Jeff Blankfort to AZZ Gabriel Ash

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon:

A few days ago we came across a vile email exchange between three, so-called,  Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists  and Dr. Maizn Qumsiyeh, leading Palestinian intellectual and peace activist.

Regretfully, the three Jewish ethnic campaigners used an abusive and patronizing language that left some of us bewildered and hurt. But Dr Qumsiyeh didn’t shy away, compassionately he answered the AZZ (Anti Zionist Zionists) putting into play every possible rule of reason. But his words were in vein.

The infamous Tony Greenstein foolishly circulated the exchange and made his level of abusive language once again into public knowledge.   I myself passed the exchange to Jeff Blankfort and a few others. Here is Blankfort’s open letter to Gabriel Ash. 

Once realising that he is about to be exposed, Ash  tried to stop the publication of the following letter. However, Jeff Blankfort is made of a different material. His integrity is never compromised.

This letter is published with Mr. Blankfort’s Consent.

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Gabriel Ash

Last night, Gilad forwarded to me the correspondence that is apparently being circulated by Tony Greenstein, he of the poison pen, among you, Abraham Weizfeld, and Mazin Qumsiyeh regarding an upcoming conference in Munich on the future of Palestine in which Mazin is participating together with Ghada Karmi, Norton Mezvinsky, and Oren Ben Dor with whom I am not familiar, and the objections to this conference on your part, as well as Greenstein and Weizfeld, based upon the latter’s discovery that Mazin was not a signatory to that unforgivable and contemptible letter circulated, to his everlasting discredit, by Ali Abumimah, denouncing, in terms, worthy of Joe McCarthy, Alan Dershowitz, and Abe Foxman, the estimable Gilad Atzmon who you and your fellow Jewish tribalists seem to see as the éminence grise behind the conference.

Before reading your contribution to this exchange, despite our disagreements over the role of the American Jewish establishment in dictating US Middle East policy, I had otherwise respected you but our point of disagreement turned out to be more important than I first thought. It is considerably more than a red line being nothing less than the division between political realists and one hand and Jewish tribalists on the other, and you have shown that you are just as eager to circle the wagons when Jews are criticized collectively as any full throated Zionist yahoo. That you have further besmirched yourself by comparing Atzmon with Meir Kahane is therefore fully consistent with where you, Greenstein and Weizfeld appear on the political spectrum. Weizfeld, who I have long considered a certifiable nutcase,  founded something called “The Jewish People’s Liberation Organization,” (ROTFLMAO) and claims to “have functioned as an intermediary on behalf of the Palestinians to the Western (North American) societies and, on behalf of the Jewish People to the Palestinian and Arab Nations since 1968.” I need not bother to point out further the arrogance of such a statement since it speaks for itself.  As for Greenstein, he has written that attacks on the pro-Israel Lobby “are the first step towards holocaust denial.” You certainly are in fine company, Gabriel.

Frankly, despite the time and energy I have spent exposing the nefarious role in support of Israel played by organized Jewry at every level of American society, political, economic, and social, my biggest problems, from a personal political standpoint, have come from left wing Jews, beginning with those, among them close family friends, Jewish communists, who were ready to lynch me back in 1971 when they learned I had spent four months with the Palestinians in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan. Their anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism was so intense that in 1973, when the CPUSA paper, the People’s World, put out a photo calendar (without having anything to do with the photo selection), they had to excise a photo I had taken in Jordan’s Schneller Camp of young Palestinian women with guns in order to sell it to the comrades.

Successive generations have become only more sophisticated. Leftist Jews from the various Marxist and Trotskyist organizations made sure that the Palestinian issue would be segregated from all the other people’s liberation struggles–even while claiming to be anti-Zionist (a word for me that has lost all meaning)–and this lasted up until the first US war on Iraq and then their bleats were limited to that ridiculous slogan that most Americans do not understand, “End the Occupation!” Not a word about stopping US aid to Israel, not a word about AIPAC or the pro-Israel Lobby and when I started speaking about it in the 80s, I found myself marginalized, not only by the faux Jewish solidarity activists but by Palestinian groups, as well, whose leaders had been thoroughly colonized by the Jewish activists and by that pied piper of disinformation. Noam Chomsky, who even Israel Shahak, his old friend, had to admit, served AIPAC’s cause. <www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html>
Not surprisingly, no Jew would debate me regarding the Lobby. Chomsky, even when we were on friendly terms, Joel Beinin, Phyllis Bennis, Mitchell Plitnick and the JVP crowd. Chomsky, Beinin and Bennis, said the same thing, “it wouldn’t be useful.” To whom they didn’t say but I can tell you.

What Gilad has provided is an explanation for this phenomenon and the hysterical responses to what he has written from Jews such as yourself, from Greenstein and Weizfeld and the earlier railing against him by the International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network confirms his theory for which, I assume, he is much appreciative.

I have read his book and while I don’t agree with all his conclusions, I do agree with the most important, his analysis of Jewish identity and the problems it creates in the political sphere and not only for the Palestinians.

• If you do not think that the build-up for a war against Iran and the draconian sanctions against that country and its people have been directed by Jews, inside and outside of the US government, on Israel’s behalf, you are not only in denial, you are part of the problem.
• If you do not think that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948, followed by the 1967 war, and the decades of occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians, are not primarily the responsibility of Israeli Jews and their supporters internationally, you are part of the problem since, whatever else you may say or do, you are providing protective cover for the perpetrators.

Jeff Blankfort
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!