A Funny Thing Happened Today as Unity FM Bows to Atzmon’s Blackmail

and York Against War Invite Atzmon to Speak Despite Opposition Locally

Atzmon Wants to Question Everything (especially the Holocaust) But Seeks Protection Through Censorship

Unity FM is a Muslim radio station in Birmingham run by Sami Ibrahim. He’s phoned me for interviews on a number of occasions in the past, so it was no surprise when I got the following text message at just gone 1 pm:

‘Today on Unity FM GILAD ATZMON @ 5.00 PLEASE CALL AND ASK YOUR QUESTION

Tel – 01217728892/07926843388 Or visit

I therefore rang Sami up and let him know that I considered Atzmon an anti-Semite not an anti-Zionist. Sami was understanding and said he’d welcome my putting Atzmon on the spot. Indeed he even offered to give me first shot and to call me at approximately 5.05 p.m. And Sami was as good as his word ringing me a couple of minutes later resulting in me having to ring him back.

Sure enough I was connected and listened to Atzmon begin his garbage. Sami then invited me to intervene, which I did. I asked what was quite a simple question, which was how Atzmon’s holocaust denial helped in any way support for the Palestinians. When Atzmon tried to duck and dive I quoted from his article ‘Truth, History, and Integrity’ accessed 13.3.10. where he wrote that

‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich…, or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?’

Atzmon goes on to explain that ‘I have been concerned with this simple question for more than a while’. This absurd interpretation of the death marches leads him to ask the following:

‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?’

It couldn’t be much clearer. There was no death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the contrary when the concentration camps were abandoned by the Nazis, their Jewish inmates were eager to join them. Clearly there could have been no exterminations there.

Atzmon then tried to respond to what he termed his ‘internet now radio stalker’ (apparently criticising the great man counts as stalking!) and when I began laying into him for his lies and duplicity, and I repeatedly asked him how holocaust denial had anything to do with support of the Palestinians, he tried to interrupt. Eventually Sami told me that it was time for the adverts and I would be brought back in after the interval. And the radio connection to my phone continued as I listened to Atzmon trying to defend the indefensible. But I wasn’t called. In fact no one was called. A phone-in programme had turned into a monologue. Atzmon doesn’t like criticism and is particularly bad at responding to it. When I phone in on another line I was told firstly there was a technical fault and then that Sami Ibrahim had decided just to interview him.

It became clear from this conversation with the staff member that Atzmon had insisted, if he was to continue allowing himself to be interviewed, that I not be allowed to call him to account and Sami Ibrahim had bowed to his dictat in order to allow the programme to continue. The result? No phone in programme!

Atzmon struck me though as a man who has ready very little about Zionism and what he has read he takes as gospel. One of the few books he has read is Shlomo Sand’s book ‘The Founding of the Jewish People’ an excellent book, though not unproblematic, which I have reviewed in a number of publilcations. The problem is that Atzmon doesn’t understand it and he thinks that because Palestinians are more genetically akin to the ancient Jewish farmers, that gives them the right to their land. But this is nonsense . The rights of the Palestinians derive from their position as an indigenous population being displaced by largely European settlers, regardless of their genes.

Likewise Atzmon believes that until 1927 Ben-Gurion believed in assimilating the Palestinians rather than expelling them and attributes the latter to a post-1927 Ben-Gurion. In fact expulsion was on the agenda from the moment the Zionist movement was born. Ahad Ha’am castigated his fellow Zionists as early as the 1890’s in This is not the Way and other essays. Jewish Labour and Land policies took shape from the early 1900’s as a reading of something like Ben-Gurion’s Rebirth & Destiny would confirm. Brit Shalom, the Zionist peace group was founded in 1925, by people like Arthur Ruppin. But despite being wholly ignorant Atzmon gives the air of someone who knows what he is talking about.

Which is why he fought shy of having to confront my criticism of his anti-Semitism and ignorance. Despite believing the holocaust is a ‘narrative’ rather than a fact, Atzmon was strangely reluctant to discuss this, preferring a monologue.