The ‘Jewish Messiah’

Saturday 25 February 2012

The ‘Jewish Messiah’

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:01PM

Gilad Atzmon

http://haroonhaider.com

Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon, an Israel-born Jew, who has been championing for a single democratic Palestinian state for Muslims, Christians and Jews for years. He openly shows his hatred of Zionists and the so-called ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews – because he believes both of those groups are two-faces of the same coin – working for the occupation of Palestine.

The Jewish Lobby’s re-action to his new book ‘The Wandering Who: A study of Jewish Identity Politics‘ has proved that Gilad Atzmon could be the only Jew who unifies the Zionist horde while among the Gentile, it’s Iranian President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In reviewing Giad Atzmon’s book – Shahram Vahdany called Gilad ‘King of Jews’. Read the review here.

“It seems as if the Zio-cons on both sides of the pond are now in a state of panic – In an obviously orchestrated attack, the Zionist mouthpiece The Jewish Chronicle of London, the Islamophobic Award winning ‘Harry’s Place’ and the ex-Israeli concentration camp guard Jeffrey Goldberg, all launched a typical Hasbara smear & intimidation campaign, in which they labeled both Professor Mearsheimer and myself anti Semites. I was also called a ‘neo Nazi’, a ‘Hitler apologist,’ a ‘Holocaust denier’ and a ‘hatemonger’,” writes Gilad Atzmon.

UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Professor Richard Falks calls The Wandering Who a kind of diary of Atzmon’s journey from a hardcore Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionised patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people. The metaphor of a journey, which pervades the experience of the Jewish Diaspora, is apt — it even seeps into the title.

Gilad was recently interviewed by Eric Walberg, published in Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.

When asked if Atzmon agrees with Iranian President Ahmedinejad in his speech to the “World Without Zionism” conference in 2005 that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time“? Gilad replied: “I am certain that political discourse is not going to bring a change. I am afraid to say it, but I think Israel is in a bad way and its supportive crowd isn’t much better“.

In his new book Gilad writes: “Within the context of Jewish identity politics and ideology, history doesn’t play a guiding role. Zionists and Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists alike insist that circumstances made the Jews into what they are. I do not buy it. The emancipation of European Jewry started two hundred years ago with the French Revolution. And as we can see the Jewish conditions didn’t change much. Also, Israel, which was supposed to be an exemplary case of Jewish proletarian rebirth, is in fact a hard-capitalist hell.“

Gilad told Eric Walberg: “The difference between the Jewish tribal ideology and other tribal concepts is that Jewish tribalism is an exilic concept. Judaism as we know it was formed in the Babylonian exile. Jewish tribalism became a template of negations. It is there to alienate the Jew from his surrounding reality. Jewish tribalism is imbued with hostility toward others and otherness. Jewish-ness can be celebrated without God or the Torah, but one thing is clear, the exilic conditions always remain intact. Most importantly, the Jewish Question cannot be resolved as long as Jews fail to overcome the exilic mindset. The exilic mindset aspires to Zion. It is detached from its surroundings while in the Diaspora, and once in Zion, the exilic identity collapses completely since its raison d’etre vanishes. In other words, Jews are locked in a limbo; their identity complex cannot be resolved.”

Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is now widely compared to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews. Gilad does not pussyfoot in explaining this: “Stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people; however, Jewish ideology and Nazi ideology were very similar. In some respects Israel is far worse than Nazi Germany. Israel, for instance, regards itself as a democracy, and as such, its brutal policies are accurately reflecting the will of the people. The latest polls show that the majority of Israeli Jews support ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. 94 per cent of Israelis supported the carpet bombardment of Gaza at the time of Operation Cast Lead.

Atzmon criticises those anti-Zionists who blithely compare Israel to apartheid South Africa or other colonial regimes. “Zionism, colonialism, and apartheid are there to mislead. Israel is the product of Zionism but it isn’t driven by Zionism. Israel is not a colonial state either. It may be a settler state but it lacks a mother state. And Israel is not exactly apartheid, though it has many apartheid symptoms. Apartheid is a system of exploitation of the indigenous people. Israelis prefer to see the indigenous gone. The above terminology is there to maintain dogmatic Marxism’s relevance within the discourse. But the contemporary left discourse has basically lost any relevance within our intellectual discourse. It needs an immediate facelift.”