Gilad Atzmon's Blog, page 4

Gilad Atzmon on Jeff Rense Radio Show (3/4/15)

We spoke about the Israeli election, Jewish power in America, The Jewish Left and the future of Western civilization.

You can listen to the audio here

Israel: Lying abroad for your country

By: Karl Sabbagh 

Comment: By failing to analyse and understand the rationale behind Israel's propaganda, Western media is complicit in its lies.

The 16th and 17th century English author and diplomat Henry Wotton described an ambassador as someone "sent abroad to lie for his country". 

Nowadays, the principle of "lying abroad" enables Israel to hammer home its message and drown out that of the Palestinians throughout Western media.

It is not surprising that nations use propaganda to cover up their sins. What is surprising is that so-called intelligent, informed journalists report Israel's fabricated stories time and again, and rarely dig deeper. 

Even worse, when the truth becomes known weeks, months or years later, it is buried in NGO reports or academic papers and rarely gets reported at all.

It may seem naive to complain about this - surely no government tells the truth? 

Well, there is a difference between not telling the whole truth and telling blatant lies. Blatant "black is white" lies by a British or US spokesperson would be quickly revealed for what they are by a free and assiduous press. 

But look at how long it took the parents of Rachel Corrie or Tom Hurndall to establish how their children were murdered, in the face of institutional denials by Israelis at every level.

One tiny recent example from the Guardian, not the worst offender by any means, was a headline to a recent news story which read: "Confrontation looms after Hizballah missile strikes kill two Israeli soldiers." 

"Here we go again," the reader is led to think, "those dreadful Arabs attacking Israel." In fact, the headline failed to reflect the fact that ten days earlier, Israel had attacked a Syrian town and killed two senior military figures, and Hizballah was retaliating.

    There is an all-pervasive willingness to accept Israel's own excuses for even the most criminal and inhuman acts.

Every justification Israel has given for its successive wars on Gaza, widely repeated in the Western media, has later turned out to be fabricated to appear as if Hamas triggered them.

By taking at face value anything said by Israeli politicians or spokespeople without independent corroboration, the press is presenting Israel in the best possible light, a stated aim of Israel and Zionism.

Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh prime minister of Israel famously said: "It is permissible to lie for the sake of the Land of Israel."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Irrespective of whether you're right or not, you must always present your side as right."

Akiva Eldar, an Israeli journalist, also wrote: "In Israel, lying has become the norm among the army, the legal establishment and the diplomatic corps. Lying has become a way of life for commanders and soldiers, lawyers and clerks, most of whose views are far from being right-wing, and who loathe the occupation."

British journalists are among the best and most sceptical in the world. Why then, with a few honourable exceptions, do they fail to be sceptical when it comes to Israel?

There is an all-pervasive willingness to accept Israel's own excuses for even the most criminal and inhuman acts. This extends beyond journalists to the establishment as a whole.

In the recent debate over Palestine in Britain's House of Commons there was a dramatic volte-face by Richard Ottaway, a Conservative MP who had been a staunch supporter of Israel. The MP finally withdrew his support because of the 2014 Gaza war.

While this is encouraging, what is more surprising is that, for decades, Israel's crimes and atrocities have been a regular occurrence in the West Bank and Gaza. However, during that time Ottaway - and many MPs who are members of the three Friends of Israel groups in the Commons - have given unqualified public support to Israel. 

Like the media, these people all fail to spot - or choose to ignore - that all of Israel's accounts of its actions aim to deceive. It is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone who might otherwise believe the Palestinian arguments for justice, freedom and an end to persecution.

 

- See more at: http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2015/4/3/israel-lying-abroad-for-your-country#sthash.lyT8spLc.dpuf

Is Max Blumenthal an Imbecile?

This comical short video exposes Max Blumenthal for what he is - a devout tribal activist.

https://youtu.be/6yqiZ32rP0Q

You can watch the entire video and follow the discussion here http://mondoweiss.net

At one point, when it seemed as if the Mondoweiss' crowd were accepting that Blumenthal & Co have nothing to offer, editor Annie Robbins wrote the following:

Annie Robbins April 1, 2015, 1:02 pm
hi dan, keith, giles, mooser, yonah, hops, philemon, tokyobk, w.jones… and every/anyone else. i anticipated lots of comments about atzmon when i put this up, because people are so obsessed w/him. however, i posted this video anyway because i thought it was valuable info, not primarily focused on atzmon, and worthy of discussion.

as i have mentioned before, especially since atzmon doesn’t host any forums for people to argue about him and his ideas, and once people start arguing about him they often become myopic and do not stop, we don’t plan on hosting an extended argument/ conversation about him.

just saying in case you notice your comments about him start not making it thru, you’re not alone and it’s not targeted towards your opinion per se. otherwise this will go on for days like it always does whenever his name gets mentioned.

sorry to break up the party, find another forum for it. and by all means if there’s anything else you’d like to discuss about the information in the video, feel free.

 

Later today- Jazz Video Guy and Gilad Atzmon on Google Hangout

For the first time in my life, I will participate in a Google Hangout with Jazz Video Guy (Bret Primack). Followers  are invited to join in and ask questions..

  

Gilad Atzmon in Conversation With Harold Channer

I have been waiting many years for the opportunity to meet Harold Channer, the NY TV presenter who introduced the great Israel Shahak to the Americans . Here is a one hour conversation with this legendary TV man. We spoke about music, Palestine, Jewish ideology and Jewish Left duplicity, activists vs. intellectuals, Isis,  Israeli politics, the work of Israel Shahak, The Wandering Who and more. very interesting..  

From Gaza To Southampton – We Are All Palestinians

By Gilad Atzmon

For the second time in just a month, a British academic institution has been intimidated by an orchestrated Zionist lobby.

Yesterday we learned that Southampton University has decided to withdraw its permission to hold the academic conference on International Law and the State of Israel. The decision was taken on the grounds of “health and safety” with the university claiming it did not have enough resources to mitigate the “risks.”

This comes just one month after the Royal Northern College Of Music cancelled a concert of mine for similar safety reasons. Like Southampton University, the RNCM was bullied by a violent pro-Israel group and it took us only a few hours to learn that the spokesperson for the pro-Israeli body was an infamous crook as well as a football hooligan (see here).

This raises the immediate question: Is it possible that like the Palestinians, British academia is now also subject to Zionist terror?

The vile campaign against the Southampton Conference was led by the Board Of Deputies of British Jews, a body that claims to represent Jews in Britain. So far, not one single British Jewish body has stood up for the conference and for elementary academic freedom nor has a single Jewish institution criticised the Board of Deputies’ campaign against British academic institutes.  I guess that the meaning of it is as simple as it is devastating: We now see a clear conflict between the Jewish community and those precious British values of tolerance and academic freedom.  

Recently, Jewish community leaders have been concerned by the rise of anti-Semitism in Britain. In this connection, I would use this opportunity to remind them that Jewish institutional bullying of British academic institutes does not reflect well on British Jewry. In fact it has a most disastrous effect

So, as we witness this devastating continuum between Gaza and Britain we once again come to realise that the plight of the Palestinians is not an isolated event in contemporary world affairs or history.

Brits are also now subject to Zionist  terror and the meaning of it is simple: Now, more than ever we are all Palestinians.

At Last I Met My Rabbi

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro

By Gilad Atzmon

Fear of wisdom is one of the notable characteristics of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. I often find myself flabbergasted by the indignation solidarity enthusiasts direct against creative minds, scholars, thinkers and wisdom in general. But the solidarity movement is consistent, coherent and determined on at least one front- it is united in its battle against ‘anti-Semitism.’ Not surprising, given that the movement has long been dominated by Jewish progressive organisations and funded by liberal Zionists such as George Soros and his Open Society Institute.

As many of us learn to accept that the solidarity movement has been largely reduced into a controlled opposition apparatus, it is reassuring to find out that Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular are more determined than ever to fight Israel and bring their on going plight to an end. In fact, the Palestinians are not alone. More and more solidarity supporters are awakening to the covert transformation in the movement.  Increasingly, voices of dissent grasp that the solidarity discourse has taken an unfortunate turn. They detect the problematic Judeo-centrism embedded in Jewish progressive politics. In fact, especially since the Israeli elections, many of us have noticed that while Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies speak openly about the reality of the Jewish state, our imaginary friends at Mondoweiss, JVP and the PSC still prohibit any attempt to discuss the Jewish culture that drives the Jewish state. I hope that one day this clan of peace advocates will come to their senses, but I won’t hold my breath.

For a while I have been arguing that unlike the duplicitous Jewish progressive discourse, it is Jewish orthodoxy’s opposition to Zionism that presents the only Jewish principled, ethical collective stand against Zionism and Israeli evil.

A week ago I met the inspiring Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro in a kosher deli in Manhattan.  The meeting was arranged by my dear friend and New York radio host Tom Kiely who joined us. (Please note that a kosher restaurant wasn’t my choice. For almost 20 years I’ve been keeping a very strict diet –I basically, eat ‘everything except kosher.’ This time I had to compromise on Brooklyn pickled cucumbers, and Israeli style instant humus. For the sake of peace, I was willing to compromise my most precious culinary rules. 

I was thrilled to find out that Rabbi Shapiro was familiar with my thoughts. He has read ‘The Wandering Who.’ He was fully aware of my criticism of Jewishness. Our thoughts on the situation were pretty much in line. His scholarship was thorough and sincere, his arguments astute and his terminology transparent. This combination is rarely encountered within the institutional solidarity discourse.

Rabbi Shapiro is not happy with Zionism and not just because of the crimes that are committed in his name by those who call themselves Jews. He rightly sees himself and his community as victims of ‘identity theft.’ At a certain stage in recent Jewish history, a group of people (secular assimilated Jews) rebranded themselves as  ‘the Jews’ at the expense of those who have been Jews and recognised as such throughout their long history (Torah Jews). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4_1dfp3tAM

 Rabbi Shapiro is an opponent of Zionism.  But unlike the banal Diaspora Jewish left that ‘as Jews’ condemn Netanyahu or Israeli policy while overlooking the fact that such disapproval actually affirms Israel’s legitimacy as the Jewish State[1], Rabbi Shapiro protests against Israel’s self-proclaimed mandate to represent the Jews. Instead of falling into the usual secular Jewish ethno-centric exceptionalist trap that is symptomatic to Zionists as well as their so-called ‘anti,’ Rabbi Shapiro defines himself as an American citizen who follows the Jewish faith. He doesn’t claim any privilege when it comes to Israel or any other state. Quite the opposite, he claims no special privileges whatsoever. He opposes Israel not just because it has been plundering Palestine for decades but also because it has robbed the Jews of their true historic home, the Torah.

I pointed out to Rabbi Shapiro that Zionism wasn’t alone. At about the same time that Zionism was trying to uproot the Jew; the Bolsheviks were making final plans to transform the Russian people into a socialist collective and in Turkey, the Ottoman Empire was taken over by a new ideology determined to uproot its culture and heritage in the cause of secularist, nationalist westernisation. As Zionism became more popular amongst Jews in Europe and the West, The Frankfurt School was forging its post Marxist global uprooting doctrine and Wilhelm Reich decided that a sexual revolution could save the working class from their ‘mass reactionary conservatism.’ 

By the end of the millennium not much was left of the Western Athenian heritage. Suppressed and abused by the tyranny of political correctness policed by identity politics merchants, the Western citizen was reduced into a voiceless subservient consumer. Bolshevism, The Frankfurt School and Wilhelm Reich are considered by a growing number of scholars as ideologies associated with Jewish secular thoughts. Interestingly, a growing numbers of Turkish Scholars are now convinced that the Young Turks and even Kamal Ataturk, were in fact Jewish converts and followers of the false Jewish messiah Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi. Rabbi Shapiro wasn’t surprised by my thoughts. He was fully aware of the history and philosophy I expressed. He wasn’t annoyed by my suggestion that the Zionist assault on Torah followers was just one symptom of a far greater Jewish secular ideological transformation.  A true scholar, Rabbi Shapiro referred me to some academic comparative studies of the Turkish revolution and the birth of Zionism. My take home message was clear-unlike the Jewish left that is determined to divert any attention from Jewishness, my new favourite fearless Rabbi is thrilled by the topic and is willing to engage in any attempt to review Jewish culture, ideology and history.

Unlike the Zionist and ‘anti’ who seem devastated by me turning my back on the Jews and Judaism, Rabbi Shapiro didn’t show any remorse from my drift away. For him, Judaism is a God oriented affair. The Torah and the bond it requires with God are demanding tasks. If you are not willing to believe in The Shem and take on all the commitments involved, don’t be bothered - set yourself free. And in practice, the freest Jew, the one brave enough to look in the mirror, to reflect and criticise, is apparently the most pious one-an orthodox Rabbi. I am relieved, but somehow I knew it all along.

[1] If X is entitled to criticize the Jewish state only because X is Jewish, then X’s criticism itself affirms Israel as the Jewish State.  

Dan Simpson: Retaliate against Israel for sucker punching us

GA: This is a superb  commentary by a former U.S. ambassador. It must be read and spread widely.

Retaliate against Israel for sucker punching us

http://www.post-gazette.com/

  By Dan Simpson

Israel has delivered three major body punches to the United States this month, which means it is time to hit back — unless our government wants to be perceived by Americans, Israelis and everyone else in the world as a bad joke as a world power.

The first blow was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using the House of Representatives as the site of a campaign pep rally for himself, with congressmen and senators as cheerleaders and majorettes. His speech on that occasion just happened to be an attack on a major American project: the achievement of an international agreement with Iran to control its nuclear ambitions and begin the end of 36 years of estrangement.

That agreement, by the way, is being negotiated in coordination with China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain. It is intended to remove a threat to Israel and the region from an Iranian nuclear program. The U.S. partners in these negotiations and the Iranians on the other side cannot have missed the humiliation administered to President Barack Obama by Mr. Netanyahu’s dissing the president’s policies in public in Mr. Obama’s own capital.

The second Israeli blow was administered when Mr. Netanyahu declared to Israeli voters that if they elected him there would be no Palestinian state. The prime minister’s sputtering attempts to walk that cat back since the March 17 election mean nothing. He is considered an inveterate liar by many people, friend and foe.

It just so happens that a negotiated two-state solution in the land of the former Palestine has been firm U.S. policy for decades, under Republican and Democratic presidents. So Mr. Netanyahu cheerfully told everyone — Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, everyone — that what America has been pursuing for decades is flat not going to happen.

The third major body blow occurred when Mr. Netanyahu told his Israeli supporters that they should hurry to the polls to vote for him because the supporters of the Joint List — representing the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arabs — were going to the polls “in droves” to vote against him. That would be the equivalent of an American Catholic candidate — say, John F. Kennedy — urging American Catholics to hurry to the polls to vote for him because the Protestants were flocking to the polls to vote for his Protestant opponent, Richard Nixon.

Apart from Mr. Netanyahu’s election-day message promoting racial hatred between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, an always sensitive relationship, there is another, longer-term aspect to what he did.

Let’s assume that Mr. Netanyahu does intend not to see the creation of a Palestinian state. Considering his deeds as prime minister — constantly expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to a population now estimated at 600,000-plus — he apparently sees Israel eventually absorbing the whole territory, today’s Israel plus the part that would have been Palestine, as a Greater Israel.

His words to Israel’s Arabs on election day therefore would mean that every effort would be made to prevent them from sharing power in that Greater Israel.

Of course, the real problem would remain: What is supposed to happen to the Palestinians?

Just about everyone, starting with the Israelis but even including the Arabs of neighboring states, has hoped or imagined since 1948 that the Palestinians would simply go away, physically and politically. But they haven’t, and they still are pounding on the door for their own state 67 years later.

Their next steps will be another violent uprising or more efforts to be recognized as a state in international forums, such as the International Criminal Court, or both. Mr. Netanyahu has shut the door on negotiations, so what else exactly are they expected to do now?

This leaves us where we started: What is America’s response to having been sucker-punched three times by the Israelis and the leader they just re-elected?

First, the United States should expel from Washington Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican Party operative, as persona non grata. He helped organize with House Speaker John Boehner the March 2 Netanyahu speech to Congress. He was born in the United States. It would be educational for him to go live in Israel. A country can “png” another’s ambassador without breaking relations.

The U.S. government also could simply isolate Mr. Dermer, granting him no appointments with U.S. officials. Let him talk to his friend Mr. Boehner, which should be a real treat.

Second, the United States should eliminate its $3 billion in annual aid to Israel, a prosperous, developed country in any case.

Third, the next time Israel gets into a war, with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon or whomever, as is its wont, and asks for more U.S. arms, remind it of its March 2015 madness and sit on the request.

Neither people nor countries respond well when their bad behavior turns out not to have consequences for them. Mr. Netanyahu’s attack in Washington on U.S. and international negotiations with Iran, his promise to the Israeli people that there would be no Palestinian state if he were re-elected and the racist tactic he employed against Israel’s Arab voters were all bad behavior in terms of U.S.-Israeli relations. It is time to strike back, hard.

The American Congress Performing The Bibi Dance (must watch)

Chutzpah is an act only a Jew can get away with. 

Israelis must be cheered when they witness the American Congress dancing to the Bibi's tune.

ProMosaik Interviews Gilad Atzmon

http://www.promosaik.blogspot.de/

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: When did you realize that you aren’t just a musician but that you also have a political soul?

Gilad Atzmon: I believe that describing me as a political being is slightly misleading. I have never been part of any political party.  I despise politicians collectively and I am not a great believer in the value of the political spiel. I guess as a philosopher I am interested in the human condition. I care about that which establishes meaning, beauty, happiness, yearning, knowing, belief etc. Unlike banal activists who suffocate us with faulty answers, my role is simple; I refine the questions.

This intellectual adventure is fully consistent with my Jazz and music career. As a Jazz artist I strive to reinvent myself on a daily basis. This is the essence of truth seeking, we submit ourselves to the process rather than the goal.

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: Do you remember the day when you changed your mind about Israel and Zionism?

Gilad Atzmon: Was it a day? Or a phase? Or a recognition that dawned on me over a period of time? I don’t really know. I suppose that discovering Jazz and then craving to become a black man helped.

However, my views of Zionism are far from settled or complete. Fifteen years ago, I basically believed that Zionism was at the core of modern evil. But the more I learned, the more I understood that Zionism is just one symptom of Jewish identity politics. It took me a while to accept that the so-called ‘good Jews’ namely the ‘anti’ Zionists are even more supremacist than the ultra Zionists. In ‘Zionist’ Israel, for instance, the 3rd biggest party in the Knesset is the Arab Party, and yet, I do not see the board of JVP or JFJFP allowing any goyim, let alone Arabs.  Gentiles are permitted to join and pay fees, but they can never join the leadership.  

As far as I understand it, early Zionism, was a unique and short-lived moment of truthfulness in Jewish history. It was a brief phase when insight into self-loathing matured into an ideology. Early Zionists such as Borochov, Nordau and Herzl promised to ‘civilize the Diaspora Jew.’ They admitted that the Diaspora Jewish identity was parasitic, capitalistic and non productive. They genuinely believed that ‘homecoming’ and settlement would rescue the Jew.

We now know that they were wrong. Israel is a horrid place mainly because the early Zionist’s anti Jewish inclination was replaced by Jewish self-love. Israel, the place that Zionism promised would cleanse the Jewishness out of the Jew, became the home for every problematic Jewish supremacist symptom.  

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: How would you present your book The Wandering Who to our readers?

Gilad Atzmon: As the sub title states, The Wandering Who is A Study of Jewish Identity Politics. The book asks, if Israel defines itself as the Jewish State: what is Jewishness? Who are the Jews? What is Judaism? How do these terms relate to Zionism, Israel and Jewish power? I offer a few answers and my studies reveal that all forms of Jewish politics, whether Zionist or ‘anti,’ Left or Right, are always Judeo-centric, racially oriented and exclusivist to the core.

 

 

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: How difficult is it as a Jew to live in the middle of Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Jewish Identity and Lobbies?

Gilad Atzmon: To start with, I am not necessarily qualified to answer this question because I have not been a Jew for quite a while. I define Jewishness as a template that facilitates choseness. All Jewish political discourses- both Zionism as well as ‘anti’ celebrate the specialness of ‘being Jewish.’ Zionism calls upon Jews to return to ‘their’ alleged ‘promised land’ after 2000 years and take it over. It is the choseness that justifies such an unusual plunderous attitude. But at the same time, The anti Zionist Jews would claim that their voices are uniquely privileged because, after all, they are Jews and therefore special for opposing the bad Zionists. In fact the ‘anti’ claim to be ‘über Chosen.’ It seems that when Jews operate politically as Jews, they fall collectively into the same supremacist trap.

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: What can music do for human rights? How can music be the universal language of peace?

Gilad Atzmon: Art and music in particular celebrate the best in the human condition; the ability to experience the power of beauty. Art and music remind us what humanity and humanism are all about. I assume that once our hearts are open to beauty, we are also able to think empathically. I do not like the idea of art being recruited by political institutions. I know that I am seen as a political artist, but I am not. I am an artist who thinks deeply about social and humanist matters and that is probably reflected in my art. 

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: What does ethical awareness mean to you?

Gilad Atzmon: The ability to produce a universal judgment that distinguishes between good and evil. But also to accept that different people can produce different and even contradictory universal judgments. For me, this is the real essence of diversity and ethics that are essential for ethical awareness. And it is something I really miss in Left thinking.

Dr. phil. Milena Rampoldi: How can we explain to the Jews that Netanyahu does not represent them?

Gilad Atzmon: I actually think that he does. Apparently a poll in Britain revealed last week that British Jewry’s support of Netanyahu is massive. The Israeli election today proves that Netanyahu doesn’t just represent the Israeli he is actually a representation of what Israel is all about.  

One thing is clear though, not a single Israeli politician offers any alternative vision of peace or reconciliation. Israel is a doomed escapist society, the more doomed its fate, the more paralyzed the society become. 

http://www.promosaik.blogspot.de/2015/03/promosaik-ev-interviews-gilad-atzmon.html
http://www.promosaik.blogspot.de/2015/03/and-now-it-is-time-for-interview-with.html