TOPIC: CONTROLLED OPPOSITION and Jewish Dissent - by Gilad Atzmon

Controlled Opposition and Jewish Dissent



February 04, 2016 / Gilad Atzmon




The Goyim drift away,,,


In this NYC talk I suggest that Jewish dissent is, in practice, a controlled opposition apparatus.
This talk will help you to connect the dots and to grasp your own responsibility.







Read the comments on the video. Gilad Atzmon responds to questions and objections.


Source: www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2016/2/4/controlled-opposition-and-jewish-dissent


Btw, Gilad Atzmon is not allowed to give public lectures in the occupied by-you-know-who FRG =>

DISCLAIMER:
Please note that I post this information as food for thought and for free
discussion only - everyone has the right to freedom of expression - the
contents, of course, does not necessarily reflect my own views.

"To be a thinker is the ability to lift every stone,
to be courageous enough to do it and to look under."

~ Gilad Atzmon



Ref.:

- JEWDAS - a glimpse into Jewish Left Duplicity - by Gilad Atzmon
- AIPAC - American Israel Public Affairs Committee
- Yoav Shamir - DEFAMATION

and many more.
.

Atzmon is one of the good guys and a great friend of the Palestinian people.
He's still gigging with The Blockheads too.
Atzmon compares Zionists to Nazis - concluding that they were as bad as each other.
I doubt that you have ever been to Israel Pfiz nor seen, at first hand; just how badly Palestinian people are treated there.
Atzmon's comparison of Nazism with Zionism stands IMO.. bunch of bastards the lot of them.

Next time you comment you might want to watch the video first.

Humans are learning and developing and changing all of the time.

Stub-born liars and obstinate political propagandists don't.

.

Seen it ta.
I look at his blog.
Been following that Oxford University Labour Club debacle with interest.
You're an interesting character Pfiz anything that you think will support your ideas you put it on here.
Take it from me though buddy, having seen some of the Nazi shite that you post on TZ; Atzmon would not piss on you even if you were on fire.

Speaking of recalls your obsession with doing one stinky dump after the other
on every thread which does not match your 100% system conforming views.

GMP wrote:

Is he currently doing this?
Still not a single proof ....





... and you did not watch the full video.

.

PFIZIPFEI wrote:
There ya go buddy...www.gilad.co.uk/writings/immortalising-the-myth-comparing-zionist-apartheid-israel-to.html
Hope that helps.

GMP wrote:


December 25, 2013 / Gilad Atzmon



Thanks again for proving my point!




PFIZIPFEI wrote:

That's certainly the way bd sees the world, except occasionally he'll replace the word, "NAZI" with "bigot" or "racist".

peacenik wrote:

... and GMP aka dif pit grandmasterp even seems to have invented the novel term naztalgic
according to the lady with the all-mine-belly globe-avatar, which they hope
will replace the boring trite ol' term "nazi", also
invented by their ilk:

truth-zone.net/forum/government-and-authority/64344-the-holocaust.html?start=2000#196659

Thus nobody can say they are not inventive ... or can you ... ?

I think Atzmon might have done the zio/nazi meme on the Rivero show that Pfiz linked to, but could be wrong. It could have been Rivero. I do remember that when Rivero revealed he was sephardic (generations back) Atzmon became rather ecstatic. Seemed strange for someone who says he is an ex-jew.

Hilda Atzmon is scheduled to perform jazz and speak about Israel September 17th at the Unitarian Fellowship of Houston (1504 Wirt Road). He is an outspoken critic of Israel, but in his writing and speaking, he makes frequent prejudicial errors and distortions. When called out for them, he won’t accept correction. He is a bad spokesperson for the anti Israeli-Apartheid movement (and all peace and justice movements), because he has continually misled his audiences about crucial issues. Though he is frequently labeled by others as ‘racist,’ whether or not that is true, his words are too often defamatory, inaccurate, and self-aggrandizing. While we organize against Israeli apartheid, we must avoid such problematic spokespeople.

Here are some of the reasons so many have renounced him as an ally:

INSULTING AND SMEARING RESPECTED PALESTINIAN VOICES

Gilad said of Ali Abunimah, who co-founded Electronic Intifada:

Ali Abunimah… is just dishonest/stupid. Abunimah calls Israelis Zionists because he needs the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists to support his operation. The last time i communicated with Ali Abunimah he wrote to me, ‘Just refer to Zionism instead of Jewish identity and everything would be fine’. He basically asked me to lie.. I obviously refused…”
Gilad fabricated the quote he attributed to Abunimah.



FACTUAL ERRORS / SMEARS

Gilad dismisses the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and Jewish Voice for Peace, saying,

“If you are a Gentile (non-Jew), you can not really join a Jewish anti-Zionist cell, because you are not racially qualified.”
This is factually wrong — both groups have non-Jewish members. When I called him out for his error, Gilad responded,

“You are just not intelligent enough to grasp the argument.”
Repeating this smear to the public alienates his fans from working with these important organizations, and that is a problem.

INABILITY TO CONCEDE ERRORS

Gilad told the world on the BBC,

“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.”
This type of egotism makes it impossible for Gilad to be accountable to the public that reacts to his writings and speeches. Gilad is dismissive of constructive feedback and insulting.

DISTORTION

Gilad sees Jewish exclusivity everywhere, calling even anti-Zionist Jews a “racially oriented exclusivist culture driven by chosenness,” and concludes they are unable to “move beyond the Talmudic phase.” (ie. don’t interact enough with non-Jews). Anti-Zionist Jews often have non-Jewish partners, are committed to working in diverse movements, and clearly denounce the idea of ‘chosenness.’ Claiming that racial exclusivity is found in all Jewish groups is defamatory nonsense. Instead of encouraging Jewish allies to join the movement for justice in Palestine, this type of distortion pushes them away.



EXCEPTIONALISM

Gilad objects to the term ‘Israeli Apartheid,’ because he feels that Israel’s system is worse than apartheid. The word “apartheid” is used by BDS activists and others who seek justice in Palestine, and accurately describes Israel regardless of degree. Just like Zionists create Holocaust exceptionalism (denying that the Holocaust is one of many genocides), Gilad seems to create the opposite type of exceptionalism, in which Israel’s war crimes are unlike anything else that has ever occurred anywhere. Gilad does not see Zionism as fitting into white supremacy, but rather as an unprecedented evil. It’s true that there are unique and greatly threatening aspects of the Israeli state, but Gilad dismisses all the clear similarities to white supremacy and Christian imperialism.

RACIST SLUR

Gilad compared the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to the killing of Jesus. He also said,

“American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy… I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew.”
Gilad carelessly or intentionally adopts racist language. Invoking the ‘Christ-killer’ slur invokes past centuries of anti-Jewish racism and violence in Europe and the US.
www.freepresshouston.com/why-other-critics-of-israel-wont-work-with-gilad-atzmon/

The Case of Gilad Atzmon (edited)



Atzmon is basically asserting that the settler-colonialist paradigm is not sufficient to explain Zionism: Zionist events like the attack on the Mavi Marmara, dropping White Phosphorus on Gaza, slicing up the Holy Land with separation walls, and indeed the original expulsion of “the vast majority of the Palestinian indigenous population just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz… have nothing to do with the colonialist nature of the Jewish state…” (pp 181-182) Granting interprets Atzmon’s complex sociological concept of Jewish-ness to mean that

Zionism…is…part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Now, to say that self-identifying as a Jew entails Zionism is prima facie absurd, and I do not find the claim in Wandering. I agree with Granting that Atzmon is wrong in his blanket criticism of anti-Zionist Jewish groups. I also find Atzmon at places abstruse on this issue of the relation between world Jewry, “Jewish ideology” and Zionism.

But confusion is abated when we realise that his definition of Zionism differs from the standard, broad ‘movement for a Jewish state in Palestine’. Rather: “I suggest that it makes far more sense to regard Zionism as a tribal Jewish preservation project [aiming at] the prevention of assimilation…[] Accordingly, Zionism should be seen as an amalgam of different philosophies specialising in different forms of tribal separatism, disengagement and segregation.” (p 70)

Atzmon sets up three non-exclusive basic categories: “Jews (the people), Judaism (the religion) and Jewish-ness (the ideology)… or identity politics, or political discourse”. (p 15) The book does not criticise Jews, the first category, does criticise a few aspects of Judaism, the second, and argues for 200 pages against the third, Jewish-ness, and against those who “put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits.” (p 16)

I am confused as to whether Atzmon wants to say that politically identifying with Jewish-ness entails Zionism. In numerous places criticises or laughs at Jewish tribalism (pp 19, 32, 56, 113, 116, 164-165, 172, 181-184), writing that “to identify politically as a Jew and to wonder what is ‘good for the Jews’ is the true essence of Jewish tribal thinking...” (p 184) Zionism “united the tribe on many levels” (p 46) and “is grounded on a very specific realisation of the Jewish identity as a synthesis of racial awareness, religious awareness and nationalistic awareness”. But while Jewish-ness is an ethnically-based political ideology, Atzmon doesn’t show that non-Zionist Jewish political identities are inconceivable.

Holocaust denial

Atzmon throughout acknowledges the Holocaust, shoah or Judeocide, asserting however that it should be studied historically like other ethnic exterminations. (pp 43, 70, 130-131, 154, 175-176, 182, 185-186) And we need to see how the Holocaust is used in the destruction of the Palestinians – a position shared by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Adi Ophir, Norman Finkelstein and Marc Ellis. (pp 148-152, 162) I do find imprecision in his statement that the “Holocaust… [is] not an historical narrative, for historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and politicians” (p149); to be consistent with everything he writes about the Holocaust this should read “not merely an historical narrative”.

Atzmon recalls,

As much as I was a sceptic youngster, I was also horrified by the Holocaust. In the 1970s Holocaust survivors were part of our social landscape. They were our neighbours, we met them in our family gatherings, in the classroom, in politics, in the corner shop. They were part of our lives. The dark numbers tattooed on their white arms never faded away. It always had a chilling effect. Yet I must mention that I can hardly recall a single Holocaust survivor who ever attempted to manipulate me emotionally.” (pp 185-186)

Further, “It is the Holocaust that eventually made me a devoted supporter of Palestinian rights, resistance and the Palestinian right of return.” (p 186)

An earlier blog reads,

The form of Holocaust denial that really bothers me is the denial of the on-going Palestinian Holocaust. This Holocaust is documented and covered daily by the western media. The turning of residential Palestinian cities into concentration camps; the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian population; the withholding of medical aid from Palestinian civilians; the wall that tears the holy land into isolated cantons and Bantustans; the continuous bombardment of civilians by the IAF are known to us all. This Holocaust is committed by the Jewish state with the support of world Jewry.

(5) Racism and ‘antisemitism’

Atzmon writes nothing against Jews by origin, i.e. against anybody based on their genetic heritage or ‘race’; yet this would be the precondition for justifying the allegation of ‘antisemitism’/racism because ‘semitic’ refers to an ethnos or race. I trust moreover that ‘some of his best friends are Jewish’, and he vows:

I will present a harsh criticism of Jewish politics and identity. Yet… there will not be a single reference to Jews as ethnicity or race… This book doesn’t deal with Jews as a people or ethnicity. If anything, my studies of the issue suggest that Jews do not form any kind of racial continuum…[] I also refrain from criticisng Judaism. Instead, I confront different interpretations of the Judaic code. I deal with Jewish Ideology, Jewish identity politics, and the Jewish political discourse. I ask what being a Jew entails. (p 15; also pp 147-148)

Again, his first two categories – religious Jews and Jews by origin – are “harmless and innocent”. (p 16) No one is calling for harm to Jews. (p 131)

Atzmon does once lambaste Judaism for tribalism because it so closely adheres to an ethnic rather than religious concept of itself (p 113) and sees a continuum between the Bible and Zionism (pp 120-122). But he says clearly,

I am against racism and in fact in my writing you won’t find a single racial reference. Moreover, when I write about Jewish identity I analyse it in ideological and philosophical terms. For me Jewishness is a mind set. Nothing to do with the quality of one’s blood or the religion of one’s mother.

He does unfortunately make several statements that refer to “Jews” where “Jewish-ness” or “Zionist” would be more accurate and consistent with the whole book. He for instance writes of “European and American Jews” who have assimilated and cast aside their “Jewish identity”, where he means their Jewish political identity or identification with the “tribe”. (pp 64-65) He rightly says that all Jewish Zionists sign up to the Jewish-ness ideology, but he should avoid any ambiguity suggesting that all Jews adhere to Jewish-ness.

Blurring occurs when he omits the qualifier ‘political’ in writing of “the Jew within”, “the Jewish understanding of the past” or occasionally of “Jewish identity”. (pp 95, 173, 135) He does however usually precisely include it, for example in writing that one “can hardly endorse a universal philosophy while being identified politically as a Jew.” (p 39; also pp 102, 138, 145, 174) Imprecision burdens as well the statement that “Jewish people… can never be like ‘other people’, for those who demand to be seen as equal must feel inherently and categorically different.” (p 52) I also miss clear definitions for the phrases “the Jewish condition” (p 184) and “the wider Jewish problem”. (p 15)

Atzmon’s use of the phrase “Jewish lobbyists” (pp 152, 171) has been challenged, clarity speaking for “Israel lobby” or “Zionist lobby”. It is however at least mitigating that most Jewish Zionist lobbyists themselves refer to themselves and their organisations as ‘Jewish’, and that Zionists themselves appropriate Jewish identities to oppress Palestinian Arabs – for instance with the Holocaust (pp 130-134) or Judaic symbols on fighter planes (p 140). As Zionist Michael Bar-Zohar puts it, “If you’re attacking Israel, this means you are attacking Jews.” But why should one language-rule be valid for pro-Israel lobbies and another for its critics? (pp 149-151)

Granting in addition accuses Atzmon of ‘”allying” himself with “conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities”, but offers no evidence, nor even a definition of what “allying” would look like. I urge Atzmon to make his language less ambiguous, but given that he is criticising what he sees as the dominant Jewish political culture, not Jews in general, his book in fact supports Granting’s position that “our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism.”

Anti-Jewish-ness

At a One Democratic State conference in Stuttgart in 2010, attended by both Atzmon and Abunimah, the latter argued that this ‘culture’ category is useless:

I think that to use language that blames a particular culture – [Atzmon] was talking about Jewish culture – is wrong [applause] because such arguments could be made about anyone. We could blame German culture for the history of Germany, we could blame British culture for the history of British imperialism, we could blame Afrikaner culture for apartheid in South Africa. And this really doesn’t explain anything at all. (emphasis added)

Atzmon counters that this is

what historians, sociologists, anthropologists, intellectuals are doing when they try to understand historical and political development. The historians and sociologists who look into the Nazi era, don’t they look into German culture, into German philosophy, into the work of Wagner, both as a writer and as a composer, into the work of Hegel, and the German spirit, into Christian antisemitism, and the impact of the Protestant church, don’t they look into a Martin Luther, and his infamous book about the Jews and their lives? Don’t they look into German Early Romanticism? We are in the 21st century. We understand very well that culture, politics, history, heritage, religions, are all bonded together.

unquote

Perhaps “Jewish-ness” is not strictly necessary to refute Zionism and support ODS. However, on the principle of ‘know thine enemy’ it may assist us in fighting Zionism and negotiating with Israel – were it ever to come to the table. I moreover submit that analysing the hoary topic of ‘what it is to be a Jew’ is of much interest to many Jews who are now doubting their support of the Jewish state. It seems to me that the issue can contribute to both an intra-Jewish discussion and to the discussion of how to stop the Jewish state’s murderous ethnic cleansing. Why should it do only one or the other?

One Granting signatory, Omar Barghouti, has sought in terms similar to Atzmon’s to explain Zionist crimes against Palestinians, the “relative-humanization” of Palestinians, and how Zionists live with it. His explanatory concept is ‘Jewish fundamentalism’, relying partly on the thought of Israel Shahak to find cold-bloodedness and justification for Jewish ethnic superiority in some “tenets of Jewish Law”. The Midianite genocide and certain Torah passages provide precedents for what is happening today. Atzmon likewise relates Israeli behaviour to Biblical precedents (pp 120-122, 157-162, yet in the main looks at secular Jewish culture, whereas Barghouti is perhaps focusing only on religious Jewish culture. Or, if it is not Atzmon’s anti-Jewish-ness that Barghouti finds racist, antisemitic and Holocaust-denying, what is it?

As for the content of Jewish-ness – in the broadest terms merely “Judeo-centric political discourse” (pp 88, 55, 145, 197) – Atzmon characterises it as (1) exclusivist, (2) based on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, (3) supremacist and (4) uncannily paralleling some Old Testament stories. (pp 121, 160, 188) He writes for instance that

assimilation has never been presented as a Jewish political call. It was rather individual Jews who welcomed and enjoyed European liberal tendencies. The Jewish political call was inspired by different means of tribal, cultural or even racially-orientated segregation. (p 32)

As evidence that it is more “tribal” than many other groups Atzmon points to a relatively high resistance to assimilation, strong halachic marriage rules (procreative isolation), and high hurdles for conversion to Judaism. (pp 19, 32, 56, 113, 116, 164-165, 172) The bridge to Zionism, in Atzmon’s view, seems to be that a combination of exile, cohesion and chosenness, together with feelings of unique suffering, led to both a strong desire for an ethnically-defined rather than secular-democratic state and a sense of righteousness (and thoroughness) in its establishment at the expense of indigenous people.

We should perhaps not forget that Hess, Jabotinsky, Weizmann and all Israeli politicians have tied the state as closely as possible to Jewish history and culture. (pp 16-17, 139) The Law of Return, the Jewish National Fund, Jews-only settlements and roads, the very concept of Eretz Israel, and Israel’s Declaration of Independence are racist. Negative Kulturkritik is not.

Atzmon unexpectedly even has a good word for Jewish-ness in seeing its “complexity” and the “duality of tribalism and universalism… at the very heart of the collective secular Jewish identity…” (pp 148, 162, 56) “Secular collective Jewish identity” is made up of bothelements, “Athens” and “Jerusalem”. (pp 56, 57, 78) In conciliatory mode he ambivalently asserts that while there is no such thing as a “Jewish humanist heritage’… there are some remote patches of humanism in Jewish culture, [which however] are certainly far from being universal.” (p 113) By reference to the ethnic particularism of Jewish-ness he suggests an answer to the question “How is it that… Israel and its lobbies are so blind to any form of ethical or universal thinking?” (p 177, emphasis added)

Atzmon asks several taboo questions.

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start asking questions… We should strip the Holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place. The Holocaust, like every other historical narrative, must be analysed properly… Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they geniunely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? (pp 175-176)

Another excerpt:

It took me many years to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative [for] historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and political lobbies. It took me years to grasp that my great-grandmother wasn’t made into a ‘soap’ or a ‘lampshade’ as I was taught in Israel. She probably perished of exhaustion, typhus or maybe even by mass shooting… The fate of my great-grandmother was not so different from hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in deliberate, indiscriminate bombing, just because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died just because they were Japanese… [As devastating as it was], at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptional meta-historical status. (pp 175, 149)

The “Holocaust religion” freezes a certain narrative in law while Holocaust research follows normal historiographic rules; the claim of its uniqueness is ‘philosemitic’, and its severity is used to justify, with the logic of two wrongs’ making a right, the ethnic cleansing of people having nothing to do with the Holocaust. (pp 148-153)

First, Israel subscribes to the racial supremacy of Jews, and Zionists “equate their colonial project with Judaism”

At any rate, on this subject Atzmon delivers a one-liner: “As I have said earlier, I do not believe in Jewish conspiracies: everything done in the open.” (p 76) But his real view is that “In fact the opposite [than a conspiracy] is the case. It isn’t a plot and certainly not a conspiracy for it was all in the open. It is actually an accident.” (pp 30, 21)

www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/01/the-case-of-gilad-atzmon/

The writings of the Talmud are supremacist and yet for Gilad "Jews who fol­low the Torah/Talmud and see Judaism as the core of their identity" are innocent. I find it confusing and dissociating the... 'those who identify politically as Jews' who are for the most part in the guilty category on a monumental level..... from the first category Talmudists who he deems innocent. How many Jews who are politically active to the detriment of the goy do so at least in part due the teachings of the Talmud and the Rabbis which seems to remain for the most part in his innocent category. He seems to be a humanist and I am curious as to what he thinks is the route that is the correct one on the global level.

quote:

Gilad Atzmon: Noahisim is realized as a global call to accept monotheism and the seven laws of Noah. As such, the opposition to Noahisim should be realized as an Athenian necessary assault on Jerusalem. The Athenian is the realization of the ethical as a moral judgment as opposed to the Jerusalemite ‘rule of law.’ For the Athenian, the moral shouldn’t be imposed by law for humanity is the ability to reach at the ethical by means of judgment and creativity.

www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2014/12/17/jewish-culture-and-cognitive-partitioning

&R: In the history of the 20th century Zionist movement, it's rarely mentioned that when the British government proposed to the World Zionist Congress and Theodor Herzl the possible establishment of a Jewish settlement in Uganda, it was East European Zionists and Haïm Weizmann who lobbied restlessly against the offer. They pushed for the Jewish National Home to be established in Palestine. Do you think that it suggests that contrary to the idea of a secular Jewish movement, Zionism is rooted in a literal interpretation of the Torah and Talmud?

''The idea of Jewish secularism is in itself very problematic. As you may know, I argue that Judaism is only one Jewish religion amongst many. To be a Jew is to be able to transform different ideas into a Jewish religion.....''

"Now we are ready to tackle your question. Zionism, in its early days was a ‘Jewish secular anti Jewish’ movement. It promised to transform the Diaspora Jew into a civilized being by means of ‘homecoming.’ Detesting the Diaspora Jewish identity, Zionism attempted to drift away from the Rabbinical attitude, it distanced itself from the Talmud and made the Hebrew Bible into the forming text of the new Israelite. It basically made the Torah into a ‘land deed’ and God into an ‘estate agent."

www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2014/12/17/jewish-culture-and-cognitive-partitioning

"The Jewish State"
by Theodor Herzl
(1896)
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/herzl2.html

Gilad Atzmon - "truthful anti-Zionist" or rather CONTROLLED OPPOSITION himself?

It might be worth mentioning that “anti-Zionist” disinformation agent Gilad Atzmon has acknowledged that he is related not only to Menachem, but also to Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, Mossad operative and former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni (recently targeted in the Harvard “smelly Jew” anti-Semitism incident, which I can only assume was a hoax), and Nathan Yellin-Mor, a leader of the Zionist terrorist organization, Lehi (which was involved in the Deir Yassin massacre).

Some say "keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer"
I'd say "investigate your enemies, but your "friends" even more...