Just as Wolfowitz’s toppled Saddam, who dragged the American Empire down with him, the poor Americans, that were set to facilitate Wolfowitz’s war, pulled down American capitalism as well as the American monetary and banking system. Greenspan’s policy led an entire class to ruin, leaving America’s financial system with a hole that now stands at a trillion dollars.
Greenspan and Wolfowitz remind me of the joke about an insensitive surgeon who comes out of the theatre after a 12 hour heart operation, telling the anxious family ‘the operation was a great success but unfortunately your beloved didn’t make it to the end.’
The Moral Agenda
Greenspan and Wolfowitz’s doctrines looked promising on paper. The operation was indeed successful but the American Empire didn’t make it to the end. It is now doomed to lose its primacy. Greenspan, so he says, did it all for the ‘immigrants’ and the ‘poor’. Wolfowitz appointed Great America to be the global police force. He did it for the Iraqis, for ‘morality’ and democracy. At least this is what he wants us to believe. The pattern is familiar, a few ‘graceful’ people who always try to save the world in the name of one ideal or another. They ‘bring’ democracy to the ‘savage’, they ‘bring’ equality to the poor. They employ abstract ethical concepts. But somehow, the Jewish state is always set to benefit. One just has to read the first and prominent Zionist prophet Theodor Herzl to know that this is what political Zionism is all about: getting superpowers to serve the Zionist cause.
Some Americans were fooled into blindly following Wolfowitz and Greenspan, many others, especially in the highest economical, political and media echelons, were stupid not to stop them in time. Greenspan and Wolfowitz should have at least been restrained. Already in 1992 Americans should have been alerted to the possible dangers concerning foreign interests within the hub of their strategic headquarters.
You may wonder at this stage whether I regard the credit crunch as a Zionist plot or even a Jewish conspiracy. In fact the opposite is the case. It isn’t a plot and certainly not a conspiracy for it was all in the open. It is actually an accident. The patient didn’t make it to the end.
Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who?
A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
Showing posts with label Atzmon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atzmon. Show all posts
Thursday, February 27, 2020
What we see here is an extraordinary degree of solidarity
Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity of third category members. To be a Zionist means to accept that, more than anything else, one is primarily a Jew. Ostrovsky continues: ‘You have at your disposal a non-risk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It’s much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere.’9
What we see here is an extraordinary degree of solidarity. But Jews are far from being a single race, so if it isn’t racial solidarity per se, what is it that leads the sayan to run the risk of years of imprisonment? What did Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard have in mind when he betrayed his country? What do those alleged 2,000 sayanim in London have in mind when they betray their Queen or their neighbour? What did Paul Wolfowitz have in mind when he set the strategy for his country to demolish the last pockets of Arab resistance to Israel?
I regard Ostrovsky’s testimony as a reliable report. As we know, the Israeli government used every possible means to stop the publication of his books.
In a radio interview Joseph Lapid, at the time a senior Israeli columnist, opened his heart and told the world what he thought of Ostrovsky: ‘Ostrovsky is the most treacherous Jew in modern Jewish history. And he has no right to live, except if he’s prepared to return to Israel and stand trial.’ Valerie Pringle, the journalist on the other side of the line, asked Lapid: ‘Do you feel it’s a responsible statement to say what you’ve said?’
Lapid: ‘Oh yes, I fully believe in that. And unfortunately the Mossad cannot do it because we cannot endanger our relations with Canada. But I hope there will be a decent Jew in Canada who does it for us.’
Pringle: ‘You hope this. You could live with his blood on your hands?’
Lapid: ‘Oh no. It’s to..only it will not be his blood on my hands. It will be justice to a man who does the most horrible thing that any Jew can think of, and that is that he’s selling out the Jewish state and the Jewish people for money to our enemies. There is absolutely nothing worse that a human being, if he can be called a human being, can do’.
Lapid, later a member of Sharon’s cabinet, makes it very clear: to be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any legal or moral order. Clearly, for Lapid, Jewish-ness is not a spiritual or religious stand, it is a political commitment.
*
The Organism
It is of course possible that there is no decision-making process at all. It is more than likely that ‘Jews’ do not have a centre or headquarters. It is more than likely that they aren’t aware of their particular role within the entire system, the way an organ is not aware of its role within the complexity of the organism. No single operator within the collective is fully familiar with the collective’s operative mode but is only aware of his or her personal and limited role, function or duties within it. This is probably the Zionist movement’s greatest strength. It transformed the Jewish tribal mode into a collective functioning system.
Looking at Zionism as an organismus would lead to a major shift in our perspective of current world affairs. The Palestinians, for instance, aren’t just the victims of the Israeli occupation, they are actually the victims of a unique global political identity, namely the third category people who transformed the Holy Land into a Jewish bunker. The Iraqis are better seen as the victims of those third category infiltrators within British and American administrations, who succeed in transforming the American and British armies into a Zionist mission force. The Muslim world should be seen as subject to the third category attempt to make ‘moral interventionism’ ideology into the new Western expansionist Bible. Americans and Brits and, to a certain extent, the West are all subject to a financial turmoil known as the ‘credit crunch’. It could be seen as a Zio-punch.
Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who?
A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
What we see here is an extraordinary degree of solidarity. But Jews are far from being a single race, so if it isn’t racial solidarity per se, what is it that leads the sayan to run the risk of years of imprisonment? What did Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard have in mind when he betrayed his country? What do those alleged 2,000 sayanim in London have in mind when they betray their Queen or their neighbour? What did Paul Wolfowitz have in mind when he set the strategy for his country to demolish the last pockets of Arab resistance to Israel?
I regard Ostrovsky’s testimony as a reliable report. As we know, the Israeli government used every possible means to stop the publication of his books.
In a radio interview Joseph Lapid, at the time a senior Israeli columnist, opened his heart and told the world what he thought of Ostrovsky: ‘Ostrovsky is the most treacherous Jew in modern Jewish history. And he has no right to live, except if he’s prepared to return to Israel and stand trial.’ Valerie Pringle, the journalist on the other side of the line, asked Lapid: ‘Do you feel it’s a responsible statement to say what you’ve said?’
Lapid: ‘Oh yes, I fully believe in that. And unfortunately the Mossad cannot do it because we cannot endanger our relations with Canada. But I hope there will be a decent Jew in Canada who does it for us.’
Pringle: ‘You hope this. You could live with his blood on your hands?’
Lapid: ‘Oh no. It’s to..only it will not be his blood on my hands. It will be justice to a man who does the most horrible thing that any Jew can think of, and that is that he’s selling out the Jewish state and the Jewish people for money to our enemies. There is absolutely nothing worse that a human being, if he can be called a human being, can do’.
Lapid, later a member of Sharon’s cabinet, makes it very clear: to be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any legal or moral order. Clearly, for Lapid, Jewish-ness is not a spiritual or religious stand, it is a political commitment.
*
The Organism
It is of course possible that there is no decision-making process at all. It is more than likely that ‘Jews’ do not have a centre or headquarters. It is more than likely that they aren’t aware of their particular role within the entire system, the way an organ is not aware of its role within the complexity of the organism. No single operator within the collective is fully familiar with the collective’s operative mode but is only aware of his or her personal and limited role, function or duties within it. This is probably the Zionist movement’s greatest strength. It transformed the Jewish tribal mode into a collective functioning system.
Looking at Zionism as an organismus would lead to a major shift in our perspective of current world affairs. The Palestinians, for instance, aren’t just the victims of the Israeli occupation, they are actually the victims of a unique global political identity, namely the third category people who transformed the Holy Land into a Jewish bunker. The Iraqis are better seen as the victims of those third category infiltrators within British and American administrations, who succeed in transforming the American and British armies into a Zionist mission force. The Muslim world should be seen as subject to the third category attempt to make ‘moral interventionism’ ideology into the new Western expansionist Bible. Americans and Brits and, to a certain extent, the West are all subject to a financial turmoil known as the ‘credit crunch’. It could be seen as a Zio-punch.
Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who?
A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
There are thousands of sayanim around the world
The sayan is a person who would betray the nation of which he is a citizen out of devotion to a notion of a clannish brotherhood.
While in its early days, Zionism presents itself as an attempt to bring the world Jewry to Zion, in the last three decades it has become clear to the Zionist leadership that Israel would actually benefit from world Jewry, and especially the Jewish elite, staying exactly where they are. Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emmanuel, Lord Levy and David Aaronovitch have proved far more effective for the Zionist cause by staying where they are. Gilad Atzmon
‘The next day Ran S. delivered a lecture on the sayanim, a unique and important part of the Mossad’s operation. Sayanim (assistants) - must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter telling the person bearing the letter that he represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way? .. There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan , for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs.’
Victor Ostrovsky
By Way of Deception
While in its early days, Zionism presents itself as an attempt to bring the world Jewry to Zion, in the last three decades it has become clear to the Zionist leadership that Israel would actually benefit from world Jewry, and especially the Jewish elite, staying exactly where they are. Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emmanuel, Lord Levy and David Aaronovitch have proved far more effective for the Zionist cause by staying where they are. Gilad Atzmon
‘The next day Ran S. delivered a lecture on the sayanim, a unique and important part of the Mossad’s operation. Sayanim (assistants) - must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter telling the person bearing the letter that he represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way? .. There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan , for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs.’
Victor Ostrovsky
By Way of Deception
Supremacy was brewed into our souls, we gazed at the world through racist, chauvinistic binoculars. And we felt no shame about it either
My Grandfather believed in the revival of the pride of the ‘Jewish race’, and so did I in my very early days. Like my peers, I didn’t see the Palestinians around me. They were undoubtedly there – they fixed my father’s car for half the price, they built our houses, they cleaned the mess we left behind, they schlepped boxes in the local food store, but they always disappeared just before sunset and appeared again before dawn. We never socialised with them. We didn’t really understand who they were and what they stood for. Supremacy was brewed into our souls, we gazed at the world through racist, chauvinistic binoculars. And we felt no shame about it either.
*
At the time, my peers and I were convinced that Jews were indeed the Chosen People. My generation was raised on the magical victory of the Six-Day War. We were totally sure of ourselves. As we were secular, we associated every success with our omnipotent qualities. We didn’t believe in divine intervention, we believed in ourselves. We believed that our might originated in our resurrected Hebraic souls and flesh. The Palestinians, for their part, served us obediently, and it didn’t seem at the time that this situation was ever going to change. They displayed no real signs of collective resistance. The sporadic so-called ‘terror’ attacks made us feel righteous, and filled us with eagerness for revenge.
*
As difficult as it might be to believe, military bands are always treated as VIPs, and once we landed at the officers’ barracks we were taken on a guided tour of the camp. We walked along the endless barbed wire and guard towers. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘Who are these people?’ I asked the officer.
‘Palestinians,’ he said. ‘On the left are PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation], and on the right are Ahmed Jibril’s boys [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command] – they are far more dangerous, so we keep them isolated.’
I studied the detainees. They looked very different to the Palestinians in Jerusalem. The ones I saw in Ansar were angry. They were not defeated, they were freedom fighters and they were numerous. As we continued past the barbed wire I continued gazing at the inmates, and arrived at an unbearable truth: I was walking on the other side, in Israeli military uniform. The place was a concentration camp. The inmates were the ‘Jews’, and I was nothing but a ‘Nazi’. It took me years to admit to myself that even the binary opposition Jew/Nazi was in itself a result of my Judeo-centric indoctrination.
While I contemplated the resonance of my uniform, trying to deal with the great sense of shame growing in me, we came to a large, flat ground at the centre of the camp. The officer guiding us offered more platitudes about the current war to defend our Jewish haven. While he was boring us to death with these irrelevant Hasbara (propaganda) lies, I noticed that we were surrounded by two dozen concrete blocks each around 1m2 in area and 1.3m high, with small metal doors as entrances. I was horrified at the thought that my army was locking guard dogs into these boxes for the night. Putting my Israeli chutzpah into action, I confronted the officer about these horrible concrete dog cubes. He was quick to reply: ‘These are our solitary confinement blocks; after two days in one of these, you become a devoted Zionist!’
This was enough for me. I realised that my affair with the Israeli state and with Zionism was over. Yet I still knew very little about Palestine, about the Nakba or even about Judaism and Jewish-ness, for that matter. I only saw then that, as far as I was concerned, Israel was bad news, and I didn’t want to have anything further to do with it. Two weeks later I returned my uniform, grabbed my alto sax, took the bus to Ben-Gurion Airport and left for Europe for a few months, to busk in the street. At the age of twenty-one, I was free for the first time. However, December proved too cold for me, and I returned home – but with the clear intention to make it back to Europe. I somehow already yearned to become a Goy or at least to be surrounded by Goyim.
Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who?
A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
*
At the time, my peers and I were convinced that Jews were indeed the Chosen People. My generation was raised on the magical victory of the Six-Day War. We were totally sure of ourselves. As we were secular, we associated every success with our omnipotent qualities. We didn’t believe in divine intervention, we believed in ourselves. We believed that our might originated in our resurrected Hebraic souls and flesh. The Palestinians, for their part, served us obediently, and it didn’t seem at the time that this situation was ever going to change. They displayed no real signs of collective resistance. The sporadic so-called ‘terror’ attacks made us feel righteous, and filled us with eagerness for revenge.
*
As difficult as it might be to believe, military bands are always treated as VIPs, and once we landed at the officers’ barracks we were taken on a guided tour of the camp. We walked along the endless barbed wire and guard towers. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘Who are these people?’ I asked the officer.
‘Palestinians,’ he said. ‘On the left are PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation], and on the right are Ahmed Jibril’s boys [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command] – they are far more dangerous, so we keep them isolated.’
I studied the detainees. They looked very different to the Palestinians in Jerusalem. The ones I saw in Ansar were angry. They were not defeated, they were freedom fighters and they were numerous. As we continued past the barbed wire I continued gazing at the inmates, and arrived at an unbearable truth: I was walking on the other side, in Israeli military uniform. The place was a concentration camp. The inmates were the ‘Jews’, and I was nothing but a ‘Nazi’. It took me years to admit to myself that even the binary opposition Jew/Nazi was in itself a result of my Judeo-centric indoctrination.
While I contemplated the resonance of my uniform, trying to deal with the great sense of shame growing in me, we came to a large, flat ground at the centre of the camp. The officer guiding us offered more platitudes about the current war to defend our Jewish haven. While he was boring us to death with these irrelevant Hasbara (propaganda) lies, I noticed that we were surrounded by two dozen concrete blocks each around 1m2 in area and 1.3m high, with small metal doors as entrances. I was horrified at the thought that my army was locking guard dogs into these boxes for the night. Putting my Israeli chutzpah into action, I confronted the officer about these horrible concrete dog cubes. He was quick to reply: ‘These are our solitary confinement blocks; after two days in one of these, you become a devoted Zionist!’
This was enough for me. I realised that my affair with the Israeli state and with Zionism was over. Yet I still knew very little about Palestine, about the Nakba or even about Judaism and Jewish-ness, for that matter. I only saw then that, as far as I was concerned, Israel was bad news, and I didn’t want to have anything further to do with it. Two weeks later I returned my uniform, grabbed my alto sax, took the bus to Ben-Gurion Airport and left for Europe for a few months, to busk in the street. At the age of twenty-one, I was free for the first time. However, December proved too cold for me, and I returned home – but with the clear intention to make it back to Europe. I somehow already yearned to become a Goy or at least to be surrounded by Goyim.
Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who?
A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
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