Mazal Tov to Harry’s Place and Mark Gardner
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 11:04PM Gilad Atzmon Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: So the shekel has dropped. The notorious Zionist, pro-war, Islamophobic, Harry’s Place has finally woken up. At long last it attempts to engage - and, for the first time ever, to engage intellectually. Perhaps someone at the centre of Israel Cyber Command has at last gathered that urgent, strategic rethinking is now desperately needed.
So far, every effort to destroy The Wandering Who has backfired. Last week’s orchestrated attack led by the Jewish Chronicle, the Guardian and war-advocate Jeffrey Goldberg ended in vain. The book wasn’t pulled, but we were given a telling glimpse into the embarrassing continuum between the hardcore Zionist praxis and the onanist AZZ ( Anti-Zionist Zionist) discourse. If you want to know how the Guardian ended up in bed with both the Jewish Chronicle and ex-concentration camp guard Jeffrey Goldberg, I suggest you read The Wandering Who.
As usual, the Guardian listened to the wrong people and so grossly miscalculated its position, power and influence. Its outrageous attack on Alison Weir, Counterpunch and myself was not picked by a single dissident journal around the globe. In fact, it led Jonathan Cook, the most respected writer on Palestine, to expose what he defined as the Guardian’s “Dangerous Cult”. Unlike the Guardian piece that was left hanging out to dry on some rabid Zionist sites, Cook’s article was reprinted by every dissident outlet on the net.
However, Harry’s Place seems to be slightly more sophisticated. This week, they were quick enough to sense that a change of tactics is needed.
For many years, Harry’s Place has had the following engraved on its banner: “Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.” This week, it dropped its old banner and introduced a new, more upbeat image featuring none other than…. myself. They must have finally got it, that it is Atzmon whom they really despise, it is Atzmon who actually tells people what they don’t want to hear.
Obviously, I’m delighted with this development but the Zionist outlet still couldn’t quite manage to avoid yet another unfortunate lapse in taste. To my right, on their banner, you can see a vague, but still disturbing image. I suspect it’s an image of human corpses - probably victims of some genocide. But I can’t quite make up my mind whether these human corpses are victims of the Nazi Holocaust or are actually Arabs and Muslims who lost their lives in one of those wars for which Harry’s Place are so enthusiastic and supportive of. Is it not about time that Harry’s Place’s hasbara ringleaders grasped, that in every campaign they run, they simply expose further the darkness at the heart of the Zionist project?
Earlier today, Harry’s Place published an article by rabid Zionist Mark Gardner. Interestingly, Gardner has managed to produce the first Zionist attempt to deal with ‘The Wandering Who’ that’s actually worth reading. Unlike his tribal comrades, Gardner seems to have actually read my book. He doesn’t quote me out of context, he doesn’t falsify my words and, best of all, he seems to understand what I’m talking about. He actually attempts to criticise my text at face value. Unlike his comrades, Gardner manages to draw the necessary conclusions. He grasps that, both myself and a few others, are “…formulating what risks becoming the new Jewish Question.” Here, Gardner is bang on. This is exactly what we’re doing. We argue that, considering the level of Jewish institutional involvement in Western politics (through lobbying AIPAC, CFI etc’ and pro Zionist think-tanks), the ‘Jewish Question’ is truly worthy of wide public interest.
However, Gardner is not entirely without error. For instance, he refers to ‘cultural racism’, yet it’s far from clear what he means by ‘cultural racism’ and exactly how I am complicit in such a discourse. I believe that racism is indeed a horrible thing and I regard myself as a devoted anti-racist campaigner. But I also believe that supremacist cultures that are racially driven are also a very bad thing. This fact alone makes me into an opponent of every form of Jewish political discourse - for such a discourse is always racially driven.
I suppose that Mark Gardner and Harry’s Place are coming to realise that The Tide Has Changed. Solidarity with Palestinians is now far from being an insignificant, fringe, Marxist exercise, teetering on the verge of self-indulgence. Harry’s Place is waking up to a new reality. We’re all Palestinians now - and we’ve lost our fear.
Mark Gardner: From The Wandering Jew to The (new) Jewish Question
Gilad Atzmon is an ex-Israeli Jew. His latest book, “The Wandering Who?”, is potentially a key moment in the battle against contemporary antisemitism: forcing parts of the anti-Zionist left to finally confront the antisemitic dead-end that their over-heated fervour can lead to.
