United Against Freedom

GA: The Rabid Zionist BBCWatch is upset once again. The BBC gave me a platform, oy vey indeed.  Seemingly, the BBC fails to (fully) submit to Zionist  pressure.  The usual spin aplied - once again I am equated with  'neo nazis' and 'KKK',  I am labled  an 'anti Semite' in spite of the fact that I actullay hate everyone equally (a joke).  The message is clear. Zionist organisations are determined  to dominate UK culture. But today's  story is even more peculiar. Adam Holland, the Hasbara troll  behind the following piece is  actually a Californian operating from America.  In short, this time it is an  American Zionist Jew who atempts to vet British radio as if we don't have enough Zionists on this side of the pond. 

BBC World Service promotes Gilad Atzmon – again

http://bbcwatch.org/2013/03/09/bbc-world-service-promotes-gilad-atzmon-again/

h/t Adam Holland

The BBC World Service has an arts programme called ‘The Strand‘ which, according to the blurb:

“..is a daily 18 minute programme highlighting the best of what’s going in the arts.

Wide-ranging and with eclectic interests, The Strand reflects the artistic response to the BBC’s news agenda.

Presented by Harriett Gilbert and friends, it features discussions, reviews, big-name interviews and location reports as well as live studio performances and Hollywood, Bollywood gossip.”

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Is Palestinian Solidarity an Occupied Zone?

By GILAD ATZMON

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism, is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.

But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all -  they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19^th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.

So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow, ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.

This raises some serious questions.

Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently undistinguishable?

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Nick Cooper: Gilad Atzmon Makes His First Error Ever?

GA: I promised Nick Cooper (BDS activist and  Klezmer muscian)  to publish his piece about my 'first error'. In fact I am happy to do so.  Cooper provides us here with a glimpse into the Jewish progressive mind.  For the obvious reasons he  fails to realsie that Jewish identity is far more complex than mere 'ethnicity'. We are dealing with ideology (Jewishness) and racially oriented exclusivist culture driven by choseness. This applies to Zionism and anti Zionism alike. I think that this exchange is interesting enough.   

end

Gilad Atzmon Makes His First Error Ever?

by Nick Cooper

https://docs.google.com

   I heard famous Israel critic and sax player Gilad Atzmon interviewed on the BBC, and he said two things that caught my attention on the air. The first was something I knew he had wrong, "If you are a Gentile, you can not really join a Jewish anti-Zionist cell, because you are not racially qualified."  
   The second was pure egotism, "No one until now said that I got my facts wrong, that I misquoted anyone, nobody until now. There is not a single critical voice who said Gilad is wrong about something."

   Since Jewish Voices for Peace and the Jewish Antizionist Network welcome non-Jewish participants and members, I thought I might have a chance to qualify as the first person to say that Gilad Atzmon had got a fact wrong.  Gilad and I had worked together on the Klezmer Musicians Against the Wall compilation CD, so I hoped, as an ally, I could influence him to change this erroneous talking point.  I contacted him about it.

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Marxist, Atheist, Jewish, Zionist and Prime Minister (wannabe)

Haaretz reported today that  “Britain's next Jewish prime minister says he is a Zionist” how surprising. His brother David, was listed by an Israeli official website as an ‘Israeli propaganda (Hasbarah) Author’.  Reading Haaretz today confirms that 'Red Ed' changed his mind, he is now  'Blue & White'. a genuine Zionist Jew. I guess that  the British Labour is,  once again, an Israeli occupied territory. 

Read for yourself:
http://www.haaretz.com

Labor Party leader Ed Miliband establishes his pro-Israel credentials like never before by stating that while he doesn't always agree with its government, he is 'intolerant of those who question Israel's right to exist.'

The leader of the British Labor Party and the man who may well become the United Kingdom's first Jewish prime minister put a lot of minds at rest on Thursday when he said that he is a Zionist.

Ed Miliband may be the son of Jewish Holocaust refugees but he has never been considered a son of the local Jewish community. His Marxist parents gave him a resolutely atheist upbringing, and he never went through any of the typical rites of passage of British Jews; he didn't even have a Bar-Mitzvah. His leftist credential and a couple of critical remarks on Israel's operations in Gaza have rendered him suspect until recently. In recent months, however, he has been signaling a greater willingness to engage with the Jewish community – this included a personal essay on his Jewishness in the New Statesman weekly, mentions of his religious roots in his main policy speech at Labor's annual conference, closed meetings with community leaders and on Thursday night, the first open dialogue between the leader of the opposition and a Jewish audience.

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GILAD’S CITIES by Bryan Thomas

G: This poem by Bryan Thomas made me very proud. Beauty is the weapon and we fight for truth, peace and justic.

GILAD’S  CITIES

PARIS.  Accordion,

essentially Parisian,

echoed by the clarinet.

Here love is true,

is soulful and the depth of it is fearful

not because of things unknown to come

but because its felt so deep.

TELAVIV, never been, but Africa, the North

blew loud and clear, those

phrases, musical, ring true.

This is a ‘foreign’ land,

where people love and hate,

are passionate; their boundaries,

in all senses of the word, are marked,

unlike our favoured compromise.

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Is the Anti-Occupation Movement Driven by Defenders of Genocide?

by Dr. PAUL LARUDEE

http://www.counterpunch.org/

If there is one message that unifies critics of Israel and advocates for Palestinian rights, it is “End the Occupation.”  As with many unifying messages, however, it is successful partly because of its ambiguity.  What land and which people are occupied?  And what are the terms under which the “occupation” will be ended.

The ambiguity allows groups as disparate as Hamas and J Street to chant the phrase with very different images in mind. Hamas and other anti-Zionists argue that all of the land defined by the British Mandate of Palestine is occupied territory, while J Streeters and other “soft” Zionists commonly refer only to Israel’s 1967 territorial conquests as “occupied.”

The dividing line between these two views has been articulated By Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of JBIG (Jews Boycotting Israeli Goods):

…there are many people within the movement who share the opinion – which is general throughout the West – that Israel needs to exist as a Jewish state, should exist as a Jewish state.  And there are many Jews and others in the movement who don’t want to criticize that fundamental fact.[i]

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Hear My Country-Gilad Atzmon on BBC World Services

Hear My Country-Gilad Atzmon on BBC World Services from Gilad Atzmon on Vimeo.

I was asked by BBC World Service to choose  three Israeli songs that had an impact on my life and intellectual/emotional  development. Israel is clearly not my state anymore. But it was great to return and listen to the music of my childhood. I also spoke briefly about academic and cultural boycott.  Unfortunately, I still see a categorical difference between an academic and an avocado and also between an artist and a carrot.

There Is No Business Like Shoa Business

By Gilad Atzmon

Yesterday, the Independent reported  “Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network targeting Jews was twice as big as previously thought.” But The Independent was quick and kind enough to give us an insight into the  implications of this new Shoa affair. “The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented.”

Legendary (and very perceptive) Israeli diplomat Abba Eban had already sussed it out in the 1950s when he told us that: “There’s no business like Shoa business” 

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Twin Towers for Purim

http://www.shalomlife.com

Purim has begun, and just like with Halloween, children around the world are proudly parading around in their inventive costumes. This is one of the best times of year for our youngin’s- dressing up, going to parties, playing with friends, and playing make-believe… but what about the poor kids that are used as models for their parents distasteful creative endeavors?

Enter Ilay and Nehaoray, seven-year-old twins from Israel whose parents “playfully” decided to dress their children up in famous twin costumes: the Twin Towers. Not only are the kids dressed as the famous New York City buildings, they are fashioning the structures while on fire… with the planes sticking out of the side right near the children’s eye holes.

Popular news website Ynet originally posted the image, with the headline “Twin Towers and other costumes this Purim.” After several commenters remarked about how the title was almost as distasteful as the costume itself, the publication chose to remove it.

Purim and Genocidal Phantasies By Ran HaCohen

Why Purim?

Like any legacy stretching from the Ancient World through the Middle Ages to Modern Times, Judaism is a multifaceted culture: it can be universal as well as nationalist; egalitarian as well as racist; liberal, even revolutionary as well as ultra-conservative – all these messages can be found in it. Among other things, Purim, however, has always reflected deep genocidal phantasies of revenge. The Book of Esther, the textual basis for this holiday, tells the story of the miraculous saving of the Jews of Persia from their enemies, most notably the evil Haman. It ends with the hanging of Haman by the Persian King. Consequently, the Jews take revenge and kill Haman’s ten sons, murder several hundreds of non-Jews in the capital Susa, and then massacre seventy-five thousand non-Jews all over Persia. That’s how the Book of Esther ends. The (probably non-existent) historical foundations of these events are irrelevant: it’s the myth and the memory that matter.

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