Truth In Berlin

By Gilad Atzmon

Once again, ‘scandal in Germany.’ This time the ultra Zionist AJC (American Jewish Committee) is empowered to define the boundaries of an exchange in Germany about Palestine and the hope for peace in the Middle East.

The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that Germany’s Family Ministry and the Berlin Senate are engulfed in an anti-Israel scandal because they provided some funding for the three-day Canaan conference that included a group that had previously hosted a speaker who called for an “end of Jewry” and claimed that “Zionists are racists.”

If anyone still harbored some remote doubts about racism and the ‘Jews only State’, such doubts evaporated last month when the Israeli cabinet approved Israel’s National Bill, a law that specifically affirms the primacy of Jews in Israel.

And who was it who called for the “end of Jewry?” The AJC and the Jpost blame me. These people must be mad – would I call for the demise of my favourite intellectual pets, i.e., the Jews? Such a tragedy would sentence me to spiritual death. I will never let it happen. I need the Jews alive and kicking and I need their lobbies to keep celebrating their symptoms as they did this week in Berlin, so I have something juicy to write about every morning when I awake.

According to the Jpost, Jewish organisations were devastated to find out that the Canaan conference invited Cafe Palestine Freiburg because it is infested with those who are “stoking modern anti-Semitism.”  Apparently, the ‘anti-Israel critic Gilad Atzmon, delivered a 2011 lecture for Cafe Palestine Freiburg and called for a process of dismantling Jewish ideology.’

This part is correct. In 2011 in Freiburg, I argued that in order to make Israel into an ethical  ‘state of its citizens,’ Jewish ideology, which sustains and promotes Jewish racial exceptionalism must be abolished. Are not Germany, Britain and France states of their citizens? Apparently not. The Cannan conference, although it was in full compliance with German law, and largely funded by the German Family Ministry, has been harshly abused by the Ministry due to pressure mounted by an American Jewish Lobby group.

But before we move forward I urge you to watch the following 2011 Freiburg talk. Try to detect a call “for the end of Jewry.” All I find in this talk is a desperate call for Israel to become a state of its citizens, drifting away from Jewish exeptionalism.

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW0nLtxSPuw

[youtube qW0nLtxSPuw]

Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gnKYWCR-2g

[youtube _gnKYWCR-2g]

But I am only part of this story. The Zionist campaign is now focused on Dr. Gabi Weber, the fierce German activist who founded Café Palestine Freiburg and sits beside me in the above video (translating).

In the last few years, Café Palestine Freiburg has become a hub of vibrant intellectual and humanitarian activity. Israel and its Lobby are worried about Dr. Weber’s success; they cannot control the Cafe via the usual channels (George Soros, Open Society Institute, NGO’s etc).   The lousy pro Israeli journalist David Harnasch, who has written about ‘modern German anti-Semitism,’ termed Cafe Palestine Freiburg “Cafe Jew hatred.” In late 2013, Joachim Bruhns, of the Socialist Initiative Forum, another Israeli Hasbara front, described Cafe Palestine’s co-founder Dr. Gabi Weber as a “helper of neo-Nazis.”  This despite the fact that the vast majority of speakers at Café Palestine have been Jews and Israeli dissenters.

It is worth pointing out that Dr. Weber and Café Palestine’s criminal record is nonexistent. Not once has Dr. Weber or the café been so much as questioned by the authorities on issues of anti-Semitism or any form of incitement of hatred.
In the next paragraph the Jpost reveals who dictates German Government actions. “Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office, said: “whoever advocates a boycott of Israel cannot be a partner for peace…” She called on the Family Ministry and the Berlin Senate to “review their funding policies.”

Peculiar: law-abiding German citizens are now subject to pressure mounted by a Jewish American Lobby. Germany’s Family Ministry surrendered to the Jewish lobby group immediately and shamelessly. But there is something they probably don’t know.

In recent years Dr. Weber won two significant court cases against the mayor of Freiburg and Freiburg University. Both attempted to stifle discussion of Palestine in a similar manner but saw their argument collapse in the house of law. Knowing Dr. Weber well, I am pretty sure that Germany’s Family Ministry will regret its cowardly actions very soon.

More to follow…

Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist and writer.

Atzmon’s album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. Playing over 100 dates a year,[4] he has been called “surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz.” His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore the music of the Middle East and political themes. He has described himself as a “devoted political artist.” He supports the Palestinian right of return and the one-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His criticisms of Zionism, Jewish identity, and Judaism, as well as his controversial views on The Holocaust and Jewish history have led to allegations of antisemitism from both Zionists and anti-Zionists. A profile in The Guardian in 2009 which described Atzmon as “one of London’s finest saxophonists” stated: “It is Atzmon’s blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile, particularly in the Arab world, where his essays are widely read.”

His new book The Wandering Who? is now availble at Amazon.com