Scandal: An Impoverished Labour Council spent £136.000 to stop me from playing sax and got Santa Claus instead

February 02, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

The corrupted Islington Labour Council has disclosed that it spent the staggering amount of £136.000 on legal fees in its efforts to stop me from playing sax with the Blockheads at a Christmas concert.

 Islington Labour council claims to be impoverished, as a result it has evicted disabled people, it  struggles with housing and can’t find the necessary cash to feed impoverished kids in school.  Instead  they used the £136.000 of the taxpayers’ money to try to interfere with the arts, freedom of expression and a Christmas musical celebration. If this story doesn’t become a huge scandal, Britain is a free place no more.

Background:

On 3 December, Islington Council received an email from Likud Uk Director Martin Rankoff. Rankoff claimed to be so upset by my appearance at a council venue that he would be forced not to attend. Council leader Richard Watts took immediate action. In an email to Rankoff he vowed to prevent me from appearing with the Blockheads. On the 4th the Council sent a letter to the Band informing them that they had to remove me from the  concert or face a cancelation. The Band was indignant that the Council was interfering with their performance and published a very strong statement opposing the Council’s demand.  I hired a legal team to help me fight the Council’s autocratic demand.

On its part, the bankrupt Council hired the Simkins law firm. Simkins, already one of Britain’s most expensive legal firms, deployed two partners for the task of stopping me playing the sax. Not surprisingly,  one of these partners had represented ultra Zionist tycoon Sheldon Adelson, a benefactor of both President Trump and Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu.

A few days before the concert, I publicised the matter, having decided that the public deserved to know how their Council was spending its time and their money. And I was determined to expose the troubling collusion between the Labour Council and Likud UK.

A petition expressing disgust with the Council was launched and quickly gathered almost 7000 signatures, but the Council refused to employ common sense. Thousands off complaints were filed with the council. But the Labour council preferred to listen to UK Likud Director. I was told that the Council was spending tens of thousands of pounds on legal fees to justify its unlawful act. Some of  my supporters filed Freedom of Information requests to find out how much Cllr Watts’ ‘decision’ cost Islington’s residents.

I thought there had been an outlandish waste of £40-60.000. Today, through the Freedom of Information replies, we learned that the corrupted Labour politicians spent three times that amount. And in response to a request for an explanation of the Council’s actions, the Labour councillors showed that they were not even brave enough to take responsibility for their own wasteful and absurd actions. Their claim was that the Council’s employees had been the decision makers.  “The operative decision to ban Mr Atzmon was not taken by a councillor. Rather, the decision was taken by Martin Bevis, Assistant Director Financial Operations and Customer Service, and that decision was upheld on appeal by Ian Adams, Director Financial Operations and Customer Services.”

Oh, The Services of Islington Council

January 12, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

Introduction by GA: Many of us have, in the past, been open to leftist ideas. Ethically oriented thinkers are still excited by the idea of equality, freedom and opposition to racism. Sadly, these ideals are not reflected in New Left politics. While the Old Left taught us to transcend gender, race, sexual preference etc., the New Left builds walls dividing us along those same lines. As much as the Old Left was inspired to openness by Orwell’s criticism of the tyrannical, the New Left has slipped into that authoritarian dystopia. In a Kafkaesque manner that defies any reasonable rationale, the New Left is consumed with interfering with freedom of expression, meaning expression that does not comply with its strict newspeak protocol. The New Left bureaucracy is oblivious to the intent of the law and uses the form of the law to impose its will.

The Islington Council, a ‘Labour’ run operation, exemplifies everything that has gone wrong with New Left ideology, politics and practice. It operates bureaucratically masking its authoritarian positions,  following forms of procedure that are without substance so that the Council effectively insulates itself from its constituents and the rest of society.

We have to ask why, why is the New Left removed from traditional Labour values? Why is it detached from the people? Why would the New Left want to act as an obvious  Zionist tool? Why is it determined to bring Jeremy Corbyn down?

The answer is simple. The ideological and spiritual roots of the traditional Left came from working class politics. Traditionally, Labour and Left leaders both came from the working people and unions. They were proletarians who were inherently connected with the their class, its needs and its values. This ended when the evaporation of manufacturing made the working class workless. The unions have collapsed and the orientation of Labour politics has shifted radically. Instead of aspiring to be working class and union heroes, young Labour politicians are most often a dysfunctional herd of spoiled middle class former university activists who mature into party commissars. These New Left politicians may never have had to work and are in any case totally removed from the working people and their values as well as the values of the Old Left.

In the following article Eve Mykytyn dissects Islington Council’s institutional duplicity, the council’s formulaic pretences and most disappointingly, its removal from the Labour values of freedom and work.  While many of us are sympathetic to Corbyn and his politics, Britain may want to think twice before it gives his party greater access  to government. Labour politics seems to mean – end to free Britain as we know it. We shouldn’t let this happen. We better make sure that the Labour Party fix itself first.

 

Oh, The Services of Islington Council

 By  Eve Mykytyn

How does Islington Council respond to complaints about its decision to ban Atzmon?

The Islington Council issued a ‘detailed’ ‘stage one’ response to a complaint from a ticket holder(TH). The initial complaint, dated 19/12/18, expressed ‘disgust’ at the decision to ban Atzmon and a desire to see a music concert “that has no antisemitism in its show. ” In her first response, Lucinda Brown, venue business manager, had on 21/12/18 (the date of the concert) directed TH  to the Council’s (non) statement on its site.

As of  11/2/19 Ms Brown claims she “had the opportunity to investigate the details” of the complaint  and her “findings were as follows:” Contact the promoter and “raise a complaint.”  Ms. Brown then finds that the complaint has been duly  investigated at “stage one of Islington’s Complaint procedure and not upheld.” TH was given 30 days to reply.

The Council claims to be a service organisation. What service did TH get? What might Ms. Brown have ‘investigated’? Did she herself check with the promoters to see if refunds were available?  Since the Council itself had prevented Atzmon from playing, a simple “I’m sorry” might have been more satisfying than the insulting pretence that a refund would be forthcoming if TH were simply to “raise a complaint.”  Why did Ms. Brown send this answer at all?  Does sending a nonsensical jargon filled note help to feign service?

London Councils, the parent organisation of Islington Council provides for a three step complaint procedure in which the complainant is entitled at each successive phase to have his appeal reexamined by an employee higher up the council ladder. Mr. Atzmon’s appeals were handled first by Martin Bevis, the assistant director of Financial Operations & Customer Service and then by Ian Adams, the director of Financial Operations and Customer Service . Mr. Atzmon was not informed of or offered the third level of review to the Corporate Complaints Officer of the London Council. The Council’s policy provides that  a complaint will only be reviewed at Stage 3 if “at the discretion…there is a clear reason for dissatisfaction….or that any remedy proposed is insufficient.” Atzmon was never given the chance to make a case for a third appeal. There is even a fourth step available, if appeals one-three fail to satisfy the complainant, he may bring the complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman at the London Councils.

Why was Atzmon not fully informed of his rights of review?

Atzmon would seem to be included in the Council’s mission statement, which reads as follows: “We’re determined to make Islington fairer. To create a place where everyone, whatever their background, has the opportunity to reach their potential and enjoy a good quality of life.” Did they add, ‘if we agree with their opinions?’

The Council made its decision weighing two competing interests. First, the rights of Mr Atzmon under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act of 1998 “to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” Article 10 restricts this right as follows: “The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law…”

Article 10 makes clear that the right to free speech is not subject to a balancing test unless the speech violates a law. Atzmon, having crossed no legal limits in his speech, was not subject to speech restrictions. Indeed, the ban had to do with prior speech, no one alleged that Atzmon would speak while playing the saxophone at a rock concert.

The council referred to and quickly dismissed Atzmon’s rights under Article 10, citing article 10 rights to earn a living (which is not a provision of Article 10) and deciding that Article 10 rights are subservient to the Council’s duty under S 149 of the Equality Act of 2010. Are individual liberties properly curtailed by a council acting under a general non discrimination mandate? What if the Council thought it could make Islington safer for a protected group by bursting into homes instead of banning employment, would this be a legitimate override of personal freedom?

The Council claimed that its ban was necessitated by the law it found controlling, “the legal duty placed on the Council by s.149 of the Equality Act 2010.” But does the equality act even mandate the Council’s actions?

S 149 part 1 states the general purpose of the rule:  that a public authority must perform its duties with due regard to three factors; a. to eliminate discrimination, b to provide for equal opportunity and, c to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

Section (5) of 149 explains how to ‘foster good relations’ as required by section 1(c). “Having due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to (a)tackle prejudice, (b)promote understanding.”

Mr Bevis and Mr. Adams ‘found’ that Atzmon’s views are well known and disliked in the Jewish community. But both men went beyond this. Acting not as lawyers, judges (or may I assume scholars of Jewish identity politics) they pronounced Atzmon’s comments  “to be, [regarded as] at the lowest, provocative and distasteful, and, at the highest, anti-Semitic and racist by many, particularly those in the Jewish community.”

Based on their personal (and not legal) reading of materials provided by opponents of Atzmon, the Council concluded that good relations with the Jewish community would be harmed by Atzmon’s appearance. Tickets to the concert cost money and the musicians were known. Were many Jews likely to find offence also likely to pay to attend a rock Christmas concert with Gilad Atzmon?

Further, while some may have cheered the Council’s choice to disregard Atzmon’s Section 10 rights, how did his banning help to foster good relations between Jews and others? What about the ‘others’ who merely wanted to go to the concert? What groups did the Council integrate with the Jews to foster good relations?

Or does ‘fostering good relations’ mean banning any speech any protected group objects to?

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If you are a British citizen, you can file a Freedom of Information request asking for records relating to Gilad Atzmon’s ban, the standards relied upon for that purpose and the process and assistance used by Bevis and Adams in their decision making.

You can do this by using Islington Council’s complaints form here, by writing to Islington Council at 222 Upper Street, London N1 1XR, or by fax to 020 7527 5001.

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

https://donorbox.org/embed/support-gilad-s-legal-fund

Who Runs Our World? AIPAC, the lobby for israel (apartheid state), completely controls both houses of the US Congress

Who Runs Our World?

Netanyahu addresses US Congress

By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019

Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.

Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors.

With this perspective we may judge all kinds of world events, such as the many false flag terror attacks which have been perpetrated in one country after another to bring about political objectives. False flag attacks range from Operation Gladio to demonize leftists, 9-11 to demonize Arabs and Muslims, and the shooting down of the MH-17 airliner to demonize Russia. Under an atmosphere of terror, with citizens clamoring for revenge, all kinds of political goals can be achieved.

Propaganda is also vital. Control of information through a likewise controlled media has facilitated mass brainwashing. To control the narrative, whistle blowers and truth tellers must be isolated and destroyed, preferably in the open, so as to warn others away. This is what is happening with Julian Assange.

The attack on Gilad Atzmon is an other example. Atzmon has been a major critic of the role of Jewish political power in our world — not just in Palestine, but all over the western world. When he says “we are all Palestinians” he is making the observation that Europe and North America are being Israelified. For example, some police in the US go for training in Israel, where they learn to view the US public, particularly African Americans, the way the Israeli military views Palestinians — as enemies to be shot in the streets and abusively treated. In the US, people are not allowed to question or discuss Jewish power, when it is evident that AIPAC, the lobby for Israel, completely controls both houses of the US Congress. We recall the members of Congress giving Benjamin Netanyahu 29 standing ovations during his denunciation of Iran in 2011. In Britain, mass insanity has taken hold, at least in the media, in the demonization of Russia via the Skripal affair and Luke Harding’s MI6 journalism in The Guardian. This is taking place solely because of Russia’s thwarting of Israel in its attempt to destroy Syria. For the neocons, the agenda is always war — the stick to bring recalcitrant states in line with the New World Order. This behavior is so dangerous that it would be crazy if we did not speak about who is doing this, and why.

In December 2018 Atzmon was banned from playing a jazz gig in Islington, north of London, because a powerful entity — the Zionist Herut Likud UK — initiated a character assassination and attack on his livelihood through Richard Watts, leader of the Islington Town Council. The Council created the lie that in banning Atzmon it was protecting the citizens of Islington from “antisemitism.” In fact, it is only protecting organized Zionists — supporters of the racist state of Israel — from one of their most effective critics.

Two paid staff for the Council — Ian Adams and Martin Bevis — were assigned to carry out the bureaucratic part of the job. They defended the assassination in the name of political correctness. They responded to Atzmon’s appeal of the Council ruling by citing almost entirely Zionist and Israeli sources to back up the claim that Atzmon is an “antisemite.” These sources include the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and The Forward. When Atzmon countered these sources with a list of well-known academics who have supported his work — Richard Falk, John Mearschimer, Ramzy Baroud, Paul Craig Roberts, Cynthia McKinney, James Petras, Francis Boyle, among others — Ian Adams responded by saying, “I have found that the majority of them would appear to have also been subject to significant controversy or allegations of being anti-Semitic themselves.” To Adams, representing a town in Britain, the only valid authorities are in the media run out of Israel, with its blatant record of discrimination and genocide against Palestinians, which all those media support.

Power likes to cover up its crude manipulations with a veneer of reason and legality. Islington based its original decision on Atzmon’s banning on a clause in the town’s books having to do with events at the Islington Assembly Hall. The clause states:

“You must not, in connection with any Live Event, use, provide or display any material, whether written or spoken, or allow behaviour that constitutes direct or indirect discrimination or harassment, victimisation of, villification of, any person or group of persons on grounds of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or age.”

In their letters, Adams and Bevis provide no response to the fact that Atzmon was to appear at the December 21, 2018 event as a saxophone player with a jazz group called The Blockheads. There was no logical way to assume that his saxophone playing would discriminate against, harass, victimize, or vilify anyone at this event. The banning was therefore not backed up by law; it was illegal in itself, as it discriminated against Atzmon.

The only thing one can say about the bureaucrats’ defense of Islington’s decision is that they and the town officials, and indeed much of Britain’s political class, seem to be unaware that Zionism is the water in which their boat is floating. When the entire mainstream narrative is dictated by Jewish identity politics, of course all criticism of those politics must be heresy. Britain was once a sovereign nation, not a colony of Israel — much like the US. Much like Canada, Germany, France, and so on. These countries were not invaded by tanks and infantry; they were invaded by dogma. Political dogma, political “correctness,” and the totalitarian policing of our thoughts and words, are the things which Gilad Atzmon has pointed to in western culture and held up for us to examine. Zionists have made criticism of Israel “antisemitic” by definition. There is no way to win the argument. The word no longer has any meaning. This is aside from the fact that ‘semitic’ refers to a language group which includes Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew and that the majority of the settlers claiming rights to the Holy Land did not come from areas, like Palestine, where semitic languages were spoken.

Atzmon has asked the most basic questions: Israel defines itself as “the Jewish state” — what then is the Jewish state? What are Jewish identity politics? And why are we not allowed open discussion and debate on these questions? This is the reason for the attempt to denounce him. The bureaucrats and politicians of Islington say they’re fighting bigotry, but because they are part of a system which bigotry built, they’re actually speaking on behalf of it. Once again, the oligarchs have put through a dirty scheme under cover of benevolence and human rights.

The Witch Hunt: from Pontius Pilate to the Labour Party

By Gilad Atzmon

A witch hunt is a dangerous game. It entails a merciless campaign directed against  people who hold unorthodox or unpopular views. But, as Jewish history tells us, a witch hunt can backfire and turn the pursuer into the hunted.

Jewish past is littered with witch hunts that boomeranged. In fact, the birth of Christianity contains a classic example of this. Jesus’ persecution began with a hate campaign against a whistle blower who held some radical views, such as ‘love your neighbor’ or ‘turn the other cheek.’ Historically, it was the Sanhedrin war against Jesus that made him into Christ – the message as well as the messenger.

Jesus wasn’t the only casualty of such a campaign. The history of Jewish herem  (Hebrew for excommunication), tells us that Spinoza was subjected to the apparatus of a similar highly orchestrated witch hunt. In the Jewish world,  Herem is the highest rabbinical censure, such a verdict commands that the person suffer total exclusion from the Jewish community and beyond. As with Christ, it was Spinoza’s humanism and universalism, and not the dictates of the inquisitor rabbis, that planted the seeds of enlightenment and progress. While Spinoza’s Jewish contemporaries didn’t approve of the Dutch Jewish philosopher, the Goyim couldn’t have enough of his Wisdom.

The Hasbara Handbook indicates that Israel is very concerned that it will be subjected to ‘name calling.’  “Through the careful choice of words, the name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol.  Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try and get the audience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative association, without allowing a real examination of that person or idea.”(Hasbara Handbook p 22)  It is interesting that the Hasbara Manual complains that Israel’s enemies employ name calling. The truth is the opposite. Name calling is actually a state policy of Israel. It is certainly Israel firsters’ most popular device. Far more concerning to me is that Jewish so called ‘anti’ Zionists use  exactly the same tactics. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Jewish BDS have been smearing those whom they want to cleanse out of ‘their’ solidarity movement. We have seen JVP and Mondoweiss witch hunting, name calling and issuing their Herem against Alison Weir, Ken Okeefe, Greta Berlin, yours truly and many others. What do these vile campaigns have in common? I will let you guess.

Name-calling, witch hunts and herem are designed to stop any lone voice from spreading beyond the walls of the ghetto. At his trial, Jesus was presented by the Sanhedrin as an enemy of the Roman Empire. The Rabbinical body intended Spinoza’s excommunication to impact the church. When Alison Weir is attacked, she is often criticized for her alleged ‘connection’ with white nationalists in an attempt to make the attack resonate with the wider community. I have been slandered as a ‘racist’ although I have never presented a single critical reference to race or biology.

What is fascinating about the herem ritual is both its complete lack of mercy and the role it allocates to the Goy. An examination of how the British Labour Party became an inquisitor provides us with a window into the metaphysics of the witch hunt mechanism.

Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the party’s leader, British Labour has been openly operating as a thought policing apparatus. The party has been played as an instrument of the Zionist global witch hunt. It has been purging, evicting, suspending and expelling some of its best and most ethical members. Ken Livingstone, probably the last true socialist in the Kingdom was suspended numerous times for telling the truth about Hitler, Zionism and Palestine. Hundreds if not thousands of other members have been suspended and/or expelled for supporting human rights in Palestine.

The British public has witnessed all of this with dismay. Labour Party members watched their party with disbelief. But none of that matured into any significant protest.  This has now changed.  Hell broke loose when the Islington Council (Labour) decided to stop me from playing my Saxophone with the Blockheads in one of its venues. Thousands signed a petition expressing disgust with the Labour Council, Hundreds filled complains with the Council. Many others expressed their total dismay with how the Labour Party has managed to fall into every possible trap in this affair.

As is consistent with the Jewish past, the witch hunt has boomeranged. This last slander campaign against me revealed an astonishing continuum between Likud and British Labour. When the story made it to the national press, the Labour Party panicked. Like Pilate, it made the wrong decision which has backfired colossally. Instead of the people judging me, it is the Labour Party that is under scrutiny. Although many of us are sympathetic to Corbyn, the actual workings of the Labour Party have been devastating and perhaps tragic. The Labour Party is running a Stasi like operation, operating as a hateful opponent of elementary freedoms. If the Labour Party in its current form manages to win an election, it may mark the end to Britain as a free country (assuming that it still is). This might sound like a radical prediction but it isn’t original. Orwell saw it coming in 1936 while in Spain. He was slightly wrong about the date (1984). I predicted this fatal transition in my recent book Being in Time.

By no means do I compare myself to Jesus Christ or Spinoza. Instead,  I am trying to point out that what is at play here is the classic ritual of a witch-hunt. This time it is the Likud UK instead of the Sanhedrins that has instigated a non ethical anti humane campaign through a proxy operator that happens to be the Labour Party. In this saga, a Labour Council was happy to play the role of Pilate. The Labour Party has been exploring this treacherous role for at least three years. Yet no one seemed to care when hundreds of Labour members were unfairly punished by their party. People have watched the absurd impunity with which Jewish pressure groups have been terrorizing the British media and political universes. But the public reacted differently in my case. First because the idea that the director of Likud UK, a body that in the eyes of many is associated with crypto fascist ideology, can interfere with British culture and politics is sickening. But there is another reason.

My offering is a message of hope. It counters the path towards destruction that is advocated by pro war Zionist enthusiasts. It transcends beyond the politicized left/right agenda to exist in the realm of the philosophical and the universal. People seem to take my side because they are expressing their fatigue with the institutional duplicitous narrative imposed on them by the media, politics and academia. People are rallying behind me because this battle is theirs as much as it is mine: they fight for my right to express what they think but are afraid to say.

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

To support Gilad’s legal fund:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support

 

Happy New Year from Gilad Atzmon

December 30, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

Everything you need to know about Zionism, Controlled Opposition, The Post Political and Athens vs. Jerusalem so you are ready for 2019.

https://youtu.be/SRX55nHmuUQ

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

To support Gilad’s legal fund:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support

 

Hate speech without hate: Britain and the United States

December 28, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Eve Mykytyn

Gilad Atzmon is fighting a battle for free speech in England. Here’s why it matters in the United States. Atzmon was prohibited by a local council, Islington, made up almost entirely of Labour Party members, from playing the saxophone with his band the Blockheads. The ban followed a complaint from a far right Zionist, who in his own social media posts frequently disparaged and threatened the Labour Party and its leader as anti Semitic.

The complainant submitted a number of quotations from Atzmon taken out of context and cut and pasted for the desired effect. In fact, Atzmon is not an anti Semite, although he is critical of identity politics and particularly of Jewish identity politics (for example, the group Jewish Voices for Peace, why not All Voices for Peace?). The council concluded that Atzmon’s views were “at the lowest provocative and distasteful or at the highest anti-Semitic and racist”.

England has hate speech laws and with that conclusion one might have expected the council to file a complaint. But Atzmon has never been charged or even questioned under such laws. Through a convoluted series of rationales, the council, which does not have policing power, decided it had the right to prohibit a saxophone player from joining his band. The Labour Party seems to support the council’s decision: the Guardian reported that a spokesman for the Labour Party, without proof, labelled Atzmon a “vile anti-Semite“. Would Atzmon, a critic of Israel, been allowed to have the council deny admission to hard core Zionists? Could the council ban Muslims in burkas about whom Zionists complained?

“The right to examine its history simply places the holocaust with other terrible events we must examine and learn from, such as the Armenian Holocaust or the countless and uncounted Africans who died in the middle passage.”

Atzmon was also falsely called a holocaust denier. Atzmon is a critic of European laws that forbid any examination into the holocaust that contradicts the “accepted” narrative. This is odd, because the count of six million is, in itself, a suspiciously round number. Could it have been 6,100,000? Timothy Snyder, a Jewish historian at Yale, has written in the book Bloodlands, Europe between Hitler and Stalin, that far more Jews were simply shot than had originally been thought. Is this a violation? And, of course, no other historical narrative has been granted the legal right to go unexamined. The right to examine its history simply places the holocaust with other terrible events we must examine and learn from, such as the Armenian Holocaust or the countless and uncounted Africans who died in the middle passage.

In the United States we are facing similar issues. At the moment, there is a groundswell of support for prohibiting ‘white supremacists’ or more accurately, those whom some perceive as ‘white supremacists,’ from speaking. The University of Virginia, a public college, banned Richard Spencer and nine other white nationalist from campus for four years, although there were no claims that any of the 10 had participated in violence. Effective prohibitions have also come from students in response to Charles Murray’s statistical analyses (as at Middlebury College where thrown bottles injured a professor). There was indeed violence at Charlottesville where ‘white nationalist’ gathered, but there was violence during the civil rights marches. Should we have prohibited those brave enough to fight Jim Crow?

Twenty five states now have anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) laws for state workers or government contractors prohibiting participation in and/or requiring divestment (another boycott?) of companies that support BDS. This even though the Supreme Court has long held that political boycotts –  are a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. A similar bill is now pending in Congress and seems to enjoy wide support. Why can’t a teacher or a government contractor conclude that Israel’s persistent brutality towards the native Palestinians is worthy of a boycott? Like Atzmon’s saxophone playing, they are being subjected to a political test while simply trying to earn a living, unrelated to Israel or boycotts.

Clearly, this is a slippery slope and it appears Britain is still ahead of the United States in attacking unwanted speech. Let’s not race so hard to catch up.

*Eve Mykytin is a writer, editor and former financial lawyer

source: https://www.redressonline.com/2018/12/hate-speech-without-hate-britain-and-the-united-states/

An open Christmas Greeting to a few Labour Politicians

December 24, 2018  /  Gilad Atzmon

 

Dear Rt Hon. Jeremy Corbyn, Chris Williamson MP, Cllr Richard Watts and members of the Islington Council,

I would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

I want to assure you that during the holiday I will not respond to the biased and unprovoked punitive ban that you imposed on me, and to the shame you have brought upon yourselves and your party. I want to allow you sufficient time to rethink your unreasonable actions. I do want to assure you that this story is not going to go away.

As soon as 2019 settles in I, along with the very active movement that has supported me in recent weeks, will push for answers.

 We will ask:

1.     The director of Likud-Herut UK threatened his absence at the concert in case of Gilad Atzmon being present. How is it that Islington Labour Council went out of it way to appease a right-wing pro-Israel activist? At the very least it appears  that Likud UK is connected to a  foreign government that has been hostile to the Labour party and its leader. This is when the Likud’s political philosophy is in direct opposition to the values that Labour espouses.

2.     How is it possible that an impoverished Labour Council that has been forced to make significant cutbacks in essential services finds the funds to hire one of Britain’s most expensive law firms and appears ready to spend tens of thousands of pounds just to stop one of the world’s leading musicians from making a living and entertaining an audience at a Christmas event?

3.  How do you justify that you, as a party,  claim to care for the ‘many and not the few,’ yet you managed to cause a complete and blatantly prejudiced mess in response to a single pro-Israel campaigner and ignored the mass protests against your decision. A petition with thousands of signatures and hundreds of complaints were not addressed at all. Apparently, you ignored the ‘many’ to appease the ‘one.’

4.     We will publish all the relevant documents and correspondence issued by the Council relating to this matter. Not a single document contained any comment I made or wrote that was hateful or discriminatory. It is of note that the quotations contained in the Council’s evidence were cut and pasted and/or taken entirely out of context. Instead, nearly all of the Council’s writing seemed sourced from  hard core Zionist outlets such as the Jewish Chronicle, Jerusalem Post, Ynet, and the ADL, all of whom spew hatred towards me and my work. We must remind British officials of their obligation to be impartial. We will also publish the document in which the council dismisses as ‘anti-Semitic’ some of the greatest living humanists, quoting again the opinions expressed about them in the ultra right wing Zionist media.

5.     We have further learned that one of the lawyers  hired by the Council to encounter the menace of Gilad Atzmon’s saxophone also represented the ultra Zionist and leading Likud (and Trump) donor Sheldon Adelson. Did the Council take any steps to ensure that this representation did not interfere with its own impartiality?

6.     In the last few days, the press has quoted a “Labour spokesman” who called me a ‘vile anti-Semite.’  Are political parties entitled to accuse law-abiding  citizens of ‘hate crimes’?  Would  Labour also accuse a private British citizen of paedophilia or murder without any official record?  Further, if  Labour did find me guilty of hate speech and can substantiate it, why have they failed to notify the police?

This is enough for you to reflect upon. I will start to dig into these matters in early January. Your decision to operate in a Stasi-like manner, crudely interfering with the arts, freedom of speech, and my obligation to earn a living, suggests that you have become an existential threat for all of us and what we believe in.

We will deal with all of this in due course.

For the time being I hope that you can learn about my position on different matters that concern you through my Christmas Message:

njoy your holidays.

All the best

Gilad and thousands of very concerned citizens

P.S. I do accept that you are somehow fearful of good music but here is a rare opportunity to watch Santa Claus performing with the Blockheads. Give beauty a chance.

To sign a petition in support of Gilad click here

Lodge a formal complaint with Islington Council: https://www.islington.gov.uk/contact-us/comments-and-complaints?status=inprogress

Email: assemblyhall@islington.gov.uk

Contact the Council: +4420 7527 2000

To support Gilad’s legal battles:  https://donorbox.org/gilad-needs-additional-support