Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: As I explained in my latest book The Wandering Who, Jewish identity politics is driven by different tribal narratives. In many cases it is intolerant and even openly hostile towards open exchange and universal ideologies. This applies the Zionist and ‘anti’ Zionist alike.

The Jewish internet outlet Mondoweiss initially presented itself as a progressive pro-Palestine journal but it didn’t take long before it admitted to be a fig leaf dedicated to Judeo-centric gate-keeping. This week Mondoweiss changed its comment policy. No longer will it allow any criticism of Jewish politics, culture and identity politics.

But here’s the good news: Years ago, when some of us decided to write about the Jewish state in the context of Jewish culture, the AZZ (anti-Zionist Zionists) dismissed us as an ‘irrelevant marginal voice’. This week however, Mondoweiss admitted that we are actually “a lot of people” and “a significant part of the community.” A community Mondoweiss attempts to silence.  

In the following piece Aletho News added the names of those who oppose freedom of speech and open discourse. These people have publicly disavowed me because of my recognizing the clear connection between Jewish identity politics and Zionist ideology. I’ll admit that I am actually happy to be at the centre of this battle for truth and liberation.

In the list you will find many Jewish activists. Yet, one may wonder why Palestinians such as Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti have so compromised their credibility by joining such a list and it would be interesting to find out what they got in return. But it would be even more interesting to find out what principle they were willing to sacrifice. Apparently, giving up on the Palestinian Right of Return was something they were quite happy to give away.

Amazon.com  or Amazon.co.uk

What shall we not talk about today?

http://alethonews.wordpress.com

Mondoweiss:

“. . . a significant part of the community wants to talk about Israeli policy in the context of Jewish history and Jewish identity, and do so in a highly critical manner. Clearly a lot of people, including many in our community, want to have these conversations and regard them as necessary to resolving the Middle East conflict. We don’t. We are tired of serving as a platform for this discussion, including in the comment section, and don’t see the conversation as a productive one. From here on out, the Mondoweiss comment section will no longer serve as a forum to pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.

We are making this change because this discussion makes for a toxic, often racist, discourse, and scares off others who would otherwise be drawn to the issues this site concerns itself with.”

Xymphora responds:

I look forward to the ‘Roots of Slavery in the Old South’ forum, which consists entirely of a discussion of the sufferings of the slaveholders, and how their actions derived entirely from the racism experienced by their Scots-Irish forefathers.

Of course, the deeper issue is that Zionism is based, not in Jewish suffering or the mythology of a universal irrational hatred of Jews, but in Jewish violent group supremacism.  This is easy to see in that Zionism waxes in times of Jewish group dominance (like now), and wanes in the relatively rare times of Jewish group oppression. The lite Zionists are always more skittish about hiding Jewish supremacism than the hard-core Zionists.

~~~

Aletho News adds the following list containing the names of those who have publicly disavowed Gilad Atzmon due to his recognizing a connection between Jewish cultural identity and Zionist ideology:

As’ad AbuKhalil, The Angry Arab News Service, Turlock, CA

Suha Afyouni, solidarity activist, Beirut, LEBANON

Max Ajl, essayist, rabble-rouser, proprietor of Jewbonics blog site, Ithaca, NY

Haifaa Al-Moammar, activist, stay-at-home mom, and marathon walker, Los Angeles, CA

Electa Arenal, professor emerita, CUNY Graduate Center/Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Women’s Studies, New York, NY

Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Geneva, SWITZERLAND

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Dan Berger, Wild Poppies Collective, Philadelphia, PA

Chip Berlet, Boston, MA

Nazila Bettache, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Sam Bick, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, Québec

Max Blumenthal, author; writing fellow, The Nation, New York, NY

Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, New York, NY

Café Intifada

Paola Canarutto, Rete-ECO (Italian Network of Jews against the Occupation), Torino, ITALY

Paulette d’Auteuil, National Jericho Movement, Albuquerque, NM

Susie Day, Monthly Review, New York, NY

Ali Hocine Dimerdji, PhD student at The University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, UK

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emerita, California State University

Todd Eaton, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions, Brooklyn, NY

Mark Elf, Jews sans frontieres

S. EtShalom, registered nurse, Philadelphia, PA

Benjamin Evans, solidarity activist, Chicago, IL

First of May Anarchist Alliance

Sherna Berger Gluck, professor emerita, California State University/Israel Divestment Campaign, CA

Neta Golan, International Solidarity Movement

Tony Greenstein, Secretary Brighton Unemployed Centre/UNISON, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Brighton, UK

Andrew Griggs, Café Intifada, Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Grossbard, artist, designer, writer and fighter, New York, NY

Freda Guttman, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Adam Hanieh, lecturer, Department of Development Studies/SOAS, University of London, UK

Swaneagle Harijan, anti-racism, social justice activism, Seattle, WA

Sarah Hawas, researcher and solidarity activist, Cairo, EGYPT

Stanley Heller, “The Struggle” Video News, moderator “Jews Who Speak Out”

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, CANADA

Elise Hendrick, Meldungen aus dem Exil/Noticias de una multipátrida, Cincinnati, OH

Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, New York, NY

Ken Hiebert, activist, Ladysmith, CANADA

Elizabeth Horowitz, solidarity activist, New York, NY

Adam Hudson, writer/blogger, San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Dhruv Jain, Researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie and PhD student at York University, Paris, FRANCE

Tom Keefer, an editor of the journal Upping the Anti, Toronto, CANADA

Karl Kersplebedeb, Left Wing Books, Montréal, CANADA

Anne Key, Penrith, Cumbria, UK

Mark Klein, activist, Toronto, CANADA

Bill Koehnlein, Brecht Forum, New York, NY

L.A. Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee, Los Angeles, CA

Mark Lance, Georgetown University/Institute for Anarchist Studies, Washington, DC

David Landy, author, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, Dublin, IRELAND

Bob Lederer, Pacifica/WBAI producer, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York, NY

Matthew Lyons, Three Way Fight, Philadelphia, PA

Karen MacRae, solidarity activist, Toronto, CANADA

Heba Farouk Mahfouz, student activist, blogger, Cairo, EGYPT

Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell, co-editors, New Politics, West Roxbury, MA

Ruth Sarah Berman McConnell, retired teacher, DeLand, FL

Kathleen McLeod, poet, Brisbane, Australia

Karrie Melendres, Los Angeles, CA

Matt Meyer, Resistance in Brooklyn, New York, NY

Amirah Mizrahi, poet and educator, New York, NY

mesha Monge-Irizarry, co-director of Education Not Incarceration; SF MOOC City commissioner, San Francisco, CA

Matthew Morgan-Brown, solidarity activist, Ottawa, CANADA

Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action, Los Angeles, CA

Saffo Papantonopoulou, New School Students for Justice in Palestine, New York, NY

Susan Pashkoff, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Tom Pessah, UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, Berkeley, CA

Marie-Claire Picher, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB), New York, NY

Sylvia Posadas (Jinjirrie), Kadaitcha, Noosa, AUSTRALIA

Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Danielle Ratcliff, San Francisco, CA

Liz Roberts, War Resisters League, New York, NY

Emma Rosenthal, contributor, Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, Los Angeles, CA

Penny Rosenwasser, PhD, Oakland, CA

Suzanne Ross, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, New York, NY

Gabriel San Roman, Orange County Weekly, Orange County, CA

Ian Saville, performer and lecturer, London, UK

Joel Schwartz, CSEA retiree/AFSCME, New York, NY

Tali Shapiro, Anarchists Against the Wall, Boycott From Within, Tel Aviv, OCCUPIED PALESTINE

Simona Sharoni, SUNY, author, Gender & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Plattsburgh, NY

Jaggi Singh, No One Is Illegal-Montreal/Solidarity Across Borders, Montréal, CANADA

Michael S. Smith, board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY

Pierre Stambul, Union juive française pour la paix (French Jewish Union for Peace), Paris, FRANCE

Muffy Sunde, Los Angeles, CA

Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, Bronx, NY

Tadamon! (http://www.tadamon.ca/), Montréal, CANADA

Ian Trujillo, atheist, Los Angeles, CA

Gabriella Turek, PhD, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Henry Walton, SEIU, retired, Los Angeles, CA

Bill Weinberg, New Jewish Resistance, New York, NY

Abraham Weizfeld, author, The End of Zionism and the liberation of the Jewish People, Montreal, CANADA

Ben White, author, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, Cambridge, UK

Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, NYS Task Force on Political Prisoners, New York, NY

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, founding member, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)

Asa Winstanley, journalist for Electronic Intifada, Al-Akhbar and others, London, UK

Ziyaad Yousef, solidarity activist

and also:

• Ali Abunimah
• Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
• Omar Barghouti, human rights activist
• Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine
• Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
• Haidar Eid, Gaza
• Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
• Toufic Haddad
• Kathryn Hamoudah
• Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
• Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada
• Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
• Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate
• Andrew Kadi
• Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist
• Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY
• Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico
• Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine
• Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
• Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
• Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London
• Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate
• http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/what-shall-we-not-talk-about-today.html