I own my Words!

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

Email: assemblyhall@islington.gov.uk

Contact the Council: +4420 7527 2000

To support Gilad’s legal battles:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support

Transcription:

Hello Everybody,

The smear campaign against me didn’t stop for Christmas.  However, it is becoming clear that thousands of people are behind me. So far almost 5000 people have signed a petition expressing their disgust with the Islington council’s decision against me. We are winning this essential battle for freedom.

Despite the orchestrated slander campaign against me, no one has produced a single racist or hateful quote by me. I have challenged those who called me a racist and a holocaust denier to find a single writing or speech by me in which I criticise Jews as a people, an ethnicity,, a  race or for biology.  I have also asked them to show me where I have denied the holocaust? Guess what: No ones found such a reference.

What this means is that in Britain in 2018, you can be accused of a hate crime (even by the mainstream press) without having committed or been charged with a single crime, let alone a hate crime.

The Guardian made an attempt to produce the ‘evidence’ of my most controversial quotes. They quoted my thoughts fairly accurately. This is fine, I actually own each of these quotes with pride. They are my opinions and I substantiate them in my writing.

The Guardian writes, “Atzmon has previously accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust and distanced himself from his Jewish heritage.”  This is not a quote but it is true. But I am hardly alone. Norman Finkelstein makes a similar point in  ‘The Holocaust Industry’ and in the 1950s, Abba Eban, the legendary Israeli diplomat, coined the famous phrase ‘there is no business like Shoah Business.’ I guess this means that neither Abba Eban nor Norman Finkelstein are allowed to play saxophone in Islington.

In a 2003 essay, Atzmon (me) wrote: “We must begin to take the accusation that Zionists are trying to control the world very seriously.” Surely I should receive an award for saying that three years before Mearsheimer and Walt published their bestseller ‘The Israeli Lobby’ and many years before Bibi Netanyahu disrespected the Obama Administration by giving a sermon to the Joint Houses of Congress in America. I suggest that  Brits here check out how many of your MPs are members of Israel’s friends’ clubs.

The Guardian continues, in another article, he [Atzmon] denounced “the Holocaust religion” and said “Holocaust denial laws should be reconsidered.” Yes, I do believe that history should be subject to open discussion. And, guess what, I am not alone. Deborah Lipstadt, the legendary Jewish historian and probably the strongest opponent  of holocaust denial (as she calls it) also opposes holocaust denial laws. I am against all history laws. I believe that slavery, the Irish Famine, the Holodomor, the Nakba and the Holocaust; everything that happened in the past should be discussed freely.

“Atzmon” the Guardian reports,  “has suggested attacks on synagogues should be considered political acts rather than hate crimes.” “I am here to announce as loudly as I can: there is no antisemitism any more,” he wrote.  “In the devastating reality created by the Jewish state, antisemitism has been replaced by political reaction.” I  accept that some may not like what I’m saying, but this is what I believe. I don’t believe that the present situation is like  the 30s, when people hate Jews because of their genes. This may happen in some corners of society but a lot of the opposition we see to Jewish politics, institutions, political bodies, Israeli lobbying and so on are political reactions.

“I am not saying that synagogues haven’t been attacked, or that Jewish graves have not been brutally smashed up. I am saying that these acts, that are in no way legitimate, should be seen as political responses rather than racially motivated acts or ‘irrational’ hate crimes.”

Now, is this a hateful statement?  Not at all. Is this a call for violence or an incitement to violence? It’s actually the opposite. Why are some people so upset by my statement? Is it because it searches for rationality, reason, cause and effect where others insist upon imposing their view that hatred is always irrational? This is something that we see a lot in the left discourse in the western world. We use the word ‘phobia’ – Islamophobia, Judeophobia, transphobia, gayphobia to label hatred of a group. Once we label a ‘phobia,’ we somehow don’t examine it, we declare it irrational. I suggest that we do the opposite. We can try to understand where hatred is coming from. We are not justifying hatred, instead we try to understand its rationale in order to best tackle it. I insist that ‘rationality,’ the search for reason, is what we have lost in our public debate.

Instead of trying to understand, we are forced to navigate through minefields in which we must not speak without violating the  tyranny of correctness imposed on us by authoritarian forces.

To me, this war  is the most important war we must fight. We must reinstate our elementary freedoms to say what we think, to say what we believe to be true; to exercise our right to make mistakes, and to be corrected through open debate. Silencing and witch-hunts are not the answer. It’s the path towards darkness.

That’s all for today. I’ll meet you again in a few days, with more details on this battle, Thank you so much for

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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