39 Facts About Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British saxophonist, novelist, political activist, and writer.

Gilad Atzmon's instruments include the saxophone, accordion, clarinet, zurna and flute.

Gilad Atzmon has been bandleader, successively, of the Gilad Atzmon Quartet, the Spiel Acid Jazz Band and the Orient House Ensemble.

Gilad Atzmon has played on albums by Pink Floyd and Robert Wyatt and collaborated with other musicians on their recordings.

Gilad Atzmon has produced albums for Sarah Gillespie, Norman Watt-Roy and others.

Gilad Atzmon has written satirical novels, non-fiction works and read essays on the subjects of Palestinian rights, Israel and identity politics.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a conservative secular Jewish family.

Gilad Atzmon grew up in Jerusalem, where his father served in the military.

Gilad Atzmon first became interested in British jazz when he came across recordings of Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes.

Gilad Atzmon started the first incarnation of the "Gilad Atzmon Quartet" and a group named "Spiel Acid Jazz Band", and performed regularly at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.

Gilad Atzmon says Arabic music, like Indian music, cannot be notated like western music but must be internalised by "reverting to the primacy of the ear".

Gilad Atzmon's performances have been described as "quotes from jazz standards, torch songs, ideas playfully purloined from Mediterranean or Middle Eastern sources, sultry Paris-cabaret smooches, New Orleans clarinet swing and bebop in hyperdrive", and that "Gilad Atzmon's source materials range from east-European folk music through to hard bop, funk and French accordion tunes".

Gilad Atzmon has led a bebop quartet since the 1990s and, in 2000, founded the Orient House Ensemble, with Asaf Sirkis on drums, Frank Harrison on piano and Oli Hayhurst on bass.

In 1998, Gilad Atzmon joined veteran punk rock band Ian Dury and the Blockheads, while sustaining other projects.

Gilad Atzmon participated in Robert Wyatt's album, Comicopera, and with Wyatt, Ros Stephens and lyricist Alfreda Benge, on For the Ghosts Within.

Gilad Atzmon produced and arranged two albums for Sarah Gillespie, Stalking Juliet and In The Current Climate, and toured with her band, and has produced albums for Dutch-Iraqi jazz singer Elizabeth Simonian, afro-jazz percussionist and singer Adriano Adewale, and Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy.

In 2010, Gilad Atzmon released a musical transcription of ten saxophone solos.

Gilad Atzmon has been a member of the creative panel of the Global Music Foundation, which runs international musical education and performance events internationally.

Gilad Atzmon has said that his experience in the military of "my people destroying other people left a big scar" and led to his decision that he was deluded about Zionism.

Gilad Atzmon has compared "the Jewish Ideology" to that of the Nazis and has described Israel's policy toward the Palestinians as genocide.

Gilad Atzmon has written for a number of publications, including CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and The Palestine Chronicle.

Gilad Atzmon's first book, A Guide to the Perplexed, published in 2001, is a comic novel set in a future in which Israel has been replaced by a Palestinian state.

Gilad Atzmon's A to Zion: The Definitive Israeli Lexicon, published in 2015, is a satirical dictionary illustrated by cartoons from Enzo Apicella.

Gilad Atzmon's Being in Time: A Post-Political Manifesto, was published in 2017.

Keith Kahn-Harris argues that book features several antisemitic tropes and that its argument that problematic identity politics are derived from Jewish identity leads to antisemitic conclusions: "for Gilad Atzmon, Jewishness is the ultimate source of everything that divides and rules us".

Gilad Atzmon added that Atzmon considers charges that he is antisemitic as "last ditch attempts" to validate that identity.

Also in 2003, Gilad Atzmon wrote that attacks on synagogues and Jewish graves, while not legitimate, should be seen as "political responses".

At a talk by Richard Falk at LSE in March 2017 at which pro-Israel protestors were expelled for disruption, Gilad Atzmon commented that Jews had been "expelled from Germany for misbehaving", and to have recommended the works of David Irving, whose Holocaust denial views are widely known.

Gilad Atzmon subsequently confirmed that he indeed recommends Irving's work and that in his view "Jews are always expelled for a reason".

In 2018, Islington Council stopped Gilad Atzmon from performing at the council-owned Islington Assembly Hall, as the council feared Gilad Atzmon's appearance could harm relationships between different races and religions.

Gilad Atzmon has described Hope Not Hate as "an integral part of the Zionist network, dedicated to promoting Jewish tribal politics".

Terry notes that after the Palestine Solidarity Campaign expelled several Holocaust deniers, Gilad Atzmon rallied other sympathisers around the Deliberation website.

Gilad Atzmon has described charges of antisemitism as being a "common Zionist silencing apparatus" and said that "there is an international smear campaign against me".

In 2012, Norton Mezvinsky wrote that "Gilad Atzmon is a critical and committed secular humanist with firm views, who delights in being provocative".

Gilad Atzmon performed at Socialist Workers Party events for several years from 2004, and was promoted by the party as delivering "fearless tirades against Zionism", according to David Aaronovitch.

In 2006, arguing that, because Gilad Atzmon believed the text of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax from the early 20th century, was a valid reflection of contemporary America, Oliver Kamm wrote in The Times that the SWP were "allying with classic anti-Semitism".

In July 2018, Gilad Atzmon was forced to apologise to Gideon Falter, the chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and agreed to pay costs and damages, after being sued for libel.

Gilad Atzmon had falsely alleged that Falter had profited from fabricating antisemitic incidents.

Gilad Atzmon is married with two children and lives in London.