On the way in which Jewish so-called "solidarity" has been policing the Palestine debate:

 Gilad Atzmon

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On the way in which Jewish so-called "solidarity" has been policing the Palestine debate:

My FB friend Caruthers Sebastian, who is one of the most sophisticated and scholarly-oriented commentators on this page, found a 14-year-old exchange between Noel Ignatiev and myself last night. In the post, Ignatiev details how the Jewish so-called "anti-Zionists" ADL (Atzmon Defamation League) mounted pressure on him to denounce yours truly and to support the cancellation of my upcoming USA tour around that time.

It goes without saying that Ignatiev and myself agreed on very little. I believed that a lot of Ignatiev's work on what he describes as 'white supremacy' was actually a projection of his own Jewish cultural roots. What is amazing to witness, however, is the obvious fact that neither Ignatiev nor myself needed a genocide to see the most obvious connection between Jews, Judaism, Jewishness, and the insane brutality of the state that refers to itself as The Jewish State.

Yet at the time, the entire Jewish "solidarity" movement—from Max Blumenthal to Mondoweiss, to JVP, to Ilan Pappé—was engaged in one prime objective: namely, obscuring the connection between the "J-words" and the Jewish State by suffocating the discourse with some peculiar misleading ‘explanatory’ models (e.g., colonialism, settler colonialism, apartheid) and fantasy resolution promises (e.g., One Democratic State).

Here is an extract from Ignatiev's 2012 blogs:

“From Noel Ignatiev, Monday, March 5, 2012, 4:35 PM

Dear Mr. Atzmon:

I am writing in dismay at what may have been a mistake on my part. To establish the background, I am letting you know that I have been involved in exchanges with people who oppose your U.S. tour and condemn you as a “racist” and an anti-Semite, including people whom you list in your March 3 post as members of the “Atzmon Defamation League.” As part of these exchanges I wrote the following:

1) Atzmon says that the Zionist settler-colonial state is an outgrowth of “Jewish ideology” going back to antiquity. To him the essence of “Jewish ideology” is chosen-ness, exclusiveness . . . I agree with him . . .

2) He says that any attempt to retain a Jewish identity (other than on purely religious grounds) plays into the hands of Zionism . . . leading those who hold it to be more Jewish than Socialist, more Jewish than internationalist, more Jewish than Marxist. I am not sure he is right, but it often seems to work that way.

3) Atzmon says that European Jews were not mere victims chosen at random but by their actions bore some responsibility for the hostility of their neighbors, which the Nazis were able to mobilize as a political force . . . I agree.

For writing these things in a semi-private exchange, I have been criticized and even personally attacked by people I respect and who up until this point have respected me, and warned by friends that I am jeopardizing the good will I have accumulated through decades of struggle against all forms of racial supremacy, including Zionism. I understand that people feel strongly about these issues, and so I try not to take the attacks personally, and moreover I like to think I cannot be swayed by finding myself a minority of one, but I would hate to be mistaken on something this important.”

Sebastian found another Ignatiev’s blog presumably from around that time where Ignatiev summarises that which he agrees with me upon and that which we disagree about. I guess Ignatiev died prematurely, by now he would agree with me on all points.

Ignatiev writes:

First let me set down where I agree with Atzmon:

1) I agree that the influence of American Jewry, what Atzmon calls Jewish power, plays an important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.

2) I agree that one aspect of Jewish power is its ability to inhibit discussion of it.

3) I agree that Jewish power determines the limits of acceptable debate over US support for Israel.

4) I agree that the refusal of many “progressives” to examine and confront Jewish power holds back the Palestine solidarity movement.

5) I agree that it is not the orthodox or rightwing but the secular and “progressive” who give Jewish power its force.

Here are some things about which I do not agree with Atzmon:

1) I do not agree that “Jewish power is the most effective and forceful power in the land.” That distinction belongs to the power of capital.

2) I do not agree that setting the limits of dissent is distinctively Jewish. Capital has long ruled by “determin[ing] the boundaries of the political discourse and criticism.”

3) I do not agree that the heart of neo-conservatism is “Judeocentric tribal politics.”