By Alison Weir

http://alisonweir.org/

I'd rather be researching and writing articles on Palestine-Israel; analyzing media coverage ; placing advertisements and billboards around the country; creating fact-sheets, cards, booklets and other materials on the topic; updating the websites (e.g. here and here and here) we've created to get the facts out; creating new initiatives; and numerous other productive activities for justice and peace.

However, I feel I need to briefly take time out to provide information about the Gilad Atzmon controversy, since I feel the attacks on him are enormously unfair, they continue to occasionally interfere with productive efforts, are sometimes used to try to block my presentations (more on this later), and because an important new article on the topic has just come out.

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli who moved to London about 20 years ago, is a superb jazz musician who has written several books, and blogs about Israel-Palestine.

His most recent book, and the center of the controversy, is The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, in which he draws on his background in philosophy (he has a Masters degree in the subject) to explore the Jewish connection to the Jewish state.

Some activists found this topic impermissible and began to launch attacks on Atzmon, which largely seemed geared at preventing others from reading his work for themselves.

In February 2012 a public letter denouncing him was launched with 33 signatories, none of them Palestinian. (One signatory, listed first, is Lebanese; the full list is below).

The letter was circulated widely and reposted various places; eventually accruing 173 names. This time a handful were Palestinian.