Roger Tucker

It is only right and fitting that a proper response be made to the OpEd written by Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, and head of the Manhigut Yehudit ("Jewish Leadership") faction of Israel’s governing Likud party, entitled My Outline for a Solution in Gaza and published in Arutz Sheva on July 15th, 2014.

1. An international commission should be established to bring Israel and its supporters to account for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, dating back to the first terrorist attacks on Palestinian and British targets in Palestine by the Irgun and other Jewish terrorist organizations starting in 1937. This near century long crime can properly be termed a holocaust, as its ruthlessness, intensity, longevity and destruction of lives and property is on a par with, or exceeds, the crimes of those prosecuted by the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials.

2. The first task of this commission would be to identify the most culpable of the Zionist criminals still living, not to exceed one thousand people. Millions are guilty but bringing those most responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Iranians, the Egyptians, the Syrians et al and the many millions of other direct and indirect victims of the Zionist project, would best serve the cause of justice.

3. Those people so identified should be drawn from the various sectors of society that have been primarily responsible for the heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over these years, regardless of their countries of residence, particularly among the politicians, the military, the media, the financiers, the public intellectuals, academics, the religious leaders and the leaders of Zionist organizations. Those found guilty would be sentenced to a minimum of life in solitary confinement without parole.

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Roger Tucker

The quenelle is first inserted into the cavity...

The current flap over the gesture called a “quenelle” is revealing in a number of ways. It’s instructive to look first at a couple of Wikipedia entries.

“The word quenelle is derived from the German Knödel (noodle or dumpling)” (which we know from Yiddish cuisine as a knadel)."

"French political activist and comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala is credited with creating and popularizing the gesture, which he first used in 2005 in his sketch entitled 1905 about French secularism and has been used since in a wide variety of contexts.. The first time Dieudonné used the gesture in a political context was for his 2009 European election campaign poster for the "anti-Zionist party", he stated that his intention was "to put a quenelle into Zionism's butt"..."

“The name quenelle comes from an elongated fish meatballs dish, which is said to look like a suppository. Hence, the phrase 'mettre une quenelle' ('to give someone the quenelle'), with a gesture simulating fisting practice, is similar to the English 'up yours'. The arm outstretched refers to the length of the arm going up one's bottom."

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Gilad Atzmon

An Interview with Gilad Atzmon

Un entretien avec Gilad Atzmon: Les nouveaux inquisiteurs et leurs campagnes calomnieuses

Following the publication of the French edition of the “The Wandering Who ?” we asked jazz star Gilad Atzmon to respond to charges made against him by those who relentlessly try to stop him from speaking and disseminating his ideas. In his book, Gilad is critical of Jewish identity politics. He is also highly critical of Jewish political activity within the Left in general and the Palestinian solidarity movement in particular. Gilad’s arguments are impeccable – they appear faulty only to those who, lacking conscience incline to making slanderous accusations.

Silvia Cattori: Your book has just been published in French (1). Without any promotion it is selling like hotcakes; in spite of the fact that six months before the French publication (2), members of U.J.F.P. (French Jewish Union for Peace) and I.J.A.N. (International Jewish Antizionist Network) launched a campaign to demonise you within the left and the Palestinian solidarity movement,. Did all these attacks come as a surprise to you?

Gilad Atzmon: As you probably know I have been subject to these vile Jewish anti-Zionist campaigns for years. It is clear beyond doubt that I have managed to rock the boat. As it happens, I oppose any form of Jewish identity politics for being exclusive and racially oriented. Sadly enough, like Zionists, many of the Jewish anti Zionist political cells are openly engaged in similar tribal, racially-driven and exclusivist politics.

But there is also an ideological issue here. I openly contend that their entire terminology is misleading. Zionism is not colonialism, Israel is not Apartheid and the Israelis are not Zionists.

Zionism is not colonialism because the Jewish ‘Settler State’ lacks a Jewish ‘Mother State’. Israel is not Apartheid because the Jewish (settler) State doesn’t want to exploit the Palestinians but to get rid of them. Israel is actually driven by Lebensraum (Living Space) philosophy. In other words, the Jewish State adopted Nazi racist, expansionist ideology. But the Jews in our movement do not like the comparison with Nazi Germany.

Also, Israel is not exactly Zionism and Israelis are not necessarily Zionists. Israel is the product of the Zionist ideology and the Israeli is basically a post-revolutionary product. Hence, the Zionist/anti-Zionist debate has very little significance in Israel or on Israeli politics.

In short, our entire terminology is misleading if not deceitful. I guess that since I expose all of this it is only natural that some people would wish to kill the messenger.

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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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Roger Tucker

Photo: In the park outside 'my' window, a random search was conducted of two young men, very randomly indeed. As random as all those searches they always do of young people in parks... Three biker-cops rolled in, and looked through all of their things, including their school notebooks. The cops ended up letting them go, but not before at least five minutes of rooting through all of their belongings. As the cops biked away, the guys stood outside the park for a bit, and then one of them opened up the palm of his hand to the other one, showing him the butt of a joint hidden there. They promptly lit it. There was apparently also something hidden under the park bench that the cops didn't manage to find. They try to control everything you do...

Roger Tucker considers the linguistic root, visual representation, usage and practise of fascism, and examines the circumstances under which the concept, “which is neither good nor bad in itself”, becomes malevolent. To illustrate, he looks at two contemporary examples of fascism: the USA and Israel.

”Fascism ... is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity's most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past.”

We have met the enemy and they are us. -Pogo

Pretty much everyone nowadays rejects fascism, but nobody seems to know quite what it is. The words "fascist" and "fascism" are frequently flung about, but they seem to be applied to all sorts of different and unrelated people and things. The dictionaries and Wikipedia are no help because they all assume that the word refers to a political phenomenon that arose in Europe in the 20th Century. That is indeed when the word "fascism" was coined (in the form of fascismo, an Italian word for the ideology of Benito Mussolini's political party).

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