The Socialist Worker's statement is very disingenious
about retracting the Gilad Interview
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 4:00 pm GMT
I stumbled upon an article today which was a statement of retraction of an interview that the famous pro-Palestinian activist Gilad Atzmon had given to the Socialist Worker website. Of course 'retracted' means that the article had been butchered and thrown away and it was no longer at the Socialist Worker Website. However, it was not hard for me to find a copy of it posted at many other blogs. Too bad for the Socialist Worker that their 'retraction' is in fact worthless since the retracted interview is abundantly available elsewhere. I am providing to my readers a link of both the statement of retraction and the interview itself below following my own commentary on this matter.
My immediate reaction when I read that silly statement of retraction was disdain and overwhelming contempt for the Socialist Worker website editors. Their website had remained on my blog list for many years but today out of shame of being associated with such a spineless group, I decided to remove it. But then I had a better idea: I put a strikethrough on it as a reminder that this group cannot be trusted on matters that involve the question of Palestine, which often involves money for those who are ready and willing to receive it to silence the truth.
Let me first address the contents of the retraction and then I will address the contents of the interview. This so-called 'socialist' group claims that they were unaware of Atzmon's standing on Palestine but came to learn of his 'highly inflammatory, but anti-Semitic statements about Jews' only after publishing the interview. What a deceptive and preposterous statement! It is indeed damning and shaming for this 'Socialist' group to unabashedly make up a lie and let it fly and hope that it would stick. Let me now quote a few statements from this very brief 'retraction' by these 'socialists'.
and that he has associations with deniers of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. The evidence for these serious charges is damning.
Oh, thank goodness! At least Atzmon is spared the most dreaded accusation of being 'a denier' himself, but only of having 'associations' with 'deniers'. Ridiculous!
What evidence? A group that claims to be 'socialist' has an obligation to adhere to principles and honesty and not just throw words around that are devoid of meaning. 'Damning'? What? What is damning? Give it to us and let's evaluate it. Mustn't we the jury first be provided with the evidence? Once again: ridiculous!
Speaking of this 'holocaust denier' business, I read an article posted at one of the most anti-Islam and anti-people of color websites by the name of Frontpagemag.org. In recent times, I posted a couple of commentaries on their website and as would be expected, I was not allowed to post any more messages! The reason? None given but it is obvious that my statements could not be counter-argued and refuted without resorting to silliness and absurdity. I would like to quote a statement from one of their posts titled: "Wikipedia's Jewish Problem." Whoever wrote the article is apparently a scatter-brain judging by the way he writes. He starts off by telling his readers about Wikipedia and then off he goes to the subject of the holocaust and remains there for many pages until it finally dawned on him what the topic was about and returns to it. While his thoughts were on the holocaust train, the victim of the Jewish writer's wrath is another Jew who was believed to be not enough of a 'holocaust' peddler. I was frankly pleasantly surprised by what it was that he said that caused anger. Let's take a look:
His writings indicate a sincere belief in the Reform Judaism of his day, which repudiated Jewish peoplehood and nationhood. Like Jewish liberals today, he hated Jewish loyalty, preferring compassion for all mankind.
After visiting the death camps in Europe in 1945, Sulzberger gave an address to a Reform temple stating that there was an overemphasis on Jewish refugees, who were after all, only a minority of the victims. He criticized Jews who tried to focus world interest on the problem of Jewish survivors, still in camps in Europe, "instead of using their great moral strength to plead the cause of all displaced persons."
Wow! Great! Sweet!
Now, please think long and hard about the above statements. They have rendered the Jewish man, Sulzberger, who spoke those words of compasson to be at the receiving end of the Jewish supremacists' outrage for his compassion towards humanity! A normal and compassionate human being would most certainly appreciate Sulzberger's outlook on life, his notion of one human being's suffering not being greater or lesser than another's. But hell, the Jewish supremacists would then be denied of their higher hierarchy in status among the peoples of the earth. Gilad Atzmon too is being accused via silly statements that are totally barren of meaning with such expressions as 'holocaust denier' and 'anti-Semite'. They are empty words intended to scare away those who speak the truth!
Let me now address one more quote from this silly statement of retraction from the Socialist Worker:
And needless to say, there is no trace of such ideas in his interview with SocialistWorker.org, or it never would have been published.
Then on what basis did you have to remove the interview if it had no traces 'of such ideas'? No, there are more than 'traces' in this interview; in fact some of the statements spoken by Gilad were very damning and scary to a Zionist but statements that would be extremely hard to counter. Let me list them below to the 'socialist' group who seem not have to taken notice of the 'traces' of Atzmon's position on Palestine during the interview.
Here are Gilad Atzmon's statements from the interview that scared the Socialist Worker's group to the point where they decided to play it safe and removed the interview from their website, with apologies to their benefactors, to boot!
- We were shocked to wake up in the morning and find out there was a terror attack, then another terror attack. It took me years to understand that these were people who were fighting for their land--land that belongs to them and them alone.
- I told him, (Gilad's father) "The way to Haifa was all Palestinian villages. Here." I had the map. "Here they are, and they're gone." My father just waved his hand as if to say, "Go away."
- We really have to start to understand the notion of phantasmic past. These people invented their past, as Shlomo Sand argues, and he is right. The Zionists invented their past with the hope that their future would shape accordingly. And their history doesn't have to be consistent, because they can invent it whenever they want. They cherry-picked the events that would support their narrative. It's very typical.
- Every time I think about my past, I find more and more things I should have recognized. I read and reviewed Ramzy Baroud's amazing book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, and he talks about his father's experience and where he was born. It's amazing. I gave it to my mom, who read it and, like myself, was shocked. She said, "Where was this village?" We looked at the maps, and we couldn't figure it out.
- You have to understand. It's hard to believe, but try to imagine you traveled from Rochester, N.Y., to New York City and on your way back, all the villages and towns along the way were wiped out. Even the signposts...gone.
- The Israelis have managed to wipe out Palestinian civilization. But it didn't work. Why? Because the Palestinians didn't disappear. The claim is there. It is sound. The prickly pear is there, in each village, to point out that this was a village of authentic people and will be there until they come back. Again, it's poetic.
- IN MY opinion, the Palestinians are not anything close to that situation. The Palestinians are still nonexistent to the Zionists. The Israelis don't understand that the people in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Lebanon are largely people waiting to come back. They are there, still waiting, but they will come back. I understand it now. I know that many Palestinians lost hope throughout the years, but I think that there is room for hope again.
- Speak your heart. Say, "We don't like it. We don't like what you're doing. We don't like to send our soldiers to fight Zionist wars in Iraq. We don't like it." To identify, to name and shame the people that are behind it. They will call you an anti-Semite. To me, if telling the truth means I have to be labeled an anti-Semite, then I'll be an anti-Semite. What do you want me to do?
- It's very possible that our politicians cannot provide this hope. I said the other day, and I'll say it again: Try to buy an F-15 fighter jet. They're expensive, man. Try to buy a tank. Try to buy armor. How much is it? Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars?
- It's much cheaper to buy a politician. You take him on two trips to Israel with his wife and put them in the Hilton in Tel Aviv...She can do the shopping, blah blah blah. They have a good time, they fly them back, give them some money so they can have a new swimming pool. That's it! It's much cheaper to buy American or British or French or German or Dutch politicians than buying a tank!
- So they buy a few American politicians, and then you fight their wars. You go, you kill Saddam, you say you're going to liberate the Iraqi people. It's almost pathetic. How can these politicians...how can this system provide us with hope?
- The first step towards hope is to be genuine. Say, "We don't like what we see." And for Palestine, I think that the shift of consciousness is far bigger than the politicians. The politicians will follow us. We are ahead of them.
Whoa! I must admit that there is a lot more than 'a trace' of Gilad Atzmon's opinion expressed here, which the socialist people of integrity at the socialist worker confessed not to have noticed.
The following are my observations in life that I hold to be true:
1. Money makes the world go round! And it is my humble opinion that the socialists at the socialist worker might have been swayed by the force of the almighty dollar!
2. There is no such thing as half-pregnant and by the same token there is no such thing as half-truthful. One has to have absolute and uncompromising integrity and discipline, especially in matters where it affects disadvantaged people like the Palestinians or one is better off moving to the other side.
3. When it comes to the question of Palestine, the majority on the Left swings to the Right!
4. It has always been the case that when you attempt to silence the truth that you help spread it much further, simply because people do not like censorship.
I should also not fail to mention about another incident of 'retraction' that is written in the very same intreview that was destined to be retracted the very next day. Funny! Here it is:
Atzmon recently traveled to western New York to speak about Israel and Palestine and perform selections from his new CD. His appearance created a stir when just five days before the June 29 performance in Rochester, the venue, a local Unitarian Church, suddenly retracted its offer to host Atzmon due to "concerns" about the content of his past political statements and rumored pressure from local, pro-Israeli religious leaders.
Absolutely hilarious! The very next day, the Socialist Worker did also retract that interview. Of course, it is not lost on me that the very brief, incoherent and very silly statement of 'retraction' was done at the behest and for the benefit of the ADL's and the AIPAC's. The Socialist Worker could just have as easily just removed the interview and the mission of censorship would have been accomplished if their desire were to silence the truth spoken by Gilad in that interview. But the fact that they put up a 'retraction statement' is another way of apologizing to their benefactors. Yes, money does make the world go round.
As a person on the Left, I reacted to this 'retraction' with anger and horror! I perceived it to be such a betrayal, a stab in the back by a group that claims to stand for fairness and justice. Watch your back when you find yourselves in the vicinity of this 'socialist' group!
Please help me spread the word. Two-faced double agents should not be allowed to go unnoticed in the community on the Left. They must be exposed for what they really are: double agents, their ultimate God is the almighty dollar, at least from all appearances. Don't let them get away with their deception! Expose them to the world! I will do my part by reaching out to all those honorable bloggers who posted that interview. Please do your part and expose this 'socialist' group for its hypocrisy and treachery!
Click here for the statement of retraction and the interview itself.