it is left to Gilad Atzmon to concoct a weird conspiracy of Zionist imperialist warmongers and financiers who have somehow engineered the vast mountain of credit debt that has all but brought down British, European and American banks:
‘the people who keep the Palestinians starved behind walls, are unfortunately very much the same people who are responsible for a class genocide of millions of disenfranchised Americans who are now on the brink of total dispossession.’
Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis ‘scooter’ Libby are, it would appear, single-handedly responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It has to be said that although Atzmon is at his normal incoherent, contradictory and long-winded best, the message is crystal clear. We are told in one paragraph that
the current economic disaster endangers the security of millions of Western Jews who have really nothing to do with global economy, banking and global Zionism. It would be devastating to see innocent Jews being implicated collectively by the crimes committed by a very few tribal nationalist enthusiasts.
A few paragraphs previously Atzmon informs us that:
Jews are not necessarily Zionists. They can also be humanists, universalists, ordinary human beings… However, the Zionists amongst the Jews are very easy to trace. They always operate politically as Jews. They run Jewish lobbies, think tanks and pressure groups. For that matter, Jewish American Committee (JAC), AIPAC, Jews For Peace and Anti Zionist Jews are all different forms of Jewish tribal national politics…. they are all rabid Zionists who are set to serve what they regard as Jewish tribal interests.
If one can penetrate this gobbledydook, Jews are ‘racially oriented’, part of a separate tribe, despite the fact that tribes went out of fashion over a thousand years ago in most of the West.’
So whatever their politics, be they anti-Zionist or Zionist, in favour of peace or war, Jews cannot help but serve ‘Jewish tribal interests.’ If anyone is in any doubt as to the genesis of these fantasies, they could do worse than consult the Foreword to Norman Cohn’s ‘Warrant for Genocide – the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ Describing the interrogations of leaders of the SS after the war he wrote that What I kept coming across was, rather, a conviction that Jews – all Jews everywhere in the world – form a conspiratorial body set on ruining and then dominating the rest of mankind.’ As part of this fantasy the Bolsheviks were funded by American Jewish bankers and Lenin was someone ‘who Hitler and Eckart both assumed to be a Jew. (203 Cohn).
‘THIS HATRED WILL BE STILL FURTHER MAGNIFIED BY THE EFFECTS of an ECONOMIC CRISES, which will stop dealing on the exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, A UNIVERSAL ECONOMIC CRISES WHEREBY WE SHALL THROW UPON THE STREETS WHOLE MOBS OF WORKERS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE.’
Atzmon too is under no doubt. ‘Throughout the centuries, Jewish bankers bought for themselves some real reputations of backers and financers of wars and even one communist revolution.’ Quite why reactionary American Jewish bankers should have financed a revolution directed against their interests is never explained, unless of course it is the racial nexus. But the footnote assures us that
For Atzmon too ‘Lenin and Trotzky [sic] were Jews.’ Paul Wolfowitz, whose powers were not enough to prevent him being sacked as President of the World Bank, has it would seem almost single-handedly engineered this crisis. Quite why his superior, the non-Jewish Dick Cheney, should have allowed this is unclear, but one suspects that like Lenin there is some Jewish blood there somewhere. After all ‘In 2003, by the time youngster of Zion Wolfowitz was on the verge of becoming a proper elder, America was taken into an illegal war in Iraq.’ Wolfowitz may be an Elder of Zion, as per the Protocols, but it was not long ago that he was in training for the role!
And returning to a familiar theme Atzmon asks ‘How is it that America that had all the ‘necessary warnings’ had found itself just ten years later acting as an Israeli mission force fighting the last pockets of resistance to Jewish national imperialism?’ which is an echo of the same argument in his ‘on anti-Semitism’ essay:
Surprisingly Atzmon’s answer is mundane. ‘Money is probably the answer, it indeed makes the world go round, or at least the ‘American housing market’. So if money, i.e. capitalism is to blame why then the tortuous detours via the Wolfowitz doctrine, Lenin and ‘racially oriented tribal pressure groups.’ We are never told.
But Atzmon asks a series of questions under the title ‘Kosher Snatch or Zion Punch?’ One which seems to particularly disturb him is why ‘the British Empire found itself promising the Zionists a Jewish National home in 1917? Have you ever asked yourself what Balfour received in return?’ In fact the footnote to his own question half gets it right, viz. the hostility of American Jews to an alliance with the pogromists of Czarist Russia against Germany. Leonard Stein’s Balfour Declaration also gives this as a reason. (p.533) But it was never the main reason, which clearly was the strategic situation of Palestine, adjacent to the Suez Canal, and the desirability of a friendly pro-British colonial settlement there. But it’s far better to look for racial conspiracies than obvious facts.
Perhaps the nastiest piece of racism is when Atzmon calls for ‘A Zionist who declares affiliation with foreign national interests should never be appointed by any administration or any other political institution.’ Given his definition of what constitutes a Zionist, it is clear that this is a euphemism for Jews per se. He is quick to assure us, that ‘The issue here is not at all about religious belief, ethnic origin or racial orientation.’ and immediately contradicts himself when he describes a wide variety of Jews – Zionist and anti-Zionist as ‘racially orientated tribal pressure groups.’
And in what is the most dishonest of all his polemics, Atzmon takes aim, once again, at the anti-Zionist Bund, the General Jewish Workers Union of Russia, Lithuania and Poland and a co-founder of the Russian Social Democratic Party. If anyone is in any doubt that when Atzmon says ‘Zionist’ he means ‘Jew’ then his attacks on the Bund prove that. The Bund was resolutely in favour of fighting for socialism and against anti-Semitism where Jews lived, not in emigrating to Palestine. It led the heroic resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto and the sole surviving commander of that fight, Marek Edelman, was a dedicated opponent of Zionism. But to Atzmon:
‘The Bund, on the other hand, was a rabid Zionist setting in spite of the fact that it ‘formally’ opposed Zionism. It was Zionist just because it operated as a tribal political setting. It was Zionist just because it was racially orientated rather than universally motivated’.
Leaving aside his clear and obvious anti-Semitism, the essay is a muddle of innuendo, half-truth and assertion. It is little wonder that when Atzmon asks the obvious question we can be forgiven for having assumed it. ‘You may wonder at this stage whether I regard the credit crunch as a Zionist plot. In fact it is the opposite. It is actually a Zionist accident.’ Which may, to him, be a clever formulation, but is as empty as the rest. If the financial crisis is a ‘Zionist accident’ (as opposed to being deliberate) then clearly the Zionists are responsible.
Perhaps the comments are the most revealing. One argues that ‘In fact, while I agree that Trotsky was not a Zionists, I do think that he operated primarily as a Jew.’ which Atzmon readily accedes to. Another suggests that ‘some solid facts about jewish influence would help?’. These anti-Semites are never strong on facts unfortunately! One informs us that ‘Zionists control the US government and the media. If you have a significant position in the government or are a significant voice in public, the Zionists will destroy.’
