The Gilad Atzmon thread - a PERSONAL redux

[Ben D]

"Equality based on the reality of non separation is a celebration of our uniqueness."

Beautiful tazmic, also love,..

[KUAN]

What They Said...

Hey! I've learned to use the quote function...a bit

Over the years I've met a number of Israelis and one of the qualities that they like to tell you they have is the refusal to queue...it's a national game - pushy-ness. That to me is why Atzmon gets up the nose of us genteel types. His directness.

CounterPunch
February 1-3, 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/01/ ... ad-atzmon/

The Case of Gilad Atzmon
by BLAKE ALCOTT

Conclusions

Within Israel’s left, Atzmon’s ideas and formulations ruffle few feathers. As Ha’aretz journalist Yaron Frid says, lamenting Israel’s loss of Atzmon, “The score, for now: 1-0, Palestine leading.” In Israel Atzmon’s mother commented, “[The book] is not at all anti-Semitic. Gilad has a problem with Jewishness, he talks about three categories of Jews, but you have to read everything to understand – rather than bring quotations and take them out of context… I am very proud of my son.” (ibid.) But a mother would say that, wouldn’t she?

Atzmon insists that the desire for a Jewish nation arises out of Jewish suffering’s experienced specialness and asks what is then left of Jewish-ness when identification with (the uniqueness of) Jewish suffering is overcome. He asserts that Israel is not just another colonial power, but one driven by a distinctly Jewish ideology, and he convinced me that we must understand this Jewish-ness to understand for instance AIPAC, or to see that the West Bank to be given up by Israel in some phantasmagoric two-state settlement is not the West Bank, but Judea and Samaria. Yes, talking about a culture as opposed to some number of that culture’s members holds risks of conflation and ambiguity, and some of Atzmon’s discussion is an intra-Jewish one. But his book undoubtedly illuminates the ‘prosemitic’ racist ideology fatal to Palestinians. Perceptions differ, of course, but I do not see how anyone can read the whole book, with open ears, and find Atzmon ‘antisemitic’ or racist.

Granting’s signatories write that they “stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights.” I urge them to re-read (or read) Wandering, present a definition of ‘antisemitic’ racism, and based on textual evidence debate whether Atzmon’s words fulfill it. Because Jew-hatred has been so trivialised by Zionists, accusations of ‘antisemitism’ must be especially well-argued. For the ODS movement unity at any cost is not essential, but we need our energies to help transform Israel into a normal country respecting all humans’ rights. Unless racism is proven, one should bury the hatchet.

Blake Alcott is an ecological economist living in Cambridge, England. He can be reached at: blakeley@bluewin.ch.

[Sounder]

Yes KUAN, that article is interesting, but I do not see the purveyors of discord giving up their hatchets anytime soon.

The following is from Alice on the banned thread. It is not an endorsement of Gilad but it is certainly an endorsement of an idea that racists ought not be able to get away with calling themselves anti-racist.

Actually, one of the things I'm taking away from this thread is that never again will I use the term "antisemitism" without quotation marks, and then, only in cases where I attribute its use to others. It was one of those concepts I mindlessly parroted, but now I realize how toxic it is to even have an exclusionary/supremacist term (whose meaning, as Nahida astutely points out, is remarkably -- and conveniently -- elastic) to describe a very particular sort of racism. For one thing, we don't, after all, have special words to describe racism against black people, or against Native Americans or against the Roma, etc. I already intensely disliked the recently-invented term "Islamophobia" to describe racism against Muslims -- to describe something as a "phobia" mitigates the hatefulness of the frequently murderous racism directed at Muslims by characterizing it as a kind of fear.

More importantly racism -- especially in the devastatingly destructive form of institutional racism -- is an effect of unequal power (and therefore wealth) distribution, not their cause. It is meaningless to claim that one exists as a societal phenomenon without the other:

Quote:
Professor Robin M. Williams, Jr has summed up the situation:

In a very basic sense, "race relations" are the direct outgrowth of the long wave of European expansion, beginning with the discovery of America. Because of their more highly developed technology and economic and political organization, the Europeans were able by military force or by economic and political penetration to secure control over colonies, territories, protectorates and other possessions and spheres of influence around the world. In a way, the resulting so-called race relations had very little to do with 'race' -- initially it was historical accident that the peoples encountered in the European expansion differed in shared physical characteristics of an obvious kind. But once the racial ideologies had been formed and widely disseminated, they constituted a powerful means of justifying political hegemony and economic control.

In much the same way, present-day vested political, economic and social privileges and rights tend to be rationalized and defended by persons and groups who hold such prerogatives.

...Whenever a number of persons within a society have enjoyed for a considerable period of time certain opportunities for getting wealth, for exercising power and authority, and for successfully claiming prestige and social deference, there is a strong tendency for these people to feel that these benefits are theirs "by right". The advantages come to be thought of as normal, proper, customary, as sanctioned by time, precedent and social consensus. Proposals to change the existing situation arouse reactions of 'moral indignation'. Elaborate doctrines are developed to show the inevitability and rightness of the existing scheme of things.

An established system of vested interests is a powerful thing, perhaps especially when differences in power, wealth and prestige coincide with relatively indelible symbols of collective membership, such as shared hereditary physical traits, a distinctive religion, or a persistently held culture. The holders of an advantaged position see themselves as a group and reinforce one another in their attitudes; any qualms about the justice of the status quo seem to be diminished by the group character of the arrangements.
-From Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton

To repeat: racism is a product of power and wealth inequality, and is one of the instruments used to perpetuate it. The term "antisemitism", the way it has been used in recent decades, actually turns the concept of racism on its head: first, by divorcing this special category of 'racism' from the economic and political and social oppression that are the defining characteristics of racism; and second, by positing the existence of a special category of collective victim-by-definition, regardless of this collective victim-by-definition's socio-economic indicators, which would otherwise define it as an exceptionally privileged group. Third, instead of being used to justify ongoing oppression and exploitation of a group, as racism does, the term "antisemitism" is, on the contrary, used to protect certain "vested interests" of persons within a society" who "have enjoyed for a considerable period of time certain opportunities for getting wealth, for exercising power and authority, and for successfully claiming prestige and social deference."

Thus, the accusation of "antisemitism" as it is used today, is designed not to promote equality of rights, but privilege; not to defeat injustice, but to perpetuate it; and not to express solidarity with the weak, but to align oneself with power. It is not a moral accusation on behalf of the oppressed, but a threat wielded by bullies.

That being said, racism itself is ugly and cruel and unfair, regardless of who is targeted by it. Like murder, theft, child abuse, slavery and other insults to humanity, it must be held to one standard and one definition. To create a special category of racism, idiosyncratically and opportunistically defined, which differentiates between some "victims" and others, is to aggravate the insult. That is why I will never again use the term "antisemitism" when I mean racism.

[JackRiddler]

If this thread is unlocked then the original should be as well:

Anti-Imperialism & Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 5&p=450625

Below is the OP. It dates from Mar 02, 2012.

All it does is correctly describe Atzmon's role as a de facto disruptor of the movement in support of Palestine. His words make it pretty obvious that as an Israeli Jew he enjoys provoking other Israeli Jews with trash-talk and sacrilege. That would be his problem, but playing the super-radical, he uses Palestinians as a prop without real regard for their movement. Anyway, this one post set off an 80-page flamewar in which a few people used every form of sophistry to defend this smallminded churl as some kind of love apostle. In the end it was locked after some quit the board and others were banned. The current thread, which puports to be about Krishnamurti somehow, is once again fronting cute little spiritual kittens for a Nazi-sympathizing asshole. The principle seems to be, "last one to post in this thread wins" (or last one to have a thread in a flamewar gets to write the history).

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/ga280212.html

Not Quite "Ordinary Human Beings"--
Anti-Imperialism and the Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon


Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. According to Atzmon, the latter are simply a manifestation of Jews' historic relationship to gentiles, an authentic expression of an essentially racist, immoral, and anti-human "Jewish ideology."

Atzmon's statements, besides distorting the history of Jews and constituting a brazen justification for centuries of anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs, also downgrade anti-Zionism to a mere front in the broader (anti-Jewish) struggle. Atzmon has specifically described Zionism not as a form of colonialism or settlerism, but as a uniquely evil ideology unlike anything else in human history. In addition to any ethical problems, this line of argumentation actually strengthens Zionism's grip and claim to be the authentic representative of Jews. It obscures the reality that Zionism is an imperialist and colonialist enemy of Jewish people and Palestinians, as well as the Arab people generally and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism.

In his online attack on Moshe Machover, an Israeli socialist and founder of the anti-Zionist group Matzpen, Atzmon states:

Machover's reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. "Israel," he says, is a "settler state." For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.1


For Atzmon, such views are "pretty trivial" and "lame" because he holds that Jews are in fact radically different from the French and the English. Of the many quotes we could provide in this regard, here is a small sampling:2

In order to understand Israel's unique condition we must ask, "who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?"3

Zionism is a continuation of Jewish ideology.4

The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and, obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic Bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures.5

Sadly, we have to admit that hate-ridden plunder of other people's possessions made it into the Jewish political discourse both on the left and right. The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution.6

Were Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans open to the notion of brotherhood, they would have given up on their unique, exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.7

I do not consider the Jews to be a race, and yet it is obvious that "Jewishness" clearly involves an ethno-centric and racially supremacist, exclusivist point of view that is based on a sense of Jewish "chosen-ness."8

At the most, Israel has managed to mimic some of the appearances of a Western civilisation, but it has clearly failed to internalise the meaning of tolerance and freedom. This should not take us by surprise: Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, and Jewishness is, sadly enough, inherently intolerant; indeed, it may be argued that Jewish intolerance is as old as the Jews themselves.9

Israel and Zionism then, has proved to be a short lived dream. It was initiated to civilise Jewish life, and to dismantle the Jewish self-destructive mode. It was there to move the Jew into the post-herem10 phase. It vowed to make the Jew into a productive being. But as things turned out, neither the Zionists nor the "anti Zionists" managed to drift away from the disastrous herem culture. It seems that the entire world of Jewish identity politics is a matrix of herems and exclusion strategies. In order to be "a proper Jew," all you have to do is to point out whom you oppose, hate, exclude or boycott.11


The conclusion to such views is not difficult to draw:

The endless trail of Jewish collective tragedies is there to teach us that Jews always pay eventually (and heavily) for Jewish power exercises. Yet, surprisingly (and tragically) enough, Jews somehow consistently fail to internalise and learn from that very lesson.12


More precisely, commenting on the climax of State violence directed at Jews in the 1930s, most famously by Germany, but also in most other European nations, Atzmon is clear:

The remarkable fact is they don't understand why the world is beginning to stand against them in the same way they didn't understand why the Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. Instead of asking why we are hated they continue to toss accusations on others.13

Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain establishes itself. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can only think as far as "two state solution" within the framework of 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920's-40's.14


It is, as such, not surprising that Atzmon's work has received enthusiastic reviews by such prominent members of the racist right as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Kevin MacDonald of the Occidental Observer, David Icke, and Arthur Topham's the Radical Press. It should not be surprising that Atzmon has distributed articles defending Holocaust deniers and those who write of "the Hitler we loved and why."15 These connections ultimately serve the interests of Zionism, which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewishness. Zionist agents have repeatedly attempted to ensnare and link Palestinian, Arab, and/or Muslim rights advocates to Neo-Nazism, through dirty tricks and outright lies.

It is more surprising and disappointing, then, that a small section of the left has opted to promote Atzmon and his works. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party promoted Atzmon for several years16 before finally breaking with him; his latest book The Wandering Who? has been published by the left-wing Zero Books (a decision that elicited a letter of protest from several Zero authors).17 In the United States, the widely-read Counterpunch website has repeatedly chosen to run articles by Atzmon. Currently, in February and March 2012, Atzmon is on tour in North America, where several of his speaking engagements are being organized by progressive anti-imperialists whom we would normally like to consider our allies.

While perhaps well-meaning, operating under the assumption that any opposition to Zionism is to be welcomed, progressives who promote the work of Atzmon are in fact surrendering the moral high ground by encouraging a belief-system that simply mirrors that of the most racist section of Israeli society. Anti-racism is not a liability; on the contrary, it is a principle that makes our movements stronger in the long fight for a better tomorrow.

As political activists committed to resisting colonialism and imperialism -- in North America and around the world -- we recognize that there can be different interpretations of history, and we welcome exploring these. Without wishing to debate the question of whether far-right and racist ideologues should be censored, or how, we see no reason for progressive people to organize events to promote their works.

In our struggle against Zionism, racism, and all forms of colonialism and imperialism, there is no place for anti-Semitism or the vilification of Jews, Palestinians, or any people based on their religions, cultures, nationalities, ethnicity, or history. At this historic junction -- when the need to struggle for the liberation of Palestine is more vital than ever and the fault lines of capitalist empire are becoming more widely exposed -- no anti-oppressive revolution can be built with ultra-right allies or upon foundations friendly to creeping fascism.



1 Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," originally published in June 2009, republished on his Web site on April 24, 2011.

2 Many more quotes like these could be provided, but we assume this is enough to show that these are not out-of-context or out-of-character remarks. If not, readers may wish to peruse the section of Atzmon's website on "Jewishness" at <www.gilad.co.uk/writings/category/jewishness>.

3 Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," Atlantic Free Press, July 2, 2009.

4 Anayat Durrani, "Exposing Dangerous Myths," Interview with Gilad Atzmon, originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly (May 19-25, 2011), republished on Atzmon's Web site on May 19, 2011.

5 Gilad Atzmon, "Swindler's List: Zionist Plunder and the Judaic Bible," Redress Information & Analysis, April 5, 2008.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Gilad Atzmon, "An Interesting Exchange With A Jewish Anti Zionist," Atzmon's Web site, August 17, 2011.

9 Gilad Atzmon, "The Herem Law in the context of Jewish Past and Present," Atzmon's Web site, July 16, 2011.

10 "Herem" is a Hebrew word that refers to banning or excluding someone; it is also the name of the repressive legislation Israel recently passed to enable punitive lawsuits against those calling for a boycott of the apartheid state. For Atzmon, this law is just one more example of Zionism's Jewish uniqueness (guess he never heard of SLAPPs), as he concludes that "this is what Jews do best: destroying, excluding, excommunicating, silencing, boycotting, sanctioning. After all, Jews have been doing this for centuries."

11 Ibid.

12 Gilad Atzmon, "A Warning From The Past," Atzmon's Web site, May 26, 2011.

13 Quoted in Shabana Syed, "Time for World to Confront Israel: Gilad Atzmon," Arab News, June 14, 2010.

14 Gilad Atzmon, "Jewish Ideology and World Peace," Atzmon's Web site, June 7, 2010.

15 "Gilad Atzmon, the SWP and Holocaust Denial," BobFromBrockley, June 13, 2005.

16 "Gilad Atzmon and the SWP: a Brief Chronology," BobFromBrockley, October 5, 2011.

17 "Zero Authors' Statement on Gilad Atzmon," Lenin's Tomb, September 26, 2011.



As'ad AbuKhalil, The Angry Arab News Service, Turlock CA
Max Ajl, essayist, rabble-rouser, proprietor of Jewbonics blog site, Ithaca NY
Electa Arenal, professor emerita, CUNY Graduate Center/Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Women's Studies, New York NY
Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Geneva, SWITZERLAND
Dan Berger, Wild Poppies Collective, Philadelphia PA
Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictator, New York NY
Susie Day, Monthly Review, New York NY
Todd Eaton, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions, Brooklyn NY
S. EtShalom, Registered Nurse, Philadelphia PA
Sherna Berger Gluck, Prof. Emerita, California State University/Israel Divestment Campaign, CA
Andrew Griggs, Café Intifada, Los Angeles CA
Ken Hiebert, activist, Ladysmith, Canada
Elizabeth Horowitz, solidarity activist, New York NY
Karl Kersplebedeb, Left Wing Books, Montreal, CANADA
Mark Klein, activist, Toronto, CANADA
Mark Lance, Georgetown University/Institute for Anarchist Studies, Washington DC
David Landy, author, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, Dublin, IRELAND
Bob Lederer, Pacifica/WBAI producer, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York NY
Matthew Lyons, Three Way Fight, Philadelphia PA
Karen MacRae, solidarity activist, Toronto, CANADA
Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell, co-editors, New Politics, West Roxbury MA
Matt Meyer, Resistance in Brooklyn, New York NY
Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action, Los Angeles CA
Sylvia Posadas (Jinjirrie), Kadaitcha.com, Don't Play Apartheid Israel, Noosa, AUSTRALIA
Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK
Liz Roberts, War Resisters League, New York NY
Emma Rosenthal, contributor, Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, Los Angeles CA
Ian Saville, performer and lecturer, London, UK
Joel Schwartz, CSEA Local 446, AFSCME, New York NY
Simona Sharoni, SUNY, author, Gender & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Plattsburgh NY
Abraham Weizfeld, author, The End of Zionism and the liberation of the Jewish People, Montreal, CANADA
Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, NYS Task Force on Political Prisoners, New York NY
Ben White, author, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, Cambridge, UK

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Organizations Listed for Identification Purposes Only

[slimmouse]

I forgot I'd even started this thread.

But it turned out to be quite interesting.

The thread was actually started to clarify my own personal opinions and perspective wrt the whole Gilad Atzmon thread. The quote was primarily a personal view to be read within that context. To me, when interpreted correctly ( see below), the quote is a very powerful occult understanding.

I wouldn't deny for example that our communities are of principal importance to the large majority of us, or that by simply stating youre half norwegian and all the rest of it, youre neccesarily being violent - and I dont think Krishnamurti would either. The crucial caveat would be that we are all human first, and when people are shitting on each other, the separation of humanity by any number of ethnicities, including "corporoethnicity" (Barracuda.) , is THE major contributor to why the large majority of humans have been hoodwinked into behaving as they do, against all their more profound human instincts- no more so than within the context of that thread.

Finally, on the face of it of course we're not the same - indeed we are all beautifully unique, whilst at the same time we are ultimately all one.
If any of us could permeate beyond the deceptive confines of our ( purposefully?) constructed 5 sense reality tunnel, then we would, see this as plain as day,according to all the best that modern physics tells us. Thats kinda mindblowing in itself when you get right down to it.

How many of us, myself frequently included, can really begin to get our heads around the physical reality of both uniqueness, but at the same time one-ness, bombarded as we are with our day to day existence?

How many can begin to assimilate that, amidst the minority of people that actually know it? How many of the relative few who know its true even really believe it? What chance those who dont know?

What Im trying to say above is that I get the strong sense that Mr Krishnamurti, contrary to most, probably got it full on. I therefore believe the quote is probably better taken within the context of such understanding also.