Gilad Atzmon

Palestinian-Israel Conflict in Gaza in 2014 (AFP/Getty/Baltimore Sun)

[Posted on this blog on 08/08/14. There's no particular reason to assume that the thirst for Palestinian blood among Israeli Jews has been satisfied yet. Quite the contrary, there's reason to believe they will ignore the decision of the World Court to cease & desist. – Ed.]

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 [sic] 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 Edmondson/Nahida Izzat

Screen capture from Chabad website

Nahida at Poetry for Palestine has posted a rather remarkable article extensively documenting Jewish hatred of Gentiles, as expressed on certain Jewish websites.

We often hear of “anti-Semitism” as being this terrible problem that supposedly is on the rise and that imperils Jews the world over–and in certain countries (France comes to mind especially) you can even get thrown in jail for making statements perceived as being too “anti-Semitic.”

But never do we hear about “anti-Gentilism” (which is the term Nahida coins), either in terms of condemnations of it, or otherwise, something which qualifies as a rather perverse incongruity since Jewish hatred for Gentiles seems to be a problem at least as bad, if not far worse, than the converse. I say this because not only is anti-Gentilism apparently quite widespread in the Jewish community, but it seems for the most part to be openly and blatantly expressed–by individuals and even by “respected” organizations such as Chabad–without anyone ever publicly calling them out on it.

What this boils down to on a practical level is that Gentiles can be fired from their jobs, or denied tenure, on the basis of angry or negative comments about Jews, but that the same standard does not apply when Jews express malice or distaste for Gentiles. The hostility can even reach the point of advocating, or at least justifying, the murder of Gentiles, with the offender suffering little in the way of opprobrium or retribution.

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Roger Tucker

The recent open letter Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, apparently written by Ali Abunimah, has come as a shock to many people, including yours truly. Not only have the Zionists colonized Palestine and subjected them to a permanent campaign of genocide, but as anyone who has been paying attention knows, they have colonized the Western democracies, turning them into obedient puppets. Now it appears that they have also colonized the Palestine Solidarity movement.

At the end of this essay are links to a number of responses supporting Atzmon and what he stands for. These cover the ground pretty well, but I’d like to add a critical look at the language used by Abunimah et al and some of the notions underlying such terminology. I’ll start with the title itself, which begins with the curious phrase “Granting No Quarter.” The phrase is familiar to anyone who has read books or seen films based on British naval warfare set in the 18th or early 19th centuries. - this is as extreme as it gets. This from a group of mostly Palestinian supporters of the Palestinian struggle against Israel in opposition to another such supporter. That is sufficiently mind-boggling in itself, but Ali Abunimah, and I would assume at least some of his fellow signatories, are also supporters of One Democratic State as the solution to the basic conflict in the Middle East, as is Atzmon. Some fundamental and portentous difference, beyond a mere dispute about strategy or tactics, must be responsible for such a total and uncompromising attack on a seemingly close ally. It allows for no debate, no compromise – no quarter offered or accepted.

Some observers have implied that Ali & Co. have actually gone over to the enemy, or may have been Zionist agents from day one, and that the Jewish members of these Solidarity groups are acting as their handlers. For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that is not so, that they are perfectly sincere in considering themselves loyal to the Palestinian cause as they conceive it. Looking at the signatories of the Letter we find some successful academics, Abunimah and Massad being the most prominent. They have prospered as unofficially sanctioned spokesmen for the Palestinian cause in the US and have no incentive to rock the boat. If they presented any perceived danger to tribal Jewry, they would likely find themselves on the street, as has happened to a number of academics, many of them Jewish, who have dared to challenge the predominant Jewish narrative. This points to a simple motivation based on economic and professional self-interest, but I believe there’s more to it than that.

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Richard Edmondson

"Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple"

“…and that no matter how many police state laws our AIPAC-vetted congress may enact, no matter how many of us they may round up and put into FEMA camps or some other detention facility, no matter how many wars they may start, no matter how many innocents they slaughter—no matter all of this, as long as there remain on this earth those who exalt this rebel, who follow his teachings, and who celebrate his birth each year, their control over humanity will never—never—be complete or total. And this they know.”

You could perhaps consider this a primer for Christian Zionists, although others, possibly even atheists, might find it interesting as well. Here is the question: If Jesus was a rebel, then who was he rebelling against? Jackson Browne, although his song is quite nice, doesn’t really give us an answer. Let us then examine the matter ourselves and see if we can reach a conclusion.

Was Jesus in revolt against Rome? This is something Jews often try and argue. Jesus, they tell us, was nothing more than a Jewish nationalist, who, like many other Jewish nationalists of the day, sought an end to the Roman occupation of Palestine (or the “land of Israel” as they now like to claim it). Some of these Jewish intellects have even gone so far as to hypothesize that Jesus practiced Pharisaic Judaism himself! But of course the preponderance of evidence does not support these claims.

And Jesus, answering, said unto them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

The above quotation, from Mark 12:17, is one of the few statements from Jesus regarding Roman rule over Palestine that can be found in the canonized gospels, and it would suggest he had no strong grievances or objections to it. Of course, that’s only the canonized material. What of other early texts? What, say, of the Gnostic sources? Or the vast body of apocryphal writings? Is there anything in any of this material to support the notion that Jesus’ mission in life was setting up a Jewish state? The answer is little to none.

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