THINK TRIBAL, SPEAK UNIVERSAL by Gilad Atzmon

14.12.06

I may as well be the King of The Jews. I have achieved the unachievable, accomplished the impossible. I have managed to unite them all: Right, Left and Centre. The entirety of the primarily-Jewish British political groups: the Zionists the anti-Zionists, Jewish Socialists, Tribal Marxists, The Board of Deputies, Jewish Trotskyites, Jews Sans Frontieres, Jews Avec Frontieres for the first time in history all speak in one single voice. They all repeat exactly the same misquotes. They all hate Gilad Atzmon.

“Pretty impressive,” I think to myself, “I must be doing something right.” Yet, I am slightly confused by my own achievement. When it comes down to it, I’m not the canonical enemy; I am a jazz musician and author. I am not a politician, nor am I a member of any party. I do not present or support any political agenda. I have never been involved in any act of violence (not even as an Israeli soldier) nor have I ever called for violence. I am what some may call an “independent critical thinker”. It is my personal understanding that I choose to share with my readers and listeners. I express my very own reading into events and some speculations regarding the notion of identity. I write about things that I find while looking into myself. This is indeed very dangerous for people who try to promote some collective dogmatic and ethnic tribalism. It is apparently the individual and critical thinker who endangers any form of ideological dogmatism (in general) and Jewish collectivism (in particular).

Surely, the most effective way to confront a thinker is through open intellectual debate. But somehow, this is precisely what those who oppose me refuse to do. Instead, they employ various tactics aimed at silencing me. They are filled with hate. Because, it seems, hate is the name of the game.

I recently came across an interesting insight into the subject of hate and anti-Semitism. It goes like this:

‘While in the past an 'anti-Semite' was someone who hates Jews, nowadays it is the other way around, an anti-Semite is someone the Jews hate.’

The politics of hate can be effective, as well as being vicious. And you’d think tribal Jewish activists would be the first to understand this. We all know that Jews have been suffering hatred and discrimination for centuries. Yet the Jewish ethnic activists seem to have learned hatred from their enemies so much that the secular Jewish political discourse has been totally shaped by it. Moreover, hate has become the main matrix of negation: The Israelis are set to hate the Arabs, the Zionists are there to hate the Goyim (in general), Jews against Zionism hate the Goyim as well as Israel as well as Atzmon (in particular).

But why do they hate so much? The answer is simple. Once Judaism is eliminated, what remains of Jewish identity is pretty threadbare. Once stripped of religious spirituality, all that is left of Jewishness is a template of negation fuelled by racial orientation and spiced up with some light cultural context. Sadly, I have to say that though very many emancipated and assimilated Jews have adopted universal humanist ideas, secular collective Jewish identity has never matured into adopting a universal humanist ideological standpoint or even a philosophical insight. The reasons are simple:

A. Racial or even ethnic orientation cannot form a basis for a universal ethical argument.
B. Chicken soup or Jewish humour (culture) does not make an ideological argument.

It was Moses Mendelssohn, an 18th century Jewish progressive scholar, who coined the famous Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) insight: “Be a Jew at Home and a (cosmopolitan) Man on the Street”. Mendelssohn’s revelation for the modern Jew doesn’t leave much room for doubt. Rather than encouraging the modern Jew to genuinely assimilate into a universal ethos of equality, the Haskalah Jew is destined to live in a dual mode if not practically a state of schizophrenia. He is split between the solitary pleasure of a cosy, homey Jewish identity and the public appearance of the ‘cosmopolitan man’. In fact, it is this duality of tribalism and universalism that is at the very heart of the collective secular Jewish identity.

This duality has never been properly resolved. A few attempts have been made to brush it off but they have all failed. Zionism for instance, offered to abolish the ‘abnormal’ condition of the ‘Jewish Diaspora’, in other words, it suggested that in a ‘Jewish State’ (intended as being for Jews Only) the differences between the ‘home’ and the ‘street’ would disappear. In fact, Zionism was all about the transforming the ‘street’ into the cosy Jewish ‘home’. Though it managed to do this, there is no trace of universalism in either the Zionist’s ‘street’ or in his ‘home’. The state of Beit Hanoun and the carnage Israel left behind in Lebanon last summer doesn’t leave much room for doubt - Israel doesn’t really offer us any lessons in universal cosmopolitanism. Marxism, on the other hand, attempted to make people equal. In other words, it promised to make all ‘homes’ look the same. This idea was very appealing to many European Jews. Marxism was certainly successful for a while but sadly enough, nowadays, it is only consumerism that makes us all look homogenous (iPod, coca-cola, jeans). Clearly, there is not much to celebrate there either.

It is within the failure of these two competing grand ideologies that the matrix of negation marched triumphantly back. Clearly, the search for a contemporary collective secular Jewish identity is a perplexing endeavour. Just as in Mendelssohn’s time, it aims at integrating the opposing categories of tribalism with universalism. But this can never be achieved, and this is exactly where hate politics starts to play its part. If you don’t know who you are, just find yourself an enemy. In other words, ‘tell me who you hate and I will tell you who you are.’

It occurred to me a while ago that if all tribal Jewish activists see me as a threat, surely they must perceive in me some kernel of truth. I realised that there must be something about my ideas that shakes everything they believe in. Indeed, it doesn’t take a genius to understand what that thing is. I have managed to expose the Mendelssohnian clash at the very heart of contemporary Jewish secular identity in general, and in tribal Jewish left activism in particular.

Mendelssohn must have understood the intrinsic clash between the ‘cosmopolitan man’ and the ‘Jewish home’. He must have realised that universalism and tribalism are opposing categories. Being trained as a rabbi, Mendelssohn offered a pragmatic and practical solution - but this solution led to false and deceptive behaviour. Either you pretend to be a cosmopolitan while in the ‘street’ or you lie to your God at ‘home’. This behavioural code, though being very pragmatic, happens to be non-ethical by definition. It is based on deception: both self-deception and deceiving the other. As we know, it was Mendelssohn’s insight that was the cause of many Germanic Jews eventually converting to Christianity or just departing from any connection with Jewish collectivism, Jewish life or culture. True humanists would be apt to disengage from a non-genuine lifestyle. Ethically, at least, Mendelssohn’s middle way between orthodoxy and modernity failed to provide an answer.

Surprisingly enough, the primarily-Jewish left activist falls straight into Mendelssohn’s trap. He tries desperately to bridge the gap between tribal commitment and the universal call and, like Mendelssohn, he is doomed to failure. Indeed, in the early days of the Palestinian solidarity movement the primarily-Jewish peace activism was of immense importance. It was actually Jewish humanists who were the first to speak out for the Palestinians when the world out there was still immersed in the Zionist narrative. But things have now changed. Once Hamas was democratically elected, it was the Jewish tribal peace activist who was the first to show dissatisfaction on many a progessive discussion group. Obviously Hamas doesn’t fit into the Jewish Socialist vision for the region. In other words, tribal Jewish humanists’ support for the Palestinians is tilted by self-centric concerns.

I do know what Judaism stands for. I can easily follow and support the Torah Jews’ argument against Zionism. Also, in my concerts and readings I meet very many Jews who put aside any tribal orientation to join the emerging Palestinian solidarity movement. I admire them and I respect their courage. Indeed, I fail to understand the Jewish tribal peace activism.

Monitoring tribal Jewish left activism for more than a few years, I have managed to expose some major categorical flaws. If the left is a ‘progressive’ endeavour aiming at a universal message that goes beyond race and ethnicity, then applying tribal and clannish banners is nothing but ‘reactionary’ attitude. The introduction of racial orientation into the Socialist discourse reduces Socialism into a light form of marginal politics and sometimes even, a bitter manifestation of national socialism. This complexity is far from being new. Lenin was already concerned with this issue in 1903.

However, I must admit that I am not concerned at all with the healthiness of the Socialist or Marxist discourse. I am engaged here solely in the deconstruction of a political standpoint and in scrutinising its rhetoric. Rather than saving the Marxist philosophy, I care for the people of Beit Hanoun, Jenin, Ramallah and Nablus. I devote my energy to support the Palestinian people who are bombed and starved by a State that happens to be ‘the Jewish State’. My message is clear. A crime of immense proportions is taking place in Palestine. As far as the humanist argument is concerned, Palestinians are the priority. If the crime against the Palestinians is a crime against humanity, we had better fight it collectively as human beings rather than as isolated formations of ethnically and racially segregated groups. The task ahead is complicated enough. Tribal Judeo-centric issues to do with anti-Semitism may be important to some. However, I maintain that they are secondary as far as Palestine solidarity is concerned. In other words, when you speak universal you may as well mean it for a change.

Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds By GILAD ATZMON

Revenge Fantasies

  18/9/09

Once again Quentin Tarantino has managed to produce the impossible: ‘an anti Holocaust film’. The Holocaust film genre  can be grasped as a realistic cinematic representation of the ‘Jewish victim’ (innocent and harmless individual) confronted with the ultimate brutal bureaucratic murderous ideology known as Nazism.  The genre can be realised as an intense emotional blackmail that aims to depict the history of the 20th century through an empathetic identification with a phantasmic faultless Jewish  protagonist.  Needless to say,  this genre has been rather successful. Whether it is Schindler’s List,  The Pianist, Everything is Illuminated,  The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or any other Shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) film, it is always Jewish innocence that faces institutional state terror.

Tarantino manages to resolve the clear discrepancy between the cinematic ‘Jewish innocence’ and the Jewish nationalist ‘murderous reality’. He does it all through a fantasy. In his imaginary setting, the Jew is a revengeful subject. He is an iconic retaliating scalping savage, Biblically-motivated murderer. In Tarantino’s latest epic, for the first time, the Diaspora Jew resembles his  Israeli nephew. Through a cinematic fictional plot, history has become a homogenous continuum in which Jewish past and Israeli present are unified into a relentless expedition of suicidal vengeance. If films indeed resemble the work of the dream and the unconscious, Tarantino’s latest can be grasped as a wake up call; it illuminates something that we insist to suppress and deny.

On the face of it, Inglourious Basterds follows a typical Hollywood WWII film genre. In the film a special unit of Jewish Americans (the Inglourious Basterds) lands in occupied France just to teach the Nazis what Jewish reprisal is all about. They ambush Nazi patrols and then kill their prisoners, exhibiting  ultimate brutality, whether it is scalping the dead Nazis or killing the rest by crashing their skulls with a baseball bat. The Basterds would always leave one German alive as a witness of their relentless brutality so he can spread out the news of Jewish terror. With a bayonet, they would carve a Swastika into the survivor's forehead in order to make the Nazi identifiable to all after the war. This is presumably a modern take on the mark of Cain  but it is somehow a bunch of ‘inglorious humans’, who take the role of God.

The film’s opening scene takes us to German-occupied France (1941). Col. Hans Landa  (Cristoph Waltz) of the Waffen SS a.k.a. the "Jew Hunter," interrogates a French dairy farmer about rumors that he was hiding a Jewish family of local dairy farmers . Col Landa manages to break  the French farmer who  admits to hiding the Jews underneath the floorboards. Col Landa orders his soldiers to fire into the floorboards, killing all but the teenage Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), who manages to escape to the woods.  (1)

Three years after her escape, Shoshanna reappears in Paris, having assumed a new identity. She also becomes proprietress of a small cinema. The film reaches its climax when Shoshanna, celebrates the opportunity to revenge the death of her family. She commits an heroic suicidal act, burning to death the entire Nazi leadership and high command who happen to gather in her small cinema to watch Goebbels’ latest Nazi propaganda film. While the Nazis burn alive and the theatre is consumed by a blaze, with Shoshanna’s face filling up the screen, laughing satanically, she is informing her Nazi burning crowed, "This is the face of Jewish vengeance." From a Jewish perspective Shoshanna’s suicidal act can be realised in reference to the heroic Biblical Samson who topples the Philistine shrine on himself killing elders, women and children. In Tarantino’s latest, rather than Nazis burning Jews, it is actually the Jew who locks the Nazis behind doors and burns them to death.

Jew Vs Nazi

“Inglourious Basterds just made me smile forever. Quentin Tarantino is righteous and every Jew should write him a thank you note. Here's mine” Sarah Silverman on Twitter.

One may wonder, how it is that a Jewish producer  affiliated with Israel and Zionism is standing behind such a film that portrays the Jews in such a horrifying light. The answer is actually very simple. Zionists love to see themselves as revengeful and merciless. In Israel, Samson who is nothing less than a genocidal murderer is regarded as an eternal hero. He even managed to get an IDF battalion called after him. It is not a secret that the fantasy of retribution is deeply imbued within the Zionist psyche  and Israeli politics. “Never Again” is there to suggest to Israelis that Jews will never again be sent as lambs to the slaughter. What it means in practice is that Jews will fight back and hit as hard as they can. Reprisal is a key element in the understanding of Israeli conduct. As much as the film depicts a horrifying image of the revengeful Jew, Jews and Zionists happen to support the film and even love it.

But Tarantino doesn’t  stop there. He also offers a harsh criticism of Jewish identity by drawing a comparison between the Jewish and Nazi protagonists. Unlike the single dimensional vengeance ridden Jewish protagonists (the Inglourious Basterds and Shoshanna), Tarantino’s Nazis are mostly complex and multi dimensional.

To start with they present a duality and even a contradiction between individuality and the collective role. While the Jewish protagonists present a conviction that unified the personal and the tribal into retribution, Col. Landa, the SS ‘Jew Hunter’ actually bounces between hedonism and Nazi murderous subservience. Col Landa is also a very well mannered  Austrian, cultured,  charming man. And yet, within seconds he could turn into a monstrous beast. He interprets his behavior in terms of productivity; he is ‘doing his job’. At the end of the day, he is a detective and his task is to locate Jews in their hiding places. Col. Landa is even willing to admit that he is good at it because he is capable of ‘thinking like a Jew’: he can predict how people who ‘lack dignity’ may behave. Unlike the Jewish protagonists who can’t speak any foreign language, Col. Landa is immersed in Western culture. He speaks fluent English, French and Italian in addition to his native German. Unlike the Jewish protagonists who are focused on nothing but revenge, Landa eventually betrays the 3rd Reich just to bring an end to the war and have  peace in  Europe. Needless to mention that he also manages to secure his future in the same breath, negotiating it with a ‘top brass’ American.

Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), is another example of Nazi multi dimensional identity. Zoller is a young German Wehrmacht war hero starring in Joseph Goebbels’ newest Propaganda film. In spite of Zoller being a decorated killing machine, he is far from being proud of it. He had done it in self-defense. His real affection is cinema. It is in the cinema where he meets Shoshanna and fall in love with her, unaware of her heritage or her revenge plan. While Zoller can easily alienate himself from his role as a  Nazi hero soldier or even a killing machine, Shoshanna is not ready to even consider the possibility. She is set to fulfill her mission. She will eventually shoot him in the back and kill the Nazi leadership. 

Rough guide to Tarantino’s Symbolism

Symbolism and History- as mentioned before During the film, the inglourious Basterds carve swastikas on German soldiers who are allowed to survive their ordeal.
It is not exactly a secret that the history of WWII is far from being widely accessible or freely discussed. Rather than trying to elaborate on the meaning of history and historical dynamic, we are subject to an increasing saturation of symbolism and even legislation that suggests what views are allowed to be held and what aren’t. ‘Terror’, ‘Nazis’ and  ‘Fascism’ are obviously ‘the baddies’. ‘Democracy’ and ‘Freedom’ are the ‘goodies’.  Tarantino is here to offer a harsh criticism of  the above. Carving people’s forehead with symbols (Swastikas) is a form of hegemony maintenance. As it seems, we are just powerful enough to dictate ‘a truth’. If we were instead interested in the meaning of our history, we may be able to stop the English Speaking Empire from repeating its Dresden crime in Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq and Gaza.

The Golem- At a certain stage, the Nazi high command is convinced that "The Bear Jew",  a ‘baseball bat’-swinging Nazi hunter’ is in fact, a vengeful Golem, summoned by an angry rabbi. In the Jewish legend, Golem is a creature made of clay and brought to life by magical incantations. In the film, “The Bear Jew” is actually Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), second in command of the Basterds. The reference to Golem is rather significant. As it seems, even the Nazis cannot believe that a  human can turn out to be so brutal towards another fellow human being. However, the Symbolism may even be greater. The Golem has the Hebrew word ‘truth’ carved on its forehead. For the Inglourious Basterds the notion of truth is the ‘truth’ they manage to impose on others by carving Swastikas on their foreheads.

The Sabbath Goy- 1st Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the commander of the Basterds is an American Goy who has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewishness. He is a thick accented, vengeance-driven officer from Tennessee.  It may raise some questions why it is that Tarantino had let a cowboy Goy command the Jewish Basterds. It may be possible that Tarantino is trying to suggest that Lieutenant Raine is just an outlet (or ‘a mercenary proxy’)  for Jewish reprisal. As devastating as it may sound, his relationships with his Jewish subordinates may resemble the relationships between Bush and his Neocon warmongers. It is hard to decide whether Lieutenant Raine is subject to judification or whether it is him, being a blood thirsty savage capitalizing on Jewish vengeance. One thing is rather clear, according to Tarantino’s cinematic imagery, the combination of America and Jews is far from being a healthy humanist adventure.

The Film and the Dream

Rather than looking at the content of a dream, it may as well be possible to imagine the dream looking at us as its ‘content of reality’. As it happens, in the dream, it is usually us and our so called psychic reality that is being watched and even scrutinized.  The interpretation of dreams is, in most cases, based on the assumption that in the dream, some involuntary waves of thoughts are there to throw light on the kernel of our being. It is there to bring to our attention those things we suppress and deny. This idea brings to mind Slavoj Zizek’s  return to the 1960’s slogan that ‘reality is there for those who cannot face the dream’.

The film resembles the role of the dream. As much as we tend to believe ourselves to be the viewers, from time to time, it is actually us who are being watched. Tarantino’s latest is a classic example. It is there to elevate consciousness to the realm of thoughts we insist to avoid.  It raises questions that are regarded as taboo. It provides us with an opportunity to glance at ourselves from the perspective of the unconscious. Through the fantasy it draws our reality. As in the dream, Inglourious Basterds displaces and reshapes events without any commitment to any historical truth, it is not committed to well accepted facts either. It doesn’t follow any recognized narrative, yet, it provides meaning.  The success of the film may be due to its ability to communicate with some pre symbolic reality (The Lacanian Real .  It strips us of our symbolism and symbolic order.  As a work of art it leads us closer to Being. Through violence it touches our ethical kernel and hopefully awakens our craving for kindness. For the first time we transcend beyond the discrepancy we impose on ourselves for turning a blind eye to the origin of Zionist and the barbarism and war mongering on a global scale. Through the fantasy we manage to look at evil in the eye and this is exactly where Tarantino ends his film. In the final scene the Camera takes the role of Lieutenant  Raine’s eyes (a point of view shot). We basically watch Lieutenant Raine sadistically cut with his bayonet onto Col Landa’s forehead. In cinematic language, we basically watch with horror as Lieutenant Raine carves us all with Swastikas.

Unconsciousness, according to Lacan, is the discourse of the other. It is that painful truth one tries to conceal from the other while knowing that this concealing may be impossible. From a Jewish perspective, Inglourious Basterds should have been realised as the nightmare of a bad dream coming true. It is almost impossible to deny that Tarantino is out there shouting ‘The Emperor is Naked’: he is neither a victim nor an innocent. The fact that many Jews fail to see it and instead, end up praising the film,  may stand as another disturbing indication that Zionist collective identity has managed to detach itself  from any recognized notion of humanist reality. As sad as this may sound, it explains world Jewry’s institutional support of Israel. It may also explain why Zionists  as a collective failed to internalize the meaning of the Shoa. Instead of searching for grace in themselves, Zionists keep engaging themselves in Nazi hunting and carving others with different labels and symbols.  

For too many years, Zionist  lobbies around the world have managed to dismantle any criticism of Israel. They have managed to turn the history of WWII into an internal Jewish restricted research zone. They have managed to transform our knowledge of the past into a symbolic exchange, but they somehow failed to silence the dream. This is where Tarantino comes into play. Through the fantasy he manages to tell us what our reality is all about.

As much as the Inglourious Basterds, Shoshanna and the Israelis (who gathered on the hills around Gaza to watch their army spreading death) gain some pleasure out of vengeance, it is possible that through two and half hours of therapy led by Tarantino we may, after all, learn to enjoy our symptoms and say it loudly: E nough is Enough. No more Old Testament vengeance and barbarism. We want grace and mercy instead.  

_________

!. Re dairy farmer, already then and there, Tarantino manages in a very subtle manner to set the template for his fictional fantasy to come. It would be impossible for me to argue that there were NO Jewish dairy farmers operating in occupied France at the time. However, it is certainly true that dairy farming wasn’t exactly a stereotypical Jewish occupation. We also learn at this very scene the names of the children of the Jewish family are Shoshanna and Amos. Again, this may seem to be a minor detail. But in fact it is rather crucial.  Amos is not at all a Jewish Diaspora name. It is actually a biblical name.

Originally published on: http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon09182009.html

Symbolism and the Grotesque Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism? By GILAD ATZMON

Symbolism and the Grotesque

Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

By GILAD ATZMON

July 24 2009

http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon07242009.html

Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest invention is a grotesque Austrian gay celebrity who comes to America to try to boost the ratings of his fashion television program. Bruno is one of the most repugnant characters ever to appear on the big screen, something Baron Cohen probably takes pride in. Bruno is Cohen’s third gross character in succession. At times it seems as if Cohen is seeking pleasure in being repelling. After mimicking an ignoramus stereotype of a non-black suburban male who revels in Black and Jamaican culture (Ali G) and a Kazakh misogynist, racist buffoon and anti-Semite (Borat), Bruno can be grasped as another creative attempt to challenge the Western liberal discourse.

Those who insist on approving Cohen’s intellectual aspirations argue in his favor that he manages to bring to light some of our inherent Western diseases: racism (Ali G), xenophobia (Borat) and homophobia (Bruno). I am slightly doubtful of such an interpretation of Cohen’s intellectual endeavor. None of Cohen’s protagonists can evoke empathic feelings amongst the people they harass. Instead they seem to compete amongst themselves for the ultimate Vulgar Award. Whether it is Borat, who approaches his host’s dinner table and his guests with his excrement in a plastic bag, or Bruno, who shares with us his anally intimate love games, Cohen’s protagonists are rejected for being truly and genuinely disgusting.

Yes, Cohen’s characters can be entreating, they can make us laugh; yet, the fact that they are rejected contemptibly is far from telling about our society. However, these scenes may throw some light about their creator, Mr Baron Borat Bruno Ali G Cohen and the social conditions he himself is imbued in.
Two years ago while in the process of gathering information about Cohen previous film Borat, I found out that Cohen had put back his wedding to former Home and Away star Isla Fisher due to some deep ‘religious’ reasons. "The couple," so I learned, "have postponed the big day so Isla could study the Bible in Israel before converting to Sacha's religion of Judaism." This was enough to convince me at the time that Cohen wasn’t that different from his chauvinistic, tribally-orientated protagonist Borat. For those who fail to understand the meaning of the above, Cohen is not just Jewish, he didn’t just ask his fiancée to join his extended family, he didn’t send her to a London Rabbi either. He really went for the ‘full Monty,’ that is: the Israeli experience. Cohen is in fact a devout Zionist and it would be interesting to elaborate and analyze his work from a Jewish Identity-politics perspective.

Though Ali G, Borat and Bruno have nothing to do with Judaism or Zionism, their identity struggle is, interestingly enough, a complete repetition of the Zionist identity complex. As in the case of Zionism, Ali G, Borat and Bruno are in a state of a complete dismissal of others. As if this is not enough, they are also celebrating their symptoms in public and at the expense of their victims.

Zionism, similarly, is a celebration of a newly-invented Jewish Identity. The Zionists set themselves to do it all on the expense of the Palestinian people. Until recently, some Zionist leaders refused to acknowledge the existence of Palestinian people. Zionism is a political setting that inherently dismisses others. One can look at the IDF’s brutality towards Palestinians, another can reflect on David Ben Gurion’s famous quote: “It doesn’t matter what the Goyim say, all that matters is what Jews do”. Interestingly enough Ali G, Borat and Bruno are celebrating a very similar form of dismissal. They are self-centered protagonists who care mostly about themselves and their own unique actions and symptoms.

However, as much as Bruno is by far Cohen’s most repulsive character to date, he is also, emotionally at least, the most developed character out of the three. Unlike Ali G and Borat, Bruno is self-conscious. He has clear desires and he struggles to fill his inner void. In fact the audience is mobilized as a witness to Bruno’s evolving self-awareness. As great as Bruno’s desires are, his repeated failures are no less than a total devastation. He is desperate to be accepted as a celebrity. He would do whatever it takes to get there. He would swap his iPod for an African cute little toddler just to ‘appear’ like Madonna; he would try to drag Ron Paul into a porn scene just to hit the news with an ‘item’. He interprets success in symbolic terms rather than anything that is related to merit.

Jewish nationalism is very similar. It is a project run by Israelis who crave to be a people like other people. But for some bizarre reason they fail to understand what the notion of ‘other people’ stands for. They can only understand it symbolically in terms of a set of material identifiers.
When you ask an Israeli ‘how can you be so cruel to the Palestinians?’ The answer will be thrown back at you, “Haven’t the Americans been cruel with their Indians? Didn’t the Brits do the same in India?”

The Israeli may even interpret state terrorism and barbarism as a natural symbol of sovereignty.

Bruno yearns to be a celeb amongst celebrities. The Zionist is craving to join the family of nations. Like Bruno, Zionists understand their nationhood in symbolic terms, they have a flag, an air force, nuclear bombs and wars. For some reason, it is just a genuine compassion which they lack--probably because genuine feeling and authenticity cannot be reduced into mere symbolism. It is the real love to their alleged ‘historic land’ which the Zionist fail to exhibit when shredding it with walls of separation. Like the Zionist, Bruno is pretty much stuck; he cannot transcend himself beyond the symbolic order. As much as the Zionists find it difficult to become an ordinary nation considering their symptoms (non-ethical existence together with racial supremacy), Bruno finds it very hard to integrate into society considering who he is (lacking ethical awareness and imbued in his gay solipsistic (1) universe).

While in his early work Baron Cohen managed to fail to distinguish between Identity and being, in his latest work he may have become aware of this crucial dichotomy. Gay and homosexuality, for instance, are very different categories. While ‘Gay’ refers to an Identity largely associated with a set of symbolic identifiers, homosexuality refers to a sexual preference.

Interestingly enough, throughout the film Bruno operates as a Gay icon. He is totally imbued within the Gay symbolic realm, he swings his buttocks without leaving any room for doubt about who he is and what he stands for: he wears the right clothes and uses the right manner of speech. But then, towards the very last scene, it all changes, Bruno for the first time surrenders to his true authentic sexual desire.

At a certain stage Bruno realises that in order to become a celebrity he would have to be ‘straight’. In the final scene we meet Bruno in a wrestling arena surrounded by rednecks. Bruno, the natural chameleon (2), is now an anti-Gay macho figure. He manages to evoke cheers from his new crowd by spitting some rabid homophobic statements. For a second it works. For the first time in the film Bruno is accepted by his surrounding social reality. Very much like the Assimilated Jew who follows Moses Mendelssohn’s (3) line of thought ‘be a Goy in the street and a Jew in your dwelling’, Bruno is mimicking the ‘straight’ on stage while keeping his true identity hidden, but the truth is chasing him and cannot be concealed.

All of a sudden, his ex-assistant, an authentic homosexual who has been loving Bruno all the way through appears from the crowd. “You are Gay” he shouts to Bruno as he makes his way through the throng. The assistant's role in the film is similar to Herzl’s and Weizmann’s task within the Zionist epic narrative. Herzl and Weizmann are there to tell their fellow assimilated Jews, ‘stop pretending at being American, French, British, Bolsheviks, Cosmopolitans and Atheists, you are primarily Jews and you better behave accordingly.’

In the film it doesn’t take more than a few seconds before Bruno and his assistant depart into a same-sex act of genuine love making. Seemingly, for the first time Bruno follows his heart rather than banal symbolism. This is obviously a repetition of the Zionist message. As opposed to Mendelssohn deceitful dualism, the Zionists would tell their followers: do not pretend to be a Goy, do not pretend to be a cosmopolitan, do not pretend to be a Marxist, just surrender to your real and true Jewish reality.

But here we do encounter a slight problem. While Bruno has a homosexual reality to safely land upon, it is not clear at all whether there is any Jewish coherent genuine reality except Judaism. The Jewish socialist identity (bund) collapsed half a century ago. The Zionists had been trying to claim a valid and coherent Jewish national secular identity, but all they really present us with is merciless conduct and a barbarian state terrorism that have very little in common with humanity. If there is a Jewish humanist school, the nature of its (uniquely Jewish) value system remains unclear. The lack of a coherent and consistent Jewish secular Identity may explain why all forms of Jewish secularity are highly engaged in symbolism. Whether it is Zionism, Jewish anti-Zionism, Jewish secularism or even Jewish humanism, it is almost always engaged in conveying a symbolic image rather than aiming at the real thing (4).

As much as I find it hard to cope with Cohen’s latest repugnant character, I may as well have to admit that in light of the above realizations of Bruno as an insightful metaphor, the film may not be that bad after all.

Gilad Aztmon is a writer and jazz musician living in London. His latest cd is In Loving Memory of America.

1. Solipstic: the belief that the only thing somebody can be sure of is that he or she exists, and that true knowledge of anything else is impossible

2. Not only is Bruno is a chameleon he is also invented and performed by Britain's NO 1 chameleon namely Cohen.

3. Moses Mendelssohn (September 6, 1729 – January 4, 1786) was a Jewish thinker largely associated with Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and with ideas to do with Jewish assimilation.

4. Judaism is also saturated with symbolism, yet, one would expect that Jewish secularization would lead towards an authenticity that goes beyond mere symbolism.

The Plot Against America a book report and a reality check by Gilad Atzmon

As it happened, on the day the Iranian President decided to share his thoughts regarding the legitimacy of the Jewish state with some four thousand students, I picked up Philip Roth’s latest book. This was nothing but a mere coincidence. Already a year ago, I was advised by a few friends to pay attention to Roth’s ‘Plot Against America’. The chunky hardcover book was awaiting my attention beside my bed since last Christmas, yet somehow I couldn’t find the time and energy to launch into a journey through Roth’s imaginary world. It was only a chance occurrence that just when I decided to begin my solitary walk through Roth’s labyrinth, the entire international community joined forces against President Ahmadinejad. But it wasn’t just the international community that voiced its indignation on cue, it was principally every Western media outlet and even the odd Palestinian opportunist politician who was probably craving for a glimpse of CNN exposure.

It wasn’t easy for me to watch the Iranian president being bashed from every possible direction. At the end of the day, I tend agree with president Ahmadinejad. In my writings and interviews I keep challenging the Jewish state’s right to exist. This isn’t to say that the Israeli people should be wiped out. As far as I am concerned, President Ahmadinejad was clearly referring to the state of Israel rather than its people. Considering the crimes committed by the Jewish state, this is rather a fair and legitimate political comment.

Not only did the president have the right to say what he said, he was basically repeating the Western post war ideological liberal mantra. As we all know, Western left thinking sees its minimum common denominator as being against racism and nationalism. For those who fail to realise it, Israel is racist and fanatically nationalist. It is racist because it legally favours what it classifies as the Jewish race. Its nationalism is fanatical because it adopts the notorious Lebensraum philosophy at the expense of other nations and peoples. Clearly President Ahmadinejad had a valid argument at his disposal. Moreover, following Western liberal philosophy, the Jewish state should have been wiped out a long time ago. But then, rather than supporting the spirit of the Iranian president’s remark, the entire Western world denounced and condemned him.

While the world was enthusiastically engaged in giving the Israeli government a green light to attack the emerging Iranian nuclear plant, something that would necessarily lead towards an escalation of the war against Islam, I was diving into Philip Roth’s plot.

Roth is no doubt an astonishing writer but somehow he has always failed to convince me. I always had the feeling that Roth is just too aware of his enormous talent; something that made him slightly technical and pretentious at times. Being a prolific writer, Roth can be slightly impersonal to my taste and yet, in his latest book he is free from that. No literary imposed tactics or strategies can be traced. In his latest book, Roth is overwhelmingly personal. Astonishingly enough, the fictional reality he conveys is so convincing that I found myself totally captivated from beginning to end. So enthralled was I, that I even managed to forget how depressing the world is out there. I avoided the anti-Iranian media blitz. I switched it off for three days and let the international community attack the Iranian president in a single Judeified voice.

‘The Plot Against America’ is a fictional tale that unwinds like a historical document enriched with personal detail. Its theme is: what would have happened if ace pilot Charles Lindbergh, the man who made the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927, the man who later called Hitler ‘a great man’, and was decorated by the Führer for his services to the Reich, had run for the American presidency against Roosevelt in 1940 and managed to win? Lindbergh’s message to the American nation is a classic Republican isolationist one. ‘No more war! Never again will young Americans die on foreign soil’. The year is obviously 1940 and Lindbergh is referring to Europe and the Pacific rather than Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran. In Roth’s book, instead of Roosevelt being elected for an unprecedented third term, Lindbergh wins in a landslide victory. He then signs non-aggression treaties with Germany and Japan. Soon enough the charismatic Lindbergh is cheered by American society as a whole. Every American loves him except of course the Jews who are far from being happy with a ‘peace loving’ president who happens to make business with the enemies of the Jewish people. But in fact this isn’t entirely true, a single prominent liberal Rabbi named Bengelsdorf positions himself right behind the new president.

The narrator is Philip Roth himself, a seven-year-old Jewish Ghetto boy from Newark, New Jersey. He tells a story of a Jewish family encountering a major disastrous political shift. Young Phil is telling the story of father Herman, mother Bess and brother Sandy. It is a story of collective fear, a story of a Jewish family’s reaction to the rise of anti-Semitism. However, throughout the book it is very hard to determine whether anti-Semitism constitutes a real objective threat or rather something the Jews bring on themselves. This very confusion is in my opinion the greatest literary asset of the book.

Roth is sketching a very deep and complex narrative in which each family member responds differently to the ‘devastating’ historical circumstances. Once again, Roth managed to convey an interesting image of the difficult amalgam of the Jewish identity both psychologically and sociologically. Like most American Jews, Herman the father is overtly pessimistic from the very beginning. He wouldn’t give Lindbergh even a single day of mercy. However, he is a proud patriotic American. He demands his civil rights. Were he in our midst, he would criticise the emerging catastrophic reality applying to the American liberal ideology. The mother Bess is far more practical, she tries to maintain the family’s sanity, behaving as if life must go on. More than anything else, she must calm down her righteous husband. Phil’s brother Sandy is a gifted painter and assumes a very interesting role. In the summer he disappears for an "apprenticeship" with a tobacco farmer in Kentucky. In a way he makes it into the heart of America. Later he is joining a new assimilation scheme by encouraging Jewish city boys to follow his example. This program is put together by Rabbi Bengelsdorf, the devoted supporter of Lindbergh. Sandy is doing very well, eventually he is invited to a reception at the White House. This is obviously far more than Herman can take. For Herman, the democratically elected American president is nothing but an enemy of the Jews and he refuses to give his son permission to go to Washington. The tension between family members threatens the stability of the family itself, which is on the brink of falling apart. However, all that time,  America has been kept out of the war. American boys aren’t dying in a far away country. American people are very happy but somehow the Jewish Americans aren’t.

All the way through the book father Herman is portrayed as a paranoid Ghetto Jew. He is totally single minded in interpreting reality, he is overly tragic. But he isn’t alone in his obsession. Alongside his Newark Jewish Ghetto neighbours he draws a lot of support from the famous Jewish journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell who is spreading his anti-Lindbergh poison to the nation. It doesn’t take long before Winchell is stripped of his positions as a journalist, first in the printed press and later in his prime time radio slot. But Winchell won’t surrender; once he loses his job, he decides to run for the presidency. Winchell, the Jew, decides to reshape the American future. In other words, he is determined to take America into war in Europe. Within a short time into his campaign, Winchell is assassinated. Again, the reader may wonder whether the assassination is an anti-Semitic act or rather a punishment Winchell and the Jews insist upon bringing on themselves.

All the way through most of the book I couldn’t make up my mind whether the plot against America is a Jewish or rather a Nazi one. Clearly most of America into war that may serve their cause or if it was Hitler who employs an agent in the very centre of the American administration as the mastermind behind the plot. When time is ripe, young Phil provides us with a shadow of an answer.

Towards the very end of the book Lindbergh disappears with his private fighter plane without leaving a trace. Mysteriously, the wreckage of his plane has never been found. No forensic evidence can suggest what happened to him. Foreign governments volunteer their versions: the Brits blame the Nazis for kidnapping the president, the Nazis suggest that it was ‘Roosevelt and his Jews’ who abducted the American hero. These suggestions are all highly charged, unfounded gossip that are there to serve an international political cause. However, Roth deliberately decides to leave us with a very personal account. We hear Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s account told by his wife Evelyn who happens to be Philip’s aunt. Brilliantly, Roth’s historical narrative takes the shape of modern ‘Jewish history’. History is then reduced to a mere personal account in the shape of gossip devoid of any factual or forensic reference.

Following Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s account, we are entitled to assume that Lindbergh was indeed a Nazi agent. Anyhow, this is the time to remind us that Roth’s President Lindbergh is a fictional character. In fact Lindbergh, the real man, was an American hero, a man who ended the Second World War as a P38 combat pilot at the age of 42. ‘The Plot Against America’ is a fictional tale, Lindbergh wasn’t a traitor, he was an American patriot who happened, like many others, to have admired Hitler for a while. Lindbergh was an American nationalist who loved his people and truly believed that his country should stay out of the ‘Jewish War’. Roth’s Lindbergh is indeed imaginary, but the Jewish collective paranoia isn’t. It is very real. Moreover, the Jewish intent upon shaping American reality is more than real.  Most importantly, while the Nazi plot to run America is totally fictional, the Jewish Plot to run America is now more vivid than ever. Nowadays, when the American army is acting as an Israeli mission force in the Middle East, when Syria and Iran are just about to be flattened by Anglo-American might, it is rather clear what the real meaning of the ‘Plot Against America’ may be.

I read Philip Roth’s book while the entire international community was standing shoulder to shoulder behind the war criminal Sharon. While in Roth’s book the Herman Roths and the Walter Wichells were expecting  America to sacrifice its best sons on the Jewish altar, we are now watching the entire world joining the Jewish war against Islam. It is rather depressing to see our Western politicians enthusiastically adopting the most corrupt version of Jewish morality: a totally blind worldview based on supremacist endorsement of the justice of the stronger. Clearly, there is no isolationist Lindbergh to save us all. Unfortunately, there is not even a single Rabbi Bengelsdorf to suggest an alternative friendly human Jewish morality.

By the time I put Roth’s book down, the storm around the Iranian president subsided somehow. The Jewish world and the Jewish state had another great victory to be cheerful about. The UN's General Assembly has passed a resolution designating 27 January as the annual ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’ throughout the world.

Why the 27th of January? Because this is the day Auschwitz was liberated. The resolution also rejects any denial that the Holocaust was a historical event in which the mass murder of six million Jews and other victims by Nazi Germany during World War II took place. Seemingly, the UN has a new role, while for years it has been engaged in securing world peace, now it is mainly concerned with securing Jewish history.  No doubt, a very nice present for the Jewish state, a state that holds the highest record for failing to comply with UN resolutions.

By the time I put Roth’s book down I am more or less ready to learn my lesson. Once again I failed to acknowledge that suffering is an exclusive, internal Jewish affair. No one is allowed entry, neither the Palestinians of Gaza’s concentration camp, nor the massacred inhabitants of Fallujah and Tikrit. One million victims of Rwanda are obviously out, two million in Vietnam are out as well, so are the innocent civilians of Hamburg, Hiroshima, Dresden and Nagasaki and millions of others who were killed in the name of democracy. By the time Roth’s ‘Plot Against America’ finds its way onto my bookshelf, I agree with myself at least: A young Rabbi Begelsdorf is long overdue. If we are being Judeified, we may as well take the best of Judaism rather than its supremacist brutality, namely Zionism. By the time Roth’s tome is resting I realize as well that the current plot isn’t just against America. It is a plot against humanity and human dignity

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Jazz and politics by Gilad Atzmon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1351248,00.html

Free jazz!
Once it was the music of the revolution, now it is the bland sound of big
business. But jazz can still be saved, says saxophonist Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon
Monday November 15, 2004

The Guardian

When bebop was born, it was the voice of black America. Black Americans were calling for freedom, and jazz expressed it better than mere words. Charlie "Bird" Parker played Now's the Time, insisting the moment was right for social change. Charles Mingus composed Fable of Faubus (1959) in response to Orval Faubus's racism as governor of Arkansas. John Coltrane recorded Alabama after four black girls died in the Birmingham church bombing. When Martin Luther King started his campaign for civil rights, the American jazz community, white and black, stood right behind him. Not only was jazz aiming for freedom; the music itself was a real-time exercise in human liberation, as performers reinvented themselves night after night. It was hardly surprising that they became symbols of the black civil rights campaign. Coltrane, whose music was deeply rooted in African culture, became a hero of the civil rights movement in America and around the world.

It didn't take long for America's white elite to realise that jazz endangered their hegemony, and that jazz and America represented opposingideologies. While the American ethos is traditionally presented as a celebration of civil freedom, jazz, as it appeared in the late 1950s, laid bare crucial flaws in the American dream. Not only did it expose the fundamental injustice within the capitalistic system; it also valued beauty far higher than money. This was foreign to the American way of thinking.

After the second world war, jazz became hugely popular in western Europe,and jazz giants such as Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon were treated as major cultural figures. At home, those very legends had to enter jazz clubs via back entrances, because the front ones were for the white clients.

So jazz became the cultural ambassador of the American civil rights movement - a fact that was highly embarrassing for the establishment, already presenting itself as the leader of the "free" and "democratic" world. Since America's main motivation at the time was to convince the world that Coca-Cola was the only way forward, jazz was clearly in the way. It was anti-American. It revealed the relentless and abusive face of hard capitalism.

For the white bourgeoisie, jazz became a problem that had to be addressed. Its political and philosophical message was about to be crushed. The best   way to beat a resentful rival is to integrate it into your system - Jazz became the Voice of America. Black Americans became simply Americans, and jazz ceased to be subversive. Itwasn't long before black Americans were found qualified enough to die en masse in Vietnam.

Soon after their alleged "liberation", black Americans lost interest in their own revolutionary music. Jazz was no longer the black American call  for freedom, but a white middle-class adventure. It was transformed from a vivid, authentic and socially motivated artform into an academic exercise. In the 1970s, more and more colleges launched jazz courses as if jazz were a form of knowledge, rather than spirit.

The new challenge in jazz was to play as fast as you could. By the late 1970s this challenge was achieved: jazz became a form of meaningless white noise. The melodic sensation had dried out. Swing was turned into endless polyrhythmic exercises. American jazz was about to be declared dead. Not many were kind or patient enough to listen to an endless algorithmic musical exercise.

Jazz became a vanishing marginal music, but then a miracle happened. Decision-makers in the ever-growing record industry defined a fresh challenge for jazz. Rather than play as fast as you could, they suggested, you should sell as much as you could.

We are now at the apex of this commercial phase. Occasionally, we hear thata new-born artist has signed a multi-million-dollar record deal. As long as jazz is in the hands of big business it will never produce acute social criticism. The music industry, like any other industry, is aimed at accumulating money and the best way to achieve this is to maintain the existing world order.

Sadly, jazz isn't a subversive art form any more. It isn't even gymnastically challenging - merely a marginal genre associated with easy listening background music a la Kenny G and Norah Jones. A few first- and second-generation veterans are still with us, playing as well as ever, and promising young talents are queueing to enter the shrinking scene. But neither group is socially engaged.

Jazz is still established enough to occupy the back quarter of the second floor of every multi-storey record shop. It fits nicely into the American-led globalised market philosophy. It provides us with an image of diversity, of an expanding music market rich with sounds and colours. In the shop they will tell you: "You name it, we have it." And they are right - you can now buy Coltrane's revolutionary album A Love Supreme for just £6.99 in almost every music shop. What a bargain, what a great Christmas present! I would argue that our devoted Big Brother has almost won. Jazz's spiritual and political message is almost defeated.

This is where I try to interfere. As a bop player, I refuse to view jazz as a technical adventure. It isn't about the speed with which I move my fingers or the complexity of my rhythmic figures. I insist that jazz is a form not of knowledge but of spirit. Jazz is a world view, an innovative form of resistance. For me, to play jazz is to fight the BBS (Bush, Blair and Sharon) world order, to aim towards liberation while knowing you may never get there, to fight the new American colonialism. To say what I believe in, to campaign for the liberation of my Palestinian and Iraqi brothers. To play jazz is to suggest an alternative reality, to reinvent myself, to be ready to do it till the bitter end.

· Gilad Atzmon plays the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1, on Friday. Box office: 0870 401 8181.

Deconstructing Grossman by Gilad Atzmon

9.11.06

The world, so it seems, is giving a standing ovation to the new Israeli orator, the author, David Grossman.  Israel's public relations desperately needs a righteous intellectual, an author who ‘talks peace’, a man who preaches ‘reconciliation’, a man of shalom . Yesterday the Guardian published Grossman’s last week speech at the Yitzchak Rabin memorial in Tel Aviv.
 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1941046,00.html).

Grossman is a ‘matured enlightened Israeli’, a light left Zionist who craves for a change.  I read Grossman’s speech, and I must say that though the man is seen by some as an Israeli left intellectual, I see in his speech nothing but hard core Jewish supremacy and even maintenance of the old crude Zionist racial agenda.  Grossman, like other Israelis, is totally submerged within a Zio-centric chauvinist discourse, a discourse of denial of the Palestinian cause;  i.e., the right of return

I have collected and highlighted some outrageous extracts made by the newly emerging Hebraic left orator.




Grossman And The Myth Of ‘Jewish Universal Values’

Grossman, the Israeli some of us love to love, serves us with a major glimpse into the Zionist secular mind.  “I am”, so he says about himself “a man entirely without religious faith”. However, Grossman doesn’t stop just there.   “For me, the establishment - and very existence - of the state of Israel is something of a miracle that happened to us as a people; a political, national, human miracle.” And I ask myself, since when do secular beings believe in miracles?  One may have to remind the ‘Israeli secular intellectual’ that a miracle is ‘an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause’. Indeed, Grossman, like many other Israelis, has managed to follow a new form of secularism.  It is an atheism that ‘ascribes to some supernatural cause’. Bizarrely enough, the Zionist seculars are pretty fundamentally orthodox about their new pathetic religion. I may help Grossman and suggest to him that there is no real truly heroic miracle about Israel.  Israel is just a vulgar racist ultra nationalist state. Israel's relative success seems miraculous just because it took its Arab neighbors a few generations to adapt to the level of Zionist barbarism.

According to Grossman, Israel wasted that ‘miracle’, that “great and rare opportunity that history granted it, the opportunity to create an enlightened, properly functioning democratic state that would act in accordance with Jewish and universal values.”

Following Grossman's glimpse into the Jewish spirit, enlightenment and democracy are foreign to Jews and their occurrence within the Jewish sphere should be realised as a miracle. Probably without realizing Grossman admits here that ‘enlightenment’ and ‘democracy’ oppose the Jewish spirit. Certainly, this intellectual current is not new, neither is it original. The early waves of Zionist ideologists believed that in Zion, a new Jew would emerge: a civilized, secular, democratic and enlightened Jew who rebels against his morally degenerate Diaspora ancestor.

More worryingly, Grossman bluntly deceives his listeners by referring to ‘Jewish universal values’ as if such values are nothing but an accepted common knowledge. As bizarre it may seem to some, there is no general accepted set of ‘Jewish universal values’. Is there a book that presents a notion ‘Jewish universal values’? I don’t think so.  If there is a set of values that should be realised as ‘Jewish universal values’, those are properly conveyed by the Judaic core. I believe that Torah Jews who genuinely support the Palestinian cause may know something about universal values. Yet, Grossman portrays himself as a secular man.  Surely it isn’t the Judaic orthodox interpretation he thinks of to when referring to Jewish universality. In fact, it is Christianity that translates Judaism into a universal value system. It is Christianity that transforms the ‘neighbor’ into a ‘universal other’. Without a doubt, there are plenty of universal humanists who happen to be Jewish by origin, Yet there is no recognized set of ‘Jewish universal values’. Grossman and other Jewish intellectuals who spread the myth of ‘Jewish universalism’ are deceiving themselves and their listeners. Moreover, the fact that Jewish secularism lacks a philosophical background may explain the general moral bankruptcy of the Jewish state. As we will read soon, even Grossman, himself, falls into the same trap. He may be aware of the concept of morality but he fails in presenting a consistent moral worldview. He may be aware of the negative effect of racism but he, himself, manages to fall into supremacist bigotry rather easily.

Grossman The Blunt Racist

Grossman is courageous enough to stand up and admit that “violence and racism” has taken control of his home, Israel. So far so good. For a second I tend to believe that Grossman is indeed an enlightened anti racist secular Jew but then, just a sentence later he asks, ”how can it be that a people with our powers of creativity and regeneration” has managed to finds itself today “in such a feeble, helpless state”? The critical reader may ask oneself what really Grossman refers to when he says “people with our powers of creativity and regeneration”? It is rather simple.  Grossman truly believes in the uniqueness of the chosen people. In other words, Grossman is not more than a biological determinist. The question to be asked here is how come the Guardian dedicates three pages to a Jewish supremacist?  I believe that Jews do enjoy some freedoms the rest of humanity lack. For instance, I find it hard to believe that the Guardian would give a voice to a German philosopher who praises Aryan people’s ‘powers of creativity and regeneration’. Somehow, a Jew intellectual can get away doing just that.

Although Grossman is honest enough to admit that the Palestinians have placed Hamas in their leadership, he calls Olmert to “appeal to the Palestinians. over Hamas's head. Appeal to the moderates among them, to those who, like you and me, oppose Hamas and its ideology”.

Mr. Grossman, if you are indeed a universal humanist, something I obviously suspect, you then better learn to listen to the Hamas rather than speaking to the Palestinians over their elected leader’s heads. Grossman obviously fail to respect his neighbor, he fails to respect their democratic choice. Generally speaking, I suggest that we leave the despicable method of speaking over heads to Bush and Blair. Intellectuals have the privilege to listen and to act ethically.

Grossman the Victim

But Grossman's Jewish chutzpah doesn’t stop just there. “Look at the Palestinians, just once” he tells Olmert. “You will see a people no less tortured than we are.” Yes, this isn’t a joke.  Grossman, the colonialist Jew who dwells on Palestinian occupied land while practicing ethnic cleansing of an indigenous nation, is looking at the Palestinian terrorised victims while saying ‘they are almost as tortured as me’.

This probably says it all.  It summarizes the level of the Zio-left blindness. Indeed, if these are the Israeli leftists, who need Right?


Indeed, in his concluding paragraph Grossman admits: “The differences between right and left are not that great today”. He is correct.  Within the European political discourse, Grossman, the Israeli left intellectual icon, is no other than a banal right wing neocon. A man who preaches racism in the name of good will. A man who talks over the heads of other people.

Grossman and the Two State Solution

Grossman is deceiving himself and his listeners by saying that “the land will be divided, that there will be a Palestinian state”. You are partially wrong, Mr. Grossman.  This land will never be divided.  I will make it very simple so you and your very few Zio leftists may realise once and for all. Palestine is a land, Israel is a state. Palestine will always be Palestine; i.e., a land.  Israel, on the other hand. is a racist nationalist state and will disappear. The land won’t be divided.  It will re-unite into One Palestine. Rather than maintaining a racist nationalist state I call Grossman and his friends to join the one Palestine movement. A movement that endorses equality in the land of Palestine.   Palestine where values are universal.

The Unilateral People by Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon • Jan 18th, 2009 

They withdraw unilaterally

They ceasefire unilaterally

They invade unilaterally

They win unilaterally

They destroy unilaterally

They massacre unilaterally

They bathe in blood unilaterally

They spread white phosphorus unilaterally

They kill women and children unilaterally

They drop bombs unilaterally

They live on stolen land unilaterally

They support their homicidal leaders unilaterally

They love their ‘Jewish Only State’ unilaterally

Their democracy is unilateral

They love themselves unilaterally

They are the unilateral people.

Living behind walls of concrete, hatred and arrogance

They are still united and lateral failing to love their neighbours