Harry Liberman
Benjamin Freedman was an American businessman who was born Jewish but converted to Roman Catholicism later in life. He became a prominent anti-Zionist activist and spent much of his later life producing literature and giving speeches that attacked Zionism and Jewish organizations.Freedman (October 4, 1890 – May 1984) was a Holocaust denier, and vocal anti-Zionist. Born in a Jewish family, he converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism.
Avi Lewis is a Jewish activist Canadian documentary filmmaker, journalist, and politician who was elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) in March 2026. Married to Naomi Klein both identify as anti-Zionist Jews . [1, 2]
The following story explores a fictional meeting between Benjamin Freedman and Avi Lewis two figures from different eras, setting their conversation in an abstract space where their contrasting eras and motivations collide.
The air in the liminal transit lounge was thick with the scent of old newsprint and damp wool. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, an endless gray fog obscured whatever city lay below.
Benjamin Freedman sat rigidly in a cracked leather armchair, his double-breasted suit meticulously pressed, a stack of self-published pamphlets resting on his knee. He looked up as the glass door slid open, admitting Avi Lewis, who looked windswept in a casual blazer, his eyes fixed on the screen of a smartphone that had no reception.
“Mr. Freedman, I presume,” Avi said, extending a hand out of polite, professional instinct. “They told me I’d find you here. Quite a temporal leap.”
Freedman didn’t take the hand. He merely gestured to the empty chair opposite him. “Sit down, young man. I have been watching your recent exploits in the press. The Canadian papers. Quite a stir you’ve caused.”
Avi sat, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “A stir is putting it mildly. The establishment is furious. But we are living through a moral crisis, and silence is complicity.”
Freedman chuckled, a dry, papery sound. “Moral crisis? You speak the language of the modern left. You think you are pioneering something new. But you are simply riding the same wave I rode decades ago. You use the identity you claim to reject to buy yourself an audience.”
Avi frowned, his defensive posture hardening. “Let’s be very clear, Mr. Freedman. We are not the same. I operate from a place of universal human rights and socialist principles. I identify as a secular Jew, and my critique is directed at a state apparatus and its military actions. You, on the other hand, spent your twilight years trading in Khazar theories and telling audiences that your own ancestors orchestrated world wars. You validated genuine hatred.”
“And what do you think you are doing?” Freedman countered, his voice rising, sharp and precise. “You think the world cares about your nuances? You think the crowds applauding your speeches care about the difference between a state policy and an ethnic group? They hear a man named Lewis—a name of political Jewish royalty in your country—telling them exactly what they want to hear.
“You give them permission.”
“Permission for what?” Avi asked quietly.
“Permission to look at the oldest scapegoat in history and say, ‘See? Even one of their own says it,'” Freedman said, tapping a finger on his pamphlets. “I understood the market, Mr. Lewis. The world has an insatiable appetite for the repentant Jew. When you speak against your own, the world opens its doors. The lecture halls fill up. The microphones appear. You become the ‘good’ one. The enlightened one.”
Avi shook his head, a look of profound discomfort crossing his face. “That is a cynical distortion. I don’t seek the approval of people who harbor prejudice. My community consists of progressive activists, people fighting for justice. If mainstream organizations call me a ‘self-hating Jew,’ it’s because they cannot answer the ethical arguments I’m making, so they attack my character instead.”
“You are naive,” Freedman said, leaning forward, his eyes narrowing behind his spectacles. “You believe you are leading a movement. In reality, you are a shield. The world doesn’t love you for your socialism, young man. They love you because your heritage makes your criticism a weapon they can use without guilt. We both found a shortcut to the global stage. The only difference is, I knew exactly what role I was playing.”
Avi looked out at the featureless gray fog beyond the glass. The weight of the comparison hung heavily in the quiet room. “If the choice is between being weaponized by outsiders or staying silent during a tragedy, I choose to speak,” Avi said, though his voice lacked its usual podium resonance. “But I will never stand where you stood, Benjamin. I speak out of a desire for a better world, not out of resentment for where I came from.”
Freedman stood up, gathering his papers under his arm. He adjusted his hat, looking down at the modern politician.
“The anti Jewish world doesn’t care about your motives, Avi,” Freedman said coldly as he walked toward the exit.
“It only cares that they can point to an anti Jewish Jew and about the headline.”
The door slid shut behind him, leaving Avi alone in the gray light, the silence of the lounge echoing with the unresolved tension of two entirely different worlds bound by a single, painful accusation.
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Freedman was politically active until the mid-1970s when he was well over 85 years old.[2][19]
Freedman died in May 1984, in Garden City, New York, aged 93.[2]
His Works
- League for Peace With Justice in Palestine. Freedman published his own broadsheets under the aegis of the League for Peace With Justice in Palestine, which he founded in 1946.[20]
- “Palestine,” Destiny: The Magazine of National Life (Jan. 1948): 26–28 (originally appeared in the National Economic Council’s Letter, no. 177, Oct. 15, 1947). Haverhill, Mass.
- Facts are Facts, Noontide Press (Softcover), ISBN 0-317-53273-1 . A pamphlet purporting to be the text of a 1954 letter from Freedman to David Goldstein, proponent of the idea that Christianity fulfilled Judaism. The text expounds the notion that most people now identified as Jews are descendants of Khazars, a Turkic people of Central Asia who converted to Judaism. Freedman does not refer to Jews, but to “so-called or ‘self-styled Jews'”.
- Why Congress is Crooked or Crazy or Both, Founder, 1946, League for Peace with Justice in Palestine (New York, 1975)
The problem is Avi Lewis comes from a long long line of grifters.