Fascism on the right, Facism on the left. Not a great wet Sunday.

On what’s happening in Israel and the influence of Gliad Atzmon some Palestinian advocates.
Some days, you see the influence of nuttiness on both sides of the separation fence.

In Israel, we see calls for loyalty oaths coming from Lieberman and co. (thus deliberately alienating its Palestinian citizens), or making it a crime to call for the return of the Golan, even though Syria has set it will sign a treaty if the Golan is returned and secret understandings were reached years ago. But the political leadership prefers to ignore that opportunity.
Then we have the nationalist-facists on the west bank who want to make Israel a permanent occupier or expel the Palestinians there to fulfil a historical fallacy of a ‘pure’ Jewish land–which was never like that and a not-so-secret army is coming into existence to fight the state.
Plus there is an attempt by the orthodox to further push the country in to being a theocracy by putting the ‘Chief Rabbinate’ completely in touch of conversion matters, even though Judaism has had 3 distinct denominations for at least 100 years now. Don’t even think of secular marriages either. At least Bibi has come out against it, but these black hats have a lot of power and don’t hesitate to use it.
Then out of Israel and in cyberspace , today I noticed that the arguments of the extremist ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon who now lives in the London have been picked up on least one Palestinian website. Atzmon may be a great jazz musician, but his musings and posturings about the nature of Judaism, what Jews think, and stuff that goes close to Holocaust denial don’t deserve any oxygen. He has every right and should be angry about what is carried out by Israel and justified by its supporters, but his stuff is essentialist quackery that plays up to all sorts of sterotype about Jewish conspiracies. His bad history and stereotyping confuse what various power elites do with ALL Jews–it’s guilt by association, based on a conspiracy theory that has an ingnominious history in Europe and which now, unfortunately, plays out in the Arab world.
His scribblings should be shunned. Many on the left are stay well clear of him, the most recent being the US Trots associated with Socialist Worker. More details about his crankiness can be found by looking what Tony Greenstein has had to say about him, and there has been a lot of discussion on other sites on the past day or two about his crazy affliations with supporters of the British National Party.
In the piece on local Palestinian website he is engaged in group vilification. Blaming all British Jews for Israeli war crimes because they have supported the Gaza action the same as blaming all British Muslims for suppporting terror becasue they have supported actions by Fatah in its struggle against the occupation.
As another example, in another article on his website, he has this wonderful statement “American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.”
And then, he has this bit of wisdom “I assume that those Jews who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus are those who identify themselves with Jesus’s killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today. Those Jews are called Zionists and they are already advancing into their sixth decade of inhuman crimes against the Palestinian people and the Arab world.” So first, he blames Jews for killing Jesus (incorrect historically) and second, he is blaming ALL Jews/Zionists for Israel’s actions. Plus he commits more disgraces in the the same article.
Now if you believe any of this garbage, then you really are an antisemite and you can’t distinguish history form fact. If you are troubled by it, you should let Palestinians who take this stuff seriously know what crap it is. This is not a way to support the cause of freedom for Palestinian people and only plays into their enemies’ hands.