Gilad Atzmon — gilad.co.uk Sept 26, 2017
The Mirror reports today that the Labour party faces a fresh anti-Semitism row after a speaker at a party conference fringe event called for “free speech to extend to holocaust denial.”
Let me assure you, this is not what Anti Zionist Zionist Naomi Wimborne-idrissi had in mind when she invited Miko Peled to speak at the Free Speech on Israel Labour fringe event.
What the Labour Jews mean by freedom of speech on Israel has little to do with freedom, speech or freedom of speech. What they mean is that a few Labour Jews should be the ones who define the boundaries of freedom to criticise Israel in accordance with their understanding of Jewish interests. Wimborne Idrissi calls it ‘giving a kosher stamp.’
Five years ago the same Wimborne-Idrissi criticised me in front of camera for demanding freedom to discuss the holocaust and its historical meaning.
Wimborne-Idrissi fell into this trap for an obvious reason. Unlike the Diaspora Jews who are defined by antisemitsm and a chain of holocausts, Miko Peled, myself and Israelis of our generation are defined by the rejection of the Diaspora identity and disassociation from Diaspora past. We, the young Israelis, identified with a piece of land that we believed by mistake was ours. We also learned to believe that Diaspora Jews brought disasters on themselves. We, on the other hand, were the Zionist post revolutionary products. We saw ourselves as civilised and humanist Jews. This belief has made Gideon Levy, Israel Shamir, Uri Avnery, Israel Shahak, Schlomo Sand, Miko Peled and yours truly into the most vocal critics of the Jewish State and the Jewishness at its core.
Needless to mention that a few of the names above, including myself, realised at a certain stage that fixing Jewishness is a futile exercise, we departed from the tribe and stopped being Jews.
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