NWFOI have released the statement below regarding Gilad Atzmon and RNCM.
STATEMENT FROM NWFOI – RNCM Cancellation of a scheduled performance by Gilad Atzmon
Thursday 5th March
NWFOI campaigned against Gilad Atzmon performing in Manchester at the RNCM as a protest against his virulent anti-Semitism.
Gilad Atzmon did not write the anti-Semitic “The Wondering Who?” as a jazz musician.
Gilad Atzmon does not engage with Holocaust Denial as a jazz musician.
Gilad Atzmon does not even define himself as a jazz musician. He prefers to define himself as “a self-hating Jew”
Gilad Atzmon condemns “Jewishness” as “very much a supremacist, racist tendency” and he does so as a “British, Hebrew Speaking Palestinian” not as a jazz musician.
Gilad Atzmon has compared Jewish Ideology to that of the Nazis, as an anti-Semite, not as a jazz musician.
In fact, Gilad Atzmon describes himself as a “devoted political artist” (Spectator Aug 9, 2003)
He therefore relinquishes all claims to performing specifically as an artist and chooses to make these claims only in those instances where it suits him to do so.
His published work and blogs are condemned as anti-Semitic by Jews, Zionists and anti-Zionists alike.
It is not acceptable to the Manchester Jewish Community to allow Gilad Atzmon a platform at the RNCM to facilitate the perpetration of his vile brand of Jew-hating politics and petitioned RNCM accordingly.
His platform was denied him as an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist propagandist, not as a jazz musician of dubious acclaim.
Stuart Ailion
Vice-Chair NWFOI
