Anti-Imperialism & Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon

[American Dream]

Are there any critiques of Atzmon rather than Tony Greenstein? Seeing how he interacts with the posters on his blog, not to mention his convictions for multiple instances of theft...TBH I find his turgid self-righteousness impossible to wade through. It's worse than reading CiF-watch.

How is that piece turgid or self-righteous?

Scare quotes, bile references, suddenly including the reader in the frame, ad hominems. Etc

How is judging his work on the basis of his having evidently been busted for petty theft and smoking pot NOT exactly the kind of guilt-by-association you get so het up about when it's merely a small matter of a writer associating himself with the ideas and rhetoric of fascists?

If Greenstein was writing about maths, in the same way that Peter Freyd did, it would be quite irrelevant that he was in personal situations which resulted in the FMS foundation being created; if it was the writing of Philip Barker, a former pediatric psych doctor's on treatment approaches for kids - and that doctor was busted for screwing an underage drug addicted hooker while on crack, yes I would judge his work on that, in the sense that his personal behaviour is relevant to the area of focus.

That is that not guilt-by- association.

And how's this for a critique:

Atzmon has such non-existent standards wrt intellectual honesty that he wrote an essay claiming that Big Bad Jews declared war on the allegedly vulnerable and insecure Hitler on March 23, 1933, which was (a) based on nothing more than the headline of a newspaper story that he either didn't read or intentionally misrepresented; and (b) in complete contradiction of virtually universally known basic facts of history.

Why?

Because he's a lying shill!

_______________

Are you referring to Greenstein or Atzmon as the lying shill, as it wasnt clear to me from the context?

How do you see Greenstein as having higher standards of intellectual honesty?
I can only assume you have not read the comment section of his blog.

BTW What is the difference between a complete and non-complete contradiction?
What are virtually universally known basic facts of history?
Given that large numbers of British teenagers thought Churchill was just a nodding dog in a car insurance advert...

The questions below seem to be pointing to historical areas which are never discussed in mainstream media

Ten questions to the Zionists
by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl ZT"L
Dean of Nitra Yeshiva and author of min hametzar
(Published by the author in 1948 and reprinted many times)

1.


IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:
a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and
b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and
c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.


2.


IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.

3.


IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:
a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.
b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.
c) No ransom will be paid

4.


IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.

5.


IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.

6.


IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).

7.


IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.

8.


IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"

9.


IS IT TRUE that the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.

10.


IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weitzman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weitzman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".

There are additional similar questions to be asked of these atheist degenerates known as "Jewish statesmen", but for the time being let them respond to the ten questions.

These Zionist "statesmen" with their great foresight, sought to bring an end two two-thousand years of Divinely ordained Jewish subservience and political tractability. With their offensive militancy, they fanned the fires of anti-Semitism in Europe, and succeeded in forging a bond of Jew-hatred between Nazi-Germany and the surrounding countries.

These are the "statesmen" who organized the irresponsible boycott against Germany in 1933. This boycott hurt Germany like a fly attacking an elephant - but it brought calamity upon the Jews of Europe. At a time when America and England were at peace with the mad-dog Hitler, the Zionist "statesmen" forsook the only plausible method of political amenability; and with their boycott incensed the leader of Germany to a frenzy. And then, after the bitterest episode in Jewish history, these Zionist "statesmen" lured the broken refugees in the DP camps to remain in hunger and deprivation, and to refuse relocation to any place but Palestine; only for the purpose of building their State.

The Zionist "statesmen" have incited and continue to incite an embittered Jewish youth to futile wars against world powers like England, and against masses of hundreds of millions of Arabs.

AND THESE SAME ZIONIST "STATESMEN" HEEDLESSLY PUSH THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF ANOTHER TOTAL WAR - REVOLVING ENTIRELY AROUND THE HOLY LAND.

What may befall the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, of the Arab crescent, Europe, or the USA; is of no concern to these Zionist leaders. The rising anti-Semitism in the Western World is the product of their "statesmanship".

Under the guise of "love of Israel", the Zionist "statesmen" seduced many Jews to replace devotion to the Torah and its Sages with devotion to the scoundrel who founded Zionism. It is of no little significance that Herzl originally sought conversion of the Jews as a solution to the problems of the Diaspora. When he realized that this was not acceptable to the Jewish masses, he contrived Zionism as a satisfactory alternative!

A look into history reveals that this very same type of "statesmen" opposed the call of Jeremiah the prophet to yield to the minions of Nebuchadnezzar at the destruction of the first Temple. Five centuries later, Rabbi Yochonon Ben Zakai appealed to the people to surrender to Titus the Roman to avoid bloodshed. The "statesmen" rejected this appeal, and the second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. --- And now for the past fifty years, the Zionist "statesmen" rebuff the leadership of our Sages; and continue in their policy of fomenting anti-Semitism. When will they stop?? Must every Jew in America also suffer?? - Even the Nazi monsters had more sense, and gave up their war before all Germany was destroyed. The Zionist "statesmen" ridicule the sacred oath which the Creator placed upon the Jews in the Diaspora. Our Torah, in Tractate Ksubos, folio 111, specifies that the Creator, blessed be He, swore the Jews not to occupy the Holy Land by force, even if it appears that they have the force to do so; and not rebel against the Nations. And the Creator warned that if His oath be desecrated, Jewish flesh would be "open property", like the animals in the forest!! These are words of our Torah; and these concepts have been cited in Maimonides' "Igeres Teimon", "Be'er HaGola", "Ahavas Yehonosson", and in "Toras Moshe" of the Chasam Sofer.

IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE SAGES AND SAINTS IN EUROPE AT THE TIME OF HITLER'S RISE DECLARED THAT HE WAS A MESSENGER OF DIVINE WRATH, SENT TO CHASTEN THE JEWS BECAUSE OF THE BITTER APOSTASY OF ZIONISM AGAINST THE BELIEF IN THE EVENTUAL MESSIANIC REDEMPTION.

Yidden - merciful sons of merciful fathers - how much longer must holy Jewish blood continue to be shed??

The only solution is:

The Jewish people must reject, outright, a "Jewish State".

The Jewish people should accept the US compromise.

We must depose the atheist-Zionist "statesmen" from their role as Jewish leaders, and return to the faithful leadership of our sages.

We beseech the Nations to open all doors to immigration - not only the doors of Palestine.

Peaceful, non-Zionist religious personalities in Palestine, (particularly from the native population) and their counterparts in the Diaspora, should engage in responsible, face-to face negotiations on behalf of the Jewish people, with the British and the Arabs; with an aim of amicable settlement of the Palestine issue.



Every Jew is obliged to pray to the Blessed creator, for in Him lies all our strength. Let us bear in mind that our prayers be forthright. One should not entreat the Creator to provide a banquet on Yom Kippur, and one can not perform a ritual ablution with a dead bug in his hand. Similarly, we should avoid the untenable position of the robber who prays for Divine help in carrying out his crime. We should pray that Zionism and its fruits vanish from the Earth, and that we be redeemed by the Messiah with dispatch.

A prisoner is released only when he has served his time, or if he is pardoned by the President for good behavior. If he attempts escape and is apprehended, his term is lengthened, besides the beating he receives when he is caught.

Faithful Jews- for over three and one-half thousand years, in all parts of the world, through all trials, our grandfathers and grandmothers marched through seas of blood and tears in order to keep the Faith of the Torah unswervingly. If we have compassion for ourselves, for our women and children, and for the Jewish people, we will maintain our golden legacy today. We have been sentenced to exile by the King of Kings because of our sins. The eternal blessed be He, has decreed that we accept the exile with humble gratitude until the time comes, or until we merit His pardon through repentance if we seek to end the exile with force, G-d will catch us, as our sages have forewarned, and our sentence becomes longer and more difficult.

Many times in the past have segments of our people been defrauded by false messiahs - but none of the false messiahs has been as fallacious and delusory as the lie of Zionism. With our historical experience as our guide, no retribution has been or will be greater than the retribution for giving credence to Zionism. If we wish our exile-sentence commuted, we must appeal through repentance; and through total physical and spiritual observance of the Sabbath, laws of family purity, and study of Torah.

Let it be clearly understood that never in Jewish history (even in the time of Jeroboam or Achav) have such hostile atheists stood at the helm of he Jewish people as today.

How can we plead to the Almighty for mercy while we tolerate these vile, "wicked" leaders as spokesmen! Beloved brothers - let us cleanse our ranks and cleanse our midst; let us entreat the Almighty through prayer, repentance, and fulfillment of mitzvos that He alone redeem us, immediately.
READ EXCERPT FROM RABBI WEISSMANDL'S BOOK Sefer Min Hametzar



























Don't mention it. It is my pleasure to serve you.

[/quote]


Is the above supposed to be a coherent defense of your previous comments or something?

[Searcher08]

If Greenstein was writing about maths, in the same way that Peter Freyd did, it would be quite irrelevant that he was in personal situations which resulted in the FMS foundation being created; if it was the writing of Philip Barker, a former pediatric psych doctor's on treatment approaches for kids - and that doctor was busted for screwing an underage drug addicted hooker while on crack, yes I would judge his work on that, in the sense that his personal behaviour is relevant to the area of focus.

That is that not guilt-by- association.

* I'm making the point that some contexts have a total independence of association of the person and the subject - like maths; others like child psychology do not. I am asserting that the Greenstein arguments against Atzmon are more in the latter category, so the background of Greenstein and his personal credibility are relevant in my eyes.

Are you referring to Greenstein or Atzmon as the lying shill, as it wasnt clear to me from the context?

*This is a question for clarification from c2w

c2w wrote:
How do you see Greenstein as having higher standards of intellectual honesty?

I replied:
I can only assume you have not read the comment section of his blog.

* Most of Greenstein's exchanges on the comment section of his blog occur in the category of shit flinging, not argumentation

BTW What is the difference between a complete and non-complete contradiction?

* Clarification question on what c2w wrote

What are virtually universally known basic facts of history?

* Clarification question on what c2w wrote

Given that large numbers of British teenagers thought Churchill was just a nodding dog in a car insurance advert...
* Asserts that universal knowns regarding history is not a solid concept -
using the example of a supposedly universally known WW2 UK leader being less well known than the eponymous nodding dog car insurance character.

That's all, folks

[AlicetheKurious]

Are there any critiques of Atzmon rather than Tony Greenstein? Seeing how he interacts with the posters on his blog, not to mention his convictions for multiple instances of theft...TBH I find his turgid self-righteousness impossible to wade through. It's worse than reading CiF-watch.

Several years ago (I think it was 3 or 4), I read several articles written by Palestinian solidarity activists in Europe, warning about this Tony Greenstein and his gang, and how they were conducting a relentless campaign of harassment, intimidation and defamation to hijack the Palestinian solidarity movement from 'within' to impose their own agenda, by making it about "antisemitism". At the time, a little light went on in my head, and I was very much reminded of the tactics used by our very own "American Dream" (although AD is a LOT lazier than Tony Greenstein, since his 'contribution' consists almost entirely of copying and pasting others' work). At the time, if you'll recall, I pointed out AD's ssssinister insssinuations, inspired by one activist's description of Tony Greenstein and his buddies as "snakes in the grass". It was therefore with much hilarity that I finally checked out AD's posts in this thread, to find that he is, indeed, trying to channel Tony Greenstein. My instincts are so damn good I scare myself.

Question: But why is there a general consensus among everyday people to support Israel?

Lenni Brenner: It's a product of the Left not doing much, other than writing articles in their newspapers about Palestine until the two intifadas. Link

It's actually quite clever: Palestinian solidarity is fundamentally about fighting racism -- not just the theoretical racism of words, but institutionalized, deadly racism imposed by a state in which the army, shock troops of heavily-armed religious fanatics, and a formidable propaganda machine are all mobilized for military and economic and political warfare against a trapped refugee population, to strip the people of all their rights. Israel blatantly violates international law and Geneva Conventions, UN resolutions, and the basic principles of human decency in its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians for the express purpose of providing lebensraum for Jewish immigrants.

Given what they've been subjected to, solidarity with the Palestinian people should be a no-brainer. And indeed, outside the West, especially in the US and Britain and Germany, the majority of the world's population has consistently viewed the Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestine as a clear-cut case of racist injustice inflicted by Zionist Jews against the indigenous population, with the support of Western imperialist states. In 1975, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Resolution 3379 which defined zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination." (It was revoked in 1991 only because Israel demanded this as a precondition for its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference, which, instead of leading to 'peace', has led to the escalation of Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies, and the rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land).

And in the West itself, solidarity with the Palestinians should also be a no-brainer, given the fact that ordinary citizens, taxpayers, are the ones who have paid the greatest price after the Arabs themselves, for the zionist project -- not just in terms of money, but in other ways as well.

With such a clear-cut moral and legal case against it, Israel's apologists have had their work cut out for them, but they're nothing if not resourceful. On the Right, they relied on mystical mumbo-jumbo and a highly-manipulated, self-serving interpretation of biblical scripture propagated through the Scofield Bible, and on the exploitation of xenophobia and ignorance in the West through a campaign of demonization and dehumanization first against Arabs, then specifically against Muslims.

On the Left, they had a much harder job. But they had a trump card: the Left in the West, such as it is, was dominated by prominent Jewish Leftist intellectuals. A tiny minority of them expressed great sympathy for the Palestinian struggle and, especially in the US, became its main spokesmen. However, whether intentionally or not, they consistently undermined the very movement they were supposedly leading. As Jeffrey Blankfort has noted regarding Noam Chomsky:

Once upon a time Prof. Chomsky was considered by many to be the most important spokesperson for the Palestinian cause.

It was a position he attained largely on the basis of his writings and activism in opposing the Vietnam War and US intervention in Central America in which, unlike the case with Israel, he had no personal vested interest. That Chomsky has maintained that position despite the presence in the US of a number of distinguished Palestinian professors, among them the late Edward Said, who were and are more knowledgeable about the subject and could speak from personal experience that does not include prior service as “a Zionist youth leader” – Chomsky’s background – is a reflection of the political culture of the American Left which was and remains substantially if not predominantly Jewish, particularly in its leadership positions. Support for Israel had become so ingrained and fear of anti-Semitism so deeply embedded in the psyche of American Jewish Leftists in the aftermath of World War 2, that if the Jewish state was to be criticized it had to be by someone from within the tribe who unequivocally supported its existence. Unfortunately, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the building of a viable Palestinian solidarity movement within the United States, that mindset persists to this day and largely explains why Chomsky maintains his reputation despite public utterances over the past half dozen years that have done more to undermine the Palestinian cause than to help it. Link

For decades, when it was led and represented by Jewish leftist intellectuals, the Palestine solidarity movement accomplished absolutely nothing. Rather than widening its support base, on the contrary, it was closing itself off into a narrower and narrower intellectual ghetto from which all but the most erudite and conformist were excluded. Rather than exposing the machinations of Israel's Jewish lobby in the US and elsewhere, naming names, pointing to specific actions, and linking these to issues which affect ordinary citizens in the West, Chomsky et al constantly tried to divert attention away from the specific onto vague and inchoate concepts like "empire", "the system", etc. It was they, on the Left, who used ridicule and insinuations of 'antisemitism' to make any exposure of the Jewish lobby taboo; who tried to make the Israel/Palestine issue into a primarily Jewish issue, the topic of a dialogue between the Jewish Left and the Jewish Right, and to make Jewishness a precondition for speaking on behalf of the Palestinians or, as Blankfort put it, to ensure that "if the Jewish state was to be criticized it had to be by someone from within the tribe who unequivocally supported its existence."

But it wasn't only Chomsky and others in the United States. In Britain, especially during the 1970s, the Palestinian cause was also dominated by Jewish intellectuals, represented by Moshe Machover, an Israeli communist who had moved to Britain in the late 1960s and founded the Israeli Revolutionary Action Committee Abroad, a Marxist anti-zionist revolutionary organization, whose heyday was during the early to mid-1970s.

For Machover, THE prerequisite for Palestinian, indeed Arab liberation, is rejection of Islam and Arab nationalism and a successful socialist revolution across the region. While Atzmon may use harsh insults to respond, his points are valid: first, why is an Israeli Jew living in London going around advising the Arabs that they must give up their religious faith as a condition for not being ethnically cleansed and indiscriminately robbed and killed?

He also rightly points out that Machover's patronizing recommendations are completely divorced from reality: while his brand of Marxist revolution has utterly failed to inspire more than a handful of mostly elderly talking revolutionaries in Israel and the Middle East, both Islam and Arab nationalism have demonstrated their power to inspire and sustain the most popular and effective resistance movements in that region, and despite decades of suppression and sabotage, both are deeply ingrained grassroots values that continue to inspire incredible acts of bravery, selflessness and solidarity. Yet according to Machover, both Islam and Arab nationalism, which he contemptuously dismisses as "bourgeois", must be eliminated as a prerequisite for Palestinian "liberation"! Why? Well, according to Machover, Islam is "backward looking": thus he passes judgment on a complex and vibrant philosophical and spiritual tradition about which he clearly knows little or nothing. As for why Arab nationalism won't do, Machover, like Chomsky, betrays his Judeo-centrism by insisting that no liberation will be possible for the Palestinians unless the Israelis, having successfully carried out their own socialist revolution, agree! In other words, two hundred or so million Arabs must throw away their Qur'ans, forget about Arab nationalism, transform the entire region into a unified socialist state and create a congenial environment for...Israeli workers, all as THE ONLY possible way to liberate the Palestinians!!

Let me make it clear: external pressure by itself cannot lead to a just res­o­lu­tion of the conflict. Zionism cannot be destroyed purely from the outside, even if and when the balance of power changes, so that Israel can no longer dominate the region. Its Hebrew pop­u­la­tion is mil­i­ta­rized, and Israel is a nuclear power. It would resist to the death any purely external onslaught — not only its own death, but of many others. It would commit the most hor­ren­dous suicide explosion in history.

But, given a change in the balance of power, the Israeli masses, primarily the working class, could be attracted by a generous offer from a pro­gres­sive Arab East: “Since you can no longer dominate us, join us; give up Zionism and accept equal rights, including the right to express your national identity within a regional federation.”

In this way the Zionist state can be over­thrown: this can be achieved from the inside — given favourable external cir­cum­stances. It will be like an egg: hatched from the inside, but only if it is warmed from the outside. Something must sit on it.…

Neither political Islam nor bourgeois Arab nation­al­ism is capable of uniting the Arab East; and most certainly neither of them is able to offer the Hebrew masses an attrac­tive inter­na­tion­al­ist alter­na­tive to Zionism. This task can only be led by the working class. This is the his­tor­i­cal agent of regional trans­for­ma­tion and uni­fi­ca­tion that can provide the regional framework for resolving the Pales­tin­ian problem. Link

If Chomsky and Finkelstein are sometimes reduced to incoherent babbling, this is all the more true with Machover.

According to him, as I mentioned earlier, the Palestinians will only be liberated once all the people of the region have carried out their socialist worker-led revolution and united into one big socialist federalist nation, which will incorporate all the Arabs into one of two federated states: one for the Arabs and one for the socialist "Hebrew nation", with the borders to be redrawn "according to economic, demographic and administrative considerations operative at that time":

Will the disposition envisaged here be a one-state or a two-state setup? It will be both and it will be neither. It will be a one-state setup – in the sense that both national groups will be accommodated, as federated members, in one state. But that one state will not be Palestine; it will be a regional union. And it will be a two-state setup in the sense that each of the two national groups will have its own canton (in the Swiss sense) or Land (in the German Federal sense), where it constitutes a majority of the population. However, no purpose will be served by interposing between these cantons and the federal state an intermediate political entity – let alone one whose borders are those of the so-called ‘historical’ Palestine, created by the British imperialists in 1923. The resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will not recreate that ill-starred territory as a unitary or binary entity, but will supersede it – as it will also supersede the Zionist State of Israel.[xiii] The true liberation of Palestine cannot be accomplished short of a regional revolution – which will liberate ‘historical’ Palestine by consigning it to history.

As for borders, it would a pointless premature exercise to attempt to draw them now; but they need not coincide with any demarcation lines that have existed so far. When the time comes, they will be determined democratically according to economic, demographic and administrative considerations operative at that time.

It may be objected that this vision puts off the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to a distant time horizon. If so, the ‘fault’ lies not with the vision but with objective reality. Shortcuts proposing liberation within the box of Palestine are illusory. Link

Not surprisingly, as Atzmon points out, Machover's rather daunting vision of what needs to happen before Palestinians can be liberated have managed to win him a dedicated following of not more than three people. Maybe Atzmon is exaggerating: I doubt there are even three who understand it, let alone who genuinely consider it to be a feasible plan.

Also, it's interesting to note that both Machover and Chomsky, as well as Norman Finkelstein, while acting as spokesmen for the Palestinian cause (the Palestinian people being, inconveniently, staunchly Arab and mostly Muslim), somehow manage to incorporate some of the same basic unexamined assumptions of right-wing zionists:

1. All three, Machover, Chomsky and Finkelstein, insist that there's no point in trying to analyze or expose, let alone fight the Jewish lobby in the West, since it is irrelevant ("insignificant" in Chomsky's words), since Israel is only a tool of US and other Western imperialists. As Machover says:



Israel is the main henchman of the US in the Middle East, a junior partner and regional enforcer, who helps to keep the regimes of the Arab East in abject subservience to American imperialism. Link



In fact, this is a precise definition of Saudi Arabia's role in the Middle East, but not Israel. On the contrary: it is the abject subservience of American politicians to the Jewish lobby in the US that has done more than anything to destroy the US' credibility and "soft power" throughout the region and made it much more difficult for the US to pursue its own strategic objectives. American citizens, and the citizens of other countries where such lobbies operate have a duty to understand what those lobbies are, where they derive their power to influence the political process, and to evaluate the consequences.

2. Chomsky, like Machover, uses Israel's threat of the so-called "Samson option" to advise us that Israel should not be subjected to external pressure. The "Samson Option" is Israel's threat to destroy itself along with millions of other people in a nuclear conflagration. (It reminds me of a friend I had back when we were teenagers, whose hysterical mother locked herself in the bathroom and threatened to commit suicide if my friend went to a concert. My friend went to the concert, and last I checked, decades later, the mother still hasn't done the deed. For obvious reasons).

3. Moshe Machover, to his credit, does support the Palestinian-led campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (except for the boycott of Israeli academics), while neither Chomsky nor Norman Finkelstein do. Chomsky's reasons are just bizarre and incoherent, but Finkelstein is straightforward about his reason for rejecting BDS: he 'accuses' its supporters of plotting to 'destroy Israel' (meaning the Judeo-supremacist regime in 78% of Palestine).

4. Finally, Machover, Chomsky and Finkelstein all agree that Jews constitute a "nation" that should be given the right -- in Palestine!! -- to have a Jewish state. At least Chomsky and Finkelstein designate this state as the 78% of Palestine that was ethnically cleansed before 1967 -- Machover not only refuses to speculate where its borders would be, alongside that pan-Arab socialist federation he envisions, but he neglects to explain how a Jewish majority could be maintained by the "Israeli Hebrew" majority in their own state, since he also supports the Palestinians' full right to return to their homes!

The interesting thing about the so-called "Jewish left", at least in the US, is that it's a subset of the tiny and almost totally ineffective "left". And the pro-Palestinian "Jewish left" is a small subset of the "Jewish left", making it a subset of a subset of a tiny and almost totally ineffective movement in the US. And yet, for decades, it was this insignificant and ineffective group that represented the Palestinian cause in America. Were they well-intentioned? Who knows? I confess that for ages I was a big fan of Noam Chomsky and an admirer of Norman Finkelstein, as well. As long as there was no authentic Palestinian movement, and seemingly no chance of mobilizing a grassroots base for effective action, they sounded just fine.

But something was happening in Palestine itself: disillusioned by the betrayal of the so-called "Palestinian Authority" and by the failure of Arab governments to do more than talk and wring their hands, and with the elected Hamas government under siege in Gaza, Palestinians under occupation were organizing themselves into civil society organizations. On July 9, 2005, over 170 of these Palestinian civil society organizations decided to by-pass governments entirely and launch a global people-to-people call for grassroots solidarity in the form of a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it recognizes and respects their human and legal rights.

A global network of grassroots activists was galvanized into action. Pre-existing groups like the International Solidarity Movement, and ad hoc groups like the organizers of numerous flotillas, braved great dangers to get medical and other aid to the Palestinians, to publicize Israeli apartheid and human rights violations, and to use legal channels to try to prosecute Israeli war criminals. The BDS movement rapidly spread to the US: student activists organized "Israeli Apartheid Week" activities to raise consciousness on campus; union workers began to organize their own BDS campaigns. In 2010, in response to the Israeli hijacking of the Mavi Marmara and the massacre of nine crew members, longshore workers in Oakland, California, refused to unload an Israeli cargo ship. Other workers have been very active raising awareness and educating other members in their unions. The internet has allowed ordinary people to bypass the corporate media, to share images and videos and documents and opinions that would have never made it through the filter. For the first time ever, the power of the pro-Israeli lobby is analyzed and debated at the popular level. Within 7 short years, grassroots activists in Palestine and ordinary people around the world had managed to accomplish far more than the so-called "Jewish left" had accomplished in the more than 7 decades during which it dominated the Palestinian narrative.

There are four striking things about this: first, while the "Jewish left" talks about "the people", in fact its members tend to move in rarefied academic circles from which the masses of ordinary people are de facto excluded. Second, while it talks about the Palestinians, once again, its members talk at them (rather condescendingly) instead of listening to them and following their lead in responding to their needs. And third, the Jewish left has been led by individuals who to some extent identified with some of the basic assumptions of zionism while trying to fight it, including a Judeo-centric world view, meaning that they've been trying to drive a car with the breaks on. Finally, in organizations like, say, the ISM, and in the BDS movement in general, there is no differentiation between "Jews" and others, just people doing what they can to help. Its power is in its inclusiveness: everyone is welcome to make their contribution, including Israelis. There's certainly no attempt to impose ideological or any other conformity.

It is precisely these strengths that are now under attack. The attack is subtle and, as all such attacks usually are, it is disguised in pseudo-moral terms. The Tony Greensteins of the world harass and threaten and intimidate the new Palestine solidarity activists into making humiliating and divisive public 'disavowals' of this or that writer to defend themselves against the charge of 'antisemitism'. Gilad Atzmon is not a racist; he is someone who demands his right to speak about his own background and experiences and his own insights about the apartheid culture in which he was raised and which he rejected so that he could live according to his humanist values, which he expresses in everything he does. But those who are using bullying and threats and defamation to shut him up are fascists, because as I said before, "fascist is as fascist does."

They're trying to put the Palestine solidarity movement back in the box in which the "Jewish left" had kept it for all those comfortable decades, taking it out only on a short leash. Though a very few appear to have gone quietly, I trust the majority won't. Jeffrey Blankfort was one of many people who wrote to Gilad Atzmon to express his support:

I suspect whoever initiated the list, and it appears that it was Abumimah, was pressed to do so by the Jewish left equivalent of the mainstream Jewish machers who pressure local black leaders to denounce Louis Farrakhan whenever he makes an appearance and has the audacity to speak out [about] Jews and the slave trade which, like Zionist-Nazi collaboration, is a classic Left taboo.

Most of the rest, with the exception of Joseph Massad, probably signed on because he asked them do so. I would bet that none of them, some of whom are friends of mine, have read or even seen your book. Massad, it should be recalled was the Palestinian professor at Columbia who was targeted by The David Project and accused of harassing Jewish students. He showed that he had learned his lesson by being the very first person to write an article denouncing Mearsheimer and Walt for their LRB article on the Israel Lobby which was lauded and reprinted by Asad Abu Khalil who seems almost as concerned about antisemitism as Abe Foxman.

After I took Massad’s article apart, paragraph by paragraph, for Dissident Voice, Henry Herskovitz in Ann Arbor suggested that Massad debate me on the issue when he made a speaking appearance in Michigan. Massad declined, claiming that I was an “antisemite.” When I wrote to Massad, asking if he had made such a statement I received no reply which told me all I need to know about him. Abu Khalil would only debate me and Hatem Bazian, one of the signatories to the letter, if we stipulated that The Lobby was the only factor in determining US policy, which of course we wouldn’t.

It would be nice if there was such a statement denouncing those in the movement who dismiss the power of the Jewish establishment over US Middle East policy but then they would be subject to charges of “antisemitism” themselves, which most of them seem to greatly fear. So it goes.

[compared2what?]

Are there any critiques of Atzmon rather than Tony Greenstein? Seeing how he interacts with the posters on his blog, not to mention his convictions for multiple instances of theft...TBH I find his turgid self-righteousness impossible to wade through. It's worse than reading CiF-watch.

How is that piece turgid or self-righteous?

Scare quotes, bile references, suddenly including the reader in the frame, ad hominems. Etc

Well....I don't see that he does suddenly include the reader in the frame, in any particularly noteworthy way. But I do see that there might be legitimate room for disagreement on that -- one person's legitmate rhetorical use of the first-person plural could well be another's sudden inclusion of the reader in the frame, it's kind of a judgment call, by definition.

It's true that he does use scare quotes, bile and assorted other marks of scorn, hostility and contempt when writing of Atzmon. But he certainly doesn't go any further in that regard than Atzmon regularly does for no stated or otherwise apparent reason at all when writing about -- for example -- perfectly inoccuous anti-zionists such as Moshe Machover. In fact, based on a quick once-over of his website, I'd say that he (Atzmon) so frequently uses those exact tactics (including the sudden-cooptation-of-the-reader-into-the-frame thing) when writing about another person and/or persons that they could fairly be said to be characteristic of his style and approach.

So....Wait a minute. That makes resolving this whole question astonishingly easy, I suddenly realize. Because:

If you regard such tactics as sufficiently discreditable to render the arguments made by those who use them illegitimate, you shouldn't actually have any need for a critique of Atzmon written by someone other than Tony Greenstein. And likewise if you don't.

Whee!

________________

I think I'll probably go ahead and address the rest of your remarks anyway, though. Just because I love you. And, of course, the modern world, modern moonlight, modern miles around. Modern neon, modern love, modern rockin sound. Et cetera.

So I'll be out all night.

What do you think about that, you guys?***

___________________

***Spoiler:Correct answer: "Radio on." But you knew that.
_______________

ON EDIT: Deleted excess text.

[compared2what?]

How is judging his work on the basis of his having evidently been busted for petty theft and smoking pot NOT exactly the kind of guilt-by-association you get so het up about when it's merely a small matter of a writer associating himself with the ideas and rhetoric of fascists?

If Greenstein was writing about maths, in the same way that Peter Freyd did, it would be quite irrelevant that he was in personal situations which resulted in the FMS foundation being created; if it was the writing of Philip Barker, a former pediatric psych doctor's on treatment approaches for kids - and that doctor was busted for screwing an underage drug addicted hooker while on crack, yes I would judge his work on that, in the sense that his personal behaviour is relevant to the area of focus.

That is that not guilt-by- association.

Unless there's a clear and direct relationship between pot-use/petty-theft and explicating a text about anti-zionism, not only would I say that it is, I'd say that you haven't even come close to explaining why it isn't.

And how's this for a critique:

Atzmon has such non-existent standards wrt intellectual honesty that he wrote an essay claiming that Big Bad Jews declared war on the allegedly vulnerable and insecure Hitler on March 23, 1933, which was (a) based on nothing more than the headline of a newspaper story that he either didn't read or intentionally misrepresented; and (b) in complete contradiction of virtually universally known basic facts of history.

Why?

Because he's a lying shill!

_______________

Are you referring to Greenstein or Atzmon as the lying shill, as it wasnt clear to me from the context?

Atzmon.

How do you see Greenstein as having higher standards of intellectual honesty?

Well. I don't see Greenstein making any enormously deceptive, irresponsible, or ill-informed assertions about topics wrt which he purports to hold reasonable and/or well-reasoned views. On the contrary. I see him making assertions for reasons he clearly states, albeit in personally heated terms, thus leaving his reader fairly positioned to judge their merits for themselves.


Whereas I do see Atzmon doing all of the above, and have pointed to numerous instances of it myself, as have others. But just to stick to the one I mentioned most recently:

Atzmon has such non-existent standards wrt intellectual honesty that he wrote an essay claiming that Big Bad Jews declared war on the allegedly vulnerable and insecure Hitler on March 23, 1933, which was (a) based on nothing more than the headline of a newspaper story that he either didn't read or intentionally misrepresented; and (b) in complete contradiction of virtually universally known basic facts of history.

I can only assume you have not read the comment section of his blog.

No, I haven't. Please provide some of the instances of intellectual dishonesty you've noticed therein, if any.

BTW What is the difference between a complete and non-complete contradiction?

I'm not sure that I could rightly say, without an example of the latter in front of me.

But since I only characterized Atzmon's error as the former -- ie, "a complete contradiction" -- I can't, for the life of me, see why that would matter at all, unless you're arguing that it's not completely wrong to say that Big Bad Jews declared war on the allegedly vulnerable and insecure Hitler on March 23, 1933.

Are you?

What are virtually universally known basic facts of history?

In this case: That Jews did not declare war on Hitler on March 23, 1933.

And I think that's a fair way to characterize it, in context, in view of the usual presumptions of reliability, diligence and good-faith that attach to the work of reasonably well-known professional writers of ostensibly good repute, such as Atzmon. Especially when it comes to the subjects on which they themselves have elected to concentrate.

Given that large numbers of British teenagers thought Churchill was just a nodding dog in a car insurance advert...

I don't see how the ignorance of large numbers of British teenagers is a legitimate (or even relevant) defense for Atzmon's ignorance and/or intellectual dishonesty.

The questions below seem to be pointing to historical areas which are never discussed in mainstream media

Ditto. Except the part about British teenagers.

[AlicetheKurious]

How is judging his work on the basis of his having evidently been busted for petty theft and smoking pot NOT exactly the kind of guilt-by-association you get so het up about when it's merely a small matter of a writer associating himself with the ideas and rhetoric of fascists?

"Guilt by association" with whom? With himself? It's not his friend who was convicted of stealing another person's credit card and using it to buy himself "toys". And of several other charges of stealing. In other words, he, not someone with whom he is associated, is a thief. And how does he defend himself? He exploits the fact that he's a rabbi's son. Nice. The articles about his arrest and trial mention prominently that he's an "anti-zionist". So he manages to drag both his father and the "anti-zionist" camp through the mud, yet his whole schtick is pointing fingers at other people and demanding they be ostracized because they make the anti-zionist crowd look bad by association.

When he's kicked out of the university, what does he do? He writes a book on the Middle East, even though it's not at all his field of study or expertise. He and his handful of buddies act like thugs, alienating people in the name of the Palestinian cause. He uses his blog to defame people who are much better than him and have something real to contribute, and to propagate lies. (Other than the examples I gave in an earlier post, he's published false news that he never retracts, obliging people to correct him elsewhere.) Hey, it's a living.

This brings us to the crux of what's wrong with Tony Greenstein: he's a taker not a giver, he's a liar, he's a hypocrite, and a parasite as well.

Why is he a parasite? Well, who is Tony Greenstein? His only claim to fame is that he is the untalented, pipsqueak loser who stalks Gilad Atzmon and writes threatening letters to anyone who associates with him.

Everything he has, he has leached off others. He produces nothing worthwhile, he gives nothing.

Why is he a hypocrite? Because he claims a higher morality that his actions do not at all reflect. He pretends that he is anti-racist, but his tiny, misnamed "Palestine Solidarity Committee" is a segregated group comprised only of Jews like himself. No Palestinians, or anybody else. Its most famous campaign aimed at cancelling a charity fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestinians. When this failed, he threatened and harassed Medical Aid for Palestinians, to try to get them to refuse the urgently-needed money raised by Gilad Atzmon and others. His idea of "solidarity" is to harass Palestinians and tell them who they should or shouldn't be friends with, who they can or can't listen to, which books they should or shouldn't read. Or else. He's a fascist who pretends to oppose fascism.

In contrast, who is Gilad Atzmon? He's a giver: he and his friends have set up scholarship funds for Palestinian students who could not otherwise afford an education. He's a brilliant and successful musician and songwriter who uses his considerable talent to support the causes he believes in. His life reflects the values he espouses: he believes in universal brotherhood and indeed he has a rainbow of warm friendships all over the world. The composition of his own band reflects the cultural and racial diversity that he defends. So does his music. His writings are rooted in his own personal experiences and his own insights, having grown up in an apartheid society, the grandson of a right-wing terrorist, having served in an army of occupation. He didn't only reject the toxic ideology he was raised in, nor did he cynically exploit it (unlike the "son of a rabbi"), he set out to expose it and opened himself up to vicious attacks, knowing very well what he was up against. He wasn't thrown out of college for stealing and vandalizing, he completed his studies and went on to earn a Master's degree in philosophy. He doesn't harass or threaten people with whom he disagrees, on the contrary; he offers to debate them. He respects the right of people to make up their own minds.

Given the choice between having more Gilad Atzmons in the world, and more Tony Greensteins, it's strange indeed to suspect that so many people on an "anti-fascist" discussion board would choose the latter. But like Gilad Atzmon, I believe in open debate, and allowing others to decide for themselves. Even when I'm convinced they're misguided and wrong.

[Sounder]

Thanks searcher08 and Alice

This thread illustrates, for me anyway, how many people only use experience if it supports their identity props. I suspect that very few Gilad critics have read much of the Gilad supporting writing of recent vintage. Thanks AD for starting this thread; you have verified my original opinion of you from when I first perused this site. You cannot speak about how your positions can be maintained because doing so would expose their contrived nature. Yeah, go Chomsky!

All anti-fascist posers will be exposed soon enough. Gotta love those internal contradictions that eventually make the head go pop. And AD, the holier than thou, take no quarter, exclusionary policy of the PC police is a perfect example of the ‘left’ bowing down, and feeding children into the machine of old ideas that maintains these structures of injustice.

http://kenokeefe.wordpress.com/2012/03/ ... -movement/

Ken O’keefe wrote….

The truth is that my actions, and my words are those of a person unafraid of the political correctness traps to which you seem to have submitted yourself. You might well call me an “anti-American hate monger” and imply that I paint all Americans with the same brush when I have repeatedly called the United States the “greatest terrorist of the 20th and now 21st centuries.” But I have never seen anybody suggest I be banned from speaking for having stated these words.

But alas, speak the words deemed taboo by the thought police and one becomes unworthy of speaking at all. Think of how incredibly holier than thou and up your own arse it makes you sound when many if not all of you, do not have a Palestinian wife/husband, or Palestinian children, who have likely never been to Palestine, certainly have not risked nearly as much as I have in defending Palestine, say that I am unworthy of speaking about Palestine or any other issue in universities where I can assure you, many people would be happy for me to speak. The arrogance and hypocrisy is quite simply over the top. And if there are Palestinians among this cadre of thought police who genuinely think that I am a liability rather than an asset to the Palestinian cause, then stand up and say so. I certainly will respect you for having the balls (in a figurative sense) to say so.

As much as you seek to censor me or ban me, all you have really done is expose yourselves and a significant problem facing the Palestinians and everyone else genuinely involved in the struggle for justice. That problem is the false allies of truth and justice, the subversives posing as friends and the dupes to blind to know how much these characters are manipulating them. The direct enemy is plain to see, a more honest enemy, and in this regard I respect this enemy more than the western “liberal” dupe who is either so full of himself, or so corrupt, that he is blind to the traitor to humanity role he plays.

I am a disciple of Malcolm X’s way of thinking, on more than one level. With regard to friends and foes he was astute, he was right. He had no illusions regarding the illusory differences between the Democrats (friends to the black man) and Republicans (racist enemies). “One is the wolf, the other is a fox. No matter what, they’ll both eat you.”

In the 1964 presidential elections, when the US presidential candidates were Lyndon B. Johnson (the “peace” candidate) vs. Barry Goldwater (the “war” candidate), Malcolm X exposed the deceit of this phony distinction.

“The shrewd capitalists, the shrewd imperialists,” he said, “knew that the only way people would run towards the fox (Johnson) would be if you showed them the wolf (Goldwater). So they created a ghastly alternative . . . And at the moment he (Johnson) had troops invading the Congo and
South Vietnam.”

Beware of the 'Thought Police'
This is my perspective, you, the thought police and false allies of Palestine, which can even include people with Palestinian blood, are the ones attempting to provide cover for the tyrants by prohibiting meaningful deliberation into matters that are of the most critical importance to our world. A stark example of this is the Jewish supremacism that is of dire consequence to our world. This is the taboo subject you are charged with enforcing, and in doing so you take sides with the same racist, supremacist ideologies you claim to oppose. I am proud to be opposed by you, I shall wear your Scarlet Letter as a badge of honour.

This Ken guy could use a few wacks with the banning stick.

Alice wrote….

But it wasn't only Chomsky and others in the United States. In Britain, especially during the 1970s, the Palestinian cause was also dominated by Jewish intellectuals, represented by Moshe Machover, an Israeli communist who had moved to Britain in the late 1960s and founded the Israeli Revolutionary Action Committee Abroad, a Marxist anti-zionist revolutionary organization, whose heyday was during the early to mid-1970s.

For Machover, THE prerequisite for Palestinian, indeed Arab liberation, is rejection of Islam and Arab nationalism and a successful socialist revolution across the region. While Atzmon may use harsh insults to respond, his points are valid: first, why is an Israeli Jew living in London going around advising the Arabs that they must give up their religious faith as a condition for not being ethnically cleansed and indiscriminately robbed and killed?

He also rightly points out that Machover's patronizing recommendations are completely divorced from reality: while his brand of Marxist revolution has utterly failed to inspire more than a handful of mostly elderly talking revolutionaries in Israel and the Middle East,….

Perfect and thanks again Alice. Machover sounds like he would be a fine mentor for someone like AD.

AlicetheKurious wrote…

Its power is in its inclusiveness: everyone is welcome to make their contribution, including Israelis. There's certainly no attempt to impose ideological or any other conformity.

It is precisely these strengths that are now under attack. The attack is subtle and, as all such attacks usually are, it is disguised in pseudo-moral terms. The Tony Greensteins of the world harass and threaten and intimidate the new Palestine solidarity activists into making humiliating and divisive public 'disavowals' of this or that writer to defend themselves against the charge of 'antisemitism'. Gilad Atzmon is not a racist; he is someone who demands his right to speak about his own background and experiences and his own insights about the apartheid culture in which he was raised and which he rejected so that he could live according to his humanist values, which he expresses in everything he does. But those who are using bullying and threats and defamation to shut him up are fascists, because as I said before, "fascist is as fascist does."

Big time
AlicetheKurious wrote…

Given the choice between having more Gilad Atzmons in the world, and more Tony Greensteins, it's strange indeed to suspect that so many people on an "anti-fascist" discussion board would choose the latter. But like Gilad Atzmon, I believe in open debate, and allowing others to decide for themselves. Even when I'm convinced they're misguided and wrong.

It’s hard to ‘debate’ slander or cut-n-paste.

C2W? we all have our faults but as Alice has pointed out, noticing the differences between givers and takers is a useful marker for ones discrimination.

[Searcher08]

C2w, thank you for your reply. This morning (UK) I had a thought...

The old saying "A picture can be worth a thousand words" could probably do with updating to "A video can be worth a thousand pictures". Rather than looking for a critique of Atzmon, which is his words mediated through another, what about his own voice. And applying the principle of 'what is sauce fir the goose is sauce for the gander', do this with Greenstein.

So I wondered if there was any video on Youtube of Greenstein, and of Atzmon. There was.
Personally, I found it very enlightening. So my reply, with a tip of the hat to IanEye, is below.

Tony Greenstein


Gilad Atzmon

[American Dream]

http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/15/n ... zmon-at-sw

No place for Atzmon at SW.org
July 15, 2010

Editor's note: On July 13, SocialistWorker.org published an interview with jazz musician and anti-Zionist writer Gilad Atzmon. After the interview's publication, we learned of many allegations that Atzmon has made not just highly inflammatory, but anti-Semitic statements about Jews, be they supporters or opponents of the state of Israel--and that he has associations with deniers of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. The evidence for these serious charges is damning.

We knew that Atzmon was a controversial figure among opponents of Israel when we ran our article, but not the full extent of these allegations. Needless to say, there was no trace of such ideas in his interview with SocialistWorker.org, or it never would have been published.

Nevertheless, we believe that our Web site, which is committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people and to the struggle against anti-Semitism, should not have published the interview without any reference to the controversy over someone who could make the comments and advance the ideas that he has--whatever his motives or reasoning. We therefore withdrew the article from our site.
**

I AM writing to express my deep dismay in finding out that SocialistWorker.org has published an interview with vile anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon ("Each village is a reminder," July 13).

Gilad Atzmon has revealed time and time again in his writings that he is less interested in being a part of a genuine anti-racist mass movement for the liberation of Palestine against Zionism than he is in trying to prove that there is something "inherently Jewish" about Zionist atrocities, attacking anti-Zionist Jews in England as "undercover Zionists" and, in the case of founder of the revolutionary anti-Zionist Israeli Socialist Organization, Moshe Machover, a "Judeo Marxist."

Atzmon has declared Machover to be worse than British neo-Nazi Nick Griffin, and in criticizing the printing of a speech by Moshe Machover in the International Socialist Review urged "Socialists and Marxists to save themselves from the Judeo political grip" and "consider liberating themselves of their tribal infiltrators." (If Moshe Machover's politics make him a "Judeo Marxist," then I am proud to identify as one--a Muslim Judeo-Marxist. Let's see how Atzmon tries to figure that one out.)

In addition to that, Atzmon has been known to circulate Holocaust denial literature and to associate with known fascists like the notorious racist Russian-Swede Israel Shamir, an open admirer of Hitler, David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nick Griffin and the neo-Nazi British National Party (although apparently being very disappointed that the BNP isn't doing more these days to attack Jews). Israel Shamir has said of Atzmon: "Gilad takes up the tools of modern philosophical discourse...to explain our position: why we are against domination by Judaic spirit."

Atzmon also has previously been condemned by Palestine solidarity activists Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish. Atzmon's pseudo-philosophical writings include quotes like this: "In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime."

SocialistWorker.org is the best publication on the U.S. left, and there is no place for a person who regularly spouts this kind of poisonous, bigoted garbage to have a voice there. To quote from a statement put out by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign against any legitimacy in the movement for Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir:

Anybody who insists that Jews must give up their Jewishness, or Catholics their Catholicism, before being allowed to join the anti-Zionist movement, or even line up alongside the vast army of critics of Israeli murder, is not just an idiot, but is a menace to the Palestinians...

Palestinians need mass support--it won't come by associating ourselves with extreme-right sympathizers who miss no opportunity to spew their racist bile into a movement for human and national rights for the Palestinian people. For the Palestinians are groaning under Zionism, which is armed and sustained by Western imperialism. Not a Jewish world conspiracy. One of these ideas is the natural discourse of the left and liberal center: one is a blind cul-de-sac propagated by the extreme right.


Safia Albaiti, Boston




.

[Searcher08]

Given the choice between having more Gilad Atzmons in the world, and more Tony Greensteins, it's strange indeed to suspect that so many people on an "anti-fascist" discussion board would choose the latter.

That was the conclusion I came to after seeing them both and reading their respective blogs.
Greenstein's left me feeling enervated, Atzmon's not. Which I understand is a subjective comment.

I have also come to the conclusion that Atzmon has a bit of a Frank Zappa - really enjoying shoving a stick into a hornets nest . For all his espoused socialism, I think Atzmon is more in a libertarian tradition. He doesn't give a crap what others think about him. Tony Greenstein communicates that Tony is right and is full of comradely solidarity for those who agree with him and Stalinest Re-education Camps for those who do not.

Greenstein reminds me of the collectivist baddie Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead. Except not as moosetache curling.


It also has given me a lot of pause for thought regarding what forms of activism might be the most successful; the role of paradox; music and politics; rigour and intuition.

[compared2what?]

You're being lied to. And not by me. But if you'd rather live in blindness to it, that's your affair, I guess.

[JackRiddler]

I have also come to the conclusion that Atzmon has a bit of a Frank Zappa - really enjoying shoving a stick into a hornets nest . For all his espoused socialism, I think Atzmon is more in a libertarian tradition. He doesn't give a crap what others think about him.

Notwithstanding that Frank Zappa would never descend to Atzmon's level - and I object to using a dead man who can't reject your association of him with Atzmon - I do actually have a similar impression of Mr. Atzmon's written work. He is enjoying the provocation, and doesn't give a crap about anything else. It doesn't matter if he believes the undeniably Nazi shit that he says. He probably doesn't. He seems rather to enjoy the reactions it prompts among Israelis and Jews, also leftists, also others who seek to make principled statements rather than just commit intellectual vandalism because it's fun. To call this childish may come across as a slur on children, but it does share in Freud's observation that a five-year-old would have no trouble destroying the whole world in a tantrum, just as Atzmon would have no trouble destroying the international Palestinian solidarity movement as collateral damage in the all-consuming task of angering his bad family and other people he doesn't like. Atzmon doesn't have a politics, he has a tantrum, and tantrums don't back down.

And so we're back to the nonsense with which this thread started, when some of Atzmon's defenders said he must be good because he annoys Dershowitz. So never mind what's good or right or true or logical or useful or constructive or principled - as long as it annoys Dershowitz, it's good. (Cutting up puppies and distributing the pieces around Dershowitz's home would probably also annoy him!) And so it has proceeded since, Atzmon's defenders trying to knock someone else or point to anything else in lieu of defending Atzmon's many indefensible statements. Why?

[AlicetheKurious]

You may have noticed that while entering the Book Shop a noisy group of ‘Anti Zionist Jews’ was picketing in the street. They were picketing against me, my friends, my message, our message or even any message in general. I can assure you that both the Shop and myself were inviting them to engage in this debate. As you may imagine, they clearly refused.

...Clearly, they hate me, they hate everything I stand for. But then why do they hate me so much? Because they know me very, very well. You ask how come they know me that well? Very simple, I am there, deep inside each of them, I am the one who raises those unbearably annoying questions. I am the one who asks what Jewishness stands for, what Jewish secularity means. I question the intrinsic relationships between Zionism and Jewishness. I am happy to openly discuss any Jewish historical narrative including the holocaust and they simply hate me.

...They all confront those questions on a daily basis but they cannot find the means within themselves to face the consequences of tackling those questions. They don’t even dare sitting with us in a room. Sitting here amongst you and me would mean as well being with oneself. It would mean confronting oneself. Instead of doing that they are engaged in the usual Talmudic symbolic game of labeling and smearing the messenger. Let’s admit it, killing the messenger is an intrinsic part of the Jewish historic narrative.

...Rather than looking at the world, I am basically looking into myself. I come out with music, literature and ideas. Whether my work is of any quality is down to you to decide. Whether I manage to say something about the world, days will tell. Some of you will read my books and I am pretty sure that you can make up your minds. But when it comes to those who were picketing out there earlier on, it is categorically clear, they are not going to make up their minds, they are not willing to be amongst others, or if to be more precise, they are not even willing to look into themselves. While we were sitting here in a book shop, they were engaged in burning books. This is the real meaning of the Jewish ghetto walls, whether it is the apartheid wall in Palestine or just a small separation wall here outside Bookmarks, London. Zionism is all about segregation, it is there to separate the Jews from the rest of humanity. It is so sad to find out that such a political disease contaminated even the very few Jews who declared to be its opponents. I wish those anti Zionist Jews well and I want to believe that sooner or later they will emancipate themselves. They will then come to sit with us.
- Gilad Atzmon, Sex and Politics

Who Is Gilad Atzmon… and, Who Are We?

A review of The Wandering Who, by Gilad Atzmon

by Gary Corseri / March 24th, 2012

Caution! Do not enter this book unless you are prepared for serious self-examination, self-dialogue, and a dialectic with an astute listener, challenger, provocateur and wit. Leave notions, assumptions, biases—positive and negative—at the doors of your perception—which are about to be vigorously cleansed! Be prepared for topic sentences like this: “My grandfather was a charismatic, poetic, veteran Zionist terrorist.”

The author of such disarming prose, the grandson of that “veteran Zionist,” is internationally-acclaimed musician and composer, Gilad Atzmon. Born and raised in Israel–a Sabra—Atzmon, like his peers, “didn’t see the Palestinians” around him. “Supremacy,” he writes, “was brewed into our souls.”

And then a strange thing happened. “On a very late-night jazz programme, I heard Bird (Charlie Parker) with Strings. I was knocked down. The music was more organic, poetic, sentimental and wilder than anything I had ever heard. …” And the most extraordinary thing about Atzmon’s first encounter with the iconic American saxophonist? “I realized that Parker was actually a black man. … In my world, it was only Jews who were associated with anyting good. Bird was the beginning of a journey.”

Now in his 50s, with a luminous musical career of his own, Atzmon has published two novels, and numerous essays and articles at websites and periodicals worldwide. The Wandering Who is a collection of 22 essays that serve as a baedeker for those who want to accompany him on his extraordinary “journey” of self-discovery and self-actualization. The book’s sectional titles include, “Identity vs. Identifying”; “Unconsciousness Is the Discourse of the Goyim”; “Historicity & Factuality vs. Fantasy and Phantasm”; and “Connecting the Dots.” Accompany Atzmon and one finds oneself sharpening one’s own tools for self-interrogation and reflection, wandering with him to discover our own elusive “who.”

His broad range of subjects include: identity; history; myths; perceptions and misperceptions; and the way “pre-traumatic stress” has shaped the nation of Israel, and, indeed, shaped much of our world these past 60-odd years. That first encounter with “Bird” opened Atzmon to the world of possibilities beyond Israel’s self-imposed, exclusionary borders: “Through music… I learned to listen. Rather than looking at history or analysing its evolution in material terms, it is listening that stands at the core of deep comprehension. Ethical behaviour comes into play when the eyes are shut and the echoes of conscience can form a tune within one’s soul. To empathise is to accept the primacy of the ear.”

His journey takes him to London in his 20s, where he hones his abilities to “listen” and “empathize” and establishes himself as a jazz musician who has been uniquely influenced by Arab music! And his mind is as agile as his fingering on his sax or clarinet: “In London, in what I often define as my ‘self-imposed exile,’ I grasped that Israel and Zionism were just parts of the wider Jewish problem.” We’re 15 pages into the book and Atzmon is broaching subject matter that could break a career in the U.S. or land him in jail in some parts of Europe! He is acutely aware of the thin ice he’s treading on, but he’s a born investigator and thinker, and he won’t be deterred: “… hardly any commentator is courageous enough to wonder what the word ‘Jew’ stands for. This question… is still taboo within Western discourse.” Our cicerone wants his readers and “listeners” to know that the road ahead will be arduous and even perilous:

“I deal with Jewish Ideology, Jewish identity politics, and the Jewish political discourse. I ask what being a Jew entails. I am searching for the metaphysical, spiritual and socio-political connotations.”

He divides “those who call themselves Jews” into three main categories:

1. Those who follow Judaism.
2. Those who regard themselves as human beings that happen to be of Jewish origin.
3. Those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits.

Throughout this book, it is the third category that Atzmon considers “problematic,” and which he probes with magnifying glass and scalpel. It is a category that includes Zionists and anti-Zionists, religious and non-religious Jews. He quotes Chaim Weizmann: “There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.” But, again, what exactly is “Jewish-ness”?

We travel down labyrinths of history, myths, power politics, enfranchisement and disenfranchisement to ferret meanings. Judaism, we find, is an amalgamation of stories, legends, poems composed during “the Babylonian exile”—and a sense of exile and alienation are categorical indicators of “Jewish-ness.” Important clues come in the Bible’s Book of Esther.

(Parenthetically, I’ll note here that during his recent visit to the US, reportedly to discuss what must be done about Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu handed the President of the world’s remaining super-power a copy of the Book of Esther. Whether or not the Prime Minister accompanied the gift with an order to “Read it!”—has not been reported!)

“In the Book of Esther,” Atzmon writes, “the Jews rescue themselves, and even get to mete out revenge.” To wit: Haman, the Persian King’s Prime Minister, “plots to have all the Jews in the Persian empire killed in revenge for a refusal by Esther’s cousin Mordechai to bow to him in respect.” Esther, “a brave and beautiful Jewish queen,” has never revealed her “Jewish” identity to her husband, the King! But, now she warns him of Haman’s murderous plot. The King has Haman and his 10 sons–innocent bystanders, really–hanged on gallows originally intended for Mordechai and allows the Jews to take up arms and slay their enemies.

“The moral,” writes Atzmon, is clear: “If Jews want to survive, they had better infiltrate the corridors of power.” And this imperative to bond with power is an essential characteristic of “Jewishness”—notable in Esther’s time and in our contemporary world of AIPAC, think-tanks, media mesmerism and “message” control.

If the roots of “Jewishness”—separateness and “exceptionalism,” non-assimilation, exilic indoctrination—are discernable in the old-time religion of the Book of Esther, they ramify into something remarkably different—yet genetically akin—in what Atzmon and others call “the Holocaust religion.” “Jewishness,” he writes, “is the materialisation of fear politics into a pragmatic agenda.” In the modern Holocaust religion, vengeful, omnipotent Yahweh has been replaced by the unchallengeable “truths” of the Holocaust—past suffering cited to justify Israel’s ethnic cleansing and expansionism, its formidable arsenal of nukes and other weapons, its threats and wars of aggression.

“It took me many years,” Atzmon writes, “to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative, freely debated by historians, intellectuals and ordinary people. … historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and political lobbies. … The fate of my great-grandmother was not so different from hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in deliberate, indiscrimate bombing, just because they were Germans. Similarly, the people in Hiroshima, who died just because they were Japanese. Three million Vietnamese died just because they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were Iraqis.”

In many ways, Atzmon’s book is a cri de coeur addressed to Jews, specifically, but to humanity, generally, to grow up! To reach beyond tribalism and the politics of fear and vengeance. His style is dialectical, positing thesis and antithesis, arguing with himself and anticipating his readers’ (or opponents’) arguments to arrive at a plausible synthesis.

The book is also a House of Mirrors—distorted and non-so—and Atzmon is our guide as he meditates on the various reflected aspects of himself and others while searching for the true notes and the high notes. Link

[AlicetheKurious]

Lenni Brenner wrote an email to Gilad Atzmon in 2007. Gilad answered it. Here is their exchange:

February 15, 2007

"Are You a Christian?"
"Do I Look Like the Pope?"
by LENNI BRENNER & GILAD ATZMON

Brenner to Atzmon:

Hi Gilad,

People tell me so many things about you, that I decided to get some answers straight from the horse’s mouth, as we Yanks say.

Are you a Christian? Was Jesus human only, or divine in whole or part? Was he the messiah? Is he coming again? Do you accept the New Testament as divinely inspired?

Did you write:

"I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all; the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew. But then two questions should be asked:

1 – How is it that people living today feel accountable or chased for a crime committed by their great great ancestors almost 2,000 ago? I assume that those Jews who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus are those who identify themselves with Jesus’s killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today. Those Jews are called Zionists and they are already advancing into their sixth decade of inhuman crimes against the Palestinian people and the Arab world.

Zionism, for those who do not know, is a repetition of the darkest age of the Jewish Biblical era."

Does any living Jew have any responsibility for Jesus’s death? Am I responsible? Do I have to atone for his death? Do I have to accept that he rose from the dead?

Thanks, in advance, for your time and trouble in this regard,

Lenni

BrennerL21@aol.com

New York, February 9, 2007

Atzmon to Brenner:




Lenni: Hi Gilad,

People tell me so many things about you, that I decided to get some answers straight from the horse’s mouth, as we Yanks say.



Gilad: Hi Lenni, I do appreciate it!



Lenni: Are you a Christian?



Gilad: Not that it is your business (in case you didn’t know, Christianity is not pedophilia, it is allowed these days), however, I am an ex Jew. I didn’t formally join any organised religion and this includes: Islam or Christianity as well as your UK Bundist friends’ version of Talmudic Marxism (a religion rather than an ideology).



Lenni: Was Jesus human only, or divine in whole or part?



Gilad: What a pathetic question Lenni. How am I supposed to know? Do you know? Having been trained in philosophy, I will try to help you to refine your question. What you want to ask is whether I BELIEVE that Jesus was divine.

My answer, Mr. Brenner, is very very simple. I do not engage in questions having to do with divinity. And my own belief is irrelevant because I am not religious. Yet, I do respect the FACT that very many people around me believe that Jesus was divine. Unlike you and your UK friends, I do respect other people’s beliefs. In fact I respect any form of spiritual activity. I admire people who are inspired by divinity. I admire Torah Jews, who are the only noticeable Jewish collective resistance to Zionism. In case you ask yourself where I find divinity, my answer is very simple: Coltrane, Stravinsky and Bach, but this changes often.



Lenni: Was he (Jesus) the messiah? Is he coming again? Do you accept the New Testament as divinely inspired?



Gilad: Lenni, do I look like the Pope? How am I supposed to know whether Jesus was the Messiah? Again, do you know the answers? My affair with Jesus is rather metaphysical. I regard Jesus as a critical ethical awakening. For me Christ is all about loving your neighbour. Jesus is the birth of western universal humanism (as we know it). Following Hegel, I am inspired by the notion of Otherness, and ‘Master Slave Dialectic’. However, the notion of Otherness is nothing but Christ’s heritage. I suggest that you think about it for a while.

I would like to mention as well that your dismissal of Christianity and religion in general is rather disconcerting. However, without me being Christian, I must insist to remind you and your half a dozen UK followers that the days when Jews chased Christians are over.



Lenni: Did you write:

"I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all; the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew. But then two questions should be asked:

1 – How is it that people living today feel accountable or chased for a crime committed by their great great ancestors almost 2,000 ago? I assume that those Jews who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus are those who identify themselves with Jesus’s killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today.

Those Jews are called Zionists and they are already advancing into their sixth decade of inhuman crimes against the Palestinian people and the Arab world.

Zionism, for those who do not know, is a repetition of the darkest age of the Jewish Biblical era."



Gilad: Yes indeed, these are my words and I stand by them.



Lenni: Does any living Jew have any responsibility for Jesus’s death?



Gilad: Lenni, did you lose your capability to grasp a very simple text? I would really like you to present just how my text implies that I accuse contemporary Jews for killing Christ or for being responsible for it. In fact the text says the complete opposite. I ask: "How is it that people living today feel accountable or chased for a crime committed by their great great ancestors almost 2,000 ago?" In other words, I find it astonishing that people today happen to be offended by such accusations.



Lenni: Am I responsible? Do I have to atone for his death? Do I have to accept that he rose from the dead?



Gilad: Lenni, do I look like a shrink? I really leave this question to you. It is you who should answer whether you ‘feel’ responsible or not. By no means does my text imply that you or anyone else is responsible. The text says that those who are offended are "those who identify themselves with Jesus’s killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today." Accordingly, it is you who should ask yourself whether you would commit such a crime today.

Once again, you may want to refine your question. The question you want to ask is whether I BELIEVE that you are responsible.

No is the answer. I don’t BELIEVE that you are responsible; moreover I KNOW that you are not responsible. Nevertheless, my text implies as well that you MAY not be as innocent as you wish to be. In my text I stress that "I assume that those Jews who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus are those who identify themselves with Jesus’s killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today."

Seemingly, you are ‘angry’, you feel accused of something without even being accused of anything. On the face of it, the question you have to ask yourself is whether you identify yourself with Christ’s killers? I am pretty sure that you don’t and you shouldn’t be. However, I must tell you that the cyber kangaroo courts that you and your friends hold on a daily basis reminds me too much of the Sanhedrin. I suggest that you think about that as well for a while.

Somehow you and those like you know what is good for the Palestinians, the Jews, the working class. I occasionally ask myself what it is that makes you so confident. You and your followers indeed have managed to silence some of the most interesting intellects around just because you do not approve their politics or religion. I am afraid to inform you Lenni, that these days are over. Your six UK disciples are working day and night for more than three years doing their very best to silence me, I am afraid to tell you that they fail. In fact they achieve the opposite instead.

I do not feel sorry for them because they have really zero reputation to defend. But I really feel sorry for you Lenni. You are an important contributor to the Israeli-Palestinian discourse. Your books are more than valuable. You have a reputation to defend. I would like to see you in the midst of the discourse rather than surrounded by the last shadows of echoes of tribal socialism.

Just before closing this email I will sharpen the differences between us.

Unlike you Lenni, I believe in freedom of speech. Unlike you Lenni, I am against gatekeeping, I am also against any form of dogmatic or monolithic discourses of hegemony. Unlike you and your friends, I believe that every human subject is entitled to human rights. Unlike you Lenni, I approve of the Hamas. Unlike you Lenni, I understand that working class politics has very little relevance in Arabia.

Yet, I have never tried to silence anyone, on the contrary. I will fight for your right to speak your mind.



Lenni: Thanks, in advance, for your time and trouble in this regard,



Gilad: It was my entire pleasure.

All the best

Gilad

atzmon@mac.com

London, February 11, 2007

Link

[Searcher08]

I have also come to the conclusion that Atzmon has a bit of a Frank Zappa - really enjoying shoving a stick into a hornets nest . For all his espoused socialism, I think Atzmon is more in a libertarian tradition. He doesn't give a crap what others think about him.

Notwithstanding that Frank Zappa would never descend to Atzmon's level - and I object to using a dead man who can't reject your association of him with Atzmon - I do actually have a similar impression of Mr. Atzmon's written work. He is enjoying the provocation, and doesn't give a crap about anything else. It doesn't matter if he believes the undeniably Nazi shit that he says. He probably doesn't.

The only way we could settle the Zappa question would be with a Medium And Or a Near-Death Experience.

The parallel with Zappa is worth exploring a bit more...

I want a hairy little jewish princess
With a brand new nose, who knows where it goes
I want a steamy little jewish princess
With over-worked gums, who squeaks when she cums
I don't want no troll
I just want a yemenite hole

From the excellent songfacts site
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=7286

A Jewish Princess is a stereotype of a bratty, privileged Jewish girl. This song attracted attention from the Anti-Defamation League, to which Zappa denied an apology, arguing: "Well, I didn't make up the idea of a Jewish Princess. They exist, so I wrote a song about them." (thanks, Mischa - Winnipeg, Canada)
There have been several biographies of the inimitable Mr. Zappa, including by Barry Miles, whose book, Frank Zappa, was published by Atlantic Books of London in 2005.
Herein, Miles says of the song and of the reaction of the ADL and Zappa's non-reaction to the ADL's reaction:
'"Jewish Princess" brought Zappa up against the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), a powerful Jewish lobby group who filed a protest with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to have the record banned from airplay (a rather pointless exercise, as Zappa's album tracks never received airplay anyway), claiming that it contained "vulgar, sexual and anti-Semitic references which leave very little to the imagination."
Zappa replied: "I used to think that Jewish people had a sense of humour before I got that letter from the ADL..." adding "The ADL is a noisemaking organisation that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time. They go around saying that other people are saying things that produce stereotype images of Jews."

Zappa Interview
IE: What was your response to the ADL's protest of "Jewish Princess"?

Zappa: It's very simple. l don't think that the ADL is a rational organization. I think their attack on me is unwarranted and irrational. Any ethnic group which maintains an organization which amounts to an advertising agency is in trouble. The ADL is an advertising agency for Jewishness. They manufacture a freeze-dried fake image of all Jewish people that they sell to anybody who is not Jewish. They imply that all Jews are the same. That's not true. It's a waste of time to try and advertise like that and to control the image of a whole people. There's no way that the Jewish people can live up to the artificial description that the ADL wants to put out.

IE: Can't you understand their concern?

Zappa: No, not at all. Are they trying to tell me that Jewish princesses don't exist? If they are, they're really wrong. If they do exist what's the big deal? What's the harm of the song?

He seems rather to enjoy the reactions it prompts among Israelis and Jews, also leftists, also others who seek to make principled statements rather than just commit intellectual vandalism because it's fun. To call this childish may come across as a slur on children, but it does share in Freud's observation that a five-year-old would have no trouble destroying the whole world in a tantrum, just as Atzmon would have no trouble destroying the international Palestinian solidarity movement if it angers people he doesn't like. Atzmon doesn't have a politics, he has a tantrum, and tantrums don't back down.

Another way of looking at it - Atzmon may have another motivation for doing it, which is to act as a deliberate provocation in order to create a change in state in the system.

In an argument system based on truth / falsity, one only seeks that.
Sadly, that doesnt reflect the way the brain processes information.

And so we're back to the nonsense with which this thread started, when some of Atzmon's defenders said he must be good because he annoys Dershowitz.

Venn diagrams.
By and large, if something occurs within the Middle East context around Desrhowitz, that is still a useful guide.

James Bamford of The Washington Post described one of the practices recommended by Dershowitz—the "sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails"—as "chillingly Nazi-like."

So never mind what's good or right or true or logical or useful or constructive or principled - as long as it annoys Dershowitz, it's good.

<rolls eyes> You didn't then and still do not see the intended humour in that.
You are setting what I said in binary categories. I reject a mandatory "Either / Or".
Don't impose your binary logic on me

Constructive thinking is looking at the value of something and spelling it out.
When I asked what was positive about Atzmon, there was a silence from his detractors.
Why?

(Cutting up puppies and distributing the pieces around Dershowitz's home would probably also annoy him!)

Actually that is a very good illustration, because it would annoy me too - Dershowitz does seem to be interested in moving forward Animal Rights.

And so it has proceeded since, Atzmon's defenders trying to knock someone else or point to anything else in lieu of defending Atzmon's many indefensible statements. Why?

If you are looking at Atzmon from a frame of truth/falsity, then the whole conversation becomes one of establishing those. You could go through every sentence in every one of his books and articles and investigate it for truth / falsity, in the same tradition that JREF did with Screw Loose Change. Create an AtzmonWatch Wiki. If that floats your boat, then go for it.

I think personally that this misses his very probable deliberate provocation effect.

There are people who have posted on this thread who are straight out of Tony Greenstein's mould... and my heart says that is not going to be a good thing for Palestinians. At all.
The 'cognitive immune system' around Palestinian Rights and Jewish Anti-Zionism certainly seems to have been activated by 'antigen' Atzmon - to the point of it issuing multiple 'He Is Not With Us' fatwas / edicts.
In a gestalt sense, I see this as a 'ground' that the 'figure' of Atzmon is in, that is worth discussing. The 'ground' contains his prime detractors like Greenstein and what they DO as opposed to what they say.


As an exercise, remove Atzmon from a Jewish frame; transplant into an Irish one

An investigation of Irishness deserves to look at questions like:
What was the role of the Irish to themselves during the Famine?
How were they involved in it's occurrence?
"During the 1950's , why did landladies in England often have a sign that said
No Blacks No Dogs No Irish ?"
"What is it about Irishness that seems to exude corruption in business?"
"What is it about Irishness and authority - we are very selective rebels..against the Evil English yes, against the priest err... ?"

No doubt these would be see by some people as 'deeply offensive'.

Set up and ask very provocative questions of one's own cultural identity.

I am proud of my Celtic ancestry (Alesia was one of the greatest disasters in human history) - AND it's a worthwhile process to engage in this. Seeing where extremely provocative questions lead is something I can explore and make my own mind up about.