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Google translated from Swedish: Hitting critique of jewish identity politics.

"What's so shocking about a study of the jew identity politics? Does his Jewish-zionist and Jewish-anti-Zionist detractors vain attempts to censor the book proove that he hits the nail right on the head?"

The Wandering Who? - A study of Jewish identity politics
Gilad Atzmon
Zero Books 2011

Jewishness flourishes in exile because of the Jewish narrative is exilic and marginalized identity manifested, and it loses its force once it is indigenous. "Exilic and marginalized" is linked to fear, and fear is what holds together the collective Jewish identity. So, roughly, is the gist of Gilad Atzmon exposé of the subject.

"The Wandering Who?" brings to life the idea of ​​the book as dangerous to intellectual discourse - the book is philosophical argumentation and debate - can make a difference. The book met namely stiff opposition even before the release in the form of intimidation, harassment and threats. What's so shocking about a study of the Jewish identity politics? Does his Jewish-zionist and Jewish-anti-Zionist belackares vain attempts to censor the book, which reveals a culture of self-censorship and book burning, proove that he hits the nail right on the head?

Gilad notes that he in his intellectual work face intense opposition from "anti-Zionist" Zionists, and not from hard-core right-Zionists, to whom his grandfather, once a member of the terrorist group Irgun, heard. In the preface Gilad reflects his background and how he came to leave their homeland of Israel. He fell for jazz music in his teens and followed his heart into the music, which led him out of the ordinary thinking approach, and into a humanistic exploration of self and world. A more direct awakening got Gilad when he was a soldier visited an Israeli prison camps in Lebanon during the occupation. The sight of thousands of tortured Palestinians on the other side of the barbed wire caused him to "confront an unbearable truth: The place was a concentration camp. The prisoners were 'the Jews' and I was nothing but a 'Nazi'."

In chapter one Gilad divides Jewish self awareness in three categories:

First those who follow Judaism.
Second those who see themselves as people who happen to be the jew ancestry.
Third those who put their Jewishness over all its other properties.

The first two categories, he regards as essentially harmless and innocent, the first by reason of nationalist messianism is only one interpretation of religion, the others need not be explained, while the third category is problematic. The third category was advocated by Zionism's leading representative in the early 1900s, such as Chaim Weizmann (later Israel's first president), who explained that "There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany and America. " Another example is right-wing extremists V. Jabotinsky, who said, 29 years before Hitler became German Chancellor, that the amount of German culture and language of a Jew in Germany than allow themselves imbued remains his spiritual core always jew, "because his blood, body and physiological racial type is jew ". Gilad believes that the segregationist impulse is strong even among Jewish Marxists, because they are just Jewish Marxists instead of just being Marxists. Progressive Jews have a special function that they perhaps are unaware of, to prevent self-hating Jews, to whom Gilad proudly counts itself, from speaking out.

The third category do not need to move to Palestine, because the person "living in Zion" and may be useful where he / she lives. Gilad read ex-Mossad V. Ostrokovsky's "By Way of Deception" from 1990 (the title taken from Mossad official motto). Ostrokovsky exposed Mossad's network of sayanim (helpers) in the Diaspora. Helpers must be 100 percent Jewish and Ostrovsky refer to their help as rassolidarisk. These are therefore to Gilad third category, which corresponds Weizmann Zionism.

Furthermore, if the third category of policy: "Jew political discourse is always formulated as a form of negation [...] This is far from a perfect recipe for a peaceful, ethical life, driven by reconciliation and harmony." That the emancipated Jewish identity is defined by negation explains why emancipated Jews so often involved in political campaigns and revolutionary movements (see SD's Ted Ekeroth). The neo-conservative politics that has taken root in the West is steeped in the negro of politics dressed in ethical terms. Its prominent representatives of the "Judeo-Christian civilization" in the U.S. identified correctly by Gilad through PNAC's Paul Wolfowitz (Wolfowitzdoktrinen) and the new "Prince of Darkness" by Kissinger, proponent of total war, Richard Perle, as Israeli proxy warriors.

Several times out Gilad that there is a "headquarters" where the different sides of the political discourses are coordinated from. "There is no jew world conspiracy", but "Zionism is so successful because it is a global project without heads and with many hands." It mostly takes place openly. The Israeli-American media mogul Saim Saban is quoted: "Three ways to be successful in American politics is to donate to political parties, establish think tanks, and control the media." The model for jew lobbying Gilad finds in the Bible book of Esther, as you remember during Purim, where political intrigue save Jews from extermination. The Holocaust is not something that only belongs to the 1900s but "represents a long historical continuity", which Gilad points out, has not yet been thoroughly studied one of the researchers who studied the Holocaust as a religion. It is linked to what Gilad calls "Pretraumatiskt stress disorder" (Pre-TSS), "a tenet of the jew and the Israeli culture." They are traumatized by something that can or will happen, that is the opposite of Post-traumatic stress disorder.

When Gilad discusses Jewish descent, he is partly Schlomo Sands groundbreaking work "The Invention Of The Jewish People", which shows that early Judaism was a proselytizing and therefore consisted of different ethnicities. Therefore, the exiles during Roman myth. To the historical story is mythological because it was Jewish historical texts between the first and the nineteenth century, and that jew nationalism recruited Bible for his project.

It is worthwhile to quote long passages of Gilad Atzmon well formulated and humorous profanity:

"The 'Jewish people' is an invented concept, consisting of an imaginary past with very little to back it up with, forensic, historical or via text [...] Nor has much been found in the Sinai desert to prove the story of the legendary Exodus - apparently marched three million Hebrew men, women and children around there for forty years without leaving a single Matzo Ball behind [...] If Shlomo Sand is correct, then the Jews, rather than a race, a collective of many people who have been kidnapped by a national movement based on myths. "


Yes, on Sand has the right then has the consequence that the term anti-Semitism is poor on real meaning as the majority of Jews are not of Semitic origin:

"In other words, the critique of nationalism, jew, jew jew lobbying and power only realized as a legitimate critique of ideology, policy and practice."


Gilad provides on an accurate critique of the research that exists about the Holocaust as a religion, and he identifies Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Hebrew University as the first to point out that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion.

"This new religion is coherent enough to define their 'antichrists' (Holocaust deniers), and powerful enough to persecute them (through laws against Holocaust denial and hate speech against)."


None of the researchers in the field has not yet embarked on the study of the Holocaust in a long-term continuity, for apparently the Holocaust has been a part of Jewish existence ever since the Bible was written. A reading of the Bible reveals that, with its recurring images of the disaster have desired, the source of the Pre-TSS and the fear of annihilation. This historical perspective and the fact Gilad mentions that historical narratives do not need is surrounded by draconian laws and censorship reveal the exaltation of the Holocaust than any other historical event as a manifestation of power and ideology. Here he comes in mined terrain, as power and ideology should be examined, and it is illegal in some countries in this case.

Gilad Atzmon's book is solid in both arguments and sources, consisting of internationally recognized scientists and historians, many of them Israelis. Far from everything is new but Gilad successfully connect otherwise separated knowledge and have identified new directions for future research, not to mention the peace, which he hopes can be achieved by "jew identity discourse frees itself from its självpåtvingade tyranny." The author's language does not carry the burden of complicated academic jargon and he has humor. Therefore, it is recommended to a wide audience. Maybe see Gilad Atzmon world too much through Israeli eyes, that he missed something important? The discussion is philosophical but also political, as the first two identity categories do not figure. The criticism of "anti-Zionist" Zionists might alienate some allies, but the reception is an indicator that there is substance in his conclusions.

Gilad has at least opened up a well-intentioned debate with a view of extensive work that is urgent given that once drummed for the main target (Iran) for the neoconservatives 'war on terror'. Is not the world worth more, than for the gate keepers to tuck away the routinely used stamps, which echoes increasingly empty? It feels we are probably better off in the end.


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