Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon is a writer, saxophonist and political activist. He was born in Israel in 1963, but now lives in London and prefers to be thought of as "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian" due to his anti-Israeli views,http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/39I-thought-music-could-heal.3804991.jp?CommentPage=1&CommentPageLength=1000 which have a tendency to spiral into a particular variety of antisemitism. Atzmon is a near-perfect example of how the extreme right and the radical left can become practically indistinguishable.
==The Holocaust==
Atzmon has been accused of denying the Holocaust; a blatant fib. Although he says, "I have never denied the Holocaust or any other historical chapter," he also claims to "find the notion of 'holocaust denial' to be meaningless, and on the verge of idiotic."http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-being-in-time.html He has declared "the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense".
"If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich," he asks, "or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?" He continues:
Atzmon follows the notion of a "Holocaust religion." He states that, "it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come)," along with, "its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.)," and, "an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.) ...is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws)." According to Atzmon, "[i]n the new religion it is 'the Jew' whom the Jews worship" and concludes that the typical follower of the Holocaust religion "is there to 'schlep' the entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the project is slightly more complicated. For him redemption means setting a new world order, namely a socialist haven."http://www.iamthewitness.com/Gilad-Atzmon-Purim.html
==Other views==
Atzmon comments that certain Jews object to Charles Dickens' Fagin and Shakespeare's Shylock; he believes that this attitude is misguided, as both characters are pretty accurate: "Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum."http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/symbolic-identifiers-and-jewish-stereotypes-by-gilad-atzmon.html
Atzmon has also called America "the Jewish promised land," stating that its "ruthless materialism" makes it culturally perfect for the Jews.http://www.alterinfo.net/Gilad-Atzmon-Messing-with-the-Zohan_a24032.html
==Supporters==
Sunny Singh, an author and senior lecturer in creative writing at London Metropolitan University, has written favorably about Atzmon, stating that she appreciates his writing even though she does not always agree. She has been criticized for her support of the man but scoffed at these objections, comparing criticisms of Atzmon to Muslim criticisms of Salman Rushdie.http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.com/2011/09/as-for-rushdie-and-mistry-so-for-gilad.html Another supporter is the politician George Galloway. On Sputnik, his programme for RT in 2015, Galloway said he was "enthralled" by Atzmon's The Wandering Who and was reading a chapter from the book every night to his (fourth) wife with the result "we went to bed thinking of you"."When George Schmoozed Gilad", Community Security Trust blog, 6 January 2015.
==Raise Your Banners and Hope not Hate==
In 2011 Atzmon was invited to perform a concert at Raise Your Banners, a music festival in Bradford.<capture>http://raiseyourbanners.org/index.php?page=gilad-atzmon-concert</capture> Atzmon's critics attacked the Arts Council for giving the festival a £4,000 lottery grant; an Arts Council spokesperson responded by arguing that Atzmon was attending as a musician rather than a political writer,http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/58408/lottery-cash-funds-jew-hate-jamboree despite Raise Your Banners describing itself as a "festival of political song"http://raiseyourbanners.org/index.php?page=About-RYB and its website speaking approvingly of Atzmon's "fiery political rhetoric".
Amongst the concert's protestors are Nick Lowles and his antifascist organization Hope not Hate.http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/1487/pull-the-plug-on-gilad-atzmon Atzmon responded to Hope not Hate's attack by quoting from an article about Lowles published by the organization Civil Liberty; after Civil Liberty was exposed as a front for the British National Party, Atzmon removed the quotation from his website.http://hurryupharry.org/2011/11/21/atzmon-quotes-from-bnp-website-to-attack-hope-not-hate/
The protests were dismissed by Raise Your Banners. "The request has come principally from the Jewish Socialists’ Group and some individual supporters of Raise your Banners festival", said festival secretary Sam Jackson. "We have discussed the matter with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and are satisfied that PSC have no boycott of Gilad Atzmon or events that he is involved in."http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/raise-your-banners-reply-to-the-call-to-cancel-the-appearance-of-gilad-atzmon-at-their-festival/ This is a curious defense, as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is itself no stranger to accusations of antisemitism.
==References==
Category:Antisemites
Category:Holocaust denialists
Category:Internalized discrimination
Category:Musicians
Category:Living people