Gilad Atzmon's Blog, page 68

Uri Avnery's 90th birthday

A symposium: "Will Israel exist in 90 years from now?" starts around 28:41 minutes.

Israel's Killer Robots (must watch!!!)

Ali Morgan In Bethlehem.

Please visit Ali's blog and spread the her message.

http://greennumberplate.wordpress.com/

Ali will be available for talks once back. Any interested contacts gratefully received.  

Ali Writes:

About my role with EAPPI:

EAPPI is a World council of Churches Programme, set up in response to an appeal by the Palestinian churches in 2001 to come and see what is happening to the Palestinian population (both Muslim and Christian). EAPPI sends internationals to serve in the West Bank, providing protective presence, monitoring and reporting human rights abuses and supporting Palestinian and Israeli organisations in their non-violent efforts to end the occupation and bring about a just peace based on International law and the implementation of UN resolutions.

see:  www.eappi.org

I am one of five internationals in the Bethlehem team. Our work covers both the urban area of Bethlehem municipality and the surrounding 41 villages - a total population of 194,000 Palestinians. We are one of eight EAPPI teams (a total of 36 EAs) working in various locations around the West Bank.


Latest news:

The situation is very bad in the Bethlehem governorate and across the whole of West Bank at the moment. There has been a significant increase in the number of incidents of aggression by the Israeli military and settlers against the Palestinian civilian population. My team has been submitting incident reports to the UN and others almost every day - mainly related to incidents in the villages surrounding the city. Settlement expansion continues all the time despite the so-called 'Peace talks'. People here believe this is a deliberate and orchestrated strategy by the Israeli government to incite frustration and violence from the Palestinian population so that the talks will be ended and their failure blamed on the Palestinians again.  Last week three Palestinian men were shot dead in the South Hebron Hills. Some of our Palestinian friends here agree with the Israeli view that these men were involved in an violent group, but nevertheless these killings have caused huge anger across the entire Palestinian community because they were basically extra-judicial executions with no attempt at arrest or due process. The general belief here is that the killings were a part of the Israeli propaganda strategy rather than a response to an immediate threat.

There are 41 Palestinian villages in Bethlehem governorate. There are also 22 illegal Israeli settlements with up to 60,000 settlers each and dozens of settlement outposts.  Almost all the villages are severely threatened by loss of land to the settlements and the route of the Segregation Wall. Some like An Nu'man are already a lost cause, totally surrounded and isolated by the Wall and settlements with all access restricted by an Israeli checkpoint.  Much of the Wall has yet to be completed. It seems apparent that the Israeli authorities are waiting to finalise the wall route to allow maximum settlements expansion and land grab.  It is clear that the plan is to join up these settlements with Jerusalem and this will effectively cut the West Bank in two, severing road links between north and south and cantonising the Palestinian population.

last Monday we were called to two incidents where olive trees had been destroyed. The IDF visited one farmer in the village of Al Jubba and grubbed up 93 olive saplings - the man who is the legal registered owner of the land had replanted the field for the fifth time last year. Before we had finished there we were called to Tuqu' village and arrived to find a team of settlers with chainsaws cutting down about 60 mature olive trees. The settlers were protected by a large force of soldiers and border police. We and the farmers could only look on helpless against this show of state sponsored vandalism. Our only weapons were our cameras and our pens. This was the culmination of several weeks of aggression by Israeli settlers from Teqoa settlement and called  a vigilante group Women in Green, led by Nadia Matar. See my next blog for more on this.

Despite everything we continue to be amazed and inspired at the generosity of the many Palestinians we meet every day and their determination to resist non-violent. But the repeated refrain we hear from them is 'why doesn't the world care about us?'

Best wishes

Ali

Alison Morgan
EAPPI Bethlehem Team 50

Ken O'Keefe's Middle East Show Starts Today!

A message from Ken:


Aloha all,


Well my first show on The People's Voice will air on Sunday from 1600-1800 GMT.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.tv/watchnow

It is a great programme with Gilad Atzmon and I having a conversation about the control of language and Jewish power, politically incorrect through and through.

I am also very happy to debut the series of stories about families in Gaza I met in 2011 when I lived there for 6 months. These are powerful, emotional stories and I must thank brother Ashraf Elwakhery for being the man who finally edited all the raw footage. There are 24 stories about 21 families and we are starting off with the heartbreaking story of Zeinat Samouni, it brings tears to my eyes to watch this story every single time, if you are not moved by what this beautiful woman and her children have been through then you have clearly lost your humanity. And lastly, I am very happy to have sister Noor Harazeen as our TPV Correspondent in Gaza, she will be giving us regular reports and also giving us an update about Zeinat and her children.

Please share this far and wide, please tune in, the show is called 'Ken O'Keefe's Middle East', it will repeat later in the day, prime time in the US and other places throughout the week. We may have call in opportunities, stayed tuned for info for that. TJP

Hot Off The Press: Nakba II -Israel is Testing The Water

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Simultaneous protests took place on Saturday in Hifa, Tayibe and Jerusalem over Praver Bill -a plan to evict Bedouin communities in the Negev. The Bill has provoked a storm not only amid the Arab MKs who voted against it, but mainly among those it is aimed against, the Bedouin residents of southern Israel.

It seems as if Israel is testing the water examining the reaction to another mass expulsion of Palestinians. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said today "Nothing has changed since the Tower and Stockade days. We are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people and there are those who intentionally try to rob and seize them."

Lieberman, didn’t leave much room for a doubt. Once again, it is the Jewish state that is evicting Palestinians from their land in favor of the Jewish People and their Jewish interests.

Israel is testing the water examining the possibility of another Nakba. The only question that is left open is whether the Palestinians are ready for a 3rd Intifada.

 

 

 

 

Jazz Journal's Review: Gilad Atzmon at LJF

Review: Gilad Atzmon at LJF

http://www.jazzjournal.co.uk/jazz-latest-news/679/review-gilad-atzmon-at-ljf

Ronald Atkins catches the virtuosic Gilad Atzmon in a series of city-inspired pieces at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Jazz Festival

Since coming here from Israel and winning over pundits with his jazz, Gilad Atzmon has taken an increasingly controversial political stance that even leads occasionally to banning requests. Anyone attending this gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Jazz Festival would have got an idea from the stage-side chat what the fuss was about, though it seems possible the reed virtuoso uses such utterances primarily to wind himself up for the blow. Once he starts playing, politics fly out the window.

The first half featured mostly pieces dedicated to various cities, starting with Paris, a pretty ballad Atzmon fittingly kicked off on accordion before switching to clarinet, on which he produced the occasional Artie Shaw-type glissando. On this and the following Tel Aviv, with Atzmon now on soprano, one appreciated the fresh thinking behind the routines, changes in decibel level and the order of appearance getting away from the usual round of solos.

The Sigamos String Quartet joined in for another ballad, Moscow, featuring the alto plus a brief accordion interlude leading to a chase between saxophone and pianist Frank Harrison. Two more guests, Jennifer Bennett on the cello-like viola da gamba and Yair Avidor on theorbo, a kind of lute with an extremely long neck, came on for Leipzig: Atzmon referred to this triple-time piece as being in the spirit of Bach and it certainly contained pleasing counterpoint between soprano and violin.

Bennett stayed for the follow-up, though now very much in the role of topping and tailing. This turned out to be the jazzy highlight, a triple-time romp through Scarborough Fair reflecting to some degree the legacy of John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things period. The quartet really shot off the ground during the saxophone solo, cooled down briefly when Harrison took over but soon erupted again with the remaining members of The Orient House Ensemble, Yaron Stavi on bass and Eddie Hick on drums, thundering in the background. More triple time and a brief glimpse of oompah on Berlin before the deserved break.

That was almost it, a number featuring singer Sarah Gillespie - diction a bit off from where I sat - ending as I departed. That sadly meant missing the follow-up, Atzmon’s take on Charlie Parker with strings. Once, I would have done the decent thing: with old age and the experience of trains that do a runner, or rather don't, I chickened out. If the first half was anything to go by, I must have missed some great music.

Photography by Brian Payne

Gabi Weber: Ticking Bombs – New Attempts to Silence Cafe Palestine Freiburg

http://othersite.org/

 Over the last three years Cafe Palestine Freiburg has been harassed by both major and minor institutions in the City of Freiburg. We took the mayor and also the University of Freiburg, influenced by Holocaust scholar Dr. Schwendemann, to court and won both cases and we also easily survived Henryk M. Broder (infamous German Hasbara-Islamophobe), German Israeli Society and Antideutsche’s attempts to destroy the Cafe’s reputation.

But apparently, Zionists and supporters of Israel, still determined to stop us, are now reverting to terror.

Yesterday, we hosted Israeli filmmaker Yotam Feldman and his latest documentary " The Lab" – a film that discloses the Israeli military industry and presents Israel, its weapon dealers and death merchants in a very dark light.

However, as soon as the screening commenced, we learned that alarm clocks had been planted in the hall, set to go off during the screening in order to evoke panic.
 

 

Concealment and Truth in Palestine and Beyond

By Gilad Atzmon

The following is the text of a talk I gave at the Seek, Speak and Spread Truth Conference in London last Saturday, 23 November, 2013.

History, we are told, is an attempt to narrate the past. But in reality, more than often history has little to do with revealing the past. It is instead an orchestrated and institutional attempt to shove the shame deep under the carpet.

Much Jewish history texts, for instance, are there to divert the attention from the peculiar and tragic fact that along their history, Jews have managed to bring on themselves an endless chain of disasters. But Palestinian history at large,  is no different. After more than a century of liberation struggle, the situation in Palestine is worse than ever, yet Palestinian scholarship, as we will soon see, is drifting away from any possible understanding of the circumstances that led to their ongoing disaster. 

Although the Brits have many war crimes attached to their names, the British Imperial War Museum decided to allocate a whole floor to the Jewish Holocaust instead of featuring one of the British-made genocides. The Brits, like everyone else, prefer to conceal their shame.

Historical accounts are commonly there to suppress the truth and conceal our shame. Yet, it is far from clear who is in charge, who decides what must be covered up and which path must be taken in order to suppress the truth.

Apparently, restricting the terminology and limiting freedom of expression by means of (political) correctness are probably amongst the most popular methods. Sadly enough, Palestine solidarity discourse is a spectacular test case in that regard. 

A brief examination of each of the terminological pillars and the principles that shape our vision of the conflict, of its history and of its possible solution are there to conceal the obvious causes, ideologies and belief system that drive the crimes in the Middle East in general and in Palestine in particular.

 Zoom in

We’ll now scrutinize the terminology and notions that are involved in the debate over Palestine and expose once again the deceitful nature that is unfortunately intrinsic to the contemporary progressive discourse. 

Zionism – Palestinian solidarity members are required to avoid the ‘J’ word and to use the word 'Zionism' instead. I recently revealed that Ali Abunimah, one of my current arch detractors, advised me a few years ago to refer to Zion when I really think Jewish so he and I “might find grounds for a lot of agreement….” In fact  Abunimah was not alone. Jewish Voice For Peace approached me with a pretty much similar offer about the same time.

The truth of the matter is that Israeli politics has little to do with Zionism. Israelis  are hardly familiar with Zionist ideology, nor they are concerned or motivated by Zionist praxis.  Zionism is largely a Jewish Diaspora discourse that vows to establish a Jewish National home in Palestine  and to civilize the Jew by means of nationalism. Israel is obviously the product of the Zionist project; however, the Israelis see themselves as post-revolutionary subjects - they transformed the Zionist dream into a practical reality.

Thus, criticism of Zionism per se hardly touches Israelis or Israeli politics. If anything, it actually diverts the attention from the crimes that are committed by the Jewish State in the name of the Jewish people.

But then, why do we use the term Zionism instead of referring to Jewish power, Jewish politics or the Jewish State?  Simple: we do not want to offend the ‘anti-Zionist' Jews and Jews in general. We consciously choose to let Israel off the hook. Apparently we much prefer to target a phantasmic imaginary object that means very little rather than simply calling spade a spade.

The Times' Live Review - London Jazz Festival

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John Bungey

 November 25 2013

"This year’s epic of 280 shows around the capital may have been a celebration of jazz music, but it was an old rocker who provided one of the most poignant moments. The saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, joshing his way through a fine show marking his 20 years of playing in Britain, introduced a surprise guest: “He’s a man who definitely defies every law of biology and physics . . . He’s better to play with than John Coltrane . . .” And on stage walked Wilko Johnson, the former Dr Feelgood guitarist who announced his terminal cancer to the world in January and whom medical experts confidently predicted would be dead by last month.

Johnson, very much alive and doubtless surprised to be compared with an American saxophone shaman, proceeded to rattle out some searing rhythm’n’blues with Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble as the evening reached a climax. Johnson says it could become embarrassing if his bookings continue into next year..."

Les Visible On The Seek-Speak and Spread Truth Conference.

http://www.visibleorigami.com/2013/11/the-seek-speak-and-spread-truth.html

Dog Poet Transmitting........

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Wow! What can I say? By any standards, the Seek-Speak-Spread Truth conference was a rousing success. For this, massive kudos must go to Tahra with the able assistance of Tyler Vincent, James and Steven along with Tom Fry and Anthony doing the video which you will see shortly somewhere. I'll link it when possible.


We'll forget about my presentation. It's not my place to comment on it. Someone or several someone's will come around with their two pence at some point.


Alan Hart started it off and was lucid and very well informed. After that the day took off and never stopped. Ken Shott came up and did a slideshow about his amazing work in Sweden. The amount of work and industry put out by himself and his associates is impressive. There are a lot of good things going on on this planet.


I had an epiphany of sorts at the conference where my former perceptions about someone did a big 180. In keeping with Visble's Full Disclosure Act of 2003, I'm left with no choice. I'd had certain reservations about Gilad Atzmon, on the publicity end and Litmus Test end and what I found in real life was a larger than life personality, which canceled out my concern on the first concern and made moot my second concern. Gilad is, as best I can tell, a social philosopher. That's the best definition I can come up with. He's also an, off the charts, jazz musician. He's a consummate showman as well as a very articulate and subtle speaker. I was impressed and I am not easily impressed. He's also a generous soul who came over to me and laid his books and a musical CD on me, following my moments on the dais.

I missed David Messenger, I'm sorry to say but... it was 12 hours of non-stop action, except for lunch and there were all kinds of people I was supposed to speak to; had no choice but to speak to (grin) and this is just how it wound up. I came and went without thinking about who was or wasn't coming next because it was a terrifically high energy scene, still, I managed to catch most everyone.

Ken O'Keefe followed Gilad and continued in the spirit of the extemporaneous, which seemed to be the order of the day for nearly all of us. You hardly ever see anyone speaking off the cuff anymore. They're either reading directly from a script or a teleprompter and it's also usually nothing but lies. Ken was as lucid as anyone I've ever seen in my life; clear and sustained power of precisely organized thought. That's how it comes to my mind now, on reflectio