The Jewish Experience - by Gilad Atzmon

[blackbear]

The Jewish Experience - by Gilad Atzmon

For more than half a century, those who have been trying to combat the forces that are behind the Israeli paradigm have been identifying Israeli policies and practice with Zionism and Zionist Ideology. I am afraid to say that they were wrong all the way along. Indeed, Zionism’s project dictates the plunder of Palestine in the name of Jewish national aspiration. It is also true to argue that Israel has been rather efficient in translating the Zionist philosophy into a devastating oppressive and murderous practice. Yet, Israelis, or more precisely, the vast majority of Israeli-born secular Jews, are not motivated or fuelled by Zionist ideology. Its spirit or symbols are virtually meaningless to them. As bizarre as it may sound to some, Zionism is either a foreign or just an archaic notion for most Israeli-born secular Jews.

Since the vast majority of Israelis are confused by the notion of Zionism, most forms of criticism that would label itself as anti-Zionist would have hardly any effect on Israel, Israeli politics or on the Israeli people. In other words, in the last sixty years, those who have been using the paradigm of Zionism and its antipode have been preaching to the converted.

A total review of the amalgam formed by Israel, Zionism and Jewishness is now overdue...........

http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/06/10/the-jewish-experience-by-gila d-atzmon/

Once we are brave enough to explore the Jewish question and Jewish identity we may be able to understand that Israeli apartheid is not just political circumstances, it is actually a natural outcome of a particular racially orientated tribal philosophy. The Israeli wall is not a political measure but rather a manifestation of an exclusive racist attitude that stands at the core of the Jewish notion of segregation. Once we stand up and insist upon interpreting Israeli/Zionist scrutinising of the Jewish question we may as well grasp why Senator Obama rushed to the AIPAC conference three hours after his nomination for the Democratic Party was secured. The set of promises made by Obama, Clinton and McCain in AIPAC a few days ago is in fact a true reflection of the contemporary Jewish experience. The senators feed the Jewish American prominent lobbyists exactly with the food they want to swallow. At the expense of the Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians and billion Muslims, American politicians openly promise that America will keep being biased. Seemingly, America prefers to appease its tiny Jewish minority instead of being an international mediator and a true genuine negotiator.

I would strongly argue that in the light of the crimes committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people, we are perfectly entitled to question the philosophy and praxis involved with Jewish experience. We should never be intimidated by Jewish ethnic activists and Zionist smear campaigners.

Since Jews do not form a race but largely succumb to some different forms of collective, racially orientated politics, we shouldn’t be afraid of touching the matter. Once we take it as a given that Jews do not form a race, the study of Jewish identity and politics is neither racism nor essentialism. It is actually the very opposite, it is in fact a critical reading of racist ideology and its inherent supremacy.

Those of us who regard Israel and Zionism as the grave danger to world peace must pursue in this study. Rather than focusing separately on Zionism or Israel, we must learn the unique amalgam of complexity that is formed by both. This dialectic compound shapes the contemporary notion of Jewish Experience. Zionism in itself is no more than a decoy. It is there to grab our attention and divert our focus. Seemingly our attack on Zionism has no significance on Israel, its policies and its people. At the most, it disturbs some Zionist Jews.

As much as the study of the ‘Jewish Experience’ may help us to save millions of lives of Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians and Iranians, it is also a Jewish collective interest to understand the true nature of the Jewish experience and politics. At the end of the day, it is Jewish politics (rather than religion) that may eventually demonise the entire Jewish collective for the next millennia to come. It is a Jewish collective interest to stop the political beast before it is too late.

I owe it to my Palestinian brothers and sisters, I owe it to myself, I owe it to Yann and Mai, I want to make sure that by the time they protest against my own ‘anti-Jewish experience’ I’ll be clever enough to discuss it all with them in an open and thoughtful manner.

Comments:....2....could be an interesting debate.!

[kbo234]

Here is an article on a similar theme from Israeli writer Israel Shamir, a Christian convert.

The Palestinians have no chance, unless we free our souls from Jewish control.
Gaza: Of Mice and Men

By Israel Adam Shamir



A cat called to the mouse holed up under the floor: “Come out, you have nothing to worry about! I have become a pious vegetarian, preparing for my Hajj, you may play freely”. “Oh wonderful news”, cried the mouse and ran out of the hole; a moment of the eternity clock passed, and the mouse found herself in cat’s claws, goes Nizami’s fable.



This is, in brief, the development of Gaza crisis that began with Israel’s phoney but much advertised “withdrawal” (a.k.a. “disengagement”) from Gaza in summer 2005, followed by their phoney permission to run democratic elections for the Palestinian government.



- “Sharon has changed his ways”, exclaimed the good-meaning Americans and Europeans; “he – and after him, Olmert – are ready for peace and reconciliation.”

- “We liberated Gaza”, said Hamas.

- “Oy vey!” cried the settlers.



The cries of joy and sorrow following the fake withdrawal had not died out, when the real siege and bombardment of Gaza began. After a few months of shelling, this real takeover of Gaza and arrest of all Palestinian leadership completed the picture of a fat cat playing with the mouse.



Our readers may remember that at the height of the withdrawal hullabaloo we called (in Much Ado about Gaza) for everyone to tone down expectations: an Israeli pull-out is always followed by a push-in, as in a rape scene. Do not expect to see the last of them: an Englishman leaves without bidding farewell, a Jew says his farewells but does not leave, quoth a Jewish joke. Readers of this list and site were given, as always, the correct forecast: indeed the Jews came back.



The intermezzo was quite sad, too. Gaza after the withdrawal was one of the most depressing places on earth, with widespread starvation and vast unemployment, and it was not the Gazans’ fault: whether under Hamas or Fatah rule, Gaza can’t stand alone; this narrow strip is surrounded by Israeli troops and barbed wire, the Gazans have no way to sell their goods or to import their needs but through Jewish-controlled ports. Remove the SS men from Auschwitz to its perimeter, give the camp full autonomy but keep its gates shut from outside, and you’ll get a picture of Gaza. The Jews destroyed Gazan industry and trade by their siege: Gazan fruits and flowers for export withered at Karmi checkpoint, and a multimillion-dollar investment went down the drain. Gazans openly regretted their new-found “independence”, because in the days of Israeli rule they could make a living working at Israeli factories, and the Israeli shelling was much more moderate, while “independent” Gaza was subjected to incessant shelling. Hundreds of missiles and shells were launched against this small strip of land daily, killing a few but ruining the nerves of its residents.



I, for one, know what that means: in 1974, my commando unit spent less than half a year in the fortified crater of an extinguished volcano some 40 km (25 miles) to the south of Damascus. We were shelled daily by Syrian artillery, and our light arms could not respond to their cannons. At the first exiting boom we would hide in bunkers and wait for the salvo to land. Sometimes, it was a single shell, sometimes it was followed by the inhuman squeal of a Katyusha missile. We had very few casualties: a couple of wounded and one killed for this whole period of time, but our nerves were completely shattered. We stopped brushing our teeth and shaving: it did not make sense when death is so imminent. We ceased writing letters. Even the periods of the most intense fighting we went through with dozens of killed comrades were preferable to the attrition of incessant shelling. Gazans – children, women, men, - have endured almost a year of attrition made worse by aerial booming, something we were free from by virtue of Israeli air superiority.



Israeli tactics in Gaza resemble the strategy of “starving into obedience” applied by the Pentagon to North Vietnam, per the Pentagon Papers, - the single most evil piece of strategic planning in the 20th century:



“Strikes at population targets are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with neighbours. Destruction of locks and dams, however, does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million dead?) unless food is provided--which we could offer to do at the conference table.” [1]



If the Jews were to bomb a hundred thousand Gazans to oblivion, probably there would be “a wave of revulsion”, but destruction, starvation and thirst are equally efficient, and do not disturb the world conscience all that much. The destruction of a Gazan power plant was a shrewd business decision as well: this American-build and insured station competed with the Israeli Electric Company for supply of electric power to Gazans. Even running at half-capacity, the power station undermined the Jewish supplier’s monopoly.[2] Now it is gone, and Gazans will have to buy all their electricity from Jews at a much higher price. Combining business with pleasure, this destruction also allowed Jews to “thirst Palestinians” in addition to starving them as Gaza has no rivers, and electricity is needed to operate pumps.



Still, in this short time of Gazan “independence”, Gazans have proven that they are men, not mice. Their stubborn launching of Kassams were a sign of their unbroken spirit: they refused to be starved into obedience. Kassam is hardly a weapon in the modern meaning of the word. This is a medieval weapon, a catapult, at best: an iron mote propelled by a simple device, carrying no explosives. We built and launched such missiles when we were kids in prep school. Surely, an iron mote can kill in the unlikely case of a direct hit, but the chances are small indeed.



Their brave and well-planned raid of an Israeli siege unit has restored our appreciation of Gazans’ fighting abilities. It is not a simple thing to attack tanks with your bare hands. True, Israel utilised this courageous raid to jumpstart a new invasion of Gaza, but do not make too much out of this linkage: Haaretz (29.06.06) revealed that the plans for mass arrests of Palestinian leadership and for re-invasion were prepared a long time ago.



The Israeli government referred to the raid: “a horrific, serious terror attack was carried out by Palestinian factions, which ended in the deaths of two soldiers, the injury of an additional soldier, and the kidnapping of Shalit.” Our friend Jeff Blankfort wittily quipped: “One would think Shalit was a little boy walking to the candy store who had been seized by a notorious child molester and not a soldier on active duty”.



A Palestinian Christian Professor and a Knesset Member, Azmi Bishara said well of the resistance fighters: “Some people chose to respond to the murder of Palestinian civilians by attacking an Israeli military installation. They made the hardest choice, and chose the difficult path. Those who did not take this path, who did not make this sacrifice, or put their courage to this test, or suffer trembling nerves in the darkness of the tunnel, yet who have some delicacy of feeling towards the pains of the Palestinians could at least spare this operation the embarrassment of tainting it as terrorist.”



Yea, when the Jews attack, that’s war, when they are attacked, it is terror! Uri Avnery called it “a unilateral war”, on a par with their “unilateral withdrawals”. But this unilateralism is a constant feature of Jewish-Native relations: when Jews attack natives, this is rightful vengeance, when they get some of it back, it is a pogrom. Long before the Jews defamed Palestinians as terrorists, they vilified their previous native neighbours, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Spaniards, Germans as subhuman and vicious antisemites. If we reject their defamation of Palestinians, we may re-examine their accusation of others, and the whole narrative of Jewish suffering will collapse.



Then, the problem of Palestine, or rather the problem of Jewish mistreatment of their ‘goyim’ will appear as an old problem, for the way Jews act today probably is the way they acted – if they could – yesterday. Long before the apartheid wall spanned Palestine, the Jews did not allow a native Spaniard to enter the walled city of Lucena, where they held sway.[3] Long before they shelled Gaza, they filled Mamilla Pool in Jerusalem with blood of slaughtered Christians.



This is a good news for the descendants of Jews: we were brainwashed into hatred of ‘antisemitic’ mankind; came the Rape of Gaza, and now we learn that mankind was right and good, while we misbehaved. It is better to find oneself in the wrong than to accuse the whole of mankind, for one can always repent of one’s own ways. It is better to find oneself shunned for one’s farts, than for one’s race. It is less honourable, but easier treated.



This understanding has began to seep into our conscience. A Jaffa man Anwar Sacca wrote in a letter to Tikkun Magazine: “Through their [Jewish] history, unfortunately not only for Jews but for the whole world, they were always self-destructive supremacists. As a minority living within any country and enjoying its citizenship, they always antagonized their fellow citizens by totally dominating their economy, media, life styles etc...to a limitless extent which generated dreadful consequences they had to heavily pay for. The same case applies in Palestine…”



The Rape of Gaza fits too well into this centuries-proven pattern. The Jewish leadership never intended to give their captive goy a chance to lead normal life. Sooner will a cat turn vegetarian. Whatever they do, expect the worst. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. “Their good deeds are as dangerous as their obvious crimes”. In 1880s, Dostoyevsky prophesised: if and when the Jews get power, they will skin the goy alive. In Palestine this prophesy is being realised. This is not a question of innate Jewish qualities: a Jew can be good and do good, a Jew can repent, but ‘the Jews’ can’t because this body politic exists to compete and combat the indigenes, whether in Palestine or elsewhere.



Ideologically, a Jewish state will do the Jewish thing, that is, it will fight natives and combat the Church, whether Christian or Islamic. “If the Jews of old were to come back”, - wrote Simone Weil, - “they would destroy our churches and massacre us all”. “The Jewish tradition is rampantly ethnocentric and dehumanises outsiders with a gusto that could hardly be exceeded”, - wrote Ed Herman in his Triumph of the Market[4]. In the Jewish State, the Jews of old have come back, and the Jewish tradition has became paramount.



Thus, the Hamas was right in refusing to recognise the Jewish state: in no way can this state become a tolerable neighbour, whether ruled by Labour of Peretz or by Kadima of Olmert, or even in extremely unlikely case of being ruled by Mr Avnery. This state has to be dismantled, like the Assassins’ extraterritorial State that once controlled the Middle East. The Assassins drew their power from their ability and preparedness to assassinate the prominent leaders of Crusaders and Muslims, while leaving alive only weak rulers who did not dare to touch them.



The Jews do the same: sometimes, by sword, sometimes, by their money, sometimes, by their media, but no strong leader has emerged within their sphere of influence.



* Assassinations by media are the most frequent, and this topic is well covered. If they decide to kill a person by their media, they try to eliminate every reference to his name; if it does not work, they attack him ad hominem, spreading lies and distortions. This treatment was recently given to the leaders of Iran: the Jewish press spread a lie that the Iranians intend to adorn every Jew with a yellow star. Their lie was quickly disproved, but the retraction appeared on far-away pages of newspapers, while the damage was already done. The US politicians who tried to go against Jewish orders were usually assassinated by Jewish media and found themselves in the wilderness.



* Assassinations by money are equally frequent: enough to mention prominent American industrialist Henry Ford who tried to combat Jewish influence. Eventually he received an offer he could not refuse; he apologised, burned his books, and repented. He preferred that to destruction of his car-making empire.



* Assassinations by sword were done when nothing else worked: Lord Moyne, Folke Bernadotte, Sheikh Yassin. Hundreds of Palestinian leaders were assassinated by Jews. Recent publication of Haaretz tells of operation Zarzir (Starling), a Jewish “comprehensive, operational plan, a nationwide program of assassinations” of enemy leaders, both political (Emile Houri) and military leaders, such as Hassan Salameh and Abdel Khader al-Husseini. Khaled Meshal escaped their assassins just by chance – they tried to drop poison into his ear in a rather Shakespearian fashion.



In the days of old, salvation came from unexpected corner: West Asia was conquered by Mongols and these ruthless warriors flushed the Assassins out of their mountain retreats and utterly destroyed their conspiracy. Their harmless descendants are Ismailis, who live peacefully and do not disturb peace anymore. If we can’t solve the problem, some new Mongols will dismantle the State of Sodom and render descendants of Jews as harmless as Ismailis.



Then, there is a milder way of dealing with the problem by introducing reciprocity instead of unilateralism. A medieval chronicle reports that the Jewish King of Khazar once said to a Muslim visitor: “We would destroy all the churches and mosques in our kingdom right away, but we can’t for fear that they will destroy the synagogues in Baghdad and Constantinople”. Indeed, if in response to the Jewish destruction of Gaza’s power plant, an Israeli power plant in Caesarea were erased, and the Jews had to survive our summer without air-conditioners, they wouldn’t do it again. If the Jews in Europe were limited to the rights their brethren granted to Palestinians, Palestine would be free tomorrow.



But why should we indulge in daydreaming? Who could do such a deed? The Arabs are subdued. The US conquest of Iraq eliminated the last independent Arab state. Iran is being pushed hard and this powerful Muslim state is happy every day it is not bombed. Syria is in the crosshairs of the US whom the French are helping them to contain Damascus. The noble fighters of Hizbullah saved the Arab dignity by their self-sacrificing exploits, but they can’t hurt the monster. Never before – since Saladin – has the Middle East been so helpless and powerless.



Europe and America are equally subdued: none of prominent public figures dared to object to the Jewish Drang nach Gaza. “Why do you keep quiet?” exclaimed Jonathan Steele in the Guardian (July 6, “Europe's response to the siege of Gaza is shameful”). Don’t you know the answer, Mr Steele? Whoever tried, was invariably defamed as “antisemite” and “neonazi”, and lost his living and his good name. I know, I tried to defend the Palestinians, and was stabbed in the back by a couple of nice Palestinian activists, Mr Ali Abunimah and Mr Nigel Perry of Electronic Intifada, followed by a cabal of other pro-Palestinian activists. Only after that did the heavy guns of Jewish media – like the Times, or Wikipedia – go into action. These good activists deserve some credit for the present destruction of Palestine: if an Israel Shamir from Jaffa is attacked like that, what could expect a John Smith from Wisconsin? Whoever tried to defend Palestinians, got this treatment, unless he observed the PC rule of never uttering the J-word. Still, I do not regret speaking the truth, for if we keep silent, the stones will cry out.



The Palestinians have no chance, unless we free our souls from Jewish control. And here we may turn to the second J-word, more mighty than the first: Jesus. The present subservience of the West began with a minor step. In 1960s, the Western churches removed from their liturgy a prayer “Oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis”, “Let us pray for perfidious Jews that our God and Lord will remove the veil from their hearts so that they too may acknowledge the light of thy truth which is our Lord Jesus Christ and be delivered from their darkness”. This was considered “antisemitic”, though it is a far cry from the Jewish prayer “Shepokh Hamatha”, “Lord, vent your fury upon goyim who do not know your name”. But the Jews preserved their prayer of vengeance, while misled and subdued Christians dropped their prayer of mercy. Say this prayer today, say it in your church, dismiss a priest who dares it not, and tomorrow you will not writhe in face of Jewish displeasure, and Gaza – and your soul - will be saved. And if your prayer will be answered, the Jews will be saved, too.