Gilad Atzmon is a Jazz musician, an ex-pat Israeli and, in his own words, an “ex-Jew”. He is also an anti-Semite who promotes conspiracy theories and supports Holocaust deniers.
Don’t take my word for it, though.
Here is Tony Greenstein – not exactly a “Lover of Zion” – congratulating the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (also not known for their Zionism) for dissociating itself from Gilad Atzmon in 2011 after , as Greenstein puts it, “Atzmon himself [h]as openly embraced the politics of holocaust denial question the existence of Auschwitz as a death camp”.
Here is a recent article from 972 Magazine referring to Atzmon’s book ‘The Wandering Jew’:
“Atzmon is a Holocaust denier; he has previously asked “if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?” In this book […..] Atzmon writes on page 179 “we, for instance, can envisage a horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called ‘pre-emptive’ nuclear attack on Iran that escalates into a disastrous nuclear war, in which tens of millions of people perish. I guess that amongst the survivors of such a nightmare scenario, some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’ On page 27 he argues “Throughout the centuries, some Jewish bankers have gathered the reputation of backers and financers of wars and even one communist revolution.””
Here is Nick Lowles of the anti-racist, anti-fascist campaign ‘HOPE not hate’ writing about Atzmon and here is the Community Security Trust discussing his visit to Exeter University in November 2011. Andy Newman, a British Trade Unionist and contributor to ‘Socialist Unity’, wrote about the Left’s need to distance itself from Gilad Atzmon in the Guardian in September 2011.
Alternatively, one could take a look at some of the words of Atzmon himself (all sources in the link):
“To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail. We should never compare Israel to Nazi Germany. As far as evilness is concerned, we should now let Israel take the lead.”
“The question of whether there was a mass homicide with gas or ‘just’ a mass death toll due to total abuse in horrendous conditions is no doubt a crucial historical question. The fact that such a major historical chapter less than seven decades ago is scholarly [sic] inaccessible undermines the entire historical endeavour. …Furthermore, unless one approves and repeats the official Holocaust narrative, one may find oneself locked behind bars. This happened lately to three rightwing history revisionists who dared to suspect the official Auschwitz narrative. ….I can see these three outlaws :[David] Irving, [Ernest] Zundel and [Germar] Rudolf, the three rightwing historical revisionists who happen to be locked behind bars. …While left academics are mainly concerned with signalling out Holocaust deniers telling us what is right and who is wrong, it is the revisionists who engage themselves in detailed archive work as well as forensic scrutiny…. If history shapes the future, we need to liberate our perspective of the past, rather than arresting revisionists, we simply need many more of them.”
“We must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously…. 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 do try to control the world, by proxy. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least.”
“The Protocols is widely considered a forgery. It is a manual for a prospective new member of the “Elders”, describing how they will run the world through control of the media and finance, replacing the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation. Though the book is considered a hoax by most experts and regarded as a vile anti-Semitic text, it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe both the century unfolding and the political reality in which we live.”
Most reasonable people would probably avoid putting up a photograph of themselves together with such an obviously racist Holocaust denier on their organisation’s Facebook wall. They would also not gratify his repulsive views with a sympathetic radio interview.
Not so the BBC World Service’s Julian Worricker, who was ‘intrigued’ by his interviewee Atzmon on October 14th 2012.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eSH2tq67w]
The BBC World Service would not dream of promoting David Duke or a member of Combat 18, even if they also happened to be rather good at tap dancing. So the question is; why can the BBC either not identify Gilad Atzmon for what he really is or justify giving him air-time if it does?