Gilad Atzmon

I am amused that as the Zionist smear campaign against me and my work has faded, the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists, aka AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists), are ever more infuriated by my thoughts. They are desperate to silence me. They don’t have a chance, but, let’s face it, they have some really good reasons.

The recent events in Palestine have proved beyond any doubt my interpretation of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity politics. It is not a coincidence that I was the only one to predict the Israeli defeat even before the first Israeli soldier entered Gaza. Since Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, its actions and atrocities must be understood within the context of Jewish culture and heritage. This is my line of thought and this is what I am known for.

Leading commentator, Jeff Blankfort, argued recently that the Jewish Left is not the solution, it is actually a continuation of the problem. I believe that the Jewish Left is not merely a continuation of the problem, it is actually at the heart of the problem. Jewish power, as I see it, is the capacity to silence criticism of Jewish power. In that regard, AIPAC and the Jewish Lobby are not ‘Jewish power,’ they are symptoms of Jewish power. The institutional attempt to silence any debate about Jewish power is provided by the Jewish Left and the so called Jewish anti Zionist network (JVP, Mondoweiss, Chomsky, Blumenthal, etc.). It is the Jewish Left that attempts to set the boundaries of the discussion and dictates what can and cannot be said.

For instance, we may talk about Zionism and Israel but we must never elaborate on the Jewishness of the Jewish state. Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, it attests to its affinity to Jewish history, and it draws its vile inception from the Old Testament, yet, the Jewish pro Palestinian outlet Mondoweiss, changed its comment policy to ban discussion of Jewish culture in the context of criticizing Israel.

To sum it all up, I am not just an anti Zionist, I am actually critical of all forms of Jewish politics, both Zionist and Anti. I contend that all forms of Jewish politics are ethno-centric and to a certain extent, racially driven. And in my latest book The Wandering Who I substantiate this point and yet to see any attempt to prove me wrong.

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Gilad Atzmon Interviewed by Alimuddin Usmani for Egalité et Réconciliation

Alimuddin Usmani: As I write to you, the ceasefire has, once again, collapsed between Israel and Palestinian fighters in Gaza. In its attempt to kill Hamas armed wing leader, Mohammed Deif, the IDF failed, and instead killed his wife and infant son. It is increasingly clear that Israel is stuck in this conflict and doesn't know how to end it. You were the first to say that Israel was "desperate for a break in the violence." How were you able to predict this outcome when most analysts failed?

Gilad Atzmon: Unlike the Jewish ‘progressive’ commentators who have dominated the Palestinian solidarity discourse for about two decades, I am a reactionary essentialist. I believe that events in history and politics become meaningful only when analyzed within an rigorous essentialist context. Righteous progressive Jews suffocate the discourse with tons of anecdotal details in order to conceal the Jewish ideology at the core of the crimes committed by the Jewish State and the Lobby. I firmly believe that every Israeli and Jewish collective political activity from AIPAC to Mondoweiss can be understood within the framework of Jewish culture, ideology and heritage.

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Gilad Atzmon

Earlier today, just a few hours before the ceasefire collapsed, sources in Jerusalem have disclosed that Israel and the US have agreed to gradually lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip, starting with the land crossings and eventually opening up sea traffic. Hamas, so it seemed, has achieved all of its objectives in the latest round of violence. With sparse resources, limited fire power and obsolete ballistic technology, Hamas managed to bring Israel to its knees.

Plainly, the war was unwinnable for the IDF. Israel invaded the Gaza strip without establishing its own military objectives. The Israeli Government sent its soldiers into the streets of Gaza without understanding its own military, political or diplomatic aims. Both the IDF and the Israeli government were attempting to appease Israeli popular demand for revenge. The Israeli people felt humiliated by the Palestinian rockets. These largely harmless homemade rockets interfered with Israeli escapist philosophy. The rockets’ flare reminded Israelis that there are another people who claim the land, and this people, the Palestinians, are named after the land. Once again polls confirmed that Israelis were bloodthirsty, they wanted to wipe out the Palestinians for good, and the populist Netanyahu government rushed to deliver.

But here is a little surprise; Haaretz reported today that Netanyahu tried to hide the Egyptian cease-fire proposal from his cabinet. His deceit came about because Netanyahu understood that the Egyptian draft represented a total defeat for the Israelis. Israel could have lifted the blockade on Gaza and let the Palestinians have a seaport and an airfield without dragging the region into another war. Netanyahu could have ‘freed’ the Gazans without perpetrating another set of colossal crimes against humanity.

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Gilad Atzmon

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the London Times refused to run an ad featuring Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.

The ad’s headline reads: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Wiesel’s statement is a blatant lie and the London Times knew it.

Jews have never stopped sacrificing their children. The Hannibal Protocol is an IDF directive that orders soldiers to take ‘necessary measures’ to prevent their comrades from being captured by enemy forces. ‘Necessary measures’ include risking the life of the Israeli soldier and anyone who happens to be in his vicinity. Similarly, the Kastner Affair shows that at the peak of the Shoah, Ben Gurion and the Zionist establishment were willing to sacrifice many Jewish lives on the altar of the Zionist goal.

The growing number of genocides and massacres committed by Jews in the last hundred years suggest that at least some Jews are pretty careless with other people’s children. Wiesel should examine the Holodomor and the role of ‘Stalin’s willing executioners’ as Jewish American historian Yuri Slezkine elucidates in his invaluable book The Jewish Century. Wiesel can also read Israeli Sever Plocker’s declaration that “some of (the) greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish.” Just a few years after the Holodomor, the Yiddish speaking International Brigade murdered Catholics and burned their churches in Spain (1936). The tragic and violent circumstances in which the Jewish State was born didn’t sate the lust for violence among some of its Diaspora supporters, quite the opposite.

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Gilad Atzmon

A short interview with «Ο Φιλελεύθερος», Cyprus

Do you have any comments on the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip?

Gilad Atzmon: It is agonizing to watch the brutality of the Israelis, but it was predictable. Israeli genocidal inclinations are entirely consistent with Jewish supremacist culture and Old Testament barbarism. The fact that 91% of the Israeli population supports the IDF massacre confirms that we are confronting a murderous collective that is a grave threat to world peace.

What is Israel trying to achieve in the region? Is it possible it is acting to insure its control of energy resources that may exist off the Gaza Strip?

GA: It is possible that the massacre in Gaza has been lightly influenced by geopolitical considerations. However, the Israeli lust for violence and its broad support from Jewish institutions around the world suggests that the motivation to kill and destroy other people is embedded in Zionist culture. Its homicidal impulses may relate to the manner in which modern Jews interpret their sense of ‘choseness.’

You have often expressed your support of Islamic organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas that have resorted to violence as a means of achieving their objectives. Do you believe that resorting to violence is an acceptable way to achieve political results?

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Richard Silverstein

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: The following is a superb article by Richard Silverstein. It explores the history and meaning of the IDF’s Hannibal Directive - an Israeli military protocol designed to prevent IDF soldiers from being captured alive by enemy forces. The directive orders commanders to take necessary measures, including endangering the life of an abducted soldier, to foil a kidnapping. In practice, the Hannibal Directive orders IDF combatants to kill their comrades in a case of abduction.

Silverstein is horrified by the directive and its ethical and legal implications. He also believes that such a homicidal protocol is inconsistent with the Israeli military’s alleged heritage of caring for its soldiers.

But Silverstein’s perspective may be mistaken. It must be noted that military and civil law are distinctively different domains. While civil law serves to protect societal and individual rights, military law serves the system as a whole. This explains, for instance, why collective punishment is common and even acceptable within the context of a military legal discourse. It serves the military’s interests as opposed to the rights of individuals. The amusing adage “military law is to law as military music is to music,” captures the ethical absurdity that is entangled with military Law.

The Hannibal Directive is consistent with Israeli national and military interests. From the point of view of Israel’s strategic interests, a captured soldier entails compromises Israel would prefer to avoid.

Silverstein writes, “The Hannibal Directive embraces a fascist perspective in which the individual is subsumed within the mass. He has no specific individual value unless he is serving the interest of the nation. And his interests may, when necessary be sacrificed to the greater good.” Silverstein is addressing the issue from an ethical perspective within the spirit of enlightenment. But Zionism and Jewish nationalism are inherently anti-enlightenment ideologies. Zionism denotes the birth of the ‘Jewish people,’ the idea that every Jew is an integral part of a larger collective with clear tribal interests that outweigh the individual. Accordingly, in an extreme situation, the interests of the tribe are far more important than the individual rights. The Hannibal Directive is a glimpse into the depth of the Jewish collective bond and tribal commitment. It exposes the level of commitment and sacrifice expected of tribal members.

Silverstein identifies the directive as fascist, but he should remember that Zionism predates Fascism and unlike Fascism that was largely defeated, Zionism has so far prevailed.

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Gilad Atzmon

IDF’s colossal defeat in Gaza this week leaves Israel and Israelis with just three political and personal options:

1. Mass expulsion – ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population from territories controlled by Israel. Such action may sound unreasonable or even phantasmic, but it is actually consistent with Zionist ideology and has many supporters within Israel and within the current Israeli cabinet. Moreover, oppression and brutality are embedded within Jewish political culture and even within the culture of the Jewish Left[*]. Clearly Israel possesses the military capability and fire power to proceed with such a plan for Nakba II.

2. Exodus – mass emigration of Israelis who, quite reasonably, prefer to run for their lives. This option is obviously embedded within the exilic Jewish culture and completely consistent with Jewish diaspora identity. Emigration is available to most Israelis at the moment. However, it is likely that as violence in the region continues to escalate and Israel finds itself complicit in more and more war crimes and human rights abuse, Israelis may find out that their freedom to travel around the world is gradually restricted.

3. Buying time –Israel’s favourite option. And certainly Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred policy.

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Gilad Atzmon

Israelis watch the mass murder from a hilltop near Sderot, ex-
ploding with glee & joy each time a bomb hits Gaza...

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Israeli Jews support Israel's campaign against the people of Gaza, according to a survey published Monday - and just 4.2% believe the operation is a "mistake."

The survey also revealed that 85% of respondents would only support a cease-fire agreement if Israel eliminated every Hamas rocket and destroyed the full network of terror tunnels before agreeing to do so.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Israeli Jews polled "very strongly support" Operation Protective Edge's airstrikes on Gaza; 17% "support" the airstrikes; and 4.5% had "weak support" for the airstrikes. Just 1.5% of respondents opposed the airstrikes on Gaza.

Similarly, 50% "strongly support" the IDF's ground offensive in Gaza; 28% "support" the ground campaign and 14% have "weak support" for the campaign. By contrast, only 9% of respondents oppose sending ground troops into Gaza.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of respondents "strongly disagree" with the statement "Israel launching Operation Protective Edge was a mistake"; 11% only "slightly disagree." Just 7% of respondents "agree" or "strongly agree" with that statement.

As to the operation's success, 74% of respondents overall believe the IDF is "achieving its goals" in Gaza; of those, 23% "very strongly agree" and 51% "strongly agree." Just 22.5% of respondents were neutral on the issue and only 3% believe the operation is failing.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of respondents said the operation has "made them proud of the IDF, the State of Israel, and the Jewish people," and only 2% disagreed with that statement.

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Gilad Atzmon

As one of the first to predict an imminent Israeli defeat in this round of violence, I was delighted to read this morning that Zionist mouthpiece Jeffrey Goldberg admits that Israel has lost the war. “Why Is Israel Losing a War It's Winning?” asks Goldberg. The Jewish State is a regional super power, its lobbies dominate Western politics, it is technologically superior, so what could have gone wrong?

Jeffrey Goldberg, a veteran Israeli concentration camp guard produces a few uniquely amusing arguments that deserve our attention. He writes,

“In a fight between a state actor and a non-state actor, the non-state actor can win merely by surviving.”

I suspect Israel’s military leadership is aware of this argument by now. But the Palestinians have achieved far more than merely ‘surviving.’ They brought Israel to its knees. Palestinians performed heroically on the ground and displayed total unity, two things Israel did not anticipate. They have also delivered a clear message to the Israeli people, to world Jewry and even to the miniature Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ clan – this battle is not about ‘occupation,’ 1967 or the ‘two state solution.’ It is about human dignity - the right to exist. The Palestinians do not have any plans to fade away, they are the people of the land, and they will be back. The IDF may be able to destroy a few tunnels, murder elders, women and children and turn streets into piles of debris, but it can’t even scratch the Palestinians’ will. Eventually, even Goldberg may be forced to admit, that the Palestinians prevailed because their objectives and goals are far greater than mere ‘survival.’

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Gilad Atzmon

As the Israeli Cabinet announced earlier today that it accepted the Egyptian cease-fire offer, Palestinian freedom fighters in Gaza continued firing rockets targeting the whole of Israel.

The situation is clear. Israel is desperate for a break in the violence. In spite of its endless ‘bravado,’ and military might, Israel lacks the military capacity and the courage to encounter Palestinian resistance on the ground. The Israeli elite recognizes that the military can’t resolve the problem, if anything, its extensive use would diminish Israeli manoeuvrability on the international front.

Hamas, on the other hand, has won its biggest military, political and ideological victory to date - it has managed to deliver some elementary messages to all of Israeli society:

You are living on our Palestinian stolen land, our Right to Return is elementary and is not negotiable. You Israelis do not belong here, you never did, and you had better consider your options immediately.

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