The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) plans to host notorious hate-monger Gilad Atzmon. The event in question will a be a charity performance on behalf of the Free Gaza and International Solidarity Movements, co-sponsored by Bay Area Women in Black.

Gilad Atzmon: Themes from Palestine
www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/01/18599860.php

Apparently the BFUU decided that sponsoring a person like Gilad Atzmon trumped all pretense at decency and responsibility.

A brief review of Gilad Atzmon's writings, while nauseating, is instructive.


JEWS ARE RACISTS

Quote: "It is indeed pretty puzzling that the only people who managed to maintain and sustain a racially orientated, expansionist and genocidal national identity that is not at all different from Nazi ethnic ideology are the Jews "

A man who can write that is by no means neutral. Nor balanced.

Quote: "The Jews who had now managed to kill their God learned to believe in themselves."

No, he isn't voicing the ancient Christian anti-Semitic slur, despite what it looks like. He is instead asserting, I believe, that Jews are irreligious and cynical. And somehow not, or no longer, really Jewish.

[Source: www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/thewanderingwho.html]


GAZA EQUALS AUSCHWITZ

Quote: "I see the necessity to suggest that in spite of the liberal claim for peace seeking, liberal societies in general and the Anglo-American ones in particular are currently involved in crimes against humanity on a genocidal scale. "

I had heretofore not thought of Darfur as an Anglo-American liberal society. Nor Chechniya and Tibet.

In the same turgid article, he concludes: "I would argue as forcefully as I can that if the Palestinians are indeed the last victims of Hitler, then the holocaust and its meaning do belong to them more than anyone else."

Got that? Not to Jews. Not to Rwandans. Not to Cambodians. Not to Bosniaks and Kosovars. The holocaust belongs to a group that has continually insisted that it will drive the Jews into the ocean, and has praised mass-murderers and psychopaths.

Quote: "Bearing all that in mind, equating Gaza with Auschwitz is the right and only way forwards. Questioning the holocaust and its meaning is what liberation of humanity means today and in the near future. "

The comparison is obscene. Only someone who is devoid of all decency and balance could conceive of it.

[Source: www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/the%20right%20to%20equate.html]


JEWS ARE EVIL

In one of his articles he calls the Israeli Government a "rabid right wing Zionist organization", and Israeli society 'clever, sinister, and calculating'.

One statement is particularly telling: "I assume that Jews, once left to themselves, happen to ask many questions they would avoid engaging in, in an open public discussion. ".
[Source: www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/Sabrashatilaamnesia.html]

He assumes? Has he so put himself outside of normal human relationships that he has no way of knowing? What is this but an oblique accusation that Jews are secretive? And is that not precisely what some of his most anti-Semitic friends among the European left and the Arabs assert? Clearly, the company of apologists for torturers and terrorists is more gemütlich to Gilad Atzmon than that of decent people.


There is more, much more, on his website. He is not unshameless in trumpeting his faux intellectualism, and there is far too much of his spew to catalogue in what is meant to be a short, angry post. This is after all merely a personal opinion piece. And while Gilad Atzmon represents a foul intellectual pretentiousness, he is fairly transparent, and does not hide his loathsomeness.

All of his venom is proudly displayed here: www.gilad.co.uk/politiks.htm
The internet is full of his bloviating, by the way - you do not need me to guide you.

"I’m not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act."
-----Gilad Atzmon


THE BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS

What is truly reprehensible is that the Unitarian Universalists in Berkeley have jumped on the anti-Semitic bandwagon. Hosting Gilad Atzmon cannot be seen as anything else. Gilad Atzmon is opposed to the existence of Israel, in the same way as the Women in Black, in the same way as ISM, in the same way as so many groups in the Bay Area. It is an instinctive, culturally sanctioned, and utterly ideological hatred of Jews and of a predominantly Jewish state.
It represents a complete rejection of Jewish values, Jewish identity, and Jewish worth.

The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, by hosting this event, prove themselves worthy heir to every tyrant and depraved ideologue in the pantheon.
It was probably too much to ask that they take a stand against socially approved politically correct bigotry - it would be so very un-Berkeley and far too decisive.
One just can not expect that of them.

BFUU

Meeting address: 1924 Cedar Street (at Bonita Avenue), Berkeley
Office and Mailing address: 1606 Bonita Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709-2022 (open 11-5 M-F)
phone: 510-841-4824 * e-mail: office bfuu.org * internet: www.bfuu.org/ - www2.blogger.com/http://www.bfuu.org

If you decide, AGAINST your better judgment, to write or telephone them, please be gentle and courteous. You represent all that is decent and noble, and while the other side cannot possibly ever understand any of that, they will be quick to pick up on an abrasive quality to your discourse, and reject everything else you say in consequence. Do not insult them, do not raise your voice. They are simple people, and many of them are old.
And they do so strive to fit in with the general comforting hatefulness of Berkeley. They cannot help themselves.

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NOTE:
An article on Bluetruth also discusses Gilad Atzmon:
www.bluetruth.net/2009/05/bay-area-women-in-black-they-hate.html

Quote: "Atzmon has come up with ( ) gems such as “American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy” ; “There is no such thing as anti-Semitism”; and“Why is it that the Jews who repeatedly demand that the Christian world should apologize for its involvement in previous persecutions, have never thought that it is about time that they apologized for killing Jesus?” He also is a strong supporter of the Swedish fascist who goes by the pen name of Israel Shamir. Shamir has written that “we need the voices of David Duke…and Pat Buchanan”, and has claimed that Jews have indeed slaughtered Christian children for their blood"

Regarding Israel Shamir: "even extremist Israel-haters such as Ali Abuminah, Sue Blackwell and Jeff Halper dissociate themselves from him in their embarrassment at sharing the same agenda. But Atzmon consistently defends Shamir and calls him "a unique and advanced thinker"."

Truly Gilad Atzmon and the BFUU represent Berkeley values.