Yes, Paul, often people we have known for years come out of the closet when we get close to the Israeli bone like your friend did. It is sad. The degree they go to defend some things is what makes some of them less tolerable than others. I had one friend from my teens, a very close friend, we were in a band together, we used to spend all our free time hanging out, often at the expense of really making our partners angry, and we never talked politics until out of high school. I "discovered" in 82 just how bad Israel was. I told him. He decided that he would be my enemy. Not that we could simply disagree, but that I was his "enemy". He did many things to try to hurt me and in some of them succeeded. It felt really awful to me, to see this person so full of hatred. I've seen that kind of stuff hundreds of times since. I see it here every day. Israel for some is a red line.

About me fighting Fascism.. I'm far too young for that! But I have indeed been the translator for years of ANED, the Associazione Nazionale per Ex Deportatees in Nazi Camps. It is an association of Italian (mostly) political prisoners who were in Nazi camps. I've translated (as a volunteer) the descriptions of every camp into English, including items never before published on the Italian camps, translated hundreds of testimonies, did the translation of the presentation booklet for tourists to the Museum of Judaic Culture in Milano which dealt with the section on the Italians in the Holocaust as well as the audio that is for tourists to visit the museum. My work helped to capture an SS criminal who escaped to Canada. I was given recognition by this group for my work and they published some lovely articles about my work. But, alas, they too asked me to not offend too many of our readers, with my commentary against Israel, which I asked we print some items about Palestine and Israel in the quarterly magazine, as several had moved to Israel and many had family there. I was offended they were offended, since if one is against racism, occupation and intolerance, one does not make exceptions. So, I left my activism with that group, and started to concentrate more attentively to the Palestinian issue rather than be divided in several issues.

Mary

I am mistaken about Gilad.

I tend to become manic and regret what I've written later. I suggest you take down all my comments suggesting Gilad Atzmon is judaeophobic, if it matters, or just delete all my comments on PTT, or print this, if anyone cares. But I don't think they do. Blogs are full of irrational comments and mine are no exception.

I am well aware that, most of the time, the insignia of Jewishness, whether it be Judaism or cultural baggage, are being mobilised by the Jewish community on behalf of Israel. I had a conversation this evening with a close friend who happens to be half-Jewish , and who has never been to Israel in her life. I pushed her hard on why she thought my piece Why Boycott Israel, which I gave her a copy of, should cause hatred. It all came down to her view of the Holocaust (most of the generation before that of her mother were killed in it) and Israel as the ultimate place of refuge. Now I would never have fingered L- as pro-Israel in the least. Whether this is tribalism exactly I wonder. Maybe it is the mythologising of Jewish oppression that is really pernicious, and maybe this is tribal, and this is carried in uncritical form by someone nonintellectual like L-.

L- also repeated the myths about Arabs being violently anti-semitic and Ahmad dinner jacket as she called him wanting to destroy Israel. It was an unpleasant surprise. I've known this person twenty years.

I'm done with apologising, after apologising to that prat Aaronovitch, now that I know who he is.

I've been reading Roy Ratcliffe carefully on The Case of Atzmon, published nearly a year ago on PTT. I know Gilad's intention is entirely humanitarian. I've always known this. Let's face it, I grew up in a culture that is judaeophilic, Jew loving, and to encounter an ex-Jew like him who questions Jewishness, critiques Jewish identity and identifies a dark side to Judaism (all the monotheisms seem to have a dark side in practice) that may underlie our genocidal culture is quite a shock. I live in a Judaeochristian culture. We have a love/hate relationship with Jews. (deleted)

It may be that Judaism and Jewish supremacism is at the heart of white supremacism generally and hence of the very negative view Western cultures have of Arabs and Islam. It may be that I just disagree with Gilad's emphasis on Jewish Power (I still think it's a fiction: the real issue is imperialism and colonialism: whether or not Jews are at the heart of the power structures and their ideologies is a complete red herring in my view), not with the substance of his argument with the Jews.

Some time ago Mary, you created a petition identifying the issue of anti-semitism as something that was splitting the pro-Palestinian movement in the hands of a group of British anti-Zionist Jews, and I signed (I'm around the 1240 mark), and left a comment, agreeing with those who felt that the purpose of the Palestine Solidarity Movement was not to campaign against anti-semitism, but to support the Palestinians in whatever form that took. I still hold that view.

I ordered a copy of Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti for Gilad, but that may be another red herring, and arrogant of me to boot. I thought I'd include a dedication from the Verkoyansk Committee of Ideological Correction (I think Verkoyansk was part of the Gulag). One of my correspondents told me you have been an anti-fascist activist, so you probably know far more about it than I do from books.

Paul Grenville

Reply

Dear Mary

Obviously, compared to Gilad, who reads Hebrew of course, my reading is as yet very small, and will remain so compared to his. I only read three languages. Not Arabic. Not Hebrew. I want to learn Farsi.

Here are some of the volumes (photos) I have tried to read. To date, most are by Jews,
not that that matters in itself. It was important to me that they were Jewish writers because I suddenly
found myself among Jews, and for the first time in my life, to whom Israel was an acceptable notion, and so I had to confront the issue. Within months what I found was so shocking that I immediately started corresponding with Gilad. That was back in 2007. So I owe Gilad a lot. Then I corresponded with Moshé Machover and Avigail Abarbanel as well. As for Palestinians, I did not know who I could correspond with. Said was dead. I met Gilad and at the time (2007) he did not agree with the intellectual and cultural boycott of Israel. As the degeneration of Israeli intellectual life is painfully apparent, he may have changed his view since then. Even if he has not, I am sure he has good reasons.

As for economic boycott, I would be very surprised if Gilad has bought so much as an Israeli avocado since leaving the country in 1994. I would imagine he backs it 110%. I would not suggest otherwise.

In addition, I read "The Other Side of Israel" by Susan Nathan, a South African Jew who immigrated to Israel and went to live with Palestinian citizens of Israel in the township of Tamra, and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel, and downloaded over 400 articles on Israel and Palestine from the Internet, including many of Gilad's. I sent the Beit-Hallahmi book to an Israeli in Israel but he didn't read it. I wonder even if he read Gilad's novel in Hebrew that I sent him. He never made any remark about it.

My own (added: extremely limited – since I don't want to go to the country) experience is that Israelis don't want to hear the story, they don't want to know, they want to remain ignorant. It's too challenging to their humanist self-conception. Since Israelis are by and large not even worth talking to about their own complicity in Judaeofascism, the only people worth associating with are the Palestinians. That's why Ilan Pappé was pretty much kicked out and received all those death threats from Israelis while he was still in Haifa. It's a culture that bears comparison with the culture of German and Italian fascism; intense conformism, intense machismo, and a culture of abuse of all kinds, as well as a very violent culture. What is different from fascism is I guess the tribalism of Israeli Jews, and the entirely deluded sense of proprietorship over the land and laughable belief in their genetic connection with the Hebrews of antiquity.

I can't claim to have read all of the 400 plus articles. There just isn't time. Recently I tried to get stuck into the Shlomo Ben-Ami book but it immediately stuck in my craw. I couldn't get past chapter 1. The reason why is obvious. He's a Zionist, and claims legitimacy for the Jewish state.(added – However as Gilad says you have to respect the opposition and study them.) That is the only way to win. I shall have to persist with Ben-Ami if I am to understand where the Left Zionists are coming from, yet I am not looking forward to this encounter.

I also read Jewish Chronicle when I can get hold of it. Funny I never noticed David Aaronovitch as a contributor. When I apologised to Aaronovitch and posted the fact on PTT I had no idea who the guy was, even though, on the recording, he sounded pretty horrid. The guy simply wasn't on my radar at all. I had heard a little about the other one, Cohen, and it didn't sound good.

I have apologised to Gilad before for calling him an anti-semite, because he demanded it, and at the time, I meant it. But it is better to thrash the issue out in genuine and honest open debate, if that is possible.

(added) If you really wish me to take issue with particular articles of Gilad's, I shall do that too, but I did once before with him, re the article he wrote on the military debacle of the Lebanon war, much of which was very valuable, since he was flagging up a study at that time only available in Hebrew. The second paragraph of the article, however, contained some classic stereotyping from what I remember, and appeared to hold Jews responsible for their own genocide, and naturally, since he wrote it, Gilad could not see what it was that I found objectionable. By the way there is no question of attacking Gilad here. I have immense respect for what he is trying to do,

with best wishes,

Paul
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(added) Re Western working class and the Arabs, I agree. Hopeless, almost, forget it. Resistance to the Project for the New American Century is coming not from the metropole, but from the periphery, from South America and from the Arab world, for example. The Egyptian marxist Samir Amin said so long ago, and keeps saying so, and he is right of course. The SWP/Trotskyite Left is not. That is why supporting the Palestinian struggle, without any form of moral superiority (we have none) or attempt to direct the direction chosen by the Palestinians, is a priority, an absolute priority. So I agree with your second point, too. It's not for us to tell them what to do or how to think. Most Palestinian organizations are for two states at the moment, a result of grave weakness and isolation. But that is changing, and the political position of Hamas and the PLO, the latter more compromised by its past of participation in the Palestinian Authority and de facto acceptance of the Occupation of the West Bank – may well change too as they get stronger and feel more support internationally, and especially in the Arab world. Fateh seems so compromised I am not sure they will do anything except collaborate with the Israelis and police and suppress and spy on their own people.

The PFLP/DFLP hold out, I believe, for something more than two states: namely the overthrow of Zionism/the Israeli state. Correct me if I am wrong on this point. I may be talking rubbish. Internal Palestinian politics is so labyrinthine it is best to say nothing, or else reveal the extent of your own ignorance, as I just have here….

Mary I don't really think I should go quoting Gilad's emails to me and my responses, or even the entire discussion on that occasion. It would not be appropriate here would it? I will email the whole discussion I had with him on that occasion to you privately. My reaction at the time was to think, well this guy's got some weird ideas. Where on earth does he get them except from fascist groups? As I'm sure you are aware most of the criticism of what are termed Jewish tribal interests come from fascists like David Duke and the Republican Right like Mearscheimer and Walt. The latter have some fairly obvious things to say, but they have no analysis of US capitalism and imperialism. As if it would magically change its spots and become all humanistic and cuddly if Jews were removed from all those positions of power and replaced by WASPS! Do you see my point?

Now the latter are not racist in the least; they simply focus on the preponderance of Jews in US politics, and Jewish power and control, to the exclusion of all else, including the analysis of US imperialism and militarism. It is very interesting how Jews have managed to migrate to the very top of the global power hierarchy, but I am not sure how significant that is, since empire and its depredations all over the world, including numerous genocides, existed before the US Jews got there! Do you see my point? So Jews are in positions pf power in a global and highly destructive empire that threatens human existence on this planet
(US capitalism until now has been the number one force driving global climate change, which threatens
the continuation of the human species). But so what? Does it change anything? What does that tell us? How does it change the analysis? How does it affect the Palestinian struggle? Is it of use? These are genuine, not rhetorical questions, by the way…The problem is still Empire, how to roll it back. If Jews are part of the Empire, it's because they are ruling class Jews, with the vast majority of non ruling class Jews also in agreement with what Israel is doing in the Middle East. But how significant is this? What does it mean?
There are roughly ?15 million Jews worldwide. If they were all vapourised tomorrow by a special secret process known only to a brilliant Palestinian scientist, d'you think the world would look different?

Gilad certainly managed on that occasion to offend what he saw as my parochial leftist understanding of 20th century European history. He also suggested it was deficient. We discussed the failure of the Allies to bomb the railway line to Auschwitz, for example. I think he suggested that the line had to remain so that Hitler could get his soldiers to the Russian front, something the Allies wanted too, as they feared Communism more than Nazism. Actually this makes sense. Stalin, not Hitler, was the ultimate nightmare for the ruling classes of Western Europe, as the triumph of the former would have meant their termination.

Yes I've seen one or two things on here by Palestinian or Arab marxists, and I certainly don't claim to be one of those. Neither do I have any affiliation with the International Socialists/SWP. The only thing I have time for is the Palestinian issue.

On Jewish tribalism, I have acknowledged before that yes, the phenomenon exists but it would not have the power it has in the US without the vast Christian electorate, who have the same Zionist perceptions of the Middle East as the bulk of US Jews. It's a case of a Judaeo-Christian-neoliberal alliance, which is global in scope. Is Tony Blair a Jew? Is Bush? Is Berlusconi? Obviously not, yet they are totally in accord with empire. Now if Gilad had something fresh to say, I am not sure what it is. I have not read all 100 papers. Each time I read something by him I find he focusses on the Jews to the exclusion of other factors. It is odd. Is it judaeophobic? I don't know anymore. It sounds that way to me. I am not name calling here, neither am I calling Gilad a fascist (as you know now Aaronovitch compared him with Nick Griffin). I am genuinely puzzled.

When he talks about "judaeo-bolshevism" (another piece of terminology he has pinched from the fascists) what on earth does he mean by that? Is anti-communism at the bottom of it? I suspect this is probably the bottom line. Gilad has rejected the Left and socialism, and Palestinian nationalism fills the gap.
Palestinian nationalism shows amazing persistance and determination and resourcefulness. Actually Gilad has these qualities too. But if you cross over the ethnic divide in Israel and support the occupied people struggling for liberation, which is admirable in itself, and at the same time you reject socialism/marxism
and any materialist philosophy of human liberation and equality, then where are you going to get your ideas from?

Gilad describes marxism as a "disaster failure philosophy". Is it so clear cut? Gilad is a Germanophile, nothing wrong with that. He has even described himself as a GERMAN philosopher! Will your ideas come from German existential philosophers? The US Republican Right? Fascist groups? If you reject leftist thinking you have to purloin your ideas from somewhere else. The result is curious, very curious. I read Gilad's first novel. It was hilarious and wicked, and I mailed a copy in Hebrew that he sent me off to an Israeli in Yahud. Never heard what the latter thought of it…

May I suggest that both he and you read a short study to put the record straight both on fascism and communism. I mentioned it before. Michael Parenti's "Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism And The
Overthrow of Communism." (City Lights books, San Francisco, 1997). I have been prepared to learn things from Gilad. Actually I have learned a LOT from Gilad, despite his odd ideology, He is nearly always illuminating, quite often funny, and seemingly well informed, as well as PASSIONATE, which I like.

Now Gilad can learn something from an old Commie, even if he does not accept Parenti, he can at least read a good Italian American marxist who is not in the least interested in defending the Soviet system, but in showing us how little we know of it (I include myself), and comparing it with fascism, the other contender for our hearts in the last century.

I shall read Solzhenitsyn in the French when I can afford the book and when I have finished with Schlomo Sand, also in French, but I am not very hopeful given what I know of Alexander already. Cancer Ward was good.

Now I have to go and make Hummous because I have promised my Jordanian Palestinian friend that I would have some on the table tomorrow,

Ciao,

Paolo

If you feel out at sea, you may want to reflect on why… you have been treated extremely well here, we have published several of your papers, including ones on boycott when some of the Anti Zionist Jews try to insinuate that Gilad fights the boycott, and then you make several comments that are there to stir up waters and wonder why the waves pick up? You call one of the editors a Judeophobe, without really and truly being able to say why… that the evidence he points out, and from his perspective is Judeophobic would only appear that way to someone who will not accept that it is Zionism that is running the game in order to keep international equilibrium balanced in favour of imperialistic power. He has explained it in over a hundred papers, there is little to add to it, I would imagine. It is a fight against tribalistic interests when they are in conflict with the rights of other human beings and their very existence (I don't need to point out who the tribe is).

Again, to drop little comments that no one can verify about Hitler is just "odd", wouldn't you say think so? Looks like a kangaroo court. Perhaps it is a UK thing to do. Look, my husband comes from Forlì, city in the north of Italy where Mussolini comes from. It's also been the "reddest" area of Italy since the fall of Fascism. You would think that a city like that, with all the major public works being programmed by Fascists (the Fascio – symbol where the name comes from – decorated everything, streetlamps, civil buildings, schools, parks, piazzas, water works, manhole covers, road indications, etc), after the defeat of Fascism would cancel out every trace, wouldn't you? Well, the Italians of Forlì are more intelligent than that. They left all the works in place that still functioned, and when one walks through that city today, still the reddest of them all, one sees the fascio everywhere, in fact, it's not been blotted out like other imperialist symbols in Europe, which includes the Swastika, Hammer and sickle and other signs. Seems that even a dictator once in a while did something acceptable and for the benefit of the entire community. So, I don't know what quote you want to pull out that Gilad was commenting on, but this is the trick of some people, to say Mussolini and expect hands to stretch out before one, same to Hitler, to reject everything, totally, tout court, because that is what is expected. Let me just say, in Italy it doesn't work that way, there is a grey area that Italians know exist, and the magic word of the name of a Nazi or Fascist dictator doesn't give such a knee jerk reaction as maybe one hopes to obtain, and why? I don't know why.

As to the Arab working class, I have always found this almost funny, and I have several Marxist Palestinian friends, several of which have been published for the first time in English on PTT. We have had great discussions, we agree to disagree about a few issues, but at the end of the day, they see ARAB nationalism as an essential element to defeat Western Imperialism, and PALESTINIAN nationalism is part of it. They do not see much at all in common with any other Western Working Class, and in fact, they themselves doubt that there are many points in common. They are Marxists who don't believe that much in the International Socialist for many reasons. Again, I don't know every Marxist Palestinian, but every single one of them I know does not hold out 5 seconds of hope in the Western Working Classes to liberate them, because they realise the WWC does not recognise Arab nationalism, and therefore, can be of little help to them, and in fact, they are precisely that.

I also do not totally agree with your point that "if Palestinians love Gilad it's because he is a Jew and he's on their side". May be the case in your circle, but I think that the second part is the essential one, HE'S ON THEIR SIDE!" I think that once the novelty wears off of his background, one doesn't even think about it anymore. To be really honest, sometimes I forget that he's from Israel, much less that he was raised as a Jew. It is just so marginal to what he says sometimes and I think this is the case with most people I know who support him and gain from his writing and speaking. There are LOADS of Israelis and Jews who claim to be on the side of the Palestinians. The proof is in what they actually say, how far they are willing to go to support Palestinians, including to support even a choice that may not be personally attractive, but if it is the Palestinian choice, it is supported 100%.

Good question: I have only seen his books in the hands of fascists. And I mean real fascists of the kind of going voluntary to fight for fascism back there in the 30s and 40s. Cryptofascists also (those are legion) .

The PLO and Fateh both talk about a Palestinian state next to the Jewish one.

Hamas is for two states. Does that make it a Zionist organization?

No, it's the position of political weakness.

Obviously I don't believe it is necessary to tail Hamas' two state agenda in the West.

I think the two states/one state debate is a false dichotomy. Both would be iniquitous, and
not on ethnic grounds, but because as neoliberal capitalist economies (like South Africa) they would
still be in the orbit of imperialism with an extremely unequal distribution of wealth, exacerbated
by Jewish ethnocracy, which, like white power and wealth in South Africa, will either take generations
to dismantle, or a revolution.

I'm sorry, Gilad is not anti-imperialist in his orientation. He's a Hebrew speaking Palestinian nationalist. Nationalists in occupied countries are usually anti-imperialist in orientation. It does not mean they have a grasp of what it is. G does not have a problem with imperialism as such, and he has no analysis of it; he has a problem with something called Jewish power, which he confuses apparently with neoliberal capitalism, which has large numbers of Jews at the very top of its hierarchies. All his discussions of Jewish identity are, I have to admit, very very interesting, but I believe they are (largely) beside the point. He's an artist. I maintain that's his major contribution to the Palestinian struggle, not the writings.

If you focus on the fantasmatic, such as Jewish Power, you are not even interested in the question of how to defeat imperialism in the Middle East, and you will never get there. If Palestinians love Gilad, it's because he's a Jew and he's on their side. I am having a bunch of local uprooted (descendants of) Palestinians over for a meal this Sunday evening. I love to cook and entertain.

Maybe we shall discuss Gilad, if they have heard of him (he is really becoming quite a celebrity since Erdogan). And I may play them his music (in particular Exile).

The only force capable, potentially, of defeating imperialism in the Middle East (and Zionism) are the Arab working classes. They have yet to show their potential. Because Gilad, like all nationalists (Ghada Karmi is no different) focusses on the box of Palestine, and because he (quite rightly) wants the Palestinians to win, he doesn't look at the regional picture at all. Neither did I in my published article Israel's Key Vulnerability on PTT, and that was my mistake. So an article like Living on Borrowed Time in a Stolen Land hugely overestimates, from where I'm standing, the strength of the Palestinian opposition to Zionism, as well as the likelihood of its success.

Israel will be crushed like a pomegranate pip when the popular masses rise against it all over the Middle East, but not before. Meanwhile Palestinians are just trying to exist. They are hardly winning, and while the Jewish state is in deep kaka, it is not falling.

I don't have a "game". I am genuinely inconsistent and genuinely naive.

You think I am undercover for the Jewish Chronicle? Aaronovitch works for it.
I found out yesterday, looking at the other blog running on Aaronovitch.

There is something that feels unhealthy here but I cannot work out
what it is. Lack of a socialist perspective maybe.

The Hitler reference is genuine, yet it produced no reaction at all. I wish it were not.
Nothing cryptic about it. What would I have to gain by lying?

Why would I want to read Solzhenitsyn? His novels, yes, but as a historian?
I am not even familiar with the territory. I have to review They Destroyed Iraq
and Called It Freedom (Geoff Simons), something I look forward to, but it's long too.

Anyway, Good luck. I won't be back. I've been wasting time better
employed in activism. I had a similar experience on Itszone. One ends up
feeling exposed, and in strange company, a little at sea, wondering why the
hell one bothered in the first place.

Regards to Gilad. I look forward to the new album.

Yet, you seem to essentially agree that there is this quality of "exceptionalism", even when one calls himself a Jewish Atheist or Jewish Marxist (if we are talking about an orthodox Marxist, they would see the world united in class, not in ethnic or religious groups, or no?) so therefore, to call this thing tribalism, is not Judeophobia, and I take issue with you calling someone that name when it's not true. Putting in some cryptic bit about Hitler is also odd…

What is the game?

Ok, I shall come clean. I have only been to a synagogue once in my life. It is the first and now probably the last time. After all, I'm a goy, and I'm not welcome anymore. Someone's Bar-Mitzvah. It was in Finchley. It was lovely. It was a Reform synagogue. Maybe that makes a difference. Sure, there was singing in Hebrew, but religious singing, no singing of the Israeli national anthem and no Israeli flag, in fact no references to Israel of any kind! Maybe I just got lucky….

Of course, of course, I accept that Israel is at the centre of British Jewish life. Most people accept power and most people are quite conformist. Jews are no exception. I don't care much about states, religions, national borders etc. I feel a certain sense of European identity, not English particularly. Your other points in this email: I can't see anything to disagree with strongly. Jews are two ethnicities and none. Both the Sephardis and the Ashkenazis can trace a certain "bloodline", but in both cases it has been considerably diluted, in the first case by Berber, Arab and Spanish blood, and in the second by waves of conversion throughout Ashkenazi history.

I'll tell you what I feel is Jewish. It is the aura of specialness that no other group quite claims for themselves. Special suffering, special history, special dispensations, special silencing operations, and special types of illegality all under an aura of sanctity. I'm talking about modern Jewishness.

Maybe you are right about the tribal identity. I've always balked at this because I know so many exceptions.
Almost only exceptions. It was only when I came across right wing Jews for the first time in my life that I noticed there was a certain conformity, a certain type of thinking, or rather non-thinking.

And then I meet Jews who just don't want anything to do with it, neither the religion nor Israel. My friend's like that. About the only thing she's interested in are the pretzels, a smattering of yiddish, and the jokes. The other one has even less identification with her heritage. It means nothing to her.

I bought a copy of Jewish Socialist once on a Gaza demo and I think it's a great magazine. No specialness there. Yet these socialists still want to be identified as Jews. In this case it must be a familial, cultural thing. It isn't necessarily a racial identification with radical Jews is it, since they would reject out of hand the concept of race, or at least any radicals worth their salt would…That is an instance, I would suggest, of diversity. But I guess it's really really marginal and not making any headway.

I sent you a couple of emails to your PTT address. I launched my own personal Exocet at Zionist Jewishness and anti-semitism, back in January, and from an Is it good for the Jews Judaeocentric perspective. It was very destructive, but not in the way hoped. Apparently the smashing of icons did not work. It produced murderous feelings in the recipient instead,

Paul

I've not seen any pro-Israel activity on the inside of a synagogue.
I would have walked out if I had. But it may go on.

How odd… last few times I was in one, there was the Israeli flag right there on the Bimah. I am talking about in the US and in Europe as well. I'm not a great frequenter of synagogues, but when I have to go for some reason, I always find that little item.. and I always have.

The point is: if Gilad doesn't see Jews as a race, and sees "Jewishness", which is what he calls a tribal kind of awareness of being "different" … but by the definition of many of these people who call themselves Jews not united by anything in particular such as race, ethnic group, religion, belief system…. what is there that makes a Jew a Jew… the idea that Jews are fundamentally a category, ie., different. To be against Jewishness (in the secular sense) is to be against a racial categorisation of people. It is actually very Anti racist! Gilad doesn't buy this "we are Jews stuff" obviously, and those who DO are playing out the thing he calls an ideology of "Jewishness". If I sign a petition as a Jew, that means that I in some way must identify myself as one: I don't practice the religion, I don't believe they are an ethnic group, and they certainly aren't a nation… then what is it about me that would be Jewish? I don't know!

That there is a lobby of people who sustain things known as Jewish interests -can include a lot of things, from Israel to absence of being criticised, to being able to condemn others are anti-semites because they dare to say things that bother some people such as point out that it is really pretty much a peculiarly Zionist thing to have 52% of an administration (more than half) Jews who are also declared Zionists, in a country where the population of Jews is under 2%. It simply is something that any normal person would point out as being a Zionist success and totally relevant to the power of Jews and Zionists in the US administration, and is not a racist statement. To twist that into one means that one doesn't understand Zionist power at all.

Your other points, on David's behaviour, I can only agree
with. I didn't see any point in abusing him just because I had
a strong reaction to his readings and his tone of voice.

For the rest, I would have to go back and see
if I was making any sense on the first place.

I don't believe the term race has any scientific
meaning at all. Ashley Montagu demonstrated this,
at least to my satisfaction. Racism is first of all a
belief in race. Institutionalised, it leads to discrimination
and persecution. I cannot see Gilad persecuting anybody.
I've met him on a couple of occasions. He is certainly not
racially aware in the sense that a racist would be.

Where Gilad sees a Zionist Jew, I suppose, I see a colonialist. I read a lot of
Gilad's articles and no, I suppose I never really get the point. Some of
them are very funny. My favourite is the Logical Investigation of Anti-semitism.
I feel Gilad thinks there is a specificity about Jewishness, and it is evil. That I call judaeophobic.
It is such a black and white attitude – "Jews are this, Judaism is this", when it's extremely
diverse. I can't see what else you can call it.

But as I said, this is really secondary, and rather unimportant. I can't get in a lather about it.
Even Gilad's remark to me about agreeing with Hitler's "diagnosis" in Mein Kampf.
I find it stupid and judaeophobic, and I'm really surprised at him but I can't get in a lather about it.
Even with Judaism in the Torah, there is a side that I would qualify as really vile, a side
you see in the teachings of the rabbis to young IDF murderers in Gaza which goes right
back to Numbers (a chapter Gandhi hated) and then there is another side, that you
find in Isaiah (most communists like Isaiah) and the Psalms.

I only find Jewish people offensive when they behave like Zionists,
because I oppose genocide and colonialism. Then they are full of (usually
well concealed) colonial arrogance.

I am reading Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist again. It is so instructive. Almost everybody was like this a century ago in the UK. The attitudes linger on, the attitudes of empire, in relation to Gaza. I can't see anything specifically Jewish about these attitudes. It's empire. Chomsky chose the title Exterminate all the Brutes for a recent article on Gaza. It was well chosen. I don't see where focussing on the Jews gets us, except up David Aaronowitz's nose. As Israel starts to fall apart, a lot of Israeli Jews will desert
Zionism for something better. After all, even though they're living in a stolen country, one in three
of them lives in poverty. It's something like this. A credit crunch plus a really effective boycott
could bring about an explosion where suddenly ethnicity is secondary, EVEN in Israel,

Paul

I've not seen any pro-Israel activity on the inside of a synagogue.
I would have walked out if I had. But it may go on.

My second point (there may be more, but for now, will focus here) is on your claim that you don't support Gilad's politics. As far as I know, and I can claim to be fairly certain of his politics due to close affiliation for something around 7 years, has always been to condemn Zionism and to condemn the exertion of power (Jewish, Western, Imperialist, American, UK) whenever it interferes with the legitimate rights and need for freedom and liberation of Palestinian people. This is his politics. I agree with it entirely. To have these politics doesn't mean to be "anti-Western" (if I was, I'd be living in some other place than Europe), anti-Jew (how can one be anti-Jew if one does not consider Jews a race? I don't and neither does Gilad and many others who are condemned by the likes of Aaronovitch), anti-American (I was born there, most of my family lives there, I love these people), but… Imperialism, like Zionism, is an ideology, as is the concept of "Jewish tribalism", which seeks to group people together who may have NOTHING in common, not race, religion, political affiliation… what they have in common is nothing, but they allow themselves to be categorised as a race, just like the Nazis did to people who were of Jewish origin (when that meant believing in the Jewish religion). These are people who maybe today are even anti-Zionists, but they spent time in Israel working on Kibbutzes, studying, what have you, why?? Because they believed they were entitled to because they were of Jewish origin.

You see, today maybe they no longer apply to make Aliyah or get a student grant, but they sign petitions or open letters "as Jews" and in this sense.. they act in a racially oriented way. Some of these petitions do not even have elements a decent person could sign, believe me, I get them in the mail all the time, things like "back to the 67 borders, stop oppression against Palestinians and give security to Israel," and more of the same. I won't even recognise the legitimacy of the 67 borders, but these self-styled Jewish anti-Zionists will sign something like this, why? Because they still believe there is something that makes sense in signing "ethnically" divisive petitions. This is where Gilad protests, and I am with him here. If you call him Judeophobe for it, it means you don't understand at all what he is saying.

I sent the following to Aaronowitz, or Aaronowitch, something I wrote for a local website. He says he is a non-Zionist. He grew up in a Communist family. He did not reply. He is some kind of neoliberal. I never read his journalism.

1
Why Boycott Israel
By Paul Grenville

“In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa
was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing,
academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support.
This international backing must stop. That is the only way to stop the insatiable
Israeli violence.

We are calling on the world to stop Israeli violence and not allow the continuation of
the brutal occupation. We call on the world to condemn and not become an
accomplice in Israel’s crimes.”

The above is part of a document signed by leading Israeli artists, writers and
intellectuals and ordinary citizens during the war on Gaza and published on January
7th 2009. It is not the first (see http://www.matzpun.org.) Matzpun is the Hebrew word for
conscience. This IS a matter of conscience. If you knowingly buy Israeli goods you
are complicit with the war crimes of the Israeli state. If you unknowingly buy Israeli
goods now is the time to inform yourself, now is the time to stop. Not buying Israeli
goods is ethical shopping.

Palestinian organizations have been calling for the boycott of Israeli goods for years.
We should finally listen. The war on Gaza was not fought against an army, but
against the civilian population with the most modern, deadly and in some cases
illegal weapons. 1434 civilians died and over 5,000 were injured. Over 300 children
died.

Gaza does not have an army. Gaza does not have an airforce. Gaza is an
overcrowded strip of land bordering Egypt, contains nearly one and a half million
Palestinians, many of whom are the descendants of those who fled southwards in
1948, driven out by the Jewish militias, an illegal act of ethnic cleansing,
accompanied by massacres of unarmed civilians in Tantura, Deir Yassin and other
villages, over 400 of which were then razed to the ground.

Israel has not changed its nature in the intervening years since its foundation in
1948. Schools, hospitals and police stations in Gaza were repeatedly targeted by the
Israeli Air Force in January. Israeli soldiers confronted and killed unarmed civilians in
their houses. Shells containing white phosphorous, an illegal weapon which burns
human flesh down to the bone, were dropped on a UN school. A UN compound
containing provisions and supplies for Palestinians, which repeatedly contacted the
Israeli army beforehand, was shelled and set on fire. These are war crimes. Illegal
Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME for short) weapons were used in Gaza. These
weapons shred the body and sheer off limbs leaving a stump that does not bleed.
They are illegal. What is more, the killing goes on since the ceasefire. Gaza is now a
killing field.

Gazan civilians cannot leave their cage. Gaza has been blockaded for three years.
The blockade is illegal in International Law. The Palestinians of Gaza are
malnourished for want of food. They continue to die for want of access to hospital
treatment. Over 99% of Gazan children examined by psychiatrist Dr Khalid Dahlan
have suffered trauma. Gaza is not allowed to trade. Gazan fisherman are not
allowed to fish.

The remains of the Gazan economy have been destroyed by the
Israeli bombing. Antiquated sewerage systems have been smashed by the bombing.
The water is not safe to drink. What is the word that describes Israel's treatment of
Gaza? If you are in any doubt check out this article by a Jewish Israeli historian, Ilan
Pappé, at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6374.shtml If you knowingly buy
Israeli goods you are supporting this. Who can defend this? What am I talking about
here? Ask yourself.

Things are not much better in the Palestinian West Bank, illegally occupied for 41
years by the Israeli army. Unemployment is 70% among the 3.1 million Palestinians
there. Over 40% of the best Palestinian land on the West Bank has been illegally
confiscated for illegal Jewish settlements. The illegal Jewish settlers bear arms and
harrass and kill Palestinians constantly. 500,000 of them now live on illegally
confiscated Palestinian land. The Israeli settlements pipe their sewage directly onto
Palestinian farmland.

No Palestinian is allowed to bear arms, unless he is working
for the Israel state. There is no legal recourse for the Palestinians, either for the
killings or for the land confiscations. A wall snakes across Palestinian land, isolating
Palestinian towns like Qalqiliya, now entirely surrounded by a 25 foot wall, cutting off
Palestinian villagers from their own olive groves and farmland. 600 checkpoints on
the West Bank staffed by bored, frustrated youths of the Israeli Defence Forces,
monitor and control all Palestinian movements. People are delayed for hours at
checkpoints on the whim of the Israeli army, and women have given birth at a
checkpoint and lost their babies. Over 11,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails, many
for years without charge. Many of them are under 18. 18,000 Palestinian homes
have been illegally demolished on the West Bank since 1967.

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza and West bank is far worse than
Apartheid ever was. South African blacks were part of the Apartheid economy, not a
surplus population with levels of unemployment running at 70% in the West Bank
and over 80% in Gaza before the war. There was no question of ethnically cleansing
the South African blacks from their homeland. Palestinians are not welcome or safe
in Gaza and the West Bank, and increasingly they are not welcome as citizens of
Israel. Arbitrary mass arrests greeted the largest ever peaceful Israeli demonstration
during the war of 150,000 people in the Galilean village of Sakhnin. Peaceful Palestinian
protests in Hebron on the West Bank were greeted with mass arrests and live ammunition
(http://palsolidarity.org/2009/01/3783). Who can defend this? Who would tolerate it
here? What is this democracy that the EU states embrace with open arms?

We saw the deafening silence of the international power elite, on both sides of the
Atlantic, during the illegal war on Gaza. The international boycott of South Africa,
coupled with the resistance of the ANC, was pivotal in bringing De Klerk to the
negotiating table and ending the formal existence of Apartheid in South Africa. Israel
is an even more oppressive case of colonial rule of a subject population, in which the
UK has been complicit from the beginning.

I believe that a mass international boycott campaign can bring pressure to bear on
the Israeli state to seek a resolution of the conflict with the native Palestinians that is
based on the minimum requirements of justice and the International Consensus as
represented by the United Nations annual vote on the resolution of the conflict, and
the rulings of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, not the US Road Map
to nowhere. This is the absolute minimum, and can only become an agenda for
resolution of the conflict if made a demand of an international mass boycott
movement.

Who cannot support this? Do not be complicit! Supporting the boycott in whatever
form you can affirms your own dignity and morality in the face of illegality and
immorality, and sends out a clear message both to the Israeli regime and our own
rulers.

Here are some resources for further investigation:

http://boycottisraelnow.com/about.htm. A campaign started by Muslims

http://www.bigcampaign.org

http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/42 Jason Kunin, a Toronto Jew, on Why Boycott
Israel?

http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/658-a-call-from-within-signed-by-israeli-citizens

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/gazafactsheet.html Understanding the Crisis in
Gaza.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=123835447
7394. The Jerusalem Post. Boycott campaigns do make a difference.

http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2009/03/apartheid-from-south-africa-to-israel-3.html.
Ronnie Kasrils, a South African Jew, on why Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is far worse
than Apartheid.

That is just obvious. The handful of Zionists needed such a catastrophe to happen, because most Jews just wanted to "be normal", to assimilate. The religious barriers of the ancien regime had fallen and they felt as German, French, Polish, Russian, etc. more than "Jews", when they were not outright humanist internationalists, like so many bolsheviks.

Hitler in fact flirted with them: he wanted to get rid of Jews, so Zionism or a rather tamed variant of it was a reasonable solution. The nazis considered creating Jewish deportation colonies in places like Uganda or Madagascar in fact.

But whatever the case, before 1939 there were only 10% Jews in Palestine, mostly native Arab Jews. In 1946, they were 33%! The Holocaust mobilized European Jews en masse towards the Zionist dream. Nightmare for the natives – but nobody cared much about "natives" yet at that time in fact, a time when black people were still discriminated against nearly everywhere, and that real racism applied in fact to every non-European, with almost no exceptions. It was only in the decades to come that cutural and political racism began to be challenged seriously. You still find such hidden racist prejudices in "perfectly normal" people born in the 40s: you think they are normal, rather liberal, humanist… and then they say despectively "but they are negroes!" – and you just can't but think: poor idiot!

Zionists also jumped to that cart and in fact they used to call Palestinians "negroes", as to dehumanize them sybolically, depriving them of rights in their own European racist imperialist minds, not so different from Hitler's after all.

Vineyardsaker's last remark made sense to me. Zionism also germinated in the
Pale of Settlement among better off Jews. See Chaim Weizmann's Trial and Error,
a copy of which I have. I would like to know more about Makhnov.

We should not even use the term Holocaust, which means "totally burnt", even less so the Hebrew word Shoah, which suggests subliminally that the solution is Israel. The neutral term is Nazi genocides, which restores plurality, and limits them in time and to a particular social formation. Nazism's purpose was to restore the profitability of big business by crushing the organisations of the German working class and driving down wages after the slump 1929-33, and by militarising the economy and putting it on a war footing. I am not clear what the purpose of the genocides was, or how rational this was in terms of the German economy.

Judaeophobia was a mobilising tool in the Weimar republic against Communism. Clearly the ultraleftism of Stalin's Third period of the Comintern, in which Social Democrats were seen as fascists, played a role in the victory of Hitler and the eventual triumph of Zionism, an outcome of the triumph and eventual defeat of Hitlerism. Stalin had his own national autonomy experiment with the Jews in Birobidzhan, a bit of Eastern Siberia on the seaboard and near China which accepted 100,000 Soviet Jews, and supported the partition of Palestine, giving recognition to the Jewish state. Stirring up the masses did not work in every European country within the orbit of Nazism; see The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust by Tzvetan Todorov and Arthur Denner on the case of the Bulgarian Jews, none of whom were transported, but remained in Bulgaria throughout the war. Garaudy's Mythical Foundations of Israeli Policy
(I have an English copy: the French appears to be unobtainable thanks to French political correctness concerning the Nazi genocides) points out that by far the most popular destination for Jews fleeing Nazism was the Soviet Union, second was the United States, and a very poor third was Palestine.

I cannot prove it, but I suspect Zionism needed a partial genocide of the Jews in order to triumph. What a propaganda gift for the Jewish state as well. There were certainly instances of collaboration between Zionist Jews and Nazis. Eichmann learned Yiddish, went to Palestine in 1937, and declared that if he were Jewish he would have been a fervent Zionist. The common thread is the Zionists' diagnosis that the Jews suffered from a neurasthenic disease that only a national movement would cure in a return to the land of Palestine (Max Nordau), and the view of the Nazis that Jews were vermin infecting the body politic, and needed to be cleansed out of Europe. The defeat of the German working class meant that the cure could be put into operation, and ensured the successful birth of the progeny of Nazism, with the collaboration of the British ruling class, Zionism.

My point about Gilad is not to have a pop at him; but to suggest that jazz and this website are his greatest contributions to the Palestine liberation movement, not his cloudy Heideggerian lucubrations and sallies into postmodernism as in his article on The Wandering Who? As for his politics, it's clear that no-one will touch him now, not the Indymedia anarchists, and certainly not the SWP. The Morning Star carried a feature on his music recently, so perhaps it's the Stalinists' turn.

The thing is that while some Jews in the Ukraine were poor, other were not, at least not when compared to the Ukrainian peasants. This is why all pogroms had a strong class-struggle component both before and after the Revolution. True, many Jews did well in the Bolshevik Party, but the influence of that party was more felt in Saint Petersburg and Moscow and other Russian cities. In the Ukraine, a great deal of anarcho-socialist parties existed, some with Ukrainian nationalist agendas, and a lot of the anti-Jewish pogroms under the Reds were simply seen by them as popular anti-bourgeois resistance operations. Again, this was very much like the Jacqueries. Since you read French, may I point you to this:

http://www.amazon.fr/Deux-si%C3%A8cles-ensemble-1795-1995-r%C3%A9volution/dp/2213611580

Kind regards,

The Saker