Deconstructing Avraham Burg

By Gilad Atzmon

I respect former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg. Over the years, Burg has managed to extend the scope of the Zionist self-criticism; he has challenged the Zionist discourse, Israeli society and even Jewish identity politics. A few days ago, in a New York Times opinion piece, he attempted to explore the reasons behind the collapse of Israeli democracy.

Burg seemed alarmed by the way in which the relationship between Israel and America has evolved. “When an American presidential candidate visits Israel and his key message is to encourage us to pursue a misguided war with Iran… we know that something profound and basic has changed in the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

Burg was obviously referring to Mitt Romeny’s grave comment in Jerusalem last week. But, in his analysis of the relationship between the two warmongering states, Burg may have failed because, in reality, nothing much has changed in recent years. On the contrary, the true nature and deep cultural, ideological and spiritual bond between America and Israel is now clear for all to see.

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Dismembering the Arab World

by Makram Khoury-Machool

Dr Makram Khoury-Machool is a Palestinian scholar, based in Cambridge, UK

http://www.deliberation.info/dismembering-the-arab-world/

 The behaviour of the NATO-aligned, anti-Syrian bloc is now blatant enough for us to better understand what is happening in Syria. On the one hand, we find political operators such the ad-hoc group ‘Friends of Syria’, and on the other, two Arab personalities, both ministers of two Gulf sheikhdoms.

The first group includes NATO-led heads of states, with a barely disguised Israeli master-plan conceived by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy. Rather than being the friends of Syria, these personalities are arguably working to secure their own financial interests in, around, and via Syria. The two Arab politicians are the two foreign ministers ofSaudi ArabiaandQatar. They have declared that those forces acting violently against the Syrian state should be armed and financially supported. In short, these conventions of the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’ are probably no more than a ‘modern’ version of those meetings conducted by Viceroy Lord Curzon, who, in 1903, addressed the ‘Chiefs of the Arab Coast’ on HMS Argonaut in Sharjah (UAE).

The Qataris and Saudis give financial support to the ‘rebels’ for weapons, payments to fighters and mercenaries, and logistical oversight of attacks on Syria. All of this is in addition to their support with telecommunication services, combat tactics, and strategic military advice. Unsurprisingly, the Western military advisors, who operate for the armed groups behind the scenes, do not feature in any media outlets. Neighbouring states also provide geographical assistance to the armed groups, with Jordan providing a passage for mercenaries from Libya, and Turkey acting as the northern military base for operations.

Turkey is involved because of its wish to align itself with the Saudi-Sunni, NATO-backed line and also its fear that a dismembered Syria would lead to the promotion of Kurdish autonomy. In their eyes, this could bring about the eventual union of the Kurds with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds and then lead to civil war with Turkey and the eventual separation of Kurdistan from Turkey and the creation of a Kurdish state.

For its part, Israel has for decades planned, as part of its strategy to dominate the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to weaken Syria in order to continue its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and to dominate water sources. Essentially, Israel wants to be the main economic and military power in the region and indeed, Israel may well emerge from the weakening ofSyria as the main winner, if only in the short-term.

Through its orchestrated media campaigns transmitted over the decades to its  own public,Israel has constructed a concept of Syria as the major threat to its existence in the Arab world. Arguably, the governmental vacuum that might be created in Syria could be filled by al-Qaeda-like groups giving sufficient justification for Israel’s actions (against Syria and/or Iran) and would also promote the idea of a conflict between ‘civilized-democratic’ Israel and ‘savage’ Islamists.

Despite huge differences between Syria and Libya, Syria’s fate could be similar to that of Libya in terms of direct foreign intervention, were not Russia and China firmly opposed such actions at the UN, where there has been consistent cooperation between the two. Although the origins of Sino-Soviet relations go back to the early days of the 1917 Communist Revolution, it seems that, even two decades after the dismantlement of the Eastern Bloc, the Russian Federation and the Republic of China are, more than ever, following what Mao Tse-tung advised in his ‘Be a True Revolutionary’ address on 23 June 1950. Here, Tse-tung said that ‘in the international sphere we must firmly unite with the Soviet Union’ (see Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. V. p. 39). Shared ideology, world vision, economic interests, and objectives in the field of energy have brought Russia and China ever closer together over the Syrian conflict.

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Mezvinsky & Atzmon on Heidegger's Podium

Dear friends

I am away (with no internet or wifi connection)  for 3 weeks finishing a new  book and teaching Jazz.

However, I just learned that my talk for Cafe Palestine @ Freiburg University is now available on youtube.

Last month I toured Germany, Austria and Switzerland  together with Frank Harrison and Dr Gabi Weber     for 3 weeks. I gave talks about music and Jewish identity ahead of the publication of the German edition of The Wandering Who (October 2012). The legendary American historian Prof. Norton Mezvinsky Joined us for three days.

The following is our joint talk in Freiburg University on 03.07.2012 (German translation by Dr. Gabi Weber)

Gilad Atzmon on The Wandering Who

http://youtu.be/Ka6HGnXfWdE

Prof. Norton Mezvinsky on Jewish Histroy, Zionism and Israel

http://youtu.be/loB3mTXKQw4

 

'Obama is not good for the Jews' says Michael...

The first in a series of ads by the Republican Jewish Coalition, highlighting the real stories of real Jewish people who give voice to the nagging Jewish doubts that many in the Jewish community feel about President Obama.

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics, Jewish political interest, Jewish Lobby and beyond..

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

Bigot Vs. Bigot

This is a rare and important debate between infamous ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane and the caricature Harvard Prof’ Alan Dershowitz.

In the debate, that took place in 1985, Rabbi Kahane explores a thoroughly coherent and consistent notion of Jewishness derived from self love, Jewish orthodoxy and the Torah. He grasps the true (and rather obvious) supremacist meaning of the Jewish state having to be primarily Jewish. Kahane’s views were not popular in Israel at the time, (he insisted that Arabs and Palestinians had no future in Israel so, he wanted them gone) but today, Kahane’s views are widely accepted in Israel and not at all different from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann’s political agenda.

But what is really interesting is to watch the role of Alan Dershowitz. Even in 1985, our infamous spin-master could not produce one genuine or truthful statement

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DONOR OPIUM, the impact of international aid to Palestine (MUST WATCH)

For twenty years now the international donor community has financially supported Palestinian institution-building, infrastructure development, the economy, public employees' salaries, health and education, social welfare, the police, electricity production, private credit guarantees, and the bigger part of the civil society organizations with regards to democracy promotion, human rights, tolerance, women rights etc.

Peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state have been the declared goals of all the support. But actual results are the fragmentation and pacification of the Palestinian people.

This documentary film, directed by Mariam Shahin and George Azar, and funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, features Palestinian criticism of this externally funded "development".

Castrating Arabs in the name of the Jewish People (shocking sadism)

Two former Palmach fighters boasting about how they castrated Arabs upon orders from David Ben-Gurion himself.

Unfortunately no English translation yet. This is certainly one of the most devastating documentation of Israeli barbarism.

Dr Anthony Löwstedt on The Wandering Who

In this book Atzmon moves effortlessly between disciplines and perspectives. It is an exhilarating read, from the atemporality of immoral action to the temporality of morals, from Jewish suffering to supremacy and expansionism to the categorical imperative, and from guilt feelings to responsibility. It is most interesting to follow Atzmon's diagnosis of the Israeli-Jewish mental state. He looks for signs of schizophrenia and neurosis and finds them abundantly, as well as a new mental disorder, a form of psychosis, which he names 'pre-traumatic stress syndrome', a consequence of intense elite politics of fear. He also finds it among Zionist and crypto-Zionist Jews in the Diaspora. Atzmon is keenly aware that not only Jews but many other groups of people have developed similar symptoms, e.g. white South Africans and Americans at home, or Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Blair and Bush, or the National Socialists in Germany and elsewhere. They are not essentially unique to Jews, but perhaps to conquerors, people who have conquered other people militarily, and whose mental states are disturbed by their relationship with those people, a relationship of violence, dominance, control, expropriation, exploitation, hatred, and disgust, and, naturally, of indigenous resistance to all of that. Sometimes provocative and emotional, often brash, but funny and always entertaining, Atzmon has a simple, humanistic, and very hopeful message: If you want to feel better, then make peace with justice with those people, with the Palestinians. This whole thing can be started, and perhaps as much as half of it finished, in the course of a single afternoon. 

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics

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

Farewell, Alex, My Friend by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: I have learned today that the widely admired Alexander Cockburn, co-editor of the invaluable Counterpunch Magazine, passed away last week. Alex was, no doubt, amongst the leading voices of dissent and Counterpunch, which he founded with Jeffrey St. Clair, has been the prominent English alternative media outlet for more than a decade.

Alex was a great supporter of Palestine, justice and free speech. He was quick to offer support to younger writers, myself included. Alex will missed!

I will use this opportunity to express my deepest condolences to Alex’s family and Counterpunch.

Farewell, Alex, My Friend

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012

Our friend and comrade Alexander Cockburn died last night in Germany, after a fierce two-year long battle against cancer. His daughter Daisy was at his bedside.

Alex kept his illness a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of us knew how terribly sick he truly was. He didn’t want the disease to define him. He didn’t want his friends and readers to shower him with sympathy. He didn’t want to blog his own death as Christopher Hitchens had done. Alex wanted to keep living his life right to the end. He wanted to live on his terms. And he wanted to continue writing through it all, just as his brilliant father, the novelist and journalist Claud Cockburn had done. And so he did. His body was deteriorating, but his prose remained as sharp, lucid and deadly as ever.

In one of Alex’s last emails to me, he patted himself on the back (and deservedly so) for having only missed one column through his incredibly debilitating and painful last few months. Amid the chemo and blood transfusions and painkillers, Alex turned out not only columns for CounterPunch and The Nation and First Post, but he also wrote a small book called Guillotine and finished his memoirs, A Colossal Wreck, both of which CounterPunch plans to publish over the course of the next year.

Alex lived a huge life and he lived it his way. He hated compromise in politics and he didn’t tolerate it in his own life. Alex was my pal, my mentor, my comrade. We joked, gossiped, argued and worked together nearly every day for the last twenty years. He leaves a huge void in our lives. But he taught at least two generations how to think, how to look at the world, how to live a life of joyful and creative resistance. So, the struggle continues and we’re going to remain engaged. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

In the coming days and weeks, CounterPunch will publish many tributes to Alex from his friends and colleagues. But for this day, let us remember him through a few images taken by our friend Tao Ruspoli.

Alex and Jasper. Photo: Tao Ruspoli

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On Palestinian Kindness