Atzmon, Racism And His Supporters.

Gilad Atzmon is a litmus test.

Although, he is not a very significant person, Gilad Atzmon does represent a wider problem, the continued existence of racism towards Jews.

Additionally, by gauging attitudes towards him it is possible to tell if people are genuinely interested in peace in the Middle East or they simply have hangups with Jews.

Whilst it is perfectly possible to legitimately disagree with what any Middle Eastern government does, including Israel, and campaign against them, once you get onto the topic of Jewish identity and the delegitimisation of it then you are in another territory entirely.

Once antagonism towards Israel and Israelis has crystallised into antagonism towards the history of Jews then you are squarely outside of legitimate political concerns.

So by looking at Gilad Atzmon’s most vocal supporters it is possible to determine just how far their racism goes.

Many other sites have covered the contents and rantings of Atzmon’s new book, I would recommend the CST’s critique, as it describes in detail the nature of the racism to be found in that odious publication.

Equally, Engage have covered him many times and is worth a considerated read to understand the gestation of this problem.

Bob from Brockley has an excellent summary of the history of events.

But returning to the original point, the litmus test, it comes as no surprise to me that the Britain2Gaza campaign are very keen on Gilad Atzmon, as can be seen from their approving tweets of his nonsense:

“@britain2gaza Britain2Gaza
Gilad Atzmon speaking in North London about his book ‘The Wandering Who, A study of Jewish Identity Politics’ tonight

4 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet Reply
Retweeted by ajit8_ and 3 others”

The final word goes to Mark Gardner at the CST:

“CST has consistently warned about the antisemitic route down which some anti-Zionists have careered these last few years. This book shows exactly where they have ended up. Support for this book, while perhaps in a minority amongst anti-Zionists, reveals the shocking extent to which, for some anti-Zionists, their struggle has gone from focusing upon Palestinian rights to focusing upon Jews.“

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