This form will allow you to send a secure email to the owner of this page. Your email address is not logged by this system, but will be attached to the message that is forwarded from this page.
Gilad Atzmon's New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics
Jewish identity is tied up with some of the most difficult and contentious issues of today. The purpose in this book is to open many of these issues up for discussion. Since Israel defines itself openly as the ‘Jewish State’, we should ask what the notions of ’Judaism’, ‘Jewishness’, ‘Jewish culture’ and ‘Jewish ideology’ stand for. Gilad examines the tribal aspects embedded in Jewish secular discourse, both Zionist and anti Zionist; the ‘holocaust religion’; the meaning of ‘history’ and ‘time’ within the Jewish political discourse; the anti-Gentile ideologies entangled within different forms of secular Jewish political discourse and even within the Jewish left. He questions what it is that leads Diaspora Jews to identify themselves with Israel and affiliate with its politics. The devastating state of our world affairs raises an immediate demand for a conceptual shift in our intellectual and philosophical attitude towards politics, identity politics and history.
In September 2010, 16-year-old Palestinian refugee Mohamad Fahed arrives at London's Heathrow airport and is taken to Britain's most prestigious private school, Eton College. Here, thanks to an all-expenses paid scholarship, he will spend the next two years, adopting the mantle of a public schoolboy in an environment that is largely unknown, even to the British.
Mohamad is a charismatic and thoughtful boy whose life so far has been spent in the Al Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Mohamad's dream is to become a genetic engineer, but as the third generation of his family to be born in exile, with few educational or job opportunities guaranteed, this dream seemed destined to remain unfulfilled. Winning the scholarship, however, will open up his life in ways he cannot yet imagine.
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Settlers attacked a Palestinian choir bus returning from a carol concert in Nablus on Saturday evening, choristers told Ma'an.
The singers, from Bethlehem Bible college, said five men attacked them on a quiet road outside of the northern West Bank city.
"A rock smashed through the window, and glass shattered everywhere inside," chorister Saleem Anfous told Ma'an, adding that none of the 25 carol singers was injured.
"We kept driving and starting singing to cheer ourselves up and encourage the choir members," he said.
"Tomorrow we will continue our carol tour of the West Bank in Jenin, using the same road, and we are afraid. But we are trying to convince the families that God will protect us."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 11:11AMGilad Atzmon
It was a few years ago that I grasped that Zionism was just one manifestation of Jewish political power in the West. But at the time, hardly anyone was either brave or stupid enough to tackle the topic. In spite of Israel defining itself as the ‘Jewish State’, despite the fact that the warplanes that dropped their bombs on Palestinian civilians were covered in Jewish symbols, still no one was willing to openly ask exactly what Jewishness was all about or what it stood for – and those few who did dare to raise the question were subject to total abuse until they took cover or just faded away.
It’s also been clear for quite a while that many Palestinian solidarity activists, intellectuals and academics have been begging for recognition from mainstream Western institutions. For obvious reasons, many of us have been fearful of open confrontation with exponents of Zionist power, whether mainstream Zionist media organisations or even those AZZ (Anti Zionist Zionists) who have managed to lodge themselves so comfortably within our ranks.
But recently things have changed and the popularity of my book ‘The Wandering Who’ (TWW) is just one example of that clear shift in consciousness. Somehow, we have lost our fear, somehow we have found the courage to say what we know to be the truth.
The song is an expression of Jamal’s wish to encourage others to join with him and the whole TJP movement to work to build a more truthful, more just, and more peaceful world. It is a big step for a man, an even bigger step for a boy.
(BOSTON) - Oliver Goldsmith! Look out! Jamal Belica’s latest song, World Citizen: Giving It My All,
is articulating a new view of the world citizen: bold and aggressive; quite the opposite of the genteel Chinese traveler Lien Chi sojourning in London two and a half centuries ago whom Goldsmith used to satirize the follies and foibles of 17th-century British society in his The Citizen of the World. Instead, Jamal’s world citizen has muscles and faces the unpleasant realities of the world we live in unflinchingly.
Jamal’s track is dedicated to Ken O’Keefe and Tim King. It draws its inspiration from the works and words the two dedicatees as well as other activists in the TJP (Truth-Justice-Peace) movement among them Gilad Atzmon and his influential book The Wandering Who and, of course, the views of his father’s activist musical output.
Ken O’Keefe, who has said “aloha!” to narrow nationalism in his own life has articulated the principles and aims of the TJP on his website and, moreover, practices what he preaches. As for Tim and Bonnie King, they have worked very hard and sacrificed much to spread the message of the ideals and goals of TJP.