‘I am here to announce as loudly as I can: there is no anti-Semitism any more.’  http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/onanti.html


Which of course is very convenient because it means, by definition, that come what may, Atzmon himself cannot be an anti-Semite whatever he or anyone else says! It is of course a nonsense but one which Atzmon finds reassuring. But on any objective analysis, Atzmon is deeply anti-Semitic.


Yes it is true that on 24th October ‘i.e. over two months after the article was posted’ I contacted IMC UK asking for the article to deleted. I’m not sure what point is being made here. That I should have been quicker off the mark? That I should do nothing else with my life other than track where Atzmon’s articles are posted? I rely often on others to tell me and to be quite blunt, I thought that Indymedia would be the last place a racist like Atzmon would post his articles, since it is normally conspiracy and holocaust denial sites which publish his nonsense.



And it is also true that the conflict began after Atzmon wrote an article entitled "The Protocols of the Elders Of London", ‘which railed against the way some JAZ members had treated Israeli writer Israel Shamir’. The article wasn’t provocative but it was instructive. It used the symbolism of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious anti-Semitic document ever produced. Nor was this a coincidence. In his essay ‘on anti-Semitism’ Atzmon writes that
“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… I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew.”


Atzmon has subsequently changed ‘Jewish people’ to ‘Zionists’ and added (in fact Zionists) after ‘American Jews’ but the meaning remains the same.  http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gilad_atzmon/2006/12/gilad_atzmon_responds_to_david.html


And what did Hitler write? Well in Mein Kampf he stated that ‘They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic.’  http://ddickerson.igc.org/hitler-protokollen.html The only difference between Atzmon and Hitler is that for Hitler the ‘fact’ that what the Protocols said was true meant they were authentic whereas for Atzmon it is irrelevant if they are a forgery, because clearly they are true! It is a distinction without a difference.


And what of Israel Shamir, which the article states, quite correctly, was the occasion of Atzmon’s vitriolic article? Well in his ‘Who Needs Holocaust? he writes:


‘Another go of Zionist propaganda. The camp was an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross… 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.’  http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Who_Needs.htm


I have just come across an article Darkness from the West  http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng19.htm by Shamir, someone who Atzmon rallied to the defence of and who he describes as a ‘unique and advanced thinker’. Even leaving aside its anti-Semitism the article is foul and poisonous.


The abuse of children by Catholic priests is apparently also the fault of the Jews! Yes that’s right. "It actually started while Sharon was besieging Bethlehem and destroying Palestine in 2002.' Clearly the timing is highly relevant! We are told that:


'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".


He goes on:


‘The Americans over-simplify the question of sex with minors, when they present it as something monstrous. This is not so.’


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! We are told that




‘Wise Spaniards established the age of consent at 13, while the even wiser Muslims have no such age limit for marriage at all, while disapproving of extramarital relations. Equally wise Jews were guided by the Talmud which stipulates the permitted age of marriage for girls at ‘three years and one day’ (though the safer age of nine was preferred), while strictly forbidding sodomy.’ Leaving aside Shamir’s misinterpretation of the Talmud and Quoran, does this misogyny not strike some bells amongst Indymedia?


What does it say about Atzmon and his faithful helper Mary Rizzo if they cannot bring themselves to utter even one word of criticism of the Shamir they have faithfully defended? Shamir not only tells us that:


'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".


But he lays the blame for Israel’s defeat in Lebanon on the fact that women fight in the Israeli army and the growth of the lesbian colony in Tel Aviv which is making men effeminate! It astounds me that, having admitted that the Atzmon Affair started with a defence of Shamir noone even bothered to ask themselves who Israel Shamir is and what his politics are. Leave aside male chauvinists like Peeps, are the women happy with this kind of politics which negates their very own existence as free individuals?


Yes it is true that all the criticisms of Atzmon ‘have been hidden as complaint about moderation (i.e. non-news) or inaccurate’. Isn’t that the problem? That bureaucratic devices were used to suppress discussion. So any complaint about a racist article was hidden whereas the article itself was prominently displayed! And yes, to compound the problem ‘a wiki page was started where all relevant stuff was collected.’


The crux of the problem however is in the first paragraph:


‘It goes without saying that Indymedia stands firmly against all forms of racism. The Editorial Guidelines clearly state that "posts using language, imagery or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination" will be hidden. This obviously includes anti-Semitism as well … The problem with Atzmon's above-mentioned article, however, is that not all IMC UK moderators seem to agree that it -or the author himself, for that matter- is anti-Semitic.’


In fact the Guidelines were only mentioned by me. Rather it was criticism of the moderation that was the key guideline that was used by Peeps, with the acquiescence of others, to censor criticism of anti-Semitic articles.


But the real problem is that many of the Mods. couldn’t agree that Atzmon’s articles were anti-Semitic. I would have thought it obvious that an article which compares Israel’s unpopularity, because of what it does to the Palestinians, with what the Jews and others suffered in the Nazi holocaust would have been deleted straight away. Was ‘unpopularity’ the cause of the extermination of the Jews, the Gays, the Gypsies and 3 million Poles, millions of Russians etc? What kind of crass analysis is it that blames the victim of murder but exonerates the perpetrator? I’m sorry but there is no excuse for this blindness and if IM had any shame then it would dispense with Peeps and anyone else who didn’t get it.


In fact, although the Hunters of Goliath article provoked the controversy, Atzmon’s ‘Esther to Aipac’ article was far worse. That was posted undisturbed on IM.


‘‘The Scholars who are engaged in the study of the Holocaust religion … are engaged with a list of events that happened between 1933-1945. Most of the scholars are themselves orthodox observants. Though they may be critical of different aspects of the exploitation of the Holocaust, they all accept the validity of the Nazi Judeocide and its mainstream interpretations and implications. Most of the scholars, if not all of them, do not challenge the Zionist narrative, namely Nazi Judeocide, yet, more than a few are critical of the way Jewish and Zionist institutes employ the Holocaust…. no one goes as far as revisionism, not a single Holocaust religion scholar dares engage in a dialogue with the so-called 'deniers' to discuss their vision of the events or any other revisionist scholarship.’  http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon03032007.html


Yep. That’s right. Not single anti-Zionist scholar – Finkelstein, Brenner, Ellis etc. will ‘go as far as revisionism’ i.e. deny the holocaust. Is it that surprising that people who are socialists are not going to exonerate the Nazis? Or that Norman Finkelstein, who is hated by the Zionists refuses to ‘engage in a dialogue with the so-called 'deniers'. Note the ‘so-called’. Maybe the reason is that both his parents spent time in some of these extermination camps. I seriously fail to see how IM Collective don’t get it, other than the fact that they have not bothered to read a single article during this whole time. They post up Atzmon’s articles and when they are slated for being racist they react to the criticism without ever once looking at that which is being criticised.


It is therefore touching that the IM Collective ‘despite the political disagreements’ was ‘determined to not give in to any bullying, blackmailing or lobbying.’ Their resistance to anti-racist bullying was, in the circumstances, admirable!


It is a sad reflection on how IM’s British collective treats the question of anti-Semitism that their main concern was what they considered my over-reaction rather than the cause of my reaction. I have no apologies to make. If anything my reaction was too mild. I didn’t behave like an English gentleman. No doubt in 10-20 years much if not most of the IM Collective will make their peace with if not join the establishment, having had their run of rebellion.


It is ironic that because of their indecisiveness and inability to take any decision of consequence, other than banning me, that Atzmon – who likes ‘hierarchy’ withdrew his articles rather than having them hold it up to further scrutiny and ridicule. You see Atzmon is a man used to praise not critique!


Mention is also made of an article which appeared on the Workers' Liberty site bearing the title Defend Tony Greenstein!.’ As the article itself made clear, I have been the bitterest critic of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty over the years. Not only for their pro-Zionism but their pro-war stance generally. Their ‘defence’ of me was mischievious and as I posted to them, their ‘support’ was the equivalent of the rope that supports a hanging man. (Lenin) The whole post was reprinted on another Zionist site – Engage – and when I replied to the post and comments the whole post was suddenly deleted ‘by mistake’.


I realise I am extremely critical of the IM Collective in this article and rightly so, but I also understand that they are young, probably have little experience of anti-fascist struggles still less working class ones. They are unlikely to be acquainted with anti-racist theory. I don’t hold that against anyone because we all have to learn. But if the IM Collective are going to develop they have to get rid of the racists within and that means the mod Roy Bard aka ftp. The fool cites with approval Atzmon’s Denial of the Negation article:


‘During my years in Europe I have come across groups of people who call themselves ‘Jews for Peace’, ‘Jews for Justice in Palestine’, ‘Jews for this’ and ‘Jews for that’. I have recently heard about ‘Jews for Boycott of Israeli Goods’. Occasionally I end up asking myself what stands at the core of this racially orientated separatist peace-loving endeavour. I may as well admit that though I have come across many German peace activists, I have never come across an Aryan Palestinian Solidarity group or even Caucasian Anti-War campaigners. It is somehow Jews and only Jews who engage in racially orientated peace campaigning.’


Peeps comments that ‘maybe Tone knows of an ‘Aryan Palestinian Solidarity group’ or a ‘Caucasian Anti-War campaign’ and chose not to mention it, or maybe there isn’t one. Maybe there aren’t groups that Tone can point to, in order to dispute Atzmon’s claim?’  http://freethepeeps.wordpress.com/


If Atzmon believes that Jews Against Zionism are ‘racially oriented’etc. then that demonstrates that he does believe Jews are a race. And yes, minorities of the oppressor, and most Jews today do align themselves with the oppressor, break away from that role. Is that racially oriented? Did White South Africans who formed conscientious objector groups merely reinforce apartheid? Or did Germans (not Aryans) who formed into opposition groups like the White Rose group merely reinforce Nazism? Clearly Peeps is not only stupid but insulting since the above group died under Gestapo torture.


All one can hope is that the IM Collective has at least learnt something from this episode and instead of feeling sorry for themselves will begin to understand where they have gone wrong. If so, then they will come out of it better people.


No doubt this will be hidden but I will post both this and the original to the azvsas and other sites. I hope that IM are not still afraid of debate.

Tony Greenstein