Here, Matt.

Acquitting him of the charge of antisemitism does not make him one of the good guys.

Equally, the Euston manifesto group seem to be one of those cliques that thinks you can get away with moral relativism if you loudly accuse others of the same.

The problem is not the first three unobjectionable helpings of pablum, its what happens further down the list. Starting at entry 6 which employs the familiar right wing trope of attacking any complaint directed at a US administration (i.e. that of George W. Bush) as motivated by irrational anti-American hatred rather than disgust for the man himself and his criminal activities.

Section 7. is obsolete. Neither Hamas nor Likud want a two state solution so why attempt to insist on one? Instead insist that on a genuinely equal state that recognizes the right of return equally for Jewish or Palestinians and equal citizenship for all current occupants. Oops looks like the Zionist project just fell off the table there.

Section 8 uses a jujitsu trope which uses the fact that some people make unjustified accusations of antisemitism against those who raise the legitimate complaints of the Palestinians to justify effectively equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Section 14 sounds like they found six people from an FSF meeting at the next table over who were willing to sign up if they got a shout.

Actually the same can pretty much be said of most of the rest. Its not so much a coherent platform as a series of niche appeals to the pet causes of everyone there present. The only thing they really agreed on was that they did not want to be thought of as supporting the terrorists.

As Reg said, “What have the Romans ever done for us…

But Atzmon-antisemitism – the guy apparently feels that for Zionism to exist and to be so vigorously defended there must be something seriously wrong with Jewish identity itself – this sort of antisemitism certainly is a reaction to Zionism.

You know, I’d met people in Israel who hate Germans – all Germans, no exception. Would never travel to Germany, would never talk to a German, something’s wrong with being German. Do you think these people are inexplicably evil or it might be a reaction to something?

mildly disgruntled in the shires.

And the apologetics are so strong, so vicious and so grotesque that it drives people crazy. That’s how you get Gilad Atzmon. What goes around comes around.

If Evel Kneivel had been able to make leaps of those dimensions he’d have broken rather fewer bones than actually he did.

I’ve generally found that the view that Zionism is racism among Westerners is an exaggerated display of antiracism to make up for an impoverished understanding of what antiracism is or ought to be. That despite the roots of the claim in Stalinist propaganda. Indeed, that’s what made it good propaganda. Anti-racist movements have dealt with conflicting agendas of different worthy groups, and this is not the way to do it. Indeed, anti-racist allies, even without conflicts of interest or competing oppressed groups, found all sorts of problems inherent in putting themselves at the front of anti-racist movements, and one might think the SWP could learn from such mistakes. Instead, you seem perfectly content to recreate systems of privilege and oppression within the SWP.

The claim that Engage is a bunch of racists is nothing but a way to ignore the voices of the Jewish community, and anyone ought to be ashamed to relegate Jews as Jews to the sidelines like that. (Of course, you will point out a few Jews you like.) It’s one thing to disagree with Zionism, but you go quite a few steps further, Christian. Perhaps, ironically, I could suggest Said’s Orientalism.

And I’m sure you see no contradiction, either, in claiming that SWP fights antisemitism “vigorously” while noting that “Martin Smith (chair of the SWP) has an unfortunate blind spot.” (You didn’t seem willing to acknowledge that the SWP really did further claim Atzom is neither a racist nor fascist.) Yes, you oppose antisemitism vigorously when it can be used as a weapon against fascist, anarchists, Fabians or political opponents. I think any “radical” organization ought be able to go a bit further than that.

[oh, and Matt, fuck right off you despicable bigot]

As for bizarre and twisted accusations of racism, well..

At no point has anything Atzmon wrote ever been published by the SWP; at no point have they “embraced” his views. Instead, the SWP has always fought, and continues to fight, all kinds of racism, including anti-semitism, vigorously.

Engage, on the other hand, exists simply to defend Zionism. It is therefore racist just as much as a site whose raison d’etre was opposition to the boycott of South Africa would have been racist.

What the engageniks object to in the SWP is precisely the party’s opposition to all racism.