The following is Jean Bricmont's intordiction for the Frecnch edition of The Wandering Who (La Parabole d'Esther). It was published in English a few days ago by  Counterpunch print edition.

The French edition is available here 

   Pro-Palestinian friends had repeatedly warned me: Gilad Atzmon is anti-Semitic, he is bad for the Palestinian cause, he may even work for Israel. I must have a contrarian turn of mind, because that kind of talk never stopped me from regularly reading his blog (quite the opposite) with a mixture of fascination and amusement. It struck me that an Israeli Jew living in the U.K., a voluntary exile, who is accused of anti-Semitism, among others by pro-Palestinian Jews and Palestinian militants, and whose conferences draw protesting demonstrations from “anti-racist” organizations, was at the very least an interesting curiosity. Moreover, having myself “escaped” from the religion in which I was forced to grow up (Catholicism), I have an instinctive sympathy for all those who break, often brutally, with the myths and constraints of their childhood. Atzmon’s themes, the politics of identity and memory, are at the very heart of our contemporary social debates. It ought to be possible to listen to a truly politically incorrect viewpoint on these issues, that of someone who defines himself as a “proud self-hating Jew.”

   But coming from a non-Jew like me, isn’t there something suspect, or downright unhealthy, in such an interest? When Atzmon’s editor asked me to write the preface to the French edition of The Wandering Who?, I told myself that this would be an opportunity to answer that question and, above all, to explain why Atzmon should be heard and discussed.

   It is ever so easy to “demonstrate” the alleged anti-Semitism of Atzmon. Frequently, including at the very start of his book, Atzmon makes a distinction between three meanings of the word “Jewish.” It can apply to persons who adhere to the Jewish religion, with whom he has no quarrel; to people of Jewish origin, with whom he has also no problem; and, finally, to what he calls the third category, that is, those who, without being particularly religious, constantly stress their Jewish “identity” and set it before and above their simple membership in the human race. It suffices thereupon to interpret in the first sense (people of Jewish origin) the word “Jewish” when Atzmon uses it in the third sense, in a style that is often extremely polemical, to “prove” that he is anti-Semitic.