Former Israeli Military Man Arrested at Refugee Camp, Wants to Give Up Israeli Citizenship

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Andre Pshenichnikov, an Israeli who immigrated from the former Soviet Union, was arrested by the IDF after living for two months in the Dheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem and kept in detention for eight days at the police station in the settlement of Kiryat Arba.

He told his police interrogators that he wants to break all ties with Israel, to give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian citizenship instead. Eventually he was released under restrictive conditions and banned from entering the "A" areas of the West Bank penidng the end of legal proceedings against him. He was indicted for having entered these "A" areas which Israelis are forbidden to do under military orders. During some of the proceedings at the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court and District Court, representatives of the prosecution asserted that Pshenichnikov had joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) but eventually withdrew that charge. Regarding the indictment filed against him, Pshenichnikov is represented by Attorney Andre Rosenthal of Jerusalem.

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The One Gay Solution

in

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info/

The Moscow City Court upheld last Thursday a district court’s decision to ban gay parades in the Russian Capital for the next 100 years.  Not just one year, two years or even ten years, the court was pretty clear about it all-a century with no gay parades. Pretty sinister I would say.

As it seems Homosexuality is not very popular amongst  Russia’s political establishment. In 2007, Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov described attempts to hold a gay parade in the capital as “satanic.” In fact, no gay Parade has ever been officially permitted in Russia. Russian gays are heavily discriminated.  But they should never lose hope. In the last few days I have come up with a simple and  creative solution that would calm this rift down and may even bring peace to what is left of occupied Palestine.

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What Phil Saw That Day

http://www.deliberation.info/

45th anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty  

By Gilad Atzmon

Back in 2009, in Houston Texas, Mimi Adams, a distinguished Palestinian solidarity & human rights activist, gave me a present- a USS Liberty baseball cap. She put it on my head and said,

“Gilad, in the next two weeks, make sure you have it on your head everywhere you go in America. You will see what happens.”

It was around midnight, I was tired and jet-lagged, I couldn’t really understand the significance of the baseball cap, I just wanted make my way to my hotel room and catch some sleep.  At 7 AM in the airport on my way to the gate with a USS Liberty baseball cap on my head, just before boarding on a flight to San Francisco, I noticed an older guy chasing me. He was breathless and agitated.

“Sorry to bother you, were you on the USS Liberty” he asked.

“No” I said, “I was actually four years old in 1967.” Amused I admitted that the  Baseball cap was given to me by a friend in a Palestinian solidarity gathering just a few hours ago. I asked him what did he know about the USS Liberty.

“I was a 6th Navy’s pilot” he said. “We were deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. On that day in June 1967, we heard it all, the sailors on board of the Liberty, they were begging for help, it was a real agony, we were fuming, we wanted to get on the planes, we were about 10-12 minutes away, we wanted to save our brothers, but they didn’t let us onto the deck.”

On June 8, 1967 USS Liberty, an American auxiliary technical research ship, a military vessel specialised in gathering intelligence, was attacked by the Israeli forces. It was subject to an 18 hours combined air and sea raids that left 34 American crew-members dead (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian) and 170 injured. The attack also severely damaged the ship.  Like the Mavi Marmara, at the time of the attack, the ship was in international waters, north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 50 km northwest from the Egyptian City of El Arish.

 

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Celebrating Palestinian Resistance and Resilience

By Eva  Bartlett & Ali Mallah 

You may rob me of the last span of my land

You may ditch my youth in prison holes

Steel what my grandfather left me behind:

Some furniture or clothes and jars,

You may burn my poems and books

You may feed your dog on my flesh

You may impose a nightmare of your terror

On my village

Enemy of light

I shall not compromise

And to the end

I shall fight....

--Samih_al-Qasim

 

With the passing of the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, (the establishment of the illegal Zionist state on the land and homes of Palestinians), should
we mourn or celebrate? Professor Nurit Peled–Elhanan wrote of her mourning:

“I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will mourn for vanished Palestine most of which I never knew. I will mourn for the holy land that is losing its humanity, its landscape, its beauty and its children on the altar of racism and evil. I will mourn for the Jewish youngsters who invade and desecrate the homes of families in Sheikh Jarrah, throw the inhabitants into the street, and then sing and dance in memory of Baruch Goldstein, the infamous murderer of Palestinian children, while the owners of the desecrated houses with their children and old people are sleeping in the rain, on the street, opposite their own homes. …All these things I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will join the millions of dispossessed, downtrodden and humiliated who have not given up on the future and who still believe there is a chance, who stand as witnesses and as firebrands of the true human spirit.…”

For the last 64 years, Palestinian women, men, elderly, and youth have steadfastly and spiritedly resisted the occupation and the Zionist state. It is a resistance that continues flourishing among Palestinians from all walks of life both inside and outside Palestine, be they farmers, workers, students, poets, or intellectuals.

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Hope not (Jewish) Racism

The true reality of the 'Jews only State' . It isn't just the Palestinians. Segregation and ethnic cleansing are at the heart of Israeli and Zionist cultures. If we want to understand it all, we must elaborate on the real meaning of Jewish identity politics...

Watch the Israeli mob celebrating their symptoms...

 

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics

The book can be  ordered  on Amazon.com  or Amazon.co.uk

The BDS Cultural Boycott and Integrity

By Sarah Gillespie

If we are ‘humanists’ we cannot be lured into suppressing or vandalizing art or ideas. 

Collaborators

Last week I went to see an excellent play at the National Theatre called The Collaborators by John Hodge. The play explored Josef Stalin’s unlikely admiration for dissident playwright Mikhail Bulgakov and the complex bond between art and ‘the State’. The play was a reminder that historically, even when culture has been puppeteered by an authority, unapproved and unintended meanings have a way of leaking out. Had the horror of Stalin’s Holodomor been contemporaneous today, we may well have been called upon to boycott the works of Bulgakov. This would do a great disservice, not only to the cannon of great literature, but also to the counter-revolutionary spirit evoked by Bulgakov’s work. I don’t claim that all art originating from criminal or repressive states, is loaded with subversive messages, but that art has the capacity to transcend the binary world of ‘placard politics’ (‘for’ this or ‘against’ that) and deliver the transforming might of pathos, spirit, sadness and beauty.

Reflecting on this reinforced my reluctant opposition to the cultural and academic boycott of Israel and, in particular to the call by the BDS to sabotage or ban any mode of expression delivered by state-enforced Israeli artists, musicians and thinkers. While the motives of many activists speaking out against Israeli artists and intellectuals are well intended and heart-felt, any action that seeks to abolish freedom of expression or thought is not winning any prizes for tolerance. Jews had their books burnt by Nazis & Israelis continue this dubious tradition by banning writer Gunter Grass, composer Daniel Barenboim and academic Norman Finkelstein. Surely, if we are ‘humanists’ we cannot be lured into suppressing or vandalizing art or ideas.  If we do, we enter the supremacist domain of those we claim to oppose.

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Sarah Gillespie Quartet feat. Gilad Atzmon at Black Mountain Jazz 27/05/12

Sarah Gillespie Quartet feat. Gilad Atzmon at Black Mountain Jazz, Kings Arms, Abergavenny, 27/05/12

 Reviewed by: Ian Mann  Live Review

The best Sarah Gillespie show I've yet seen, with the emphasis more firmly upon the singer.This was her most convincing and assured performance to date.

Sarah Gillespie Quartet featuring Gilad Atzmon, Black Mountain Jazz, Kings Arms, Abergavenny, 27/05/2012.

Tonight’s performance represented a very welcome return for singer/songwriter/guitarist Sarah Gillespie who last visited the club in January 2011 attracting one of the largest crowds seen at BMJ for some time. This evening’s event was less crammed but the attendance was still gratifyingly healthy with Gillespie and the quartet earning a warm reception for their distinctive music. This was the third time I’ve seen Gillespie appear live and for me this was her most convincing and assured performance to date.

Gillespie seemed to emerge from nowhere in 2008 with her acclaimed début album “Stalking Juliet”, a stunning release that also featured the playing, arranging and production skills of multi instrumentalist Gilad Atzmon, a significant recording artist in his own right. This was followed by 2011’s “In The Current Climate”, another strong collection which cemented Gillespie’s reputation as a skilled and highly literate songwriter. Her current tour comes in the wake of the release of “The War On Trevor”, an EP containing a mini suite of four songs which has recently been reviewed elsewhere on this site.

It’s something of a mystery to me that Gillespie is still only a “cult” artist. Her songs are excellent, she possesses a distinctive voice, striking good looks and fronts a characterful band of superb musicians but to date mainstream success seems have eluded her. Perhaps it’s because her songs are too wordy, too musically exotic and too politically uncompromising. Her tunes have great choruses but they’re a far cry from Coldplay’s anodyne stadium anthems, I guess the great British public just doesn’t like to be challenged too much. Their loss is my gain, one of the joys of being a fan of jazz or any other so called “minority” music is getting the opportunity to witness artists of this calibre performing in intimate situations such as a jazz or folk club. Whilst I wish Sarah every success there’s still a part of me that’s grateful that she’s still playing in venues like this. 

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Ed, David and Glenn

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info/

A few days ago, in a New Statesman special Jewish edition article, Labour leader Ed Miliband explored his Jewish heritage.

As expected, Ed Miliband confessed that his father, the Marxist historian Ralph Miliband, and his mother, Marion, “raised him to appreciate various aspects of his Jewish heritage. “

But what is Jewish heritage for Ed Miliband, is it the Torah, the Ten Commandment or any particular ethical universal teaching? Not at all, Ed is not a religious Jew and is actually innocent enough to admit that  his “relationship with  Jewishness is complex.”  In fact, it amounts to a combination of suffering mixed with Woody Allen and matzo balls.

On the one hand we follow the standard trail of Jewish anguish and trauma.

“So how can my Jewishness not be part of me?” he says. “It defines how my family was treated. It explains why we came to Britain. I would not be leader of the Labour Party without the trauma of my family history.”

But for Ed suffering is just part of the story, Ed’s Jewishness has some cultural elements in it too:

“My mum got me into Woody Allen; my dad taught me Yiddish phrases, and my grandmother cooked me chicken soup and matzo balls.”

Profound indeed.

Young Miliband is also deeply immersed in Jewish ‘rituals’.  Like Zoey, Dictator Aladdeen’s Wife in Sacha Borat Cohen’s new Hasbara film, Justine, Ed’s new wife, also “broke a glass” under their wedding canopy.

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The United Jewish Kingdom

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info

The Telegraph reported yesterday that “ministers have criticised Britain’s biggest exam board after pupils were asked to explain ‘why some people are prejudiced against Jews’ as part of a GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education).

Apparently more than 1,000 teenagers are believed to have sat the religious studies test papers, which challenged pupils to assess the reasons behind anti-Semitism.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, which set the exam, rightly said that the question acknowledged that “some people hold prejudices” – they probably expected the students to examine the reasons that lead to anti Jewish feelings rather than simply justifying them.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary who is notorious for his pro Israeli stand and his intimate relationships with the Jewish lobby, has managed to produce a particularly lame statement that should disqualify him from any holding any position related to education.

To suggest that anti-Semitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and, frankly, bizarre,

antisemitism

 

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