By Gilad Atzmon
February 24, 2020
"Information Clearing House" - I launched my
study into Jewishness two decades ago. It
began as a result of my reaction to the
relentless attacks on dissident Jewish
thinkers who didn’t fit with the
‘revolutionary agenda’ of the so-called
Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ Left. I quickly
grasped that it was actually the Jewish
Left, the radicals and progressives, who
displayed the most problematic traits
associated with Zionism and Jewish
identitarianism.
I was perplexed: the
same people who adhere to tribal politics
and operate in racially segregated political
cells preach universalism to others. I came
to understand that nothing was transparent
or obvious about Jewish culture and
identitarianism, and that this was by
design. I decided to untangle the Jewish
enigma from a new perspective: instead of
asking who or what Jews are, I asked what
those who self-identify as Jews believe in,
what precepts they adhere to. This question
was the beginning of my struggle.
By the time I
published
The Wandering Who? (2011), I realised
that those who identify as Jews can be
divided into three non-exclusive categories.
1. Those who follow Torah and Mitzvoth. 2.
Those who identify with their Jewish
ancestry. 3. Those who identify politically
as Jews. In The Wandering Who I argued that
while the first and the second categories
are innocent, the third category is always
contaminated by biological determinism. The
third category is, in fact, racist to the
core. While Jews aren’t necessarily a race,
Jewish politics are, too often, racially
oriented. This applies to both Zionists and
the so called ‘anti’ Zionists. In my work
there is no real distinction between Jewish
Zionists and their Jewish dissenters. I have
found them to be equally racist.
There is more to draw
from this categorical approach. It is
apparent that not many self identified Jews
fall exclusively into just one of the
categories. Jewish identity is a
multilayered construct. A West Bank settler,
for instance, is usually a follower of Torah
and Mitzvoth (cat’ 1), most often he/she
speaks in the name of their Jewish ancestry
and even claims lineage to Biblical figures
(cat’ 2). And it goes without saying that a
West Bank Jewish settler identifies and acts
politically as a Jew (cat’ 3). Surprisingly,
a JVP activist in Brooklyn isn’t all that
different. He or she may not adhere to the
Torah but likely identifies ethnically as a
Jew (cat’ 2) and certainly acts politically
as a Jew (cat’ 3).
In The Wandering Who
I argued that If Zionism is a racist
ideology, then Jewish anti Zionists are at
least as guilty of the same crime. In fact,
in the Israeli Knesset, the third biggest
party is a Palestinian party. You do the goy
count: try to figure out how many
Palestinians or Gentiles are on
JVP’s board or amongst the British
Jewish Voice for Labour (that
doesn’t even accept gentiles as equal
members). Needless to mention, this
observation didn’t make me overwhelmingly
popular amongst Zionists and the so called
‘anti.’
On the day of the
publication of The Wandering Who,
hell broke loose. What started as a
struggle to seek the truth or at least some
understanding, evolved into a bloody war.
Oddly, no one bothered to find a mistake in
my work or pointed to where my argument was
lacking. No one claimed that the facts I
based my argument on were inaccurate. Both
Zionists and ‘anti’ have deployed every
trick in their Hasbara book to try and
silence me. I was called a racist, an
anti-Semite and a Nazi despite the fact that
my entire work is anti racist and in
defiance of the Jewish racial argument.
Since 2011 I have
been subject to a cowardly smear campaign.
But the war called upon me has actually
helped me to refine my views on Jewish
Identity Politics. I realised that
Jewishness (yehudiyut) is a manifold of
different forms of chosenness. Rabbinical
Jews celebrate being God’s favorite
children. Atheist Jews in practice, dumped
the God who first chose them in order to
validate their own superiority as godless
people. Jewish Marxists are special for
their belief in equality. Tikun Olam Jews
believe that it is down to them to save the
Goyim. After a few more years of this study
I realised that Judaism is just one Jewish
religion amongst many and it is not even the
most popular Jewish religion.
The great Israeli
philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz figured out
in the 1970s that while Jews uphold many
religions and beliefs, all Jews believe in
the Holocaust. It was this observation by
Leibowitz that planted the notion of the
Holocaust religion. When I wrote Being in
Time, I realised that practically every
precept can become a Jewish religion as long
as it sustains a lucid concept of
‘chosenness’, self-love or auto validation.
The French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan revealed that
the ‘unconscious is the discourse of the
Other;’ the fear that one’s deepest secrets
could be unveiled and make it into the
public discourse. In Lacanian terms, the
Jewish unconscious is the fear that the
‘Goyim Know.’ Their torment is that people
‘out there’ will start to converse about
what has taken place in front of their eyes:
whether it is
AIPAC dominance of US foreign policy or
the destruction of the Labour Party or the
constant
threat to world peace imposed by Israel
and its Lobby.
Judging by their
desperate attempts to silence me, I assume
that I must be seen, at least in the eyes of
my Jewish detractors, as a prime conduit for
that ever expanding general awareness –
after all I have been blowing the whistle
for a while.
Jews do not like
those who leave the tribe. Jesus paid a
price, as did
Uriel da Costa and Spinoza. For Jews,
the former Jew, or ex-Jew, is a threat most
likely because many Jews may feel insecure
about the ethical ground of their core
beliefs, culture and ideology. Enlightened
Jewish progressives are probably clever
enough to admit to themselves that being
born into chosenness is a problematic
racially supremacist concept. Honest Jews
may have gathered that being chosen by a God
you yourself invented to favour you over the
rest of humanity is actually funny. Orthodox
Jews understand that large parts of their
core beliefs are
inconsistent with the western universal
humanist tradition. Many Zionists know
that their claims to a historic right to a
land they have never been in are ridiculous.
The Jewish strategy
to handle their fears includes the
suppression of elementary freedoms: Jewish
Power as I define it, is the power to
suppress criticism of Jewish power. I
believe that it was I who coined the slogan,
‘We Are All Palestinians.’ In accordance
with my definition of Jewish power,
Palestinians are those who can’t even utter
the name of their oppressor. While Israel
calls itself the Jewish State and boasts
about itself as Jewish, the Palestinians and
their solidarity movement go out of their
way to avoid the
‘J word.’ When British Jewish
institutions including the
chief rabbi and the British
Jewish press called an open war on the
British Labour and its leader no one in the
Labour party dared utter the ‘J word’ except
when asking for
Jewish forgiveness. The condition of
being Palestinian, of not being able to name
one’s oppressor, is now a global symptom.
This suppression of speech and thought has
evolved into a tyranny of correctness.
By the time I wrote
Being in Time I understood that my struggle
has implications that far exceed my initial
intellectual objectives. What we face as
western subjects is a massive battle between
Athens and Jerusalem, where Athens is the
birthplace of Western thought and Jerusalem
is the city of revelation. Athens teaches us
how to think, Jerusalem demands our
obedience.
The Western humanist
values and intellectual assets we are now
nostalgic for came from Athens: democracy,
tolerance, freedom of speech, philosophy,
Agora, science, ethics, poesis and the
tragedy. Jerusalem gave us laws, mitzvoth,
regimes of prescribed and proscribed
behavior. Athens teaches us how to think
ethically: in Jerusalem, ethics are replaced
by the Ten Commandments; rules to obey.
Jerusalem is not solely a ‘Jewish domain.’
The Jerusalemization of our universe is
apparent in every corner of society: from
pop culture, to the work place, to academia
and beyond. It is the tyranny of correctness
adopted by the new Left and it is at least
as infectious within right identitarianism.
My struggle as I now
understand it, has evolved into a
metaphysical quest. I battle to reinstate
Athens within my soul. If you want to make
the West great again, my struggle is your
struggle. Defy Jerusalem, say no to
authoritarianism, embrace Athens in your
heart: learn to speak your mind, tell the
truth as you see it and bear the
consequences
