AlicetheKurious wrote:compared2what? wrote:Gilad Atzmon is not talking about a real culture. Rather, he is purveying the exact same bearded old myth that's been successfully keeping people from seeing the world they live in clearly enough and with fresh enough eyes to make it into what they want it to be for pretty much the entirety of the modern era so far.
On the contrary, it is Gilad Atzmon who is exposing the toxic ideology of secular, modern "Jewish identity", which equates between "Jewishness" and "victimhood" regardless of objective reality, which does not protect actual victims, but in fact surrounds racist oppressors and war criminals with a halo of sanctity. It is Atzmon who makes sense of such otherwise inexplicable phenomena such as Netanyahu's cloaking himself in the Holocaust, while also using 'Jewish' code words to advocate genocide and catastrophic war, and heading a state that is systematically robbing and terrorizing the indigenous Palestinians in order to replace them with racist Jewish colonies.
I don't know to whom that's inexplicable. I mean, take a look at the media coverage of those Iran/Holocaust remarks of Netanyahu's I referred to upthread. The consensus is:
Netanyahu is cloaking himself in the Holocaust to advocate genocide and catastrophic war.
In both the United States and Israel, there's support for his policies on the right and opposition to them on the left, so-called. His refusal to halt settlement construction, in particular, was roundly condemned even by usually stalwart supporters of Israel, such as David Remnick, Jeffrey Goldberg, and the United States government. And he doesn't exactly get a lot of love for his position on Iran from those quarters, either.
Besides which, if the thesis offered by The Wandering Who? explains everything, how do you account for its not being the only recent high-profile book by a Jewish author that addresses the insupportability of Israel's crimes against Palestinians and rejects them unequivocally? (Peter Beinart, I mean.)
It is Gilad Atzmon's analysis that clarifies why Simon Wiesenthal's organization, which bills itself as "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time" actively promotes the most vile racist agitation against Muslims in the US, and is bulldozing an ancient and archeologically priceless Muslim cemetery dating back over a thousand years in Jerusalem, in order to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on the site.
I'm sorry to say that I don't know enough about that to comment on it. But it certainly doesn't strike me as an action that requires some elaborate and special hypothesis about "Jewishness" in order to be comprehended. The United States, which bills itself as a defender of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, also actively promotes the most vile racist agitation against Muslims at home, and destroys ancient and archeologically priceless Muslim sites. And claims to be doing so for heroic reasons. That kind of thing is a very common phenomenon, throughout the entire history of the world, though it's not always directed at Muslims, obviously.
It is Gilad Atzmon, who can explain why acting in solidarity with the victims of racist oppression is equated with "antisemitism" by those who support the "Jewish state", and insist that all Jews must do so, based on their "Jewish identity", or be labeled "self-hating Jews".
Yeah. Why would they have to insist on it if it came so naturally and was so profoundly ingrained? Ever ask yourself that?
It is Atzmon, who provides a rational framework for understanding your bizarre claim that in places like California, Jewish Americans are victims of institutionalized prejudice, while you blithely and callously dismiss all the evidence that Muslims are, and your constant denials that leading Jewish authorities are active in a massive racist campaign against Muslims.
I made no such bizarre claim, precisely. If you want to dispute the claims made by the State of California, take it up with them. As I've already indicated, I doubt I'm going to follow up on what I did say about institutional racism. Too much work. So feel free to characterize that claim as "unsupported." Because it is, effectively.
I have never blithely and callously dismissed all the evidence that Muslims are victims of any kind of prejudice. The video you posted very, very clearly shows vile and reprehensible prejudice against Muslims. It just doesn't show a hate crime,
And I've also never denied that leading Jewish authorities are active in a massive racist campaign against Muslims, for pity's sake.
Please stop misrepresenting me.
It is Atzmon who can make sense of why that great humanist, Elie Wiesel, refuses to even acknowledge the massacre his terrorist group committed in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, on the principle that he "will not say bad things about Jews", notwithstanding that this "messenger to mankind" at his 1986 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Wiesel "swore never to be silent when human beings endure suffering and humiliation". What, exactly, is this "messenger's" message to mankind? What accounts for Wiesel's halo of sainthood, despite his callous, racist hypocrisy? According to Gilad Atzmon's analysis of "Jewish ideology" there is no contradiction, and this is why people like Wiesel continue to be widely acclaimed as moral beacons for the rest of us.
Again, I don't know enough about the concrete details of that to comment on it, specifically. But again, it doesn't strike me as requiring any special Jew-centric explanation. Damnable hypocrites are sometimes revered as saints. Regularly, even.
compared2what? wrote:Atzmon is selling a bill of goods that is, was, always has been and always will be propaganda. It is, was, always has been and always will be beneficial exclusively to a few war-mongering totalitarian psychopathic powers -- such as, atm, Israel -- and nobody else. It doesn't wish you well. Buying into it is a mistake. Don't waste your passion and energy on it. You're too good for that.
You have a strange definition of 'propaganda': Atzmon, unlike you, does not insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that "Jewishness" has nothing to do with the "Jewish state" nor the "Jewish solidarity" upon which it depends.
I don't insist that. I insist that Atzmon's characterization of "Jewishness" is utter bullshit in some regards, which very effectively undermines whatever truth and applicability the parts of it that are truly applicable to Israeli policy, which is not universally embraced, approved or supported by all Israelis, all zionists, or all Jews.
Only a few days after Israel had rained down burning phosphorous and missiles on the dispossessed, trapped and already starving refugee population in Gaza concentration camp, burning alive hundreds of helpless human beings, even small babies, this took place in Seattle, America:They waved Israeli flags and sang the country's national anthem, as well as "Am Yisroel Chai" -- or the People of Israel live.
A week after more than 500 pro-Palestinian supporters marched in Seattle to oppose Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, a group three times that size met Sunday at Temple De Hirsch Sinai on Capitol Hill and called for Jewish solidarity.
At the rally, the largely Jewish audience denounced Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, for launching thousands of rocket strikes on Israel in recent years, and said countries have the right to defend themselves.
"Let me be clear: Israel isn't fighting the Palestinian people. ... Our enemy is Hamas," said Ismail Khaldi, deputy consul general at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle was the lead organizer of the rally, which received support from about 30 other groups.
Richard Fruchter, federation president, reminded the audience of "brutal terrorist" attacks on Jews in recent years, including ones in Mumbai, Buenos Aires and the 2007 deadly shooting in Seattle at the organization's downtown office.
"We must stand together in support of Jews anywhere in the world ... and especially here, today, in solidarity with Israel, our homeland," he said. Link
Richard Fruchter does not speak for all Jews.
Is it you, or Gilad Atzmon whose explanation accurately reflects what these people mean by "Jewish solidarity"?
I don't recall offering an explanation for that. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me.
Is it you, or Gilad Atzmon who demystifies the belief in a transcendent "Jewish victimhood" and how it is used to justify even the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity?
I'm not sure what you're talking about, and thus cannot respond.
If the apartheid, terrorist state of Israel has nothing to do with "Jewishness", then how do you explain the fact that so many American Jews proclaim it to be their 'homeland'?
I might equally ask you:
If the apartheid, terrorist state of Israel has everything to do with "Jewishness," then how do you explain the fact that so many Christians are (and have been, from the get) so fanatically dedicated to proclaiming it the homeland of the Jews?
Or
If the apartheid, terrorist state of Israel has everything to do with "Jewishness," then how do you explain the fact that so many American Jews do not proclaim it to be their "homeland"?
Or
If the apartheid, terrorist state of Israel has everything to do with "Jewishness," then how do you explain the fact that so few Jews were at all interested in either establishing it or living there, prior to its foundation?
My point being that "Jewishness" is not actually an adequate or accurate explanation of reality, huge swathes of which have to be ignored in order to preserve the validity of Atzmon's argument.
Why do they donate billions of dollars to Israel, and how come such donations to a state where Jewish citizens enjoy a high standard of living are tax deductible under US law, even when they go to the Israeli army, which enforces a racist, illegal occupation, or even armed, racist settlers on Palestinian land?These ‘sponsorships’ are considered as donations under American law and as such, are tax deductible - even if the money is used to buy rifle shoulder rests, a telescopic lens or infra-red binoculars. This is the case of the Nablus-area settlement of Elon Moreh and its nonprofit organization Friends of Elon Moreh, based in Passaic Park, New Jersey. According to its webpage: “Aside from the basic army equipment, the team needs special equipment which can help them in emergency situations”. The team, as a picture shows, is composed of 20 young adults, all religious, dressed in military-green and blue, armed with M-16, radios and armored vests.
This experience was considered so successful by the settlers and their American donors that they decided to export it to the forests of upstate New York. Kitat Konenut is devoted to prepare Jewish communities in the US for an eventual “anti-Semitic outbreak”. As the Jerusalem Post published three years ago, the organization charges $400 for a ten day training in the Catskills woodlands, on the property of a Jewish supporter. Some of the instructors are Israeli military veterans, who teach the young Americans to be ready for all kinds of threats, from a knife fight to “urban warfare”.
There is no other documented case in the United States of a foreign civilian armed force being equipped and trained publicly by American society through “donations”, which on top of everything benefit from tax deductions.
That's a joke, right?
And it is even rarer that in this age of the War on Terror and home-grown terrorism, the American authorities allow their citizens to openly train in urban warfare tactics. Yet additional proof of the special American-Israeli relationship. LinkPublished 02:33 25.03.12
Latest update 02:33 25.03.12
U.S. Jews' donations to Israel double in past 20 years, study shows
Study, due to be completed in April, disproves widely held view that philanthropic donations from the United States have dropped over economic, political reasons.
By Revital Blumenfeld Tags: Jewish World Jewish Diaspora
Donations by U.S. Jews to Israeli nonprofits have doubled during the past 12 years, according to a first-of-its-kind study conducted by professors at Brandeis University.
The study, scheduled to be completed in late April, disproves the widely held view by many Israelis that philanthropic donations from the United States have dropped over time due to economic and political reasons. In fact, the study - previewed last week during a hearing by the Knesset Subcommittee for the Relations of Israel with World Jewish Communities - suggests quite the opposite.
In 2007, various Israeli organizations received $2.1 billion from U.S. donors through the Jewish Agency and various "friendship" associations, according to findings by professors Theodore Sasson and Eric Fleisch, of the Cohen Center of Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. This is double what U.S. donors contributed 12 years earlier, when only $1.08 billion was raised in the United States for Israeli organizations.
"Most of the income of the leading organizations in Israel increased also when adjusted for inflation," Professor Sasson said in an interview with Haaretz. There has also been an increase in the number of U.S. organizations supporting Israel, he said, with the emergence of some 150 new pro-Israel groups in the United States in the 1990s, and some 280 emerging during the past decade.
While the research indicates that there was a 10-25 percent drop in donations during 2008 and 2009 - during the period of severe economic crisis in the United States - it suggests there was a substantial rise in donations in 2010, when the crisis began to subside.
"According to the partial data we have on the volume of contributions for 2010, we see that there is a clear rise in the amount of contributions," Sasson said. "Since some of the new organizations who joined did not yet file the data on their contributions, it is not possible to know definitively the size of the increase, but I believe that we will reach the record of 2007." Because of a drop in contributions to the Jewish Agency in recent years, "It was thought that Jews care less about Israel, but the situation suggests that U.S. Jewry is deeply committed to Israel," he said. Sasson says the main reason for the increase in contributions is not necessarily linked with a rise in Zionism, but to the increase in the number of donor collectors and their improved professionalism over the years.
"There is also the rise in the number of NGOs and the fact that since 2000 there have been NGOs who raise funds directly and not through the Jewish Agency or the [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee], as in the past," he said. Link
What's your point?
You call Atzmon's ideas "propaganda", when it is you who insists on promoting an artificial separation between the Israeli state and the massive support and legitimation it receives from Jewish communities elsewhere.
No. I do not. I insist on calling it what it is, and on not calling it what it isn't.
Like I said earlier, opposing Israel's crimes without addressing the support network that finances and otherwise enables them, is like trying to put out a gas fire without turning off the gas. It only serves those who want to keep the fire going, while pretending to work hard at putting it out.
I agree. But nobody's suggesting that Israel's support network not be addressed. Except, implicitly, you and Atzmon, insofar as you and Atzmon refuse to acknowledge that Israel is supported by anyone besides Jews, or for any reason apart from Jewishness, thus neatly revising the entire Cold War completely out of the picture. Among other things.
Which is pretty much precisely why your approach is never going to get you anywhere, btw. There are other powerful forces out there.
Atzmon's analytical paradigm also helps us to understand why and how so many self-proclaimed "Jewish Palestine solidarity activists" have managed to destroy or render ineffective every Palestine solidarity movement that they've taken over.
Be serious.
It makes sense of such incidents such as "Palestine solidarity activists" exerting enormous efforts to cancel an important fundraising concert for Medical Aid for Palestine following an Israeli massacre, and then, when after failing to do so, threatening and harassing Medical Aid for Palestine to get them to refuse the money raised.
It explains how Tony Greenstein can boast about his "success" in disrupting a concert by an Israeli orchestra, when in fact his actions provoked widespread sympathy for the Israelis and antipathy towards the Palestine solidarity movement in whose name he speaks.
It also explains how the UK's largest Palestine solidarity organization, the PSC, whose board Greenstein and his gang currently dominate, diverted everybody's attention to their noisy campaign to boycott a play in London by an Israeli theater troupe, which actually led to the Israeli play being sold out, while at the same time ignoring a play produced by a Palestinian theater company from the occupied territories, so that it received little or no publicity.
It explains why the PSC ignored one of the few solidarity events run by and for Palestinians, commemorating the Deir Yassin massacre, a pivotal wound in Palestinian history, while aggressively imposing their own feverish obsession with "antisemitism" as the central issue of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Yeah. I see another explanation for that stuff, which I don't see as being at the heart and center of the conflict, frankly.
In effect, it is you who is promoting a myth, and propaganda, that obscures far more than it enlightens. And you try to discredit Gilad Atzmon (and, by implication, anybody who disagrees with your assessment of him) by implying or stating outright that Gilad Atzmon is a fascist, warmonger, "antisemite" and so on.
I think he's wrong and dangerous. Nor do I seek to discredit those who disagree with me. I just seek to disagree with them creditably.
This, despite the fact that you've provided not one shred of evidence, none at all, that either Gilad Atzmon or anybody here is in any way a fascist; on the contrary:fas·cism
noun \ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\
Definition of FASCISM
1
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2
: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>
...let alone a "warmonger" or anything but a strong and consistent advocate for equal human and legal rights for all people, unconditionally.
I don't claim that he's a fascist or a warmonger. I don't know him. I maintain that the bullshit he's peddling does not benefit anyone except for fascists and warmongers. For reasons that I've already outlined.
In other words, you are using "prejudicial language", in which "loaded or emotive terms are used to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition," and conversely, "loaded or emotive terms" to attach negative or moral badness to those who disagree with your proposition.
This is a classic tool of demagoguery, which, in the case of someone as intelligent and knowledgeable and normally respectful of others as yourself, suggests that you lack serious, credible arguments based on facts and logic, to support your case. Otherwise, you would have certainly used them, instead.
I have. You're just misrepresenting them. You might want to try quoting me in context. It might help.
