Ali Abunimah and Gilad Atzmon at the OK Corral
Roger Tucker – One Democratic State March 2012
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.
Racism
“Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by heritable phenotypic characteristics, geographic ancestry, physical appearance, and ethnicity.”
So begins the Wikipedia page on the subject. Race is a broad brush that
covers just about any typology that attempts to divide humanity into
distinct groups according to such criteria. All such attempts have very
fuzzy edges. “Racism is the belief that
inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination.
In the modern English language, the term “racism” is used predominantly
as a pejorative epithet.
It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial
discrimination of a pernicious nature (i.e., which harms particular
groups of people).” The accusation of racism has typically been a
characteristic of leftist critiques of systems that practice
discrimination against members of relatively powerless minorities. The
accusation of racism against Zionist Jews is a curious exception. This
particular group is far from being powerless. More to the point, there
has been an obvious racist component within Jewish culture from the very
beginning. Just take a look at the Old Testament, let alone the blatant
contempt for the “goyim” (non-Jews) found in the Talmud. The
dehumanization of “the Other” is a very old and characteristically
Jewish pattern. For tribal Jews and their allies, the “shabbas goyim,”
to bandy about the term “racism” is hypocrisy of the highest order. (“The term shabbos goy refers to a non-Jew who performs duties that Jewish law forbids a Jew from performing on the Sabbath.”
– wikipedia) What I am getting at is that Ali Abunimah et al are
arguably shabbas goyim, non-Jewish elements of the currently dominant
political force in the Western world that James Petras refers to as the Zionist Power Configuration (JPC).
Antisemitism
This term is the most powerful weapon
in the tribal Jewish verbal armory. To be labeled antisemitic is akin to
having been labeled a heretic by the Holy Roman Inquisition. It might
not invite torture and burning at the stake, but they will set about
ruining your life. It is purportedly a special case of racism, whereby
the Jewish people are cast as the eternal victims of racial prejudice. I
defer to a Jewish thinker on this subject:
“If this hostility, even aversion, had
only been shown towards the Jews at one period and in one country, it
would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race
has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among
whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies
of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in
countries very distant from each other, since they were ruled by very
different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither
the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by
unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in
the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of
anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who
have fought against Israel.” ~ Statement regarding the expulsions of
Jews, by noted Jewish author Bernard Lazare in “L’antisémitisme, son
histoire et ses causes,”published in 1894.
As a number of people have pointed out,
there is another problem with the use of the word antisemitism.
“Semite” is a linguistic term denoting peoples who speak semitic
languages. Israelis are not semites in spite of the fact that they speak
Hebrew ((it’s an adopted language of far too recent a vintage). The
Zionists who created Israel and still run it are descended from the
Khazars, linguistically a “Turko-finnic” people. The vast majority of
semites speak Arabic as their native language, making tribal Jewry,
particularly the Israelis, the only people in the world who are truly
“antisemitic” – and they are virulently antisemitic.
Colonialism
Abunimah invokes this term,
specifically “settler-colonialism,” as characterizing the nature of the
Zionist invasion of Palestine. They claim that Atzmon rejects this
characterization. Actually, all he does is point out that
settler-colonialism has traditionally referred to efforts of European
powers to install a permanent presence of their nationals in countries
they wish to control. In all such cases, except Israel, there is a
mother country that the settlers can rely on to finance and support
their efforts. This is different from the case of the Jewish State, in
which that role has been played by world Jewry in the diaspora. It’s a
non-issue, really, except that once again Abunimah is misusing language
to make his argument.
Culture
Race, as we mentioned above, is a
clumsy, inaccurate and misleading way of looking at the distinguishing
characteristics of people that we attempt to lump together in
identifiable groups. There’s a much better way of separating out what
Atzmon calls “collectives.” This is by looking at characteristic ways of
thinking, speaking and behaving, which together pretty much determine
who we are. These distinctions are cultural. And this is where the
already shaky limb that Ali is clinging to breaks and he tumbles into
complete nonsense. Ali doesn’t mention culture in his letter, but take a
look at this, Ali Abunimah attacking Gilad Atzmon at the Stuttgart One State conference (Dec 2010.
“Jewish Culture.. doesn’t explain anything at all.” This remark is not
only absurd – it would be like saying that slavery had nothing to do
with the Civil War, or that the playing of the pipes has nothing to do
with their Celtic origin, or that the French drink wine merely as a
matter of personal choice, etc. , etc. (one could make a parlor game out
of this) – he is so intent on demonizing Atzmon that he abandons any
shred of intellectual integrity. Perhaps he secretly believes in
“Intelligent Design?”
The notion of race is based on genetic
differences, which determine our physical being. Genetic evolution in
the human race more or less ceased some 5,000 years ago. Culture, on the
other hand, is memetic. Memes are patterns that we inherit from our
environment, starting when we are children with our families and
continuing as we get older to to the notions, norms and attitudes
prevalent in our societies. Culture is far and away the most significant
causal factor in how we manifest in the world. What makes memetic
(cultural) evolution possible and far more rapid than through genetic
mutations is that we have the ability to change our minds based on new
information, or seeing things in a new way. To do so requires curiosity,
an open mind and considerable humbleness. This is what the word
“freedom” means in its fullest sense. Many people become rigid and
inflexible in their views, including far too many academics. As Eric
Hoffer, the great longshoreman philosopher put it in his book ‘The True Believer,’
“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find
themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer
exists. “
Identity politics
This term, frequently used by Atzmon, is the crux of the matter. If you will indulge me, click on Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism.
It is about identity politics and how this phenomenon tends to evolve
into fascism. Atzmon is absolutely correct in making it central to his
investigation. He stresses that it is intellectually dishonest to
attempt to discuss Zionism and Israel without reference to “Jewishness.”
Zionism was a specifically Jewish endeavor to create a Jewish state.
What could be more obvious? If you leave out the “Jewish” part there
isn’t much left, is there? The point is too obvious to belabor, but
Abunimah attempts to do just that. Atzmon, in the grand tradition of
intellectual inquiry, has committed himself to trying to understand the
whole complex picture, which centers around the question of what
“Jewish” and “Jewishness” mean. Abunimah cries foul and invokes the
taboo that has been the mainstay of Zionist propaganda from day one. You
can’t talk about “Jews.” You can’t talk about “Jewishness.” Otherwise
you are “racist,” “antisemitic.” A circular, absurd argument. I guess it
might upset somebody, most likely “The Wandering Guess Who.” (There is a
very intriguing piece from an unlikely source, a recent issue of the
New York Times. The author has some very intiguing things to say about
tribal identities. Click on Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness.)
I am Jewish, Atzmon is Jewish (whether
he likes it or not – sorry, Gilad, but it’s a friendly dig), and so are
many of his supporters. I don’t want anyone telling me that I can’t look
at what that means. It is one of my fondest hopes that a great many
Jews honestly consider the question “who am I?”. As long as the answer
is “I’m a Jew, first and foremost” we are in for a lot more trouble. If
the answer is “I’m first of all a human being and the rest is secondary”
then there will be grounds for optimism. If enough Jews have the
courage to look in the mirror and ask this fundamental question, we
could easily solve the most pressing problem facing the world today,
because, like it or not, tribal Jewry currently holds all the cards.
Without at least the tacit support of most Jews they wouldn’t be able to
play their game any longer.
Political Correctness
We are now going to address what I
believe to be the primary motivations behind Abunimah’s extraordinary
attack on Atzmon. A number of political fashions arose out of
postmodernism, such as multi-culturalism, radical feminism and gay and
lesbian activism, for example. In all cases, these fashions endorse
various flavors of identity politics, These particular ideas were
actually pioneered within the 60’s counter-culture, but the
postmodernist academics turned them upside down. Instead of being
inspired by a sense of our common humanity, we were inundated by all
sorts of identity politics, all with narratives that, under the new
dispensation, couldn’t be challenged without confronting the enforcement
arm of the new orthodoxy – political correctness. All of this grew out
of the Marxist culture that had previously been the fashion on the Left,
but needed a new intellectual basis after the reaction to the horrors
of Stalinism and Maoism, and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ergo, postmodernism and its progeny provided continuity and a new lease
on life.
In keeping with the tradition of
Marxism-Leninism, the neo-Marxists needed to instill monolithic party
discipline. After all, there can be only one vanguard of the
proletariat. The new ideology of identity politics developed the
strategy of political correctness to enforce its monopoly over
discourse. This is not confined to the groves of Academe – the ADL and
similar Zionist institutions actively enforce the orthodoxy. And, just
as an aside, Jews continued to make up a large proportion of both the
party leadership and the party faithful, just as Bolshevism was largely a
Jewish project. Although the thought police concern themselves with
decrying any perceived denigration of a number of tribal groups, by
other academics particularly, there is no question that the one and only
Sacred Cow is the Jewish Tribe. Casting aspersions on black people,
gays or women, for example, will get you a serious dressing down, but
any reference to Jews or Jewishness that isn’t flattering might well
cost you your livelihood, or worse.
To sum up, the attacks on Gilad Atzmon
and Ken O’Keefe reveal an organized attempt to silence independent
voices within the Palestinian support community. Many moons ago I was in
the US Army. As it was peacetime, the only enemy in sight was the Army
itself. We fought to a draw. There are many of us who don’t like to take
orders, least of all from from the PC thought police. This an attempted
political coup, actually, much like the successful efforts of the
Bolsheviks (which means “majority,” although they were a small minority –
quite Orwellian, actually) against the Mensheviks. But it isn’t going
to work, because Atzmon and O’Keefe aren’t interested in power or being
part of an organized movement. They are truly independent people taking a
personal stand against a great evil, and they take their stand on
behalf of all of suffering mankind, not just the Palestinians. Their
efforts are prompted by the plight of the Palestinians, but like Gandhi,
ML King and Mandela, they serve an even higher purpose, that of
justice, wisdom, compassion and peace.
I would leave it there, but I want to
make an appeal to Ali Abunimah et al to reconsider their views on this
matter. When I got involved in One State advocacy more than ten years
ago, I realized that we needed to operate under a big tent. After all,
we are a small, relatively powerless group of people, up against the
most powerful and ruthless fascist endeavor in history. At the very
least, we need to accommodate one another even if some people have some
views that rub us the wrong way. So I would like to invite Ali Abunimah,
Joseph Massad, my friend Haidar Eid and all the others to check their
guns at the door and rejoin the rest of us involved in the greatest
struggle of our time.
Supporters of Atzmon have written a flurry of responses to Abunimah’s letter. Here are links to some of them:
Needless to say, Atzmon and O’Keefe have had something to say about it as well:
Gilad wrote to his list: “It seems as if in spite of a very well orchestrated Jewish
campaign, truth and justice prevailed, a lot thanks to you out there.
There is a simple basic fact my detractors fail to grasp. I am not a
politician, I do not seek power. I am an artist, I search for beauty and
justice. And as it happens both are out there available for us.”
It appears that the same people who are
trying to excommunicate Atzmon are also after Ken O’Keefe, which is
really disgusting. There aren’t that many real heroes in this world, but
O’Keefe is certainly one of them.
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