BBC Persia / Gilad Atzmon HardTalk- The Transcription
Source:http://nppessaysarticles.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/bbc-persia-gilad-atzmon-interview.html
NPP News: BBC Persia and Gilad Atzmon interview: abbreviations: BBC and GA.
I have transcribed most of the interview, to save others half an hour video watching and chronicle an interesting conversation on the... BBC! I am mostly disenchanted with my UK BBC service, yet this BBC Persia programme is worthwhile. However you deem jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, he is courageous and a recognised profile figure on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
02.08.2013 transcript
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1NEpExbtRk&feature=c4-overview&list=UUHZk9MrT3DGWmVqdsj5y0EA#t=57s28.00
BBC: Are you anti-Semitic?
GA: Not at all. I am interested in Jewish identity politics. How do you define anti-Semitism?!
BBC: I am asking because you are frequently accused of being anti-Semitic.
GA: This is a common tactic used by Zionist and Jewish anti-Zionists to silence opposition to Israel, to Zionism, to Jewish politics, to Jewish power.
BBC: In the conclusion to your book The Wandering Who... it seems you are criticising not only the government; the state, but people because of their religion.
GA: No. I make a clear distinction:
(1) those who identify themselves as Jews because they follow the Torah,
(2) those because they have Jewish ancestry,
(3) and thirdly, those who identify themselves as Jews primarily, a problematic political identity.
Chaim Weizmann, first Israeli President, announced there are no British Jews, American Jews, French Jews. There are only Jews who live in America; live in Britain; live in France. Being a Jew was a primary category. This is the heart of Zionism. On the other hand we have Jewish anti-Zionists who, rather than call themselves anti-Zionists who happen to be Jews, call themselves Jewish anti-Zionists. For them also, being Jewish is a primary category. In my book I try to concentrate on this third category. I try to ask, what does it mean? Most of them are not religious at all. Zionism is not a religious movement; it is a secular movement. According to American historian, Yuri Slezkine, the (Jewish) Bund operating in Eastern Europe as a Marxist apparatus, wasn’t religious, it was a secular, atheist movement and the catalyst in the destruction of the Ukraine people; Stalin’s willing executioners; referred to as Bolsheviks, nothing to do with Judaism.
BBC: If you criticise the Jewish culture, tradition, identity, you are basically for the whole annihilation of the whole of Judaism altogether.
GA: You already contradict yourself. I don’t criticise Jewish tradition. If Jews want to eat chicken soup, I like chicken soup myself, but it (chicken soup) is not a political concept. When it comes to culture, what is it that I criticise? Chosenness; supremacy, the idea that we are the chosen people. In my book I make it clear, that from a religious Jewish perspective, chosenness is a burden; the Jews are demanded to stand as a moral exemplary case.














