ALAN HART AT FREIBURG CONFERENCE

Essence of the suppressed truth

By Alan Hart

 

The following is the text of a speech I delivered on 11 September to a conference in Freiburg, Germany, “Palestine, Israel and Germany - the Boundaries of Open Discussion”. The full title of my address was The mainstream media’s complicity in Zionism’s suppression of the truth of history.

I describe the conflict in and over Palestine that became the Zionist - not Jewish! - state of Israel as the cancer at the heart of international affairs; and I believe that without a cure this cancer will consume us all. I also believe that almost nothing is more important than crossing and actually eliminating the boundaries that have prevented, and to a very large extent do still prevent, informed and honest discussion about who must do what and why for justice for the Palestinians and peace for all. And that’s why I was pleased to accept an invitation to address this conference.

Before we get into substance I want to tell you a couple of things about myself and then offer you a key, actually THE key, to understanding.

As the advance promotion for this conference indicated, I think I am the only person in the world who enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level friendship with, arguably the two greatest opposites in all of human history - Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. The first picture in my epic, three-volume book ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS is of Golda Meir when she was prime minister. It is inscribed in her own hand “To a good friend, Alan Hart.” On lecture and debating tours across America I used this picture as a weapon of self defense when I was falsely and maliciously accused of anti-Semitism. I would hold up the picture, read out the inscription, and say to my accuser, “Do you think that old lady was so stupid that she couldn’t have seen through me if I was anti Jew?!” Everywhere I went that had the effect of turning audiences against my accuser.

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Gilad Atzmon: Obama, the Palestinian State & Zionist Schizophrenia

Those who monitor the Hebrew press and understand the Jewish State may be slightly puzzled to find out that while in the Hebrew press there is only just a little and insignificant attention to the current Palestinian leaders' drive for statehood, the Israeli English media outlets are saturated with news about the prospect of a pro-Palestinian resolution in the UN next week.

If you want to understand this clear discrepancy between the Jewish Hebrew press and English outlets, then here it is--we are dealing here with a clear split within the Jewish collective psyche.

I guess that some may be surprised to learn that Israel and most Israelis actually want the Palestinian initiative to go ahead and to succeed. They want a Palestinian State because this is the only solution that would save the ‘Jews only State’ from a demographic meltdown.

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William T. Hathaway: The Last Jewish Prophet

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The Wandering Who, Gilad AtzmonA review of Gilad Atzmon's new book, The Wandering Who?

Gilad Atzmon, OpEdNews contributing writer, has just published a study of Jewish identity politics. The Wandering Who? chronicles his journey away from his Jewish identity, and by extension away from all exclusive identities, into an inclusive humanness. It's a painful journey, a brutally honest self exploration of these internalized tribal impulses. He emerges from the struggle deracinated but emancipated, freed of a destructive load of cultural baggage.

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They Need Your support!!!!




Ibrahim (12 year old) and Mohammed (will be 15 in 2 days) are cousins.

They were playing on the street in front of their house an hour before Iftar during the fast of Ramadan on August 19th 2011, as Israel was sporadically bombing Gaza.

An unknown person in a control room kilometers away from them launched a missile from the drone flying over their heads. The result was devastating. Words cannot express the catastrophe and the anguish for the boys and their family. After ten days in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, they were transferred to an Israeli hospital for a much needed medical treatment which is unavailable in Gaza.
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Ramzy Baroud: The Gaza Story- Challenging History through Narration

RAMZY BAROUD FOR FREIBURG CONFERENCE 11/9/11

 paltagefreiburg2011.blogspot.com
To truly appreciate the situation in Gaza – whether the suffering, the struggle, or the steadfastness and the resistance – the Gaza story would have to be placed within its proper context, as an essentially Palestinian story, of historical and political dimensions that surpass the current geographic and political boundaries, demarcated by mainstream media and official narrators. The common failure to truly understand Gaza within an appropriate context is largely based on who is telling the story, how it is told, what is included and what is omitted.
Here is an alternative attempt at understanding.

 

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Gilad Atzmon: Israeli War Criminals Are Welcome Here

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Earlier today Britain amended its universal jurisdiction law to the extent that Israeli war criminals can now enter the Kingdom without risk of arrest. British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould shamelessly called Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni, against whom an arrest warrant was issued in 2009, and told her that the Queen has signed the amendment "to ensure that the UK’s justice system can no longer be abused for political reasons."

Ignoramus ambassador Gould should know that putting a war criminal behind bars is not a political matter, but an ethical necessity.
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Laura Stuart: Cafe Palestine Conference Freiburg - The Boundaries of Discourse- A Review

"Nothing will change until that which was taken from the Palestinians by force is taken back by force"

I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to attend the Cafe Palestine conference at the weekend. The topic being The Boundaries of Discourse. Being primarily a woman of action, I do not generally get the chance to listen to so many intellectuals speak on a wide range of subjects, I am more familiar with activism at the "sharp end" having participated in land convoys and the flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara.
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Gilad Atzmon: Being in Time

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Time Banking and Social Changes

(A talk given at the 'Palestine, Israel, Germany- The Boundaries of Open Discussion Conference’,  Freiburg 11th September 2011)

 

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

 

I will begin my talk with an unusual confession. Though I was born in Israel, in the first thirty years of my life I did not know much about the Nakba, the brutal and racially driven ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 by the newly born Israeli State. My peers and myself knew about a single massacre, namely, Deir Yassin but we were not at all familiar with the vast scale of atrocities committed by our grandparents. We believed that the Palestinians had voluntarily fled.  We were told that they had run away and we did not find any reason to doubt that this had indeed been the case. 

Let me tell you that in all my years in Israel, I have never heard the word Nakba spoken. This may sound pathetic, or even absurd to you -- but what about you?  Shouldn’t you also ask yourself -- when was the first time you heard the word Nakba? Perhaps you can also try to recall when this word settled comfortably into your lexicon. Let me help you here -- I have carried out a little research amongst my European and American Palestinian solidarity friends, and most of them had only heard the word Nakba for the first time, just a few short years ago, whilst others admitted that they had only started to use the word themselves three or four years ago. 

But isn’t that a slightly strange state of affairs? After all, the Nakba took place more than six decades ago. How is it that only recently it found its way into our symbolic order?

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Uprootedpalestinians STARTS IT'S FOURTH YEAR!!!

http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2011/09/up-starts-its-fourth-year.html


Not for Sale   River to Sea

 
Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Launched on September 13, 2008
Thanks to followers, all Visitors and readers
In Particular, those who encouraged, helped and contibuted.
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Gilad Atzmon: And What About Our Spring?

 

Freiburg Conference is behind us and it was a major success.

This is my opportunity to thank you all, panellists, organizers, audience and readers for your endless support and dedication. 

The conference was a gathering of some of the most articulate and innovative minds within our discourse and beyond. We had a list of panellists  who did not follow any particular party line but were dedicated to the principles of justice, ethics and universalism. We are talking here about public figures who manage to withstand Zionist and crypto Zionist pressure, including physical threats. We were lucky to be facilitated by an organisation (Cafe Palestine Freiburg)  that is genuinely interested in Palestine and justice.  Our audience were willing to listen and engage in open  discussion.  The entire event was smooth and productive. It left us with hope and fuelled  many of us with a renewed belief in a better future.  

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Gilad Atzmon: Egyptians Stormed Israeli Embassy, Other Nations Should Do The Same

מפגינים מול השגרירות בקהיר (צילום: רויטרס)Egyptians victorious  attack on Israeli embassy in Cairo last night leads to a dramatic decision: Israeli Air Force plane returns ambassador, members of diplomatic staff and their families to Israel. 

And I wonder, how long will it take before Americans, Brits, Germans, Indians, French, Chinese, Argentinians and others do the same.

The people of Egypt are proved to be far more responsible and ethical than their political leaders. The citizens of the world should follow.

There is no room for racist ethnic cleanser Israel amongst the nations.

Shahram Vahdany: King of the Jews

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      The Wandering Who, Gilad Atzmon           

The magical and yet extremely subtle gift that Gilad Atzmon offers through his personal journeys in The Wandering Who? is the wisdom of disillusionment; the gift of not floating above water, but having to take an insightful dive into a shrouded underworld of appearances and disappearances.

The Wandering Who?: intelligent, bold, unapologetic.

At a certain stage, around 2005, I thought to myself that I might be 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 for this and Jews for that, for the first time in history all spoke in one single voice. They all hated Gilad Atzmon equally.

Gilad begins his book, The Wandering Who? with a brief story of his childhood and the tremendous influence of his grandfather on his adolescence. He writes “my grandfather was a charismatic, poetic, veteran zionist terrorist. A former prominent commander in the right-wing Irgun terrorist organization …” He writes about his attraction to jazz, his enlistment in the IDF (Israel Defense Force), and finally being sent to the first Lebanon war.  He writes of his experience in Lebanon saying:

I studied the detainees. The looked very different to the Palestinians in Jerusalem. The ones I saw in Ansar were angry. They were not defeated, they were freedom fighters and they were numerous. As we continued past the barbed wire I continued gazing at the inmates, and arrived at an unbearable truth: I was walking on the other side, in Israeli military uniform. The place was a concentration camp. The inmates were the ‘Jews’, and I was nothing but a ‘Nazi’. It took me years to admit to myself that even the binary opposition Jew/Nazi was in itself as result of my Judeo-centric indoctrination.

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Gilad Atzmon: Israel Better Think Twice

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As the rift between Israel and Turkey deepens,  the Israeli media is preparing its crowd for another  possible exciting bloody conflict.
 
Israel’s leading news outlet Ynet, published yesterday a detailed comparison between Israel’s and Turkey’s military capacity - it outlines the size of the air force, navy, ground forces in the respective countries. “Turkey”, it says, “posses much bigger navy but our air force is larger.’
 
I guess that this is what one would expect from Israel, a morbid collective driven by war enthusiasm and some bizarre craving for bloody conflict.
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Paul J. Balles' Book review: The Wandering WHO?

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The Wandering WHO? navigates between thought-provoking personal experiences, historical and philosophical issues.

Gilad Atzmon, scholar, prolific writer and leading jazz saxophonist has authored the book The Wandering WHO? In it he astutely explores the identity crisis he himself experienced and one faced by many Jews.

Gilad struggled with the conflict between his early experiences as an Israeli Zionist and his awakening as a humanist.

His book reveals an innate ability to switch between the qualities of a down-to-earth artist (the successful sax player and word-smith) and the knowledgeable philosopher.

Without doubt, The Wandering WHO? will awaken many readers– pleasing some and disturbing others.

The pleased will include those who have experienced similar awakenings or resolved identity crises by continuously asking questions.

The book will also find welcome readers among those who have sought honest answers to the many contentious issues involving Jewish identity, Jewish politics and Israel.

The disturbed will include those Gilad might refer to as “separatist Jews…kind of a bizarre mixture of an SS commander and a Biblical Moses.”

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Gilad Atzmon: Machine of Israel

 

'Machine of Israel' is the name of the following cartoon.  The short clip is openly critical of Israeli politics but it is also critical of Israel as a whole. The organisation behind the clip left a short note on youtube. It says in Hebrew “rather than (politicians) changing chairs, let’s change the system.”

Israelis are unhappy with the ‘Israeli impersonal oppressive reality’. But for some reason, they fail to grasp where the real problem is. They complain about the system but they are yet to admit or even realise what their ‘system’ is all about.

Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’ and as such, it regards itself as the state of the ‘chosen’. The Israeli system is fuelled by ‘choseness’  because ‘choseness’ is the true pragmatic meaning of the Jewish State and Zionism. If Israel wants to ‘change its system’ it must first drift away from tribalism, chauvinism and supremacy. It may as well be possible but once it happens, Israel wouldn’t be the Jewish State anymore.

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You can now pre-order Gilad Atzmon's New Book: The Wandering Who? on Amazon.com  or Amazon.co.uk

 

Ode to Boycott

It is encouraging and cheering to find out that those who are daily engaged in gatekeeping, silencing and harassing  people within the Palestinian Solidarity movement can also be poetically creative and musically productive.

Well done!!!

A PROMS performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was taken off air  yesterday after it was  interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters.

For more info http://londonbds.org/

On a further note, I may as well admit that, regardless of the  politics involved, it takes some boldness to stop a symphonic orchestra playing a violin concerto. I certainly cannot imagine myself engaging in such an act in million years.  Regardless of the legitimacy of such a non-violent  act, which I do not doubt, I have to agree that the people who stopped the Israeli  orchestra, weren’t at all ordinary. I hope that their action will lead Israelis towards self-reflection, but I actually doubt it very much.

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Freiburg Conference Update

CONFERENCE 'PALESTINE, ISRAEL, GERMANY- THE BOUNDARIES OF OPEN DISCUSSION'

Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204880796235445

A message from Dr Gabi Weber-Cafe Palestine Freiburg

Dear All,

as time goes by, things are getting more and more interesting in tiny little Freiburg.

One of the organising groups of the "Counterevent" against Palestine Days Freiburg
is German-Israeli Society (DIG).
Weeks ago Cafe Palestine sent an invitation to DIG and asked for a proposition concerning one or
two persons who could represent them in the conference.
Until now we didn´t get an answer - but they organised the counter-event.
At least they are operating in the open, in contrast to certain Jewish"anti-Zionists"

One part of the counter-programme is a  demonstration against our
conference on Sunday, 11/9/11 in front of the conference venue.

For those among you who speak German - here is a radio interview
with one of the persons who are part of the counter-event. I don´t have to tell you that
most of the accusations are simply not true.
http://www.freie-radios.net/42825

On Saturday afternoon Cafe Palestine will  organise an information desk in the city of Freiburg.
Gilad Atzmon will support us with  STREET MUSIC!!!

Many greatings
Gabi Weber, Freiburg

Gilad Atzmon: The End of Innocence Revisited

Introduction: The following piece is a commentary I wrote and circulated amongst friends on the 15th  of  September  2001, just four days after 9/11.   At the time I didn’t regard myself as a writer. I was a jazz musician preparing for the publication of my debut  novel.

During that time I didn’t know a single editor, journal or media outlet. My commentary was circulated on the net via emails.  Eventually, nine months later, it was published by Counterpunch.  This commentary was, in fact, my first attempt to comment on world affairs, ethics and politics.

I am slightly embarrassed about some of my early formulations. I want to believe that I am a better writer now.  I am certainly more succinct and yet, I somehow managed to predict, already then, in September 2001,  that the fate of the west was doomed and the collapse of  Anglo-American strategy was inevitable. This paper is ten years old but its message may even be more devastating today.

 

The End of Innocence by Gilad Atzmon

15th September 2001

http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/08/03/the-end-of-innocence/

In the light of the tragedy and the devastating images from New York City, in the shadow of embarrassingly stupid remarks made by the major western ‘free world’ leaders and in the light of the call for a western jihad against a faceless enemy, I feel obliged to expose the lie that stands in the center of the current liberal democratic militant enthusiasm.

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