Ali Abunimah is probably not a racist, BUT………

Just came across this piece by Roy Bard

http://failedproject.me/?p=20

By failedproject

The birth of Israel involved a grave injustice to the Palestinians. The continued existence of Israel perpetuates that injustice. A strong lobby, dominated by Jews, but not exclusively Jewish, helps to perpetuate the injustice, by attacking those who feel compelled to speak out against the original and ongoing injustice. Despite many a career and reputation being ruined for pro-Palestinian stances,  many who love the ideas of Justice and Liberty continue to stand for Palestine, and continue to be attacked for it……

 

Today the spotlight is on Ali Abunimah, of whom Gilad Atzmon may have said:

 

“Ali has managed to take the intifada and make it into an electronic blog.

Ali’s name appears at the top of the list of signatories who called for the Disavowal of Gilad Atzmon, which led to a presumption that Ali was the author of that call.  In defending himself, Ali today let slip that he was not the author……..

Although I would have been proud to claim that credit, unfortunately I cannot. Nonetheless, when asked to sign, I did so without hesitation.

So, now the scenario is fraught with irony after irony……. in defending himself against a  baseless claim of racism, Ali reminds us that he himself was part of another baseless claim of racism against Gilad. From my reading of Gilad, there is no claim of any racial characteristics unique to Jews, rather Gilad argues that Jewish identity  is the product of ideology and that for anyone who is not religious, it may well be best to step away from that identity, and to join the other actors as a Universalist.  If anyone is in danger of characterising Jewishness as a racial trait, it seems it may well be Ali himself, and he really doesn’t want to go there…….

disavow3

 

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Abunimah, Rosenberg, Anti-semitism and Dishonesty

Illustration: Truth and LieBy Gilad Atzmon 

In the last few days blogger M. Jay Rosenberg came to the conclusion that Electronic Ali Abunimah is an anti-semite. Rosenberg's accusation is clearly unsubstantiated. Ali Abunimah is not an anti-semite. Dishonest? More likely.

Rosenberg writes, “let me explain why I consider Ali Abunimah to be anti-semitic…Ali Abunimah refers to Israelis as Zionists,.. but then he makes clear, over and over again, that Zionists are all bad people. Just go to his twitter feed and read the labels he uses for Zionists..’

Rosenberg is obviously uninformed.  More and more commentators and scholars accept that Israelis are not Zionists, they are actually the product of the Zionist project. Most Israelis do not even understand what Zionism stands for. Zionism is the promise to bring about a Jewish national home. Once the Jewish State was founded (1948) Zionism finished its role as far as Israeli Jews are concerned. Thus, Zionism is now largely a Jewish Diaspora discourse. Accordingly, the debate between Zionists and the so-called ‘anti-’ has little relevance to Israeli politics or practice.  In short, Rosenberg is wrong, yet why Abunimah misleads his readers, referring to Israelis as Zionists, remains unclear.   

Abunimah may not be the most sophisticated theoretical commentator around, but he certainly monitors Israeli society and understands its politics.

Abunimah refers to ‘Israelis’ as ‘Zionists’ only because his operation is sustained financially and politically by Jewish ‘anti-Zionists’ and the Jewish Left. Abunimah refers to Israelis as ‘Zionists’ only because he knows that telling the truth, uttering the ‘J’ word, may cost him dearly. 

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Former Israeli Navy chief detained at Heathrow

Ynet just reported that commander of Israeli Navy during Operation Cast Lead and raid on Gaza-bound Marmara ship held for questioning upon arrival in UK

 Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eli Marom, who served as the commander of the Israeli Navy during Operation Cast Lead and during the raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara vessel, was held for questioning at around noon Monday at London's Heathrow Airport upon his arrival in Britain.

Israel war criminal beware!!!

 

The Milibands, The BBC And The Proletariat

By Gilad Atzmon

Last week, The Daily Mail’s expose of Ralph Militant’s political views provoked strong reactions from the Miliband family, the Labour Party, The Guardian and the BBC.

The Mail article included a few quotes by Ralph Miliband, showing Miliband to be a radical cosmopolitan Marxist. So what else is new?  Throughout his entire adult life Ralph had indeed been a radical cosmopolitan devoted to ‘progressive’ international working class politics and naturally opposed to any nationalism and local patriotism. However The Daily Mail was soon to learn, at its cost, that elaborating on the non-patriotic nature intrinsic to cosmopolitanism is practically forbidden in 2013 ‘free’ Britain.

The Mail revealed that in 1940, when Ralph was 17-year-old he wrote in his diary: “The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world…you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent…To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.” Well, I’d guess that many 17 year old Marxists at that time could have expressed such views. But Miliband remained a devoted Marxist into adulthood and indeed for his whole life and maintained this cosmopolitan ideology into old age right up to his death. This may be unusual but it is not a crime.

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My One and Only Love — Book Review

http://www.boldfacenews.com/one-love-book-review/

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Of Showbiz Kings and Kosher Pigs with Wings

My One and Only Love is a wild romp through the vast expanse of Gilad Atzmon’s imagination that leaves you breathless with laughter.


If you read Atzmon’s Guide to the Perplexed you are familiar with his satire power, if you read The Wandering Who? you know his philosophy, humanism and unflinching quest for truth and beauty, wherever it leads.

This book reveals other facets of Atzmon’s talent. One is his humor, of Rabelaisian robustness, life-afirming even in sarcastic wit, often reminiscent of Bukowsky. Nothing human is alien to him nor taboo and barred from examination: beauty, ugliness, sexuality, greed, pretense, opportunism, nationalistic cant, hypocrisy and, of course, as expected from the pioneer of the Jewish identity syndrome studies, Jewish supremacism.
Another is his memorable delineation of characters, not two-dimensional cardboard effigies but live incarnations of Israeli typology, each with his or her individual voice and diction.


There is Avrum, the showbiz entrepreneur, resourceful “fixer” always looking for a “combina” to make some “lokshen,” while patriotically helping “Long Arm,” the feared Israeli intelligence service, to abduct a Nazi war criminal from South America by hiding him in a “Gulliver violin case.”

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Jews Are Not a Race But Jewish Identity is Racist

By Gilad Atzmon

We were informed this week that the four major female founders of the Ashkenazis show roots in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. So do most of the minor founders, the study found. Only 8% of the mitochondrial DNA shows signs of being from the Near East.

Gil Atzmon, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who led the research, argued that there had been some evidence of mass conversions, especially of women, to Judaism throughout the Mediterranean in the past. That resulted in about 6 million citizens, or a tenth of the Roman population, who were Jewish.  

The practical meaning of this information is simple and far from being new. Ashkenazi Jews are not Semitic and have no roots in Palestine. Needless to say that neither Alan Dershowitz nor Max Blumenthal or myself look particularly oriental. So if Jews are neither a race nor Semitic what is it that bonds them together? The answer is an extreme form of tribal ethnocentrism AKA racism. In short, Jews are not a race but Jewish secular culture is racist to the bone.

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Hannah Arendt and Jewish Intolerance

A film review by Gilad Atzmon

In  1961, German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt travelled to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker. Margarethe von Trotta’s  new docudrama 'Hannah Arendt' tells the story of her journey and the controversy following her report.

What Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) saw in Eichmann was not stupidity, but actually a thoughtlessness – a complete incapacity for independent critical thought. Arendt understood that it was within this thoughtlessness that the evil becomes banal as opposed to being a sinister premeditated crime.  The ‘banality of evil’, as such, is the structure that allows the ethical to fade away and blind compliance to take over. To a certain extent, the banality of evil is that crude obedience that actually removes responsibility from the perpetrator and turns genocide into a mechanical operation.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTQNWgZVctM

The Jewish community was outraged by Arendt’s reading of both the Holocaust and the Eichmann trial, and objected to the portrayal of Eichmann as an obedient officer within a state bureaucratic apparatus. They protested against the instrumental notion of the ‘Banality of Evil.’ They wanted revenge and wanted to see Eichmann as the arch exemplary case of a ‘hatemonger antisemite’. But Arendt suggested he wasn’t that at all. According to Arendt, Eichmann's appearance in Jerusalem proved that he was just a minor cog in a big machine.

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NYC is my Mecca

By Gilad Atzmon

As an Israeli boy of a patriotic background, I was destined to become a military man.  But then, at seventeen, as I was getting myself ready for my  IDF compulsory service, the unexpected happened. On a late night jazz radio programme, I heard Charlie Park first time. 

I was knocked down. The music was more organic, poetic, sentimental and wilder than anything I had ever heard before. Parker’s music was intense but it was as well romantic and even melancholic at times.

It was then and there that I realised,  my upbringing, Zion, and the IDF notwithstanding, that  NYC  was my Mecca and Jazz was my Jihad – a spiritual struggle aiming at beauty.

As I grew older, I realised that America was far from being perfect, and it wasn’t necessarily as brilliant as the music of Bird, Ellington or Coltrane’s. Nevertheless it was clear to me that  there was something in America and NYC that brought about jazz, that unique  combustible mixture of imaginary freedom confronted with harsh oppressive capitalism, urban complexity, all sparked by a lot of talent.

Yesterday I was listening to the legendary Jimmy Cobb playing at Fat Cat. Jimmy is not young, he played with Miles Davis and John Coltrane back in the 1950’s.  But his spirit is still very young. And he was surrounded by young musicians who keep jazz alive against all odds.  

This weekend I will record in Manhattan with Ben Meigners on upright bass, and Jason Brown on the drums. I am very excited about it. I rarely record in America, but when I do, it is a special event in my career. The recording sessions are open to the public but the number of seats is obviously limited. This would be the first ever recording of this trio.  But you could also be a part of it! To book a place: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/455960

Come and meet me in NYC this Weekend

Hello everybody

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/455960

On October 5th & 6th, 2013

Gilad Atzmon is coming from London to NYC for a unique studio recording at Zeb's wonderful studio.

The recording sessions are open to the public but the number of seats are limited. You will be experiencing Gilad's collaboration with two of NYC's finest musicians, Ben Meigners on upright bass, and Jason Brown on the drums.

This would be the first ever recording of this trio, and you can be a part of it!
It includes wine and snacks (suggested donation) and discounts on Gilad's CD's and book ("the wandering who?")

to book a place: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/455960