Beyond the Cult and the Clichés

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info/

Norman G.Finkelstein, de la culpabilité en... by clap36

I hardly agree with Norman Finkelstein on some fundamental issues. Yet, the American academic always manages to produce some very interesting and astute observations. In this one-year-old video, Finkelstein touches on some hot topics:

1. The Holocaust industry is counter productive.
2. Zionism/anti Zionism is an out of date irrelevant ideological dichotomy.
3. Holocaust denial laws are absurd.

The Holocaust industry has backfired suggests Finkelstein, “the countries where the holocaust is most exploited by the Holocaust industry, happen to be the countries that are most hostile towards Israel”

Finkelstein contends that Zionism (or anti Zionism) is an archaic notion that has very little to do with contemporary Israel-“It doesn’t make any sense anymore to talk about Zionism because it just becomes an ideological issue which obscures, confuses more than shed the light on. Israel is a State and it should be held to the standard of law and morality as any other State….”

On Holocaust denial Finkelstein says

"it is just a crazy law”

And about Bernard-Henri Lévy and the French Finkelstein says –

"what can you say about a country that  thinks  of  Bernard Henry Levi as a philosopher.”

Whether one agrees with Finkelstein or not, it is pretty impossible to deny the fact that the veteran academic presents a unique voice. Finkelstein certainly moves far beyond the old leftist and Judeo-centric clichés. It is hardly surprising that some cult enthusiasts within the Palestinian solidarity movement want to see him silenced.

Eric Walberg: Critiquing Israel: colonialism or Jewish culture?

 http://www.deliberation.info/

The phenomenal success the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has had since it began in 2005 has attracted attention from all corners of the political spectrum — for better or for worse. Israel is scared. Israeli thinktanks have described BDS as a greater threat to Israel than armed Palestinian resistance. At the same time, at the forefront of the movement against what is now widely called Israeli apartheid are Jews — Israeli and diaspora. This is not surprising, as Jews have traditionally been active in “political mobilisation and opinion formation”, according to Benjamin Ginsberg.

So it should not be surprising if the BDS movement itself experiences turmoil. For several years now, the UK Palestinian Soldarity Committee (PSC) has conducted a policy of calling leading activists such as Paul Eisen, Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir — all Jewish — anti-Semitic for daring to point out that those who persecute Arab Muslims and Christians are not just Zionists but are invariably Jewish. That the Jews who have opted to take Israeli citizenship are increasingly racist, belligerent settlers who use their new identity to dispossess, terrorise and murder Palestinians, with the intent of forcing them to leave even the remaining 12 per cent of the land once called Palestine.

These Jews have given Judaism a bad name, causing some “good Jews” to critique their own religious heritage and even disown it, such as American highschooler and winner of the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr Writing Award Jesse Lieberfeld, who came to realise,

I was grouped with the racial supremacists… I was part of a delusion.”

For these Jews, Judaism today had been perverted by Zionism. Paying tribute to Jesse, ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon said,

Journeying from choseness is a life-struggle. From time to time you may feel lonely but you are never alone. Humanity and humanism are there at your side — for all time.”

Click to read more ...

Rich Siegel: My Pro-Palestine CD Reviewed & then ‘Un-reviewed’

Introduction by GA: Rich Siegel is now subject to Zionist abuse and smear campaign. Jazz writer Brent Black of  criticaljazz.com  who reviewed Rich's peace seeking album favorably has now changed his mind due to Jewish pressure. Black wrote on facebook:

"my humble apologies to my jewish friends for reviewing rich sigel (sic) an anti-zionist peace activist that supports the destruction of israel. had i know (sic) who he was and what he was all about i never would have given him 30 seconds of my time. his review is pulled and e mail blocked. again my apologies i stand with israel NEVER against her but firmly against her enemies.”

In my entire musical career I have never heard of a review being deleted. Needless to say that there is not a drop of truth in anything  Black attributes to Siegel above. Siegel is a humanist. He searches for peace and reconciliation through artistic expression.

Please  support Rich,  buy his album and follow his public performances.

Beauty is liberation

Gilad

RICH SIEGEL’S CD “THE WAY TO PEACE” IS AVAILABLE AT Amazon (UK & US), CD
Baby, I-Tunes, AND Palestine Online STore.

http://www.deliberation.info/

The path that my new CD, “The Way to Peace”, has taken to arrive at completion has really been my personal path, a long and circuitous one. I’ve had a career as a work-a-day musician, something which is becoming a rarity today as live music is all but disappearing from so many venues. I’ve been a “99% musician”, not rich or famous from it, but making a living, piano bars, elegant hotel lounges, up-scale restaurants, corporate and private events, musical director for shows, accompanying singers, some famous ones. I’ve been in some shows as well, Off Broadway, a singing pianist on-stage accompanying the cast, and getting a few solo numbers. I’ve also done a fair amount of traveling, jazz clubs in Canada, hostess bars in Japan, music festivals in France, even a piano bar gig in West Africa.

One gig that I tend to leave off my resume is a steady job I had for awhile playing at a luxury hotel in Israel. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I support Israel. I don’t. At the time I worked there, in my early 20′s, I was totally the product of where I came from, deep inside the Zionist cult, in the American Jewish community. Raised in a suburb of New York, I was the teenage president of a Zionist youth group. Many years later I came to the shocking realization that I had been lied to all my life. I came to understand that we Jews had not arrived in Palestine desiring to be friendly neighbors to vicious Arab hordes who hated us for no reason and wanted to “drive us into the sea”. The fact is, we Jews committed atrocities against innocent people who were just living their lives on land that had been theirs for many generations. We committed massacres and military forced mass expulsions. We committed an ethnic cleansing, one that continues today.

Click to read more ...

Art of Resistance – a comment on Günter Grass

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info/

Outrage in Germany, Nobel Laureate Günter Grass has, once again told the truth about Israel being the greatest threat to world peace.

Günter Grass, Germany’s most famous living author and the 1999 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparked outrage in Germany on Wednesday with the publication of a poem, “What must be said,” in which he sharply criticizes Israel’s offensive approach towards Iran.

Once again, it is the artist rather than the politician, who tells the truth as it is.  Once again it is the Artist rather than the academic who speaks out.

 "Why did I wait until now at this advanced age and with the last bit of ink to say: The nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile?” Wrote Grass.

In the poem, published by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and other European dailies on Wednesday, Grass also calls for an

"unhindered and permanent monitoring of Israel’s nuclear potential and Iran’s nuclear facility through an international entity that the government of both countries would approve.”

Click to read more ...

Easter Special-GILAD ATZMON's OHE FEATURING ALEKOS K. VRETOS

GILAD ATZMON – ORIENT HOUSE ENSEMBLE FEATURING ALEKOS K. VRETOS

LONDON: Vortex

FRI 6th 8pm

SAT 7^th 8pm

Gilad Atzmon – Orient House Ensemble With Greek Oud master Alekos K. Vretos

http://youtu.be/_f7tKxomZe0

This weekend the Orient House Ensemble will be  joined by Greek Oud maestro Alekos Vretos. Vetros is an incredible  soloist and composer who creates a blend of world and jazz- This is a unique opportunity to hear him in London.  

‘...one of the most uncontrivedly versatile and unequivocally entertaining jazz units currently operating in the UK’ (Chris Parker).

To book online for Friday: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/161029

To book online for Saturday: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/161030

Watch Alekos, Gilad & the OHE in Athens

http://youtu.be/XZldT3poB7g

The Fetch - Inside the Eye Live 9/17/2011: Interview with Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon - The Wandering Who - Gilad joined live from London to discuss his new book, The Wandering Who. Topics of discussion included Jewish identity, Jewish strategy to impose language constraints, and other issues on Jewish control strategies.

We spoke about Zionism, Jewishness, Palestine,  The Left and more..

Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Israeli Big Brother

http://youtu.be/lGZv4tJSzYg

Israel's Big Brother this year achieved a surprising twist, by making a superstar out of "Palestine sympathiser" Saar Szekely. Szekely is obviously locked within a left/right banal dichotomy (occupation, pre/post 67), yet, such an open debate is taking place in Israeli TV on prime time. 

The Guardian reports: "Szekely, 27, is the wild-card candidate whose stated objective was to voice leftwing views on prime-time television. In a house full of right wind and with a predominantly rightwing audience, Szekely's mission looked certain to be short-lived. But for all the Facebook pages clamouring for his annihilation, the Tel Aviv-based artist has made it to tomorrow night's final, and along the way become something of a heart-throb."

You can watch the clip and read more here.

Ali Abunimah on History & Culture

By Gilad Atzmon

http://youtu.be/6hrJcMO88EI

In the above clip I elaborate on Ali Abunimah’s attitude towards history and culture.

I contend that since Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and its tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols, we are entitled to ask ourselves who are the Jews and what is Judaism and Jewishness? In my work I try to grasp the role and the impact of Jewish culture on Israeli and Jewish politics - something I believe necessary to bring peace to the region and beyond.

But Ali Abunimah doesn’t agree. In reference to a talk I gave at the Stuttgart One State Conference (Dec 2010), he suggested that history and politics are detached from culture - an unusual approach which contradicts all recognized, intellectual and philosophical understandings of humanity, history, politics as well as culture.  

Abunimah says “Talking about Jewish culture, is wrong because such arguments can be made about anyone. We could blame German culture for the history of Germany...”  

Someone should tell Abunimah that this is exactly what intellectuals, historian and political scientists do. They search for the origin of political thoughts in culture, ideology, religion and heritage. For instance, those who study the Nazi eratry to comprehend the impact of Wagner, the German symphony, Protestant culture, German philosophy, Martin Luther’s “The Jews And Their Lies”, Hegel and the German Spirit, German Early Romanticism, Lebensphilosophie, Heine, Athens vs. Jerusalem and so on.

It is obvious to me that, Abunimah didn’t think it through. However, it is never too late to admit a mistake and get it right.  

To view Atzmon’s Stuttgart presentation follow http://youtu.be/MlvaN2c-Oto

Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Anthony Lawson Hits the Nail Again

Iran Bashing, Terrorism and Who Chose The Chosen People, Anyway?

http://youtu.be/eptPeSmA37U

For further and deeper understanding of Jewish identity politics read The Wandering Who.

Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Sarah Gillespie: 'The War on Trevor' (tour & clip by Tali Atzmon)

Sarah Gillespie's project 'The War on Trevor'  is launched @ RONNIE SCOTT'S on TUES 3rd & WED 4th April in a double bill with supergroup 'Get The Blessing'. The War on Trevor' is a 15 min piece of narrative music charting the travails of a Londoner accused of various wrong-doings ranging from public indecency & infidelity to terrorism.  We are never drawn into Trevor's guilt or innocence. Instead Gillespie sketches a sinister Kafka-esque world in which guilt & innocence have become irrelevant. To book tickets for Ronnie Scott's CLICK HERE. Sarah Gillespie - guitar & vocals, Gilad Atzmon sax, accordion & clarinet, Ben Bastin (bass) and Enzo Zirilli (drums). www.sarahgillespie.com 

WAR ON TREVOR FILM by Tali Atzmon HERE

WAR ON TREVOR TOUR

3rd April Ronnie Scotts, London

4th April Ronnie Scotts, London

13th April Much Wenlock Poetry Festival, Much Wenlock

14th April Much Wenclock Poetry Festival, Much Wenlock (workshop)

15th April Guildhall, Lichfield 

19th April Ropetackle Arts, Shoreham by Sea 

21st April The Barn, Snailwell Suffolk (solo)

24th April The Albion Beatnik Bookshop, Oxford  

25th April Command House, Rochester 

26th April The Vortex, London 

27 April Wakefield Jazz, Wakefield 

28th April St David’s Hall, South Petherton

27th May Black Mountain Jazz, Abergavenny 

3rd June Strawberry Hill Jazz Festival, Richmond-upon-Thames 

23rd June Dentdale Music and Beer Festival Yorkshire

14th July Marlborough Jazz Festival, Marlborough