So Phil Weiss decided to do an interview with Gilad Atzmon. Its content is not what’s significant, although Atzmon and the rest of the Judeophobes, ironically parsing language with all the meticulousness of a squadron of Talmudic scholars, managed to find something objectionable in it. Frankly I disagreed with little of what Weiss said — Jewish involvement with the Palestinian struggle is obviously in part self-interested: Jewish crimes against Palestinians are bad for Palestinians, bad for Jews, and bad for a world in which we don’t kill and abuse other people on account of their melanin count, creed, and so on. Kropotkin meant something like in his book on mutual aid, and leftist politics are not based on a political theory of altruism (I recommend The Dispossessed). Of course the comment section turned into a fetid mess, with Atzmon tacking to and fro in the winds of Holocaust revisionism and the little maggots congregating on him like a piece of rotten meat, sagely agreeing, indeed, let us not turn the holocaust into a metaphysical truth, we do not acknowledge the provocation inherent in the prose, and so on. Right, guys, and I have a kibbutz to sell you in Gaza, you’ll just have to leave your mom’s basement where you sit stewing over what Moishe did to you in playschool and go get it.

Perhaps there was something disheartening in noting the number of people who comment at the Mondoweiss site who have clearly internalized both Zionist idealism — the notion that abstractions move the world hither and yon – and also Zionist racism: that Jewish people have a national and genetic “essence” that congeals in and is exemplified by Zionist practice. Furthermore, foregrounding discussion of the Holocaust tends to play into Zionist assumptions — the Holocaust justifies Zionism, so attacking the Holocaust delegitimates Zionism.

Atzmon seems to make most Diaspora Jews furious, a phase I briefly passed through but got over. I find him contemptible and don’t think he says anything worthwhile. He’s still a Zionist at heart and simply despises the genuine left. Israeli “anti”-Zionists and Israeli anti-Zionists tend to disagree, I think because they are unable to fully shake off the racist cultural conditioning of their Zionist youth, in which Zionism is immanent in Jewish identity. Others may disagree. Cool! Listen to him! It is not hard to find his views on the internet, and if you like, go read. We are not auditioning people for the guillotine and this is not about freedom of speech.