Zionists Out of the Peace Movement

He celebrates Passover, so why not Hanukkah, too?



Last night, the "first Jewish President" celebrated Hanukkah at the White House. Barack Obama underscored the nationalistic nature of Judaism by addressing opening remarks to Israeli ambassador Michael Oren and the people of Israel.

To cheers from the audience, Obama also noted, "One third of the Supreme Court is here." Of course, with his nomination of Elena Kagan, Obama himself helped ensured that an ethno-religious group comprising less than 2% of the US population would occupy three of the nine slots on the Supreme Court while the largest segment of the US population--Protestant Christians--is wholly unrepresented.

After a few more intros, Obama recited an abbreviated version of the Hanukkah story, neglecting to mention, of course, that the 'Maccabean revolt' that spawned the holiday was as much a religious civil war instigated by violent fanatics as it was a revolt against "the yoke of empire." Today, violent religious fanatics--Jewish and Christian--and their lackeys head an empire that far exceeds the scope of the Seleucid empire. That empire insures the Jewish state's existence and wages wars on its behalf in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Also left out of the Obama's remarks is any mention of Israel's 2008-09 Hanukkah Massacre that killed 1,400 Palestinians or the millions of living Palestinians "who still suffer under tyranny and oppression". The clip ends with a saxophone performance by Joshua Redman. Too bad the White House didn't invite Gilad Atzmon and his sax, instead.

Labels: Gilad Atzmon, Hanukkah, Israel, Jewish violence, Judaism, Obama

In a comment to "Time to Choose,"Joe Kane provided me with a link to a smear blog by Tony Greenstein (?) entitled Anti-Zionists against Anti-Semitism and I'm glad because reading some of the posts I was led to the brilliant Gilad Atzmon piece excerpted below. I hope Joe didn't send it to me because he agrees with the AZAAS blog. If that's the case then I hope he'll give Eisen (also targeted on the blog) and Atzmon a fair hearing, they're both in the UK like Joe.

I confess to not liking some of Israel Shamir's writings but I am almost always challenged by them and as Kafka said, "... we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us." Moreover, I've never read anything by him or Gilad Atzmon that satisifies any valid definition of 'anti-Semitic.' So far as I can see, the AZAAS blog doesn't refute anything Atzmon or Shamir have written, it's just more of the same sorry old smear tactics without much substance. Thus, it is not unlike the hatchet job Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish tried to do on Israel Shamir back in 2001. That is, before Ibish turned against Abunimah, Joseph Massad, and As'ad AbuKhalil for being insufficiently condemnatory of Hamas in 2006.

One of the most recent pieces on the AZAAS blog is about Norman Finkelstein. He has a great bit in his latest book that's spot on re: 'anti-Semitism' that I've quoted here before:

Wrapping themselves in the mantle of The Holocaust, these Jewish elites pretend—and, in their own solipsistic universe, perhaps imagine themselves—to be victims, dismissing any and all criticism as manifestations of "anti-Semitism." And, from this lethal brew of formidable power, chauvinistic arrogance, feigned (or imagined) victimhood, and Holocaust-immunity to criticism has sprung a terrifying recklessness and ruthlessness on the part of American Jewish elites. Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today.

It's sad there's so much of this bogus 'anti-Semite' baiting going on in the Palestinian solidarity movement. It's probably one of the greatest obstacles to the movement that there is today and it underscores the importance of getting "Zionists Out of the Peace Movement." It's also important, of course, to disabuse sincere anti-Zionists of the poisonous indoctrination about Jews and 'anti-Semitism' that so many of them us have internalized. Orwell said, "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy means unconsciousness." This crap about Shamir, Atzmon, and Paul Eisen being 'anti-Semites,' mostly boils down to the mindless spouting of orthodoxy, at best.

Well, here are the above mentioned excerpts from " 'NOT IN MY NAME’ – An analysis of Jewish righteousness" by Gilad Atzmon, 13 June 2004:

‘There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.’
Chaim Weizman August 1897, at the First Zionist Congress

I understand Zionists, I think that they are the biggest threat to world peace, I argue that they are war criminals, I fight them and I try to bring them down. I write about them, I compose music against them but I understand their logic. I understand their tricks, I know exactly where they are aiming and I do my best to stop them.

By contrast, I really do not understand those who fight Zionism in the name of their secular Jewish identity. I have never understood them. I have never really understood what secularism means for the Jewish people. Do they refer to a hidden core of Jewish secular ethic philosophy? I have always failed to understand those secular Jews who declare ‘not in my name’, those who claim to be ‘atheists’ and ‘enlightened humanists’ but at the same time talk in the name of a strange tribal brotherhood. There are many of them: Jews for peace, Jews for Palestine, Jews against oppression, Jews for human rights, Marxist Jews, Jews for this and Jews for that. More than often they approach me and ask for my support. Obviously, I share most if not all of their humanistic views but I always have to turn them down. I cannot understand why they choose to act under a strange clannish umbrella. If peace is that important, why turn it into a marginal business? If human rights are a universal aim why not fight for them among the rest of the humankind.

Facing my criticism they produce the same two arguments:

1. They say that being Jewish makes their views sound stronger.

2. And they say that in light of the crimes committed by Zionism in the name of the Jewish people it makes sense to prove to the world that, in fact, there are more than a few ‘good Jews’ around.

The first argument is weak and counter-effective to its very cause. In fact, to offer such an argument is to admit to a certain degree of intellectual dishonesty. If we believe in the transparency of a rational argument we must accept that the ethnic origin of an argument’s provider should not have any effect on its validity. Consequently, being a Jew doesn’t cover any argumentative flaws. If Zionism is categorically wrong, then the racial or ethnic belonging of its critics is irrelevant.

The second argument is, at first sight, more convincing. Jewish leftists occasionally claim that Zionism stains world Jewry with its continuous criminal activity. The logic behind such a statement is fairly straightforward. On the one hand, Zionism presents itself as the official voice of the Jewish people. On the other hand, Zionism is daily engaged with serious war crimes and atrocities. The synthesis of the two leads to the conclusion that world Jewry is criminally liable for the Zionist crimes. Theoretically speaking, those Jews who refuse to accept responsibility are more than entitled to stand up against Zionism. They usually apply the ‘not in my name’ strategy; sometimes they define themselves as ‘humanist Jews’ or even ‘Jews for peace’. Superficially their actions appear noble; in fact, it is with these actions that the real problems start. By saying not in ‘my’ name, they label the rest of the Jewish people as criminally liable for Zionist crime. I will try to elucidate this point.

... While Zionism appointed itself from its early days to talk and to act on behalf of the Jewish people, it is actually the sporadic rebels who criticise Zionism in the name of their Jewish secular identity who affirm the Zionist ‘totalitarian’ agenda. Bizarrely enough, it is the Jewish Left which turns Zionism into the official voice of the Jewish people.

... It is the enlightened Jewish leftist who crowns Zionism as the voice of the Jewish people. We are thus entitled to consider that all Jewish people – except Moishe’l, Yitzchak’l and Yanke’l who apparently have proved themselves to be ‘Jewish peace activists’, ‘Jewish human rights enthusiasts’, ‘Marxists Jew’ etc. – support or at least are liable for Zionist crimes. Though I would appear to be blaming ‘good Jews’ for affirming Zionism I am fairly sure that those who apply such methods of resistance are far from being vicious. They are just naïve. They are presumably unaware of the implications of their marginal humanistic attitude. They no doubt do not understand that by fighting Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity they approve Zionism. They must fail to realise that their form of resistance contributes to the labelling of the entire Jewish people as war criminals.

The Birth of Evil

We face here a carefully conceived trap set by early Zionist ideologists. Zionists would argue that every Jew is a Zionist unless proved different. Until recently I myself fell into this trap; I argued that every Jew who felt unease with Zionist crimes should do their utmost and be public about it. Only recently did I realise that I was categorically wrong. To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy. To talk as a Jew is to surrender to Weizman’s Zionist philosophy. According to Weizman, ‘There are no English Jews’ but rather ‘Jews who live in England’. In other words, you are first and foremost a Jew by race and nation; every other label is secondary.

We must admit that we have never come across a German dove who defines himself as an ‘Aryan for peace’; neither do we know of Russians who define themselves as ‘Slavs for human rights’. We do not know too many ‘Celtic Marxists’ either. Such combinations sound pretty peculiar, not to say funny. Somehow political or humanist titles seem misplaced when they precede or follow racial labels. Accordingly, defining oneself as a ‘Marxist Jew’ or a ‘Jew for peace’ should sound peculiar. But somehow it doesn’t. No one raises an eyebrow when confronting a ‘Jew for human rights’. Presumably this relates to the fact that, as far as Jews are concerned, the demarcation between racial identity and nationalist identity is very ambiguous. If we want to soften the peculiarity involved with those Jewish humanist titles, we must leave aside the racist interpretation and re-examine those titles as nationalistic labels. At least, linguistically it would make more sense. We can easily conceive of a German Marxist or a Serbian peace activist. Accordingly, if we regard Jewish identity as a national definition then the label ‘Jew for peace’ or ‘Jew for human rights’ makes sense. We would refer to the above dove as a man who holds left-wing views and who happens to be Jewish by nation. However, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that by doing so we accept the notion of Jewish nationalism. In other words, we become devoted Zionists.

Jews cannot criticise Zionism in the name of their ethnic belonging because such an act is in itself an approval of Zionism. Practically speaking, Jews can’t really oppose Zionism unless they adopt an alternative view that questions the Zionist totality.

Zionist Totality

While nationalism is a celebration of the differences between peoples, Jewish nationalism goes one step further. As well as being different from all other nations, Jews must be different from themselves. Being a total ideology, Zionism classifies and names any form or shape of Jewish appearance. Every Jew has a role in the emerging Jewish nationalist revolution. Essentially, we have two poles:

1. The ultimate Zionist: a Jew by race, a nationalist, a colonialist, a Biblically inspired being, living on Palestinian confiscated land, preferably in a West Bank settlement.

2. The ultimate self-hater: a secular, cosmopolitan, peace lover, inspired by humanistic views, in a mixed married, living in the Diaspora.

While the former represents the hard-core pioneer of the contemporary Zionist agenda – who invades Palestinian lands and engages in daily atrocities – it is the latter who makes Zionism into a dynamic movement. It is the ‘self-hater’ who serves as an inside enemy. It is he who will convert (to Zionism) in the next anti-Semitic wave. It is he who makes Zionism into an eternal struggle for ‘Jewish salvation’. And, if this were not enough, it is he, the peace lover, who proves beyond doubt that deep in their souls Jews are peace enthusiasts and great humanists.

Looking at those distinct poles we find the contemporary Jewish people in a severely schizophrenic state. This malaise is the fuel of the Zionist revolution; it guarantees a never-ending struggle for self-definition. Within such a struggle, Zionism, being the voice of the Jewish people, positions itself beyond the debate itself. Zionism becomes a form of a meta-dialectic ideology. It is a medium of activity rather than a set of political manoeuvres.

Why is this issue a major concern?

I frequently hear complaints that it is the Jewish Left which dominates the ‘Palestinian solidarity campaign’. I can confirm that I am approached by many Jewish seculars who are devoted Palestinian supporters. A significant number of them would proudly admit to acting in the name of their Jewishness. A few days ago I attended a Palestinian solidarity event in London. It was pretty depressing to find that Hebrew was the most noticeable language in the theatre. On the surface, the situation looks encouraging, as if we are dealing with people of integrity and high human values. But the truth is slightly less heroic. I learn from Palestinians and other supporters of the Palestinian cause that it is the Jewish and Israeli Left which defines the boundaries of the discussion. It is Jewish Left which decides what is right and what is wrong. For instance, political criticism of Zionism is more than welcome as long as you stick to a very limited socio-political discussion. The Jewish Left is happy to denounce Sharon or Peres but any comparison between Zionism and other manifestations of evil are forbidden. As soon as any real scrutiny of Zionism in metaphysical terms is posited, the righteous Jewish Left police will stop it immediately. As a result, Palestinian intellectuals and artists are paralysed. Most of them are terrified that if they say what they think the ‘good Jews’ will label them as anti-Semites. I will use this opportunity to declare that the only way to further understand Zionism is to throw light on contemporary Jewish identity. Zionism and Jewish identity are not as foreign to each other as Jewish leftists insist. Zionism is an extreme appearance of Jewish identity. It is the embodiment of every wrong aspect of Jewish secular thinking. It is racist, it is nationalist, and it is Biblically inspired (rather than spiritually inspired). Being a fundamentalist movement, Zionism is not categorically different from the Nazism. Only when we understand Zionism in its nationalist and racist context will we begin to comprehend the depth of its atrocities. Only then will we realise how the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948) took place (just three years after the end of the Jewish Holocaust). We will then understand Ben Gurion’s motivations, Sharon’s popularity and Peres’ commitment to Sharon’s notion of peace. We will even get a glimpse into the deteriorated morality of the newly retired ‘good Jew’ Prof’ Benny Morris.

I do not doubt the genuine good will of those who fight Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity. I do think that they fail to think it through. In practice, left-wing Jews act as the Zionist fig leaf against their will. In modern Zionist terminology they provide Israel with a mighty intellectual defence wall. ...

See also:

• "Beware of the snakes in the grass" by Paul de Rooij
• "Petition: for two activists... that you know well" by Mary Rizzo

Labels: Gilad Atzmon, identity, Jews, Norman G. Finkelstein, Zionism

Here is an excerpt from "The Politics of Anti-Semitism: Zionism, the Bund and Jewish Identity Politics" by Gilad Atzmon. It appears on his web site but none of the three browsers on my computer displayed it legibly (emphases added):

Those amongst us who support the Palestinian people, those amongst us who are devastated by the growing scale of Israeli atrocities, those who want to bring justice to Palestine and this includes bringing Palestinians back to their land, will have to make up their minds sooner or later. From now on, everything we do or say about the Jewish state is seen by one Jew or another as anti-Semitism. We have to make up our minds and decide once and for all, is it world Jewry which we are trying to appease, or is it the Palestinians we are fighting for?

I myself made up my mind. For me it is Palestine and the Palestinian people. If this makes me into an anti-Semite in the eyes of some confused Diaspora Jews (left, right and centre), I will have to learn to live with it. At the end of the day, I cannot make everyone happy.

Already in 1973, Abba Eban, then Israeli foreign minister, identified anti-Zionism as 'the new anti-Semitism':

"Throughout the 19th century, the revolutionary left literature is full of invidious remarks about the Jewish insistence on self-affirmation and survival. The assumption was that in a free national society there would be no room for the maintenance of Jewish particularism. It was assumed that the destiny and duty of Jews was to disappear in the universal utopia. When Zionism came on the scene as the product not only of specific currents in Judaism but also of European nationalism, the phrase nationalism no longer had about it the fine glow that it possessed in the days of Garibaldi… recently we have witnessed the rise of the new left which identifies Israel with the establishment, with acquisition, with smug satisfaction, with, in fact, all the basic enemies… Let there be no mistake: the new left is the author and the progenitor of the new anti-Semitism. One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism. The old classic anti-Semitism declared that equal rights belong to all individuals within the society, except the Jews. The new anti-Semitism says that the right to establish and maintain an independent national sovereign state is the prerogative of all nations, so long as they happen not to be Jewish. And when this right is exercised not by the Maldive Islands, not by the state of Gabon, not by Barbados… but by the oldest and most authentic of all nationhoods, then this is said to be exclusivism, particularism, and a flight of the Jewish people from its universal mission."

(Abba Eban, Congress Bi-Weekly, American Jewish Congress publication 1973)

See also: "Freedom of Speech: the right to equate Gaza with Auschwitz"

Labels: Gilad Atzmon, hasbara, Israel, Zionism

The expatriate Israeli musician and writer Gilad Atzmon published an essay last March that I have only today read. Called "From Esther to AIPAC," it deals with a number of subjects familiar to readers of this blog. Below are a couple of excerpts from the piece but I especially wanted to draw attention to one phrase which I think resonates with the more than 300-year-old remark of Benedict Spinoza on hatred as the glue of Jewish community.

Near the end of his essay, Atzmon observes: "Being exilic to the bone, Zionism had to turn to antagonising the indigenous Palestinians in order to maintain its fetish of Jewish identity." Where Spinoza writes of hatred and I focus on death, throughout the article Atzmon discusses fear as the basis of Jewish identity. I don't see much difference here as hate, death, and fear are but different facets of the pathology at the heart of mainstream Jewish identity.

Here are the excerpts from Atzmon. On "The Holocaust Religion":

Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew University professor, was probably the first to suggest that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. 'The Holocaust' is far more than historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and now the UN). If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws).

Critical scholars who dispute the notion of 'Holocaust religion' suggest that though the new emerging religion retains many characteristics of an organised religion, it doesn't establish an external God figure to point at, to worship or to love. I myself cannot agree less. I insist that the Holocaust religion embodies the essence of the liberal democratic worldview. It is there to offer a new form of worshiping. It made self loving into a dogmatic belief in which the observant follower worships himself. In the new religion it is 'the Jew' whom the Jews worship. It is all about 'me', the subject of endless suffering who makes it into redemption.

However, more than a few Jewish scholars in Israel and abroad happen to accept Leibowitz's observation. Amongst them is Marc Ellis, the prominent Jewish theologian who suggests a revealing insight into the dialectic of the new religion. "Holocaust theology," says Ellis, "yields three themes that exist in dialectical tension: suffering and empowerment, innocence and redemption, specialness and normalization."[4]

Though Holocaust religion didn't replace Judaism, it gave Jewishness a new meaning. It sets a modern Jewish narrative allocating the Jewish subject within a Jewish project. It allocates the Jew a central role within his own self-centred universe. The 'sufferer' and the 'innocent' are marching towards 'redemption' and 'empowerment'. God is obviously out of the game, he is fired, he has failed in his historic mission, he wasn't there to save the Jews. Within the new religion the Jew becomes 'the Jews' new God', it is all about the Jew who redeems himself.

The Jewish follower of the Holocaust religion idealises the condition of his existence. He then sets a framework of a future struggle towards recognition. For the Zionist follower of the new religion, the implications seem to be relatively durable. He is there to 'schlep' the entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the project is slightly more complicated. For him redemption means setting a new world order, namely a socialist haven. A world dominated by dogmatic working class politics in which Jews happen to be no more than just one minority amongst many. For the humanist observant, Holocaust religion means that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the struggle against racism, oppression and evil in general. Though it sounds promising, it happens to be problematic because of obvious reasons. In our current world order it is Israel and America that happen to be amongst the leading oppressive evils. Expecting Jews to be in the forefront of humanist struggle sets Jews in a fight against their brethren and their supportive single superpower. However, It is rather clear that all three Holocaust churches assign the Jews a major project with some global implications.

On Nazi collaborator Joachim Prinz:

... it is only natural that Rabbi Prinz later became the President of the Jewish American Congress. He became a prominent American leader In spite of his 'collaboration with Hitler'. Simply because of the obvious reason: from a Jewish ideological point of view, he did the right thing.

Labels: Benedict Spinoza, Gilad Atzmon, holocaust, identity, Judaism, Zionism