ON AIPAC And Patriotism

In the next few days and completely against the will of the American people, hundreds of AIPAC activists will raid the American Congress to push for a war. Nothing new in that but still, one question  bothers me: How many of these pro-war Jews have sent their own sons and daughters to serve in the American military?
Bearing in mind that pretty much the same Lobby pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, one might wonder whether Jews were fairly represented in the military forces or in the casualty statistics of that military blunder. I’d guess they were not.  It seems that the enthusiasm of the Lobby in pushing for wars for America doesn’t translate much into patriotism or sacrifice. The Lobby indeed pushes for wars, but somehow it’s always the gentiles who do the killing and the dying.
In Britain it’s much the same. David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen, both leading advocates within the British media for intervention in Iraq 2003 didn’t use many column inches in the Jewish Chronicle persuading young Jews to join the British Navy or the SAS. Like their American counterparts, they believed that ‘moral’ intervention was necessary but it was the Scottish, English and Welsh boys and girls that took care of it for them.
And what about arch interventionist Bernard Henri Levy, the so-called philosopher who ‘liberated Libya as a Jew’, did he call for Jews to join the French legions? I don’t think so.
Here we see a clear discrepancy between the contemporary Jewish right wing appetite for immoral interventionist wars and a general absence of patriotism amongst the Jewish masses. This surely demands an explanation.  Is this really parasitic aggression on AIPAC’s part? Do they really try to send America into a Zionist war yet refrain from sending their kids to the same war?  Or is it that AIPAC and the other belligerent Jewish lobbies are totally detached from the Jewish masses who are uninterested in these expansionist wars and violence. Or is it that American Jews, don’t mind one bit watching the Jewish lobby pushing for a war on their behalf, yet, for obvious reasons, they prefer to stay out of danger.
I don’t know the answers to these troubling questions; I am neither a sociologist nor a political scientist but I would suggest that AIPAC and the other Jewish lobbies are playing a very dangerous game that may put all  American Jews in grave danger.
If Jews are concerned about anti-Semitism (and they should be), they’d better tale a look at AIPAC’s actions and contemplate the possibly catastrophic outcome.

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics, AIPAC & The Jewish Lobby, available on Amazon.com  & Amazon.co.uk

Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist and writer.

Atzmon’s album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. Playing over 100 dates a year,[4] he has been called “surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz.” His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore the music of the Middle East and political themes. He has described himself as a “devoted political artist.” He supports the Palestinian right of return and the one-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His criticisms of Zionism, Jewish identity, and Judaism, as well as his controversial views on The Holocaust and Jewish history have led to allegations of antisemitism from both Zionists and anti-Zionists. A profile in The Guardian in 2009 which described Atzmon as “one of London’s finest saxophonists” stated: “It is Atzmon’s blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile, particularly in the Arab world, where his essays are widely read.”

His new book The Wandering Who? is now availble at Amazon.com