International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network: Building Power in 2016

IJAN is committed to grassroots organizing and grassroots fundraising. Your contributions, whether $5, $50, or $500 can really make a difference. Dear IJAN Supporter, Thanks to everyone for supporting our work in 2015. We are looking forward to another year of building power in 2016 and organizing in the United States, Canada, Spain, France and Argentina. We have some important projects planned for the year that we hope to get your support in making happen. In 2016, we plan to release an Anti-Zionist Primer with entries that define and describe key terms from an anti-Zionist perspective. We hope it will provide a tool for internal and external education. The primer will include entries on settler colonialism, genocide, Zionism, anti-semitism, joint struggle and more. Below is an excerpt from the anti-Zionism entry:             “Radical anti-Zionists oppose the colonial and racist nature of the state                and its role in maintaining Western control in the region, and work                toward a redistribution of power and resources in Palestine, in the                region, and globally. It emerges from anti-colonial, anti-racist, working                class, and anti-capitalist principles and movements.” If you can contribute $25, we can print 25 Anti-Zionist Primers In the spring, we are doing a tour through schools and cities across the U.S. with our report, The Business of Backlash: The Attack on the Palestinian Movement and Other Movements for Social Justice. We will be offering presentations, workshops and strategy sessions on this report as well as on topics such as pinkwashing (Israel’s claim to being a safe haven for Palestinian queers while they are actually subjected to the consequences of Israeli colonization and militarization) and greenwashing (using environmentalism to cover up ecological destruction and ethnic cleansing in Palestine).Please contact us if you are interested in scheduling a speaker to come to your town, school, or organization.   Your contribution of $50 or more will help toward travel expenses to host an IJAN presentation at campuses and cities across the United States and Canada. We will also continue our strategic defense locally and internationally, specifically around Zionist institutions using false claims of anti-semitism to propagate Islamophobic messaging. Finally, on March 30, 2016 – Palestinian Land Day, as part of the US Campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) we are filing a complaint to the IRS to investigate the charity status of the JNF. The filing will be supported by Tax Day actions and a taxpayer’s petition across the United States.   We appreciate your continued support. Please consider donating to IJAN in your end of year donations. May 2016 bring us victories in the face of challenges and humanity in the face of brutality, The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network P.S. Help us out by sending this email along to two or three of your friends who might support our work. We do not receive institutional support, we depend on our communities' support.
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Argentina :: Canada :: England :: Europe :: India :: Israel :: United States ijan@ijsn.net :: ijan.org © International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Hunger strike solidarity in Trafalgar Square

Join in solidarity with Samer Al-Issawi on a 7 hour hunger strike to protest against Israel's torture of the dying prisoner and against his imprisonment without trial or charge. 

Time: 12-7pm (please join anytime that is good for you)

Venue: By the steps of St Martin in the Fields Church Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ

FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/393097630780455/

We stand united in solidarity with Samer Al-Issawi who will be on a 160 day hunger strike as of Monday the 7th January 2013. In the face of Israel's systematic breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Law Samer Al-Issawi is not the first Palestinian prisoner to protest with the only weapon available to him - his empty stomach.

The shocking violence against the dying handcuffed hunger striker amounts to torture and took place in court in front of the Israeli judge who took no action to protect the defenceless prisoner. These videos shows Samer Issawi and his family being violently attacked by the Israeli prison officers while in Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court on Tuesday, December 18th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGjFn5RVF8 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S1wqiEOxHD8
"PHR-Israel condemns the violent treatment of hunger striker, Samer Issawi and his family members while in Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court on Tuesday, December 18th and calls for the immediate release of Samer" 
http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=116&ItemID=1679

Samer Issawi’s hunger strike continues and his condition is deteriorating and is very severe. The International Committee of the Red Cross and prisoner support and human rights groups have been denied access to visit him. He is committed to continue his strike until freedom and has refused deportation.

A Doctor concluded his Medical Report: He has recently started suffering from severe pain especially in his muscles, abdomen and kidneys. He has an acute vitamin B-12 deficiency and his body has begun to eat his muscles and nerves. Also, his sight is weak, he is fainting around six times a day and his body is covered with bruises. Moreover, he is vomiting blood, his heart is weakening and he can barely breathe. He has begun to feel pains in his chest due to having been assaulted by Israeli police at his latest court hearing on December 18th. Until now, he has not had the necessary tests conducted on him after that attack against him and so far the hospital administration refused to test and X-rays his chest. His health continues to deteriorate and his body is eroding and he has lost sense of the extremities (the hands and feet) as well as in his lips and he has lost a great deal of hair,” said his mother, in evident distress.

“I will not withdraw from the battle for freedom”: The Story of Samer Issawi by Malaka Mohammed http://t.co/2vzrHdEu

Please send emails to British officials re 160 day hunger striker Samer Al-Issawi
Write to Secretary of State for the Foreign Office, William Hague:
private.office@fco.gov.uk
Jeremy Browne MP, Minister of State responsible for human rights: psministerbrowneaction@fco.gsi.gov.uk 
Minister of State for the Foreign Office, Alistair Burt MP: psministerburtaction@fco.gsi.gov.uk 
Near East Group: AINAGCorrespondence@fco.gov.uk

Also tweet:
Foreign Office (FCO) - @foreignoffice
UK Embassy in Israel - @ukinisrael 

Samer was originally imprisoned but was released under the prisoner exchange scheme last year but was re-arrested and jailed for allegedly leaving Jerusalem which had been restricted under his release agreement. The prisoners (including Samer) initially refused this condition but signed to it under assurances from Egyptian officials that it was a mere formality. Samer Issawi was seized near Hizma – inside the Israeli-defined municipal borders of Jerusalem. Issawi’s father told the Electronic Intifada. “Whenever it suits them, they change their definition of Jerusalem!"

IJAN Bulletin January 2013

From the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

As we enter 2013 this bulletin leads with what's going on in the world and in IJAN. It then provides a report back from IJAN’s participation in the US-Canada Joint Struggle delegation to the World Social Forum Free Palestine (WSFFP) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the release of IJAN’s 28-page exposé, Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression.  There are also updates from the campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as the January 2013 Plant-a-Tree delegation departs for Palestine, and from campaigns around the world supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

The first thematic World Social Forum to focus on Palestine sustained pressure from the forces that shape the demands of the Palestinian struggle writ large. Israel, Zionist organizations in Brazil, Brazil’s reliance on Israel for military purchases, and the Palestinian forces that play favour to state power over the demands of the people they represent all influenced the forum. The uncompromising voices of younger Palestinians at the WSFFP were reflective of the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian will for liberation. The US-Canada delegation to the WSFFP participated with the intention of building international joint struggle in concert with the Palestinian popular movement. IJAN is working to use the exposé, Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression, and related popular tribunals to contribute to our on-going movements for justice and liberation.

Comments on current events: Gaza, UN status and the WSFFP

The World Social Forum Free Palestine took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at exactly the moment that Palestine was on the front page of every newspaper around the world. The United Nations had just voted (138-9) to grant Palestinians non-member limited statehood observer status at the United Nations.  Meanwhile, people in Gaza had also just survived another brutal Israeli onslaught.

Despite our grief and rage at the latest attack on Gaza, the perseverance of the Palestinian people continues to be an inspiration. As has been true for almost a century, Palestine and the Palestinian people are in the stranglehold of a global negotiation for power and resources. And now, popular movements and uprisings throughout the region threaten the colonial hold of US, Europe, Israel and its collaborators with struggles against repression and mass exploitation of resources, land and people and for basic survival and freedom. In Syria, the death toll has risen to an estimated 40,000-60,000 over the past two-years as people’s fights against repression are suffocated and infiltrated by the interests of these same forces. Click here to read more.

World Social Forum Free Palestine Report-Back

The first thematic World Social Forum to focus on Palestine took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 28 November – 1 December 2012. The Forum featured over 125 workshops and a large march and rally in support of Palestine. It was an important gathering of Palestinian and solidarity activists to continue to strengthen the movement for Palestinian liberation and self-determination.

IJAN sent a delegation of six to the forum including members from Canada, Argentina and the U.S. Most of us attended as part of the U.S.-Canada Joint Struggle Delegation – a delegation of 25 activists working in grassroots struggles for the liberation of people and land, which IJAN played a central role in organizing. Specifically, the delegation provided an opportunity for activists involved in resistance to mass incarceration, surveillance and targeting of communities, repression of popular movements and activists, militarized borders, land and resource appropriation and privatization, and the promotion of indigenous self-determination, the rights of refugees, the sustainability of the land and natural resources and the creation of a people’s economy to develop concrete connections between their struggles and the Palestinian liberation movement and identify opportunities for practical work at the intersection of movements. Some of the organizers from the Black Liberation Movement, movements for gender justice, immigrant rights, environmental justice and civil rights participated in joint struggle with the Palestinian movement for the first time.

Click here to keep reading, for links to videos of workshops and for information 

about delegation activities since our return.

Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression

                   

Many of us have been aware of the support and cooperation provided to the white South African apartheid government by apartheid Israel in the form of guns and advisors.  However, few of us had any idea of is the extent of past and current Israeli support for totalitarian and oppressive regimes around the world.  At the WSF Free Palestine, IJAN released Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression, a 28-page exposé focusing on the role of Israel’s government, military, and related corporations and organizations in a global industry of

violence and repression. The booklet also shows that the states most involved with this industry profit from perpetual war and occupation across the globe while maintaining vastly unequal societies of their own.

The pamphlet formed the basis of a 4-hour assembly on the role of Israel and Zionism in worldwide repression of social movements and communities of color. The assembly was held at the Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Throughout the assembly, which featured testimony from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, South Africa, the U.S., Canada and Germany, we built relationships with activists in several parts of the world, particularly South America, which will help to expand the scope and reach of the project of documenting and exposing the specifics of Israel’s historical and ongoing role in worldwide repression. Some

testimony from this meeting will be on line soon. After the forum, we shared this project with activists in Argentina and Venezuela, who responded with interest in partnering on the project.  In the coming months, we hope to work with our partners to evolve this assembly into rolling tribunals located in different communities around the world impacted by Zionism. For more information see the project website here.

IJAN, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement delegation to Argentina and Venezuela

                        

Following the World Social Forum Free Palestine, a smaller delegation of IJAN members and lead organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement presented in Argentina and Venezuela on the role of Israel in undermining popular movements around the world by supplying weapons, technology and training to repressive governments. We brought with us the Spanish version of the booklet, El Rol de Israel in la Represión Mundial. In both places, there was interest in collaborating on popular tribunals about the impact of the Israel-US role in arms trade and repression in South America. For more information on our delegation, click here. 

Stop the JNF

The international campaign to Stop the JNF (Jewish National Fund) launched on Land Day, March 30, 2011. Since then the campaign has built momentum. In the UK the Jewish National Fund lost over 49% of its funding last year (check it out here!) The JNF UK also recently lost the patronage of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, as well as two other Members of Parliament (MP) after an early day motion signed by 63 MPs was passed in support of the campaign. In the United States, IJAN is coordinating an effort to file a complaint with the IRS combined with a popular campaign to investigate and ultimately revoke the charity status of the JNF.

In January 2013, the Stop the JNF campaign will bring a delegation of activists to plant trees in three Palestinian villages as part of its Plant-a-Tree in Palestine project. The fourth annual delegation will visit JNF sites built on top of Palestinian villages, meet with people who have been displaced by JNF projects, and partner with the Palestinian Farmers Collective and Palestinian villages in planting trees to rebuild their village agriculture.  For more information on the delegation or to participate in the campaign, contact

us at info@stopthejnf.org.

IJAN-Spain helps coordinate Palestinian solidarity and BDS

One of IJAN-Spain’s members is the coordinator of RESCOP - the Spanish network in solidarity against the occupation of Palestine. IJAN Spain was a lead coordinator of the 1^st BDS conference in Spain held in Barcelona from October 19-21, 2012. They are now preparing to launch a Stop the JNF campaign in Spain as part of this international effort. To read in Spanish about IJAN-Spain and to see documents from the Spanish BDS movement click here.   

International TU Federation Votes for BDS

Public Service International (PSI) a global trade union federation representing 20 million public service workers in 150 countries, voted at their quadrennial congress in Durban South Africa to support BDS against Israel! For those not usually involved with labor organizations, these international secretariats are instituted to facilitate the coordination of international activity between national unions across national borders. That means some of the largest unions in major industrial countries (including in the United States where both SEIU and AFSCME are affiliates) are now members of an organization supporting BDS.  Only time will tell what the impact will be on affiliated organizations which up until now have refused to acknowledge the viciously anti-labor nature of Israel. To read about the labor movement in Israel, click here. 

Click here to see a more detailed report on this new development.

Corporate Outlaw Veolia’s Bid in UK Ends in Train-Wreck

Veolia, a multinational corporation providing utility and other services around the world including in Israel, has been forced to withdraw its £4.5 billion bid for waste disposal in the UK.  Among its other Israeli profiteering schemes, Veolia built and runs a railroad from Jerusalem to some of the illegal settlements in the West Bank. As a result it has been the target of an international campaign for running a de facto Jews-only railroad which enables illegal settlements. Yael Kahn, an IJAN friend in the UK, chaired the No 2 Veolia Action Group on this project to prevent Veolia taking over a huge contract for waste disposal in north London.  Veolia has similarly lost several contracts in other European countries and even in the United States!  Find out more here.

     

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Canada :: Europe :: India :: Israel :: Latin America :: Morocco :: United Kingdom :: United States

ijan@ijsn.net :: www.ijsn.net

© International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Seen a Palestine flag? Call the police!

Here's a self-explanatory report in a newish blog called Inside Left - The OFFICIAL anti-Olympics blog, produced by Gareth Edwards:

I wouldn't normally blog about work related stuff, but since this video has achieved mini-viral status I thought I'd let people know the story behind it.

After the Israeli air attacks on Gaza in December 2008 / January 2009 the people at my workplace all agreed that we should use our window on Fawcett Road to show our outrage - and our solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the grand scheme of things it's not exactly the greatest act of resistance, but no matter how small a gesture, it felt that we were at least doing something.

The window remained unchanged from the picture above until May 2010 when Israeli commandos boarded a flotilla of ships carrying aid to Palestine, gunning down nine activists in the process. At that point we added the words "ISRAEL = TERROR STATE" at the bottom of the window display. It wasn't long before we had a visit from the local Community Wardens - old bill wannabes - demanding to know when we planned on removing the protest as they feared it might be contentious. We explained, patiently and at great length, that this was a legitimate political comment, proven by recent Israeli actions. We assured them that it was in no way a comment on a particular faith and pointed out that a number of us had spent years actively fighting racism and fascism in the city. Not surprisingly we refused to remove either the flags or the words from the window.

By September we were visited by another police officer - the one in the video - who opened his "little chat" with the fantastic "I have to acknowledge that my knowledge of this is... quite limited"! Indeed. Perhaps this explains why he didn't feel like sticking around to debate the issue. His comment that they had received two complaints, "One from a Jewish woman, and one from a member of the public" was as absurd as it was, I believe, untrue. Can you be a Jewish woman and not a member of the public?

The whole sorry saga came to a head last year when two uniformed officers came to our door, threatening us with arrest unless we took down the 'offensive' material.

If, like me, you love a happy ending, please read on....

Greenwash this!

How eco-friendly Israel treats cyclists:



From Ma'an News Agency in Bethlehem:

Israeli forces assaulted a group of cyclists who were participating in a West Bank tour on Saturday, official news agency Wafa reported.

Footage appeared on Youtube which showed an Israeli commander hitting an international participant with the butt of his rifle, in an unprovoked attack.

Israeli forces can be seen physically assaulting cyclists in the video.

Soldiers stopped a group of around 250 participants near the Jericho village of al-Auja and refused to let them start a cycling tour, which was organized by youth group Sharek and officials from the al-Auja environmental center.

Ha'aretz reports on Netanyahu apologising for his soldier getting caught and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's report is the second major news item to appear on the google news page at the time of writing.

The Guardian has a report of the flytilla at Ben Gurion airport and those supporters of the flytilla who didn't quite make it to Ben Gurion.

Atzmon slagged

Not Quite "Ordinary Human Beings"—Anti-imperialism and the anti-humanist rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon

[The following statement has been published on several websites. The version published here is the final version and contained the most up-to-date list of signers as at 8 March 2012.]

Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. According to Atzmon, the latter are simply a manifestation of Jews’ historic relationship to gentiles, an authentic expression of an essentially racist, immoral, and anti-human “Jewish ideology.”

Atzmon’s statements, besides distorting the history of Jews and constituting a brazen justification for centuries of anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs, also downgrade anti-Zionism to a mere front in the broader (anti-Jewish) struggle. Atzmon has specifically described Zionism not as a form of colonialism or settlerism, but as a uniquely evil ideology unlike anything else in human history. In addition to any ethical problems, this line of argumentation actually strengthens Zionism’s grip and claim to be the authentic representative of Jews. It obscures the reality that Zionism is an imperialist and colonialist enemy of Jewish people and Palestinians, as well as the Arab people generally and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism.

In his online attack on Moshe Machover, an Israeli socialist and founder of the anti-Zionist group Matzpen, Atzmon states:

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. “Israel,” he says, is a “settler state.” For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.[1]

For Atzmon, such views are “pretty trivial” and “lame” because he holds that Jews are in fact radically different from the French and the English. Of the many quotes we could provide in this regard, here is a small sampling:[2]

In order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?”[3]

Zionism is a continuation of Jewish ideology.[4]

The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and, obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic Bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures.[5]

Sadly, we have to admit that hate-ridden plunder of other people’s possessions made it into the Jewish political discourse both on the left and right. The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution.[6]

Were Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans open to the notion of brotherhood, they would have given up on their unique, exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.[7]

I do not consider the Jews to be a race, and yet it is obvious that “Jewishness” clearly involves an ethno centric and racially supremacist, exclusivist point of view that is based on a sense of Jewish “chosen-ness.”[8]

At the most, Israel has managed to mimic some of the appearances of a Western civilisation, but it has clearly failed to internalise the meaning of tolerance and freedom. This should not take us by surprise: Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, and Jewishness is, sadly enough, inherently intolerant; indeed, it may be argued that Jewish intolerance is as old as the Jews themselves.[9]

Israel and Zionism then, has proved to be a short lived dream. It was initiated to civilise Jewish life, and to dismantle the Jewish self-destructive mode. It was there to move the Jew into the post-herem[10] phase. It vowed to make the Jew into a productive being. But as things turned out, neither the Zionists nor the “anti Zionists” managed to drift away from the disastrous herem culture. It seems that the entire world of Jewish identity politics is a matrix of herems and exclusion strategies. In order to be “a proper Jew,” all you have to do is to point out whom you oppose, hate, exclude or boycott.[11]

The conclusion to such views is not difficult to draw:

The endless trail of Jewish collective tragedies is there to teach us that Jews always pay eventually (and heavily) for Jewish power exercises. Yet, surprisingly (and tragically) enough, Jews somehow consistently fail to internalise and learn from that very lesson.[12]

More precisely, commenting on the climax of State violence directed at Jews in the 1930s, most famously by Germany, but also in most other European nations, Atzmon is clear:

The remarkable fact is they don't understand why the world is beginning to stand against them in the same way they didn't understand why the Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. Instead of asking why we are hated they continue to toss accusations on others.[13]

Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain establishes itself. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can only think as far as “two state solution” within the framework of 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920’s-40’s.[14]

It is, as such, not surprising that Atzmon’s work has received enthusiastic reviews by such prominent members of the racist right as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Kevin MacDonald of the Occidental Observer, David Icke, and Arthur Topham’s the Radical Press. It should not be surprising that Atzmon has distributed articles defending Holocaust deniers and those who write of “the Hitler we loved and why.”[15]These connections ultimately serve the interests of Zionism, which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewishness. Zionist agents have repeatedly attempted to ensnare and link Palestinian, Arab, and/or Muslim rights advocates to Neo-Nazism, through dirty tricks and outright lies.

It is more surprising and disappointing, then, that a small section of the left has opted to promote Atzmon and his works. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party promoted Atzmon for several years before finally breaking with him; his latest book The Wandering Who? has been published by the left-wing Zero Books (a decision that elicited a letter of protest from several Zero authors).[16] In the United States, the widely-read Counterpunch website has repeatedly chosen to run articles by Atzmon. Currently, in February and March 2012, Atzmon is on tour in North America, where several of his speaking engagements are being organized by progressive anti-imperialists who we would normally like to consider our allies.

While perhaps well-meaning, operating under the assumption that any opposition to Zionism is to be welcomed, progressives who promote the work of Atzmon are in fact surrendering the moral high ground by encouraging a belief-system that simply mirrors that of the most racist section of Israeli society. Anti-racism is not a liability; on the contrary, it is a principle that makes our movements stronger in the long fight for a better tomorrow.

As political activists committed to resisting colonialism and imperialism—in North America and around the world—we recognize that there can be different interpretations of history, and we welcome exploring these. Without wishing to debate the question of whether far-right and racist ideologues should be censored, or how, we see no reason for progressive people to organize events to promote their works.

In our struggle against Zionism, racism, and all forms of colonialism and imperialism, there is no place for antisemitism or the vilification of Jews, Palestinians or any people based on their religions, cultures, nationalities, ethnicity or history. At this historic junction—when the need to struggle for the liberation of Palestine is more vital than ever and the fault lines of capitalist empire are becoming more widely exposed—no anti-oppressive revolution can be built with ultra-right allies or upon foundations friendly to creeping fascism.

As'ad AbuKhalil, The Angry Arab News Service, Turlock, CA

Suha Afyouni, solidarity activist, Beirut, LEBANON

Max Ajl, essayist, rabble-rouser, proprietor of Jewbonics blog site, Ithaca, NY

Haifaa Al-Moammar, activist, stay-at-home mom, and marathon walker, Los Angeles, CA

Electa Arenal, professor emerita, CUNY Graduate Center/Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Women's Studies, New York, NY

Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Geneva, SWITZERLAND

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Dan Berger, Wild Poppies Collective, Philadelphia, PA

Chip Berlet, Boston, MA

Nazila Bettache, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Sam Bick, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, Québec

Max Blumenthal, author; writing fellow, The Nation, New York, NY

Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, New York, NY

Café Intifada

Paola Canarutto, Rete-ECO (Italian Network of Jews against the Occupation), Torino, ITALY

Paulette d’Auteuil, National Jericho Movement, Albuquerque, NM

Susie Day, Monthly Review, New York, NY

Ali Hocine Dimerdji, PhD student at The University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, UK

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emerita, California State University

Todd Eaton, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions, Brooklyn, NY

Mark Elf, Jews sans frontieres

S. EtShalom, registered nurse, Philadelphia, PA

Benjamin Evans, solidarity activist, Chicago, IL

First of May Anarchist Alliance

Sherna Berger Gluck, professor emerita, California State University/Israel Divestment Campaign, CA

Neta Golan, International Solidarity Movement

Tony Greenstein, Secretary Brighton Unemployed Centre/UNISON, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Brighton, UK

Andrew Griggs, Café Intifada, Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Grossbard, artist, designer, writer and fighter, New York, NY

Freda Guttman, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Adam Hanieh, lecturer, Department of Development Studies/SOAS, University of London, UK

Swaneagle Harijan, anti-racism, social justice activism, Seattle, WA

Sarah Hawas, researcher and solidarity activist, Cairo, EGYPT

Stanley Heller, "The Struggle" Video News, moderator "Jews Who Speak Out"

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, CANADA

Elise Hendrick, Meldungen aus dem Exil/Noticias de una multipátrida, Cincinnati, OH

Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, New York, NY

Ken Hiebert, activist, Ladysmith, CANADA

Elizabeth Horowitz, solidarity activist, New York, NY

Adam Hudson, writer/blogger, San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Dhruv Jain, Researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie and PhD student at York University, Paris, FRANCE

Tom Keefer, an editor of the journal Upping the Anti, Toronto, CANADA

Karl Kersplebedeb, Left Wing Books, Montréal, CANADA

Anne Key, Penrith, Cumbria, UK

Mark Klein, activist, Toronto, CANADA

Bill Koehnlein, Brecht Forum, New York, NY

L.A. Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee, Los Angeles, CA

Mark Lance, Georgetown University/Institute for Anarchist Studies, Washington, DC

David Landy, author, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, Dublin, IRELAND

Bob Lederer, Pacifica/WBAI producer, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York, NY

Matthew Lyons, Three Way Fight, Philadelphia, PA

Karen MacRae, solidarity activist, Toronto, CANADA

Heba Farouk Mahfouz, student activist, blogger, Cairo, EGYPT

Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell, co-editors, New Politics, West Roxbury, MA

Ruth Sarah Berman McConnell, retired teacher, DeLand, FL

Kathleen McLeod, poet, Brisbane, Australia

Karrie Melendres, Los Angeles, CA

Matt Meyer, Resistance in Brooklyn, New York, NY

Amirah Mizrahi, poet and educator, New York, NY

mesha Monge-Irizarry, co-director of Education Not Incarceration; SF MOOC City commissioner, San Francisco, CA

Matthew Morgan-Brown, solidarity activist, Ottawa, CANADA

Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action, Los Angeles, CA

Saffo Papantonopoulou, New School Students for Justice in Palestine, New York, NY

Susan Pashkoff, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Tom Pessah, UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, Berkeley, CA

Marie-Claire Picher, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB), New York, NY

Sylvia Posadas (Jinjirrie), Kadaitcha, Noosa, AUSTRALIA

Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Danielle Ratcliff, San Francisco, CA

Liz Roberts, War Resisters League, New York, NY

Emma Rosenthal, contributor, Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, Los Angeles, CA

Penny Rosenwasser, PhD, Oakland, CA

Suzanne Ross, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, New York, NY

Gabriel San Roman, Orange County Weekly, Orange County, CA

Ian Saville, performer and lecturer, London, UK

Joel Schwartz, CSEA retiree/AFSCME, New York, NY

Tali Shapiro, Anarchists Against the Wall, Boycott From Within, Tel Aviv, OCCUPIED PALESTINE

Simona Sharoni, SUNY, author, Gender & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Plattsburgh, NY

Jaggi Singh, No One Is Illegal-Montreal/Solidarity Across Borders, Montréal, CANADA

Michael S. Smith, board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY

Pierre Stambul, Union juive française pour la paix (French Jewish Union for Peace), Paris, FRANCE

Muffy Sunde, Los Angeles, CA

Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, Bronx, NY

Tadamon! (http://www.tadamon.ca/), Montréal, CANADA

Ian Trujillo, atheist, Los Angeles, CA

Gabriella Turek, PhD, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Henry Walton, SEIU, retired, Los Angeles, CA

Bill Weinberg, New Jewish Resistance, New York, NY

Abraham Weizfeld, author, The End of Zionism and the liberation of the Jewish People, Montreal, CANADA

Ben White, author, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, Cambridge, UK

Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, NYS Task Force on Political Prisoners, New York, NY

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, founding member, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)

Asa Winstanley, journalist for Electronic Intifada, Al-Akhbar and others, London, UK

Ziyaad Yousef, solidarity activist

* List in formation

* Organizations listed for identification purposes only

* Contact us at: antiracistantizionist@yahoo.com

Postscript:

This text is not intended as a comprehensive critique of Gilad Atzmon's politics. It was written quickly by some North American anti-imperialists who learned of Atzmon's 2012 speaking tour just days before it was to begin in late February 2012. At first it was thought it would be signed by just a few people, but the initiative quickly took on a life of its own, being posted to the web and to multiple listservs, discussed via email and on Facebook, and elsewhere, even before the wording had been finalized or a decision had been made as to how to use it (the initial assumption had been that it would be passed on to organizers with far less fanfare). Instead of a few signatures, within a week there were dozens, and emails continue to arrive from people wishing to sign on. We believe that this speaks to the deep frustration that many of us feel when confronted with Atzmon's anti-Jewish beliefs, which constitute an affront to our anti-racist principles, as well as a distraction from the essential tasks of opposing colonialist genocide and Israeli apartheid. What this response makes clear is that for many anti-imperialists, opposing such racism remains essential to building a movement against imperialism and the myriad forms of oppression that both feed on and are fed by it.

Any subsequent news or information about this initiative will appear here on the Three Way Fight website (threewayfight.blogspot.com). Those wishing to endorse or discuss this initiative, or for more information, should email antiracistantizionist@yahoo.com. We wish to reiterate that we consider many of those promoting Atzmon's work to be allies, but would ask that they reconsider their decision to do so. This is not a call for censorship, but for consistency and accountability.

---

[1] Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," originally published in June 2009, republished on his Web site on April 24, 2011.

[2] Many more quotes like these could be provided, but we assume this is enough to show that these are not out-of-context or out-of-character remarks. If not, readers may wish to peruse the section of Atzmon’s website on “Jewishness” at<www.gilad.co.uk/writings/category/jewishness>.

[3] Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," Atlantic Free Press, July 2, 2009.

[4] Anayat Durrani, "Exposing Dangerous Myths," Interview with Gilad Atzmon, originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly (May 19-25, 2011), republished on Atzmon's Web site on May 19, 2011.

[5] Gilad Atzmon, "Swindler's List: Zionist Plunder and the Judaic Bible," Redress Information & Analysis, April 5, 2008.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Gilad Atzmon, "An Interesting Exchange With A Jewish Anti Zionist," Atzmon's Web site, August 17, 2011.

[9] Gilad Atzmon, "The Herem Law in the context of Jewish Past and Present," Atzmon's Web site, July 16, 2011.

[10] “Herem” is a Hebrew word that refers to banning or excluding someone, it is also the name of the repressive legislation Israel recently passed to enable punitive lawsuits against those calling for a boycott of the apartheid state. For Atzmon, this law is just one more example of Zionism’s Jewish uniqueness (guess he never heard of SLAPPs), as he concludes that “this is what Jews do best: destroying, excluding, excommunicating, silencing, boycotting, sanctioning. After all, Jews have been doing this for centuries.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] Gilad Atzmon, "A Warning From The Past," Atzmon's Web site, May 26, 2011.

[13] Quoted in Shabana Syed, "Time for World to Confront Israel: Gilad Atzmon," Arab News, June 14, 2010.