By Gilad Atzmon
On 8 July I was scheduled to play at The Vienna Jazz Festival with the Jordanian Palestinian oud virtuoso Kamal Musallam and the musical ambassador of Indonesia, Dwiki Dharmawan. Our band is called World Peace Trio and it is dedicated to spreading the message of reconciliation and human harmony. It seemsthat the Austrian Zionist lobby opposed this message. They used every trick from the Israeli Hasbara playbook to push Vienna city into compliance. The Vienna Jazz Festival was told by its prime funder (Vienna City) that Gilad Atzmon must be expelled.
Of course, the Jewish lobby managed to shoot itself yet again. They stopped me from playing music so instead, I was invited by the Society for Austro-Arab Relations to deliver my message of dissent that night (video will be released soon).
I should probably be cheered by the fact that my invitation to play music tormentedsome ardent Zionists enough that they successfully endeavoured to push the city of Vienna to act as their anti cultural saboteur. Despite their actions, no one was able to tell me or the other members of the World Peace Trio what is it about me that they object to.What is it that I shouldn’t say?
- Is it the publication of my new book Being in Time that frightens my detractors?
- Is it the fact that in the book I re-articulate the Jerusalem/Athens dichotomy?
- Is it that I analyse the systematic failure of the political? Or maybe the problem is that I managed to clarify the meaning of Jewish Lobby domination of the west?
In the old days, when Jazz was an exciting revolutionary and vibrant adventure, it was the music of resistance: the voice of the oppressed. But for Fritz Thom, the head of the Vienna Jazz festival, Jazz is a token of compliance. Thom acquiesced to his paymasters’ demands. But the story didn’t end there. Porgy and Bess, one of the best jazz clubs in Europe, was happy to sustain our concert in their program but they also became subject to threats and some enormous political pressure from the Austrian Green Party, the Lobby and the Vienna Jazz Festival.
As usual, not a single accusation against me was substantiated or supported by anything I have ever said or written. As my followers as well as my detractors know, despite Europe’s strict legislation on hate speech and hate crimes, I have never been accused or even questioned by any law enforcement authority anywhere about any of my writings or my public statements. My record, in that regard, is unblemished. And yet, as demonstrated in Austria, political institutions are keen to serve the Zionist lobbyand neglect the most precious and fundamental rights that made the West into an open society.
It is now clear that Austria has been occupied once again. It is subservient to foreign interests that are crude, anti intellectual, anti cultural and rely upon hooliganism. Cancelling a concert because your paymasters don’t agree with the saxophonist? What’s next?
More troubling, the political institutions that so easily succumbed to the Lobby’s demands clearly managed to draw the wrong message from the holocaust. You would expect Austrian politicians to understand that silencing dissent has some disastrous consequences.
Worse for the Jewish lobby are the consequences of its actions in this incident and others. If Jewish financiers believe that abusing their power will make Jews loved and protected I suggest that they need to spend some time reviewing Jewish history. The Jewish past proves that it is the effects of Jewish political omnipotence and power games that invokes Jew hatred.
Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to silence criticism of Jewish power; my detractors should know by now that I do not surrender to this power. In fact, I insist upon disproving my own definition: despite the endless efforts to destroy my career, I have managed to survive. I am playing my music and giving talks night after night. The more vindictive they are, the more harmonious and peaceful my message becomes. This operational mode is something I borrowed from Jesus Christ. I vow to give it back once peace prevails.
If you want to understand how they made us all into Palestinians, Being in Time is the book for you: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and gilad.co.uk.
PS – we are in a process of rescheduling our return to Porgy and Bess in early 2018.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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