Gilad Atzmon's Blog, page 83

Gilad Atzmon on HardTalk BBC Persia (French)

Dina Y Sulaeman on Gilad Atzmon & The Wandering Who

source:http://www.theglobal-review.com/

Gilad Atzmon is an 'enlightened' Jewish writer. He was born and raised in Israel and has long contemplated various paradoxes in his homeland. Eventually he left his himeland and later wrote a book entitled "The Wandering Who". This book dismantles the ideology and philosophy of Judaism and Zionism from the root. Inevitably, he was hated by the Zionists, though at the same time, able to enlighten many Jews. Strangely, even there have been some Palestinian activists protesting the book, such as Ali Abunimah. They have made a petition accusing Gilad as racist. The book seems to be a 'differentiator' for those who claim themselves Palestinian activists. There are those who really want the independence of Palestine, and support the Atzmon's book. But there are also many who actually just want power and money through their activity. The book also dismantles the guise of some Jewish peace groups, because some other Jewish groups who claim themselves anti-colonial activists in Palestine, have also rejected the contents of the book. Here we see that they really want to create an imaging only instead of upholding justice in Palestine.

 

In his blog, Atzmon actively criticizes the Israeli actions with a unique perspective, the perspective of a Jew who truly understands the essence of Israel and Judaism. Latest posts on his blog are about the Israeli actions in Syria and I think are interesting to be examined. I will translate some parts of his notes.

Blue Train Gilad Atzmon @ the Pizza Express Jazz Club

GILAD ATZMON: OF COLTRANE - FINALE by bongolicious

Gilad Atzmon – tenor saxophone

Frank Harrison – piano

Ernesto Simpson – drums

Tim Thornton – bass

Fry-Up

By Gilad Atzmon

In my latest book The Wandering Who, I explore the ideological, spiritual and political continuum between Jewish identity politics and gay theory. Yesterday, Stephen Fry, a British gay Jewish playwright and celebrity, provided us with an opportunity to review the tight political and spiritual affinity between Jewish identity politics and the LGBT call.

In An Open Letter to PM David Cameron and the International Olympic Committee, Fry equated Putin’s anti gay policy with Hitler’s Jewish hatred.  Fry’s argument deserves some attention.

Hitler, says Fry “banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they ‘polluted’ the purity and tradition of what it was to be German…”

According to Fry, “Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law.“

Historical analogies are dangerous territory, especially when the necessary and even elementary scholarship is lacking. Needless to say that I oppose any form of abuse of human right against Jews, LGBTs, Palestinians or anyone else. However, I also oppose the emerging lame culture of sound bites and empty slogans in which Fry is, unfortunately, a leading exponent. 

Fry, for the obvious reasons, avoids the most necessary question - what is it that led to the dreadful treatment of Jews in the 3rd Reich?  Far from being surprising, he also avoids a similar question when it comes to Putin’s antagonism towards LGBT. And in fact, if we really want to fight oppression, these are the most crucial questions to ask and tackle.  I would argue that the difference between holocaust scholarship and proper history is that holocaust studies are mainly concerned with the study of the suffering (itself) while history attempts to grasp the events that brought the suffering into existence.  

The Jews who want to prevent Jewish future suffering must look closely into the repeated circumstances that made Jewish history into a chain of Shoas. They should read Bernard Lazare’s ‘Anti-Semitism, It's History and Causes’ instead of reading Anne Frank or the Jewish Chronicle.  Similarly, gay theoreticians should examine critically what is it exactly that the Russians oppose in the LGBT discourse. Is it possible that the Putin regards LGBT as a form of crude Western intervention? Maybe Stephen Fry should answer this question before he is lobbying again for an international boycott.

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International – A Book Review by Gilad Atzmon

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, a new book by writer/professor Sarah Schulman, tells the story of Schulman’s transformation from a “Jewish, lesbian New Yorker” into a “Cosmopolitan queer and avid BDS[1] advocate.” Her book is a must read—and not because it offers original ideological or political outlook, not at all. Schulman actually provides us with a unique and invaluable window into Jewish secular progressive thought. It unveils the structure of LGBT[2] politics and its operation within the Palestinian solidarity movement. Schulman also provides the reader some crucial and juicy references to the direct involvement of George Soros’ network in promoting a gay rights revolution in the Arab world in general, and in Iran and Egypt in particular.

Schulman is a fluent writer, her narration is smooth and flowing. But more than anything, she is astonishingly honest in her attempt to describe her journey. Indeed, her genuine openness is almost suicidal at times. This fact alone may explain why, despite its sensational title, her book has received little attention from the usually loud Jewish progressive network. 

In the very beginning of the book, Schulman provides us with an amazing confession most Jews would prefer to shove far under the carpet.

“We were raised with two Yiddish concepts about Christians: kopf and punim. Yiddishe kopf and Goyishe kopf. To say that someone had a Yiddishe kopf (A Jewish mind) was to say admiringly that he was a genius, that he was analytical and conceptual and an original thinker. To say that someone had a goyishe kopf was to say that he was dull-witted, conformist and slow” (p. 2).

One must admit that only rarely do Jews volunteer such intimate information that confirms the depth of racism and supremacy embedded within Jewish culture.

Listen to Slapper Lewinsky

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“I have two proposals for you, neither of which is you not seeing me so just deal with it,” Lewinsky tells Clinton. “I’ll quickly sneak over and we can have a nice little visit for 15 minutes, or half an hour, of whatever you want.”

Lewinsky can also be heard playfully teasing the president and suggesting she was “too cute” to ignore in the tape that was previously thought to have been destroyed.

“You can’t refuse me, because I am too cute and adorable,” she says. “I can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Very persistent…I hope you will just follow the script and do what I want.”

It seems to me as if this over weight young women was rather assertive. 

From a tribal perspective, Lewinsky's conduct reminds us the the role of Biblical Queen Esther.  According to the Book Of Esther,  Esther was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus during the time of the Achaemenid empire.  She managed to influence the king to support the Jews. Her success is the basis for the celebration of Purim in Jewish tradition. The burst of the Lewinsky affair demolished  Clinton's ability to mount pressure on Israel or to lead the region towards a resolution.  

I guess Clinton, like King Ahasuerus has very bad taste as far as women are concerned.

 

 

 

BBC Persia / Gilad Atzmon HardTalk- The Transcription

Source:http://nppessaysarticles.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/bbc-persia-gilad-atzmon-interview.html

NPP News: BBC Persia and Gilad Atzmon interview: abbreviations: BBC and GA.
I have transcribed most of the interview, to save others half an hour video watching and chronicle an interesting conversation on the... BBC! I am mostly disenchanted with my UK BBC service, yet this BBC Persia programme is worthwhile. However you deem jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, he is courageous and a recognised profile figure on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

02.08.2013 transcript
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1NEpExbtRk&feature=c4-overview&list=UUHZk9MrT3DGWmVqdsj5y0EA#t=57s28.00


[image error]BBC: Are you anti-Semitic?

GA: Not at all. I am interested in Jewish identity politics. How do you define anti-Semitism?!

BBC: I am asking because you are frequently accused of being anti-Semitic.

GA: This is a common tactic used by Zionist and Jewish anti-Zionists to silence opposition to Israel, to Zionism, to Jewish politics, to Jewish power.

BBC: In the conclusion to your book The Wandering Who... it seems you are criticising not only the government; the state, but people because of their religion.

GA: No. I make a clear distinction:
(1) those who identify themselves as Jews because they follow the Torah,
(2) those because they have Jewish ancestry,
(3) and thirdly, those who identify themselves as Jews primarily, a problematic political identity.
Chaim Weizmann, first Israeli President, announced there are no British Jews, American Jews, French Jews. There are only Jews who live in America; live in Britain; live in France. Being a Jew was a primary category. This is the heart of Zionism. On the other hand we have Jewish anti-Zionists who, rather than call themselves anti-Zionists who happen to be Jews, call themselves Jewish anti-Zionists. For them also, being Jewish is a primary category. In my book I try to concentrate on this third category. I try to ask, what does it mean? Most of them are not religious at all. Zionism is not a religious movement; it is a secular movement. According to American historian, Yuri Slezkine, the (Jewish) Bund operating in Eastern Europe as a Marxist apparatus, wasn’t religious, it was a secular, atheist movement and the catalyst in the destruction of the Ukraine people; Stalin’s willing executioners; referred to as Bolsheviks, nothing to do with Judaism.

BBC: If you criticise the Jewish culture, tradition, identity, you are basically for the whole annihilation of the whole of Judaism altogether.

GA: You already contradict yourself. I don’t criticise Jewish tradition. If Jews want to eat chicken soup, I like chicken soup myself, but it is not a political concept. When it comes to culture, what is it that I criticise? Chosenness; supremacy, the idea that we are the chosen people. In my book I make it clear, that from a religious Jewish perspective, chosenness is a bargain; the Jews are demanded to stand as a moral exemplary case.

BBC: According to Muslims, the only people who go to Heaven are the Muslims.

GA: You are missing the point. In Judaism, chosenness is a beautiful thing; Jews are demanded to stand as a moral exemplary case. The problem starts with secularism. It is the second time, third time you try to make me talk about Judaism. My book hardly refers to Judaism and even when I talk about the bible, I show how the bible was interpreted by the secularist Zionist movement and I show from a Judaic point of view you can interpret it differently. We are talking about Jewish secularism; enlightenment can be seen as a rise of a secular movement. In the Christian world, the West and European universe, there was an attempt to replace the religion with an anthropocentric philosophy that would locate the human subject as the core of an ethical thinking; we can look into our self and find our ethnicity within our notion of subjectivity. In Judaism it didn’t happen. We had orthodox Jews and at a certain stage, Jews decided they do not need God, there was an opportunity for assimilation and this ethical intensity that we see in the Christian world never happened in Judaism, except one case; early Zionism was the only attempt to erect a Jewish secular civilised world. They said ‘we are not happy when we look in the mirror’; we are bourgeoisie, capitalist, usurers. They were anti-Semitic! They were unhappy with the image of the Jew in European society; they wrote about it, you can look into Herzl, Nordau... they said it is not our fault, it is because we detached from our land; we can change it. Once we move to our land we will become beautiful people; civilised people. Early Zionism was a promise to make the Jew into a wonderful civilised human being. It failed because there were people already living on the land. It became a plunderous movement. If Zionism was the plan to turn the Jew into people like all other people, it was a paradox because all other people do not want to be like all other people.

BBC: Ultimately, what is your mission?

GA: I do not have a political mission; I am not a politician, I am a curious human being.

Must Watch: Thank god It's Friday - Official trailer

A film by Jan Beddegenoodts

http://www.tgifdoc.com/
'Thank God it's Friday' is a touching portrait about one of the hotspots of the Westbank. You will never get as close to the main obstacle of the Palestinian-Israeli contemporary peace process.
https://www.facebook.com/thankgoditsf...

Love/Hate relationships - Poetic Analysis

[image error]By Yann and Gilad Atzmon

My BBC HardTalk appearance has been drawing  a lot of attention. I have been receiving a lot of support, but I also encounter a substantial surge of hate mail. 

I would love to share this one with you, because it is poetic as much as it is angry and demands some analysis.

'i hate U' is a poem written presumably by a Zionist hardliner who decided to deliver his beauty by means of email.

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

i hate u

Left, Arabs and The ‘Israeli Democracy’

By Gilad Atzmon

In the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’ the Government decided to get rid of marginal opposition. The Knesset passed yesterday a bill that seeks to raise election threshold to 4%.  The new law is set to block the Arab and Left parties in Israel from participation in the political game. This is clearly a non-democratic move, however, we have to remember that Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’ – it is primarily committed to Jewish interests. Democracy, for that matter, is far from being a crucial or significant for most Israelis. From a Judeo-centric perspectives, democracy is basically a Hasbara plot, there to differentiate Israel from their neighbours.

In the light of the new bill,  Israeli Left and Arab parties would have a simple choice - they either unite or face political eradication. The question is whether Israeli ‘Left’ and Arabs have enough in common. We will soon find out if the Israeli Left - a secularist, Judeo-centric, hedonist and righteous worldview have anything in common with the Arabs - a proletarian, mostly Muslim and patriarchal society.