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 The
Wandering Who? A study of Jewish identity politics, gives
a unique insider’s view of the Israeli mind. Its author
explains to Eric Walberg that you can take the girl out of
Jezebel, but you can’t take Jezebel out of the girl
Gilad Atzmon is a world citizen who calls London his home. He
was born a sabra, and served as a paramedic in the Israeli Defense
Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War, when he realised that “I
was part of a colonial state, the result of plundering and ethnic
cleansing.” He has wandered far since then, become a
novelist, philosopher, one of the world’s best jazz
saxophonists, and at the same time, one of the staunchest
supporters of the Palestinian cause, supporting their right of
return and the one-state solution. He now defines himself as a
“proud self-hating Jew” and “a Hebrew-speaking
Palestinian”. In 2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan quoted Atzmon during a debate with Israeli president
Shimon Peres, telling him at the World Economic Forum that
“Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary
cruelty.”
Atzmon denies that there is even such
a concept as “anti-Semitism”, stating that
“‘anti-Semite” is an empty signifier. “You
are either a racist which I am not, or have an ideological
disagreement with Zionism, which I have.” When railed
against as an anti-Semite, Gilad quotes the witticism: “While
in the past an ‘anti-Semite’ was someone who hates
Jews, nowadays it is the other way around, an anti-Semite is
someone the Jews hate.”
One of his Orient House
Ensemble’s nine albums, appropriately called “Exile”,
with its arresting blend of Middle Eastern and Western themes, was
BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. His fascination with Arab
music was a natural development out of his embrace of the
Palestinian cause. Arab music “must be internalised,
reverting to the primacy of the ear”.
His unique
blend of jazz and radical politics means his performances are
picketed and sometimes  disrupted.
But the gregarious Gilad relished the opportunity to reach out to
even his most strident critics, always engages the picketers and
even invites them to coffee and an extended chat after the
performance. Peter Bacon wrote that Atzmon reminds us of “the
strong link between jazz and the radical politics that are
sometimes the only way to ensure its -- and our --
freedom.”
Atzmon’s novel My One and
Only Love features as a protagonist a trumpeter who
chooses to play only one note (extremely well) as well as a spy
who uncovers Nazi war criminals and locks them inside double bass
cases which then tour permanently in the protagonist’s
orchestra’s luggage. His intent was to explore “the
personal conflict between being true to one’s heart and
being loyal to The Jews”.
There is a growing
movement within Israel itself of such courageous public figures,
who realise that only a radical reversal of the entire Zionist
project to create a Jewish state in the Middle East can lead to
peace. Al-Ahram Weekly reviewed Atzmon’s
erstwhile colleague Israel Shamir’s Masters of
Discourse in 2008.
In an interview with
the Weekly, Atzmon explained that while there is
Judaism the religion, there is no Jewish race or even ethnicity,
but only a Jewish ideology -- what he calls Jewishness. “At
a certain stage when it became clear to me that Jews do not form a
racial or ethnic continuum, I realised that I would have to search
for answers somewhere else. It was also obvious to me that though
Jews are not a race, Jewish politics is clearly racist to the
bone.” Thus, the genesis of The Wandering Who?
This
applies to every form of Jewish politics, whether it be Israeli
domestic or foreign affairs, or Jewish political activity in the
Diaspora. “Jewish anti Zionists who criticise Israel for
being racist, also operate in Jews-only racially-exclusive
political cells. I realised then that we need a new ideological
instrument that would attempt to explain it all. I guess that this
is when I started to differentiate between Jews (the people),
Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the ideology). In my work,
I avoid the first two categories, I only deal with ideology -- the
racially-driven supremacist and exclusive philosophy known as
choseness. Zionism is just one face of Jewishness. Jewish
anti-Zionism is clearly another face. John Zorn and his Jewish
Radical Music is another, promoting a racially-driven
pseudo-cultural ethos.”
This, of course, is
cultural dynamite as it cuts the racial rug from under the entire
Jewish-homeland edifice, and means Atzmon is demonised by Jews
both left and right.
Interestingly, Atzmon defends the
original Zionist project. “Zionism was initially an
interesting insight. It was a rare moment of Jewish
self-reflection. Some Jewish intellectuals thought that they may
have managed to grasp the root cause of the ‘Jewish abnormal
condition’. They believed that once in their homeland, Jews
would become people like all other people.
“It
is clear that they were wrong. The anti-Zionists argue that
Zionism failed to fulfill its promise because the homeland
narrative was a myth. Zion was actually Palestine and ‘the
bride wasn’t free’. I try to take the discourse one
step further. I argue that the desire to become ‘people like
other people’ is in itself nothing less than an inauthentic
destructive aspiration. It is doomed to fail because no people
wish to become other peoples.
“In short,
Zionism was and is a form of self-imposed detachment. But what
about other forms of Jewish political identities? Are they any
different? Not really, Jewish socialists or the Bund fall into the
exact same trap. Instead of just joining humanity as equal amongst
equals, they, for some reason, insist on exercising universalism
in a tribal racially-exclusive setting. They are deceiving
themselves for they ‘speak universal’ but in practice
‘think tribal’. It has transformed the Holy Land into
a Jewish bunker.”
UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied
Palestinian Territories Richard Falk calls The Wandering
Who? a kind of diary of Atzmon’s journey from
hardcore Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionised patriot of humanity
and passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people. The
metaphor of a journey, which pervades the Diaspora Jewish
experience, is apt -- it even seeps into the title.
I
asked Gilad, as a jazz artist, to improvise on his less than
orthodox approach to intellectual life. “I indeed define
myself as a jazz musician. Jazz is, for me, a relentless and
continuous attempt to reinvent oneself. In my writing I try to dig
as deep as I can, I want to make sure that there is not a single
unturned stone in my path. In the last decade people have been
urging me to publish a book, but I wasn’t ready to let my
ideas settle. But at a certain stage I started to see a continuum
between my activity as a musician and a thinker.
“I
realised that I possess some capacity to shape the discourse -- to
shake it by means of aesthetics. I basically learned to love
myself hating myself. And once I became subject to Jewish
progressive vengeance, the penny had dropped -- I realised that
there was a clear continuum between Zionism and the so called
Jewish ‘anti’ Zionism. The Jewish secular political
discourse is largely a supremacist exclusivist discourse. The
image of pluralism and internal debate are mere spin.”
In The
Wandering Who? Atzmon writes: “My emerging devotion
to jazz had overwhelmed my Jewish nationalist tendencies; it was
probably then and there that I left Chosen-ness behind to become
an ordinary human being.” I suggested that in realising his
superior musical talent, he unconsciously discarded his faux sense
of racial superiority, that he was indeed “Chosen”
but, to paraphrase Woody Allen, not because he was a Jew. It is
the wannabe Chosen who fall back on this racial crutch, which
sadly makes it very, very hard for them to discard and realise
they too can walk without the crutch.
True to form
Gilad turned the tables on me. “To be honest, it was
completely the other way around. When I started to play jazz, I
was overwhelmed by others -- by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie,
Miles Davis, John Coltrane, my new gods. I became an avid disciple
of this black art form. They were the Chosen. When it comes to
talent, I have never felt particularly talented as a musician. I
may be more successful than some, but it is because I have always
surrounded myself with people far more talented than myself. This
is my biggest secret.”
I asked him what his best-case
scenario for “solving the Jewish problem” was, if he
agreed with Iranian President Ahmedinejad in his speech to the
“World Without Zionism” conference in 2005 that “this
regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of
time”?
“Absolutely!” he enthused.
“I am pretty certain that there is no collective solution to
the Jewish Question. For Jewish assimilation to be a success Jews
must integrate into humanity for real. Universalism (as oppose to
tribalism) is the only valid option for the morally troubled Jew.
This would mean leaving choseness and supremacy behind. However,
as soon as this happens, the Jewish subject stops being affiliated
with the tribe. Needless to say, many Jews have succeeded in doing
so.
“It is also important to mention that
Jewish Orthodoxy has always been impervious to the dilemma posed
by the Jewish Question. Orthodox Jews have a lucid and coherent
understanding of their Jewish identity. We have to remember that
the only Jewish collective that supports Palestinians are the
Torah Jews. Unlike the Marxist Jews and the so called progressive
Jews, the Torah Jews do not try to steer the Palestinian
solidarity movement; they are actually humble and sincere. Also,
we have to remember that in spite of disturbing ideas explored in
the Talmud, it is actually a Jewish secular movement that matured
into a genocidal collective (Zionism/ Israel).”
Gilad
tries to remain optimistic about the future of the Middle East,
against “all odds”, he warns. “But I am certain
that political discourse is not going to bring a change. I am
afraid to say it, but I think Israel is in a bad way and its
supportive crowd isn’t much better.”
I
asked him what he meant in his new book by: “Within the
context of Jewish identity politics and ideology, history doesn’t
play a guiding role”. “Zionists and Jewish ‘anti’
Zionists alike insist that circumstances made the Jews into what
they are. I do not buy it. The emancipation of European Jewry
started two hundred years ago with the French Revolution. And as
we can see the Jewish conditions didn’t change much. Also,
Israel, which was supposed to be an exemplary case of Jewish
proletarian rebirth, is in fact a hard-capitalist hell.”
Atzmon
points to another specifically Jewish flaw through the 19th
century, that “the assimilated Jews failed to replace
divinity with an alternative anthropocentric ethical and
metaphysical realisation.” So, what about the Homo Zionicus,
I asked.
“Very good point. The only Jewish secular
attempt to self-reflect and bring about an ethical Jew was the
invention of the Homo Zionicus. But as we know, this project
failed completely. The Homo Zionicus quickly became a mass
murderer, detached from any recognised form of ethical thinking
and engaged in a colossal crime against humanity. And yet, as I
mention before, early Zionism was a unique self-reflective moment
in Jewish history. Though the diagnosis of the Jewish abnormal
condition was largely correct, tragically, the remedy was a
disaster.”
Underlying this disaster, Atzmon
writes, is the dilemma that the duality of tribalism and
universalism “has never been properly resolved. Instead of
redeeming the Jews it imposes a certain level of dishonesty.”
He
told me, “The difference between the Jewish tribal ideology
and other tribal concepts is that Jewish tribalism is an exilic
concept. Judaism as we know it was formed in the Babylonian exile.
Jewish tribalism became a template of negations. It is there to
alienate the Jew from his surrounding reality. Jewish tribalism is
imbued with hostility toward others and otherness. Jewishness can
be celebrated without God or the Torah, but one thing is clear,
the exilic conditions always remain intact. Most importantly, the
Jewish Question cannot be resolved as long as Jews fail to
overcome the exilic mindset. The exilic mindset aspires to Zion.
It is detached from its surroundings while in the Diaspora, and
once in Zion, the exilic identity collapses completely since
its raison d’etre vanishes. In other words,
Jews are locked in a limbo; their identity complex cannot be
resolved.”
Atzmon develops his point about the
ahistorical Jewish mindset in a fascinating way, writing: “Jewish
national politics is an attempt to place the people of Israel
beyond historical temporality. Israel is blinded to the
consequences of its actions, it only thinks of its actions in
terms of short-term pragmatism. Instead of temporality, Israel
thinks in terms of an extended present.”
I countered
that is precisely what critics of capitalism complain about --
that the system encourages capitalists to focus only on short-term
gains, somehow imagining that the system can survive forever. Is
there a Jewish essence to capitalism, I asked.
“As we
all know, already in 1843 in “On The Jewish Question”
Marx suggested that there is a linear continuum between Judaism
and capitalism. I would re-phrase it as a continuum between Jewish
ideology (Jewishness) and capitalism.”
He is no
conspiracist. “I do not believe in Jewish conspiracies:
everything is done in the open. Zionism is so successful because
it is a global project with no head and a lot of hands. Many Jews
and Israelis are doing many things that can be realised as
complicity with Jewish power, yet they are not exactly aware of
themselves following any orders or role. I will give you a simple
example. Even the work of leading self-haters including myself for
the matter, can be realised as evidence of Jewish pluralism and or
Jewish openness. I can assure you that I don’t follow any
orders. But when I realised it, I immediately decided to drift
away, as far away as I could, and redefined myself as an ex-Jew.
Sooner or later, we will have to admit that we are dealing with a
very sophisticated identity. And it is sophisticated for a reason.
Jews have been perfecting their exilic model for two millennia. It
will take a while before other migrant communities catch
up.”
Gilad continued his epistemological riff with
the elegant: “History, and historical thinking, are the
capacity to rethink the past and the future.” He then boldly
suggests we “ask what it is that brought so much hatred on
the people of Israel”. A suggestion, of course, that is
immediately rebutted with cries of ‘blame the victim!”
“I
certainly do not blame the victims,” he insists. “But
I insist that those who identify with the Jewish victims of WWII
should ask some elementary and fundamental questions. I, for
instance, find it very disturbing that they are also engaged in
the total abuse of the Palestinian people.” Thus, it is
“inevitable” that “Israeli behaviour can throw
light on the events that led to the Holocaust or other instances
of persecution of Jews. It is not a political or ideological issue
but rather a basic human tendency to do with temporality. People
revisit their past in the light of their present realisations, and
let’s face it, Israel and its lobbies have accumulated a
very negative reputation in the last decade.”
This
rethinking of history applies equally to the Palestinians. In a
conference “Palestine, Israel, Germany -- The Boundaries of
Open Discussion” in Freiburg Germany on 11 September, Atzmon
began his talk by confessing that “though I was born in
Israel, in the first thirty years of my life I did not know much
about the Nakba, the brutal and racially driven ethnic cleansing
of the Palestinian population in 1948 by the newly born Israeli
State, that in all my years in Israel, I have never heard the word
Nakba spoken.”
He went on to ask his German
audience, “This may sound pathetic, or even absurd to you --
but what about you? Shouldn’t you also ask yourself --
when was the first time you heard the word Nakba?” And he
answers in his inimitable philosophical vein, “To be in the
world means to be subject to changes and transformations. It
entails grasping and reassessing the past through different
present realisations. History is shaped and re-shaped as we
proceed in time. Accordingly, we seem to understand the
Palestinian expulsion and plight through our current understanding
of Israeli brutality:”
This, it suddenly struck me,
explains the rapid change in world opinion in the past decade:
Israel’s own genocidal crimes -- Atzmon calls the Nakba
Israel’s “original sin” -- have backfired,
bringing the world to the side of the Palestinians, just as
Hitler’s genocidal crimes against Jews brought them the
world’s sympathy 60 years ago.
“The past
is far from being a precisely sealed off set of events with a
fixed meaning, pre-decided for us by a fixed viewpoint and then
closed off from further debate. As much as our current reality is
shaped by our world vision -- our past too, is shaped, re-shaped,
viewed and re-viewed by the narratives we happen to follow at any
given time.This is the true meaning of ‘being in time’;
this is the essence of temporality, and this is what historical
thinking is all about. People possess the capacity to ‘think
historically’-- to be transformed by the past -- but also to
allow the past to be constantly shaped, and re-shaped, as they
proceed towards the unknown.”
Just as the world is
waking up to the reality of the Nakba, so many are questioning the
Holocaust narrative too, which was constructed largely after the
1967 war to justify Israel’s own crimes. “Both the
Holocaust and World War II should be treated as historical events
rather than as religious myth. But then, even if we accept the
Holocaust as the new Anglo-American liberal-democratic religion,
we must allow people to be atheists.”
Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians is now widely compared to Nazi Germany’s
treatment of Jews. Gilad does not pussyfoot in explaining this:
“Stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of
the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people; however, Jewish
ideology and Nazi ideology were very similar. In some respects
Israel is far worse than Nazi Germany. Israel, for instance,
regards itself as a democracy, and as such, its brutal policies
are accurately reflecting the will of the people. The latest polls
show that the majority of Israeli Jews support ethnic cleansing of
the Palestinians. 94 per cent of Israelis supported the carpet
bombardment of Gaza at the time of Operation Cast Lead.
“We
are dealing with a severe level of complicity here. It may as well
be that some people out there are anti-Jewish. But we must ask
what it is they oppose. Is it really the Jews as a people, a race,
an ethnicity? I don’t think so. In my lifetime, I have never
come across anyone who hated Jews for being Jews. Opposition to
Jews is a direct outcome of Jewish politics, whether it is Israel,
Zionism, lobbying or even hard lobbying within the Palestinian
solidarity movement.”
Atzmon criticises those
anti-Zionists who blithely compare Israel to apartheid South
Africa or other colonial regimes. “Zionism, colonialism, and
apartheid are there to mislead. Israel is the product of Zionism
but it isn’t driven by Zionism. Israel is not a colonial
state either. It may be a settler state but it lacks a mother
state. And Israel is not exactly apartheid, though it has many
apartheid symptoms. Apartheid is a system of exploitation of the
indigenous people. Israelis prefer to see the indigenous gone. The
above terminology is there to maintain dogmatic Marxism relevance
within the discourse. But the contemporary left discourse has
basically lost any relevance within our intellectual discourse. It
needs an immediate facelift.”
In his conclusion
to The Wandering Who? Gilad sadly point out that
“for America, Britain and the West to rescue themselves all
they have to do is to revert to Western values of ethics and
openness. They must drift away from Jerusalem and reinstate the
spirit of Athens.” That prompted me to suggest to him that
it seems we have been living through the Jewish era in history and
haven’t even noticed it. He reminded me of Yuri Slezkine and
his insightful (and boastful) Jewish Century.
Which
prompted me to ask how those of us committed to social justice can
make a strategy that outlasts our own feeble attempts? I told him
I had hopes that Homo Sovieticus could survive long enough to
provide a credible alternative to Homo Greedipuss but that hope
collapsed, much like the attempt to make a Homo Zionicus.
“You
have to ask yourself whether there was any suspicious similarity
between the two utopian models and why,” he counselled. “The
first generation has its ideals, but they don’t transmit for
the most part to the next generation. Such utopian ideas are
structurally religious. This fact alone may explain the rise of
dogmatism and stagnation.”
So, we can say the same
goes for Homo Greedipuss, replacing “exilic” with
“anti-bourgeois”, I offered. Said Gilad in conclusion,
“We are dealing again with questions to do with the human
condition. At this point we must revert to philosophical and
metaphysical thinking. I believe that this is the remedy for the
current crisis in humanist thinking. We must reinstate the ability
to think, re-think, view and re-view. We must restore the ability
to ask for the sake of questioning (instead of answering for the
sake of silencing).”
Captions:
1/ Atzmon at
London mass demonstration at the time of Operation Cast Lead in
2009 (Photo: Tali
Atzmon)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/taliatzmon/sets/72157622266562840/
2/
bookcover The Wandering Who? A study of Jewish identity politics,
Gilad Atzmon, Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011
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