By Gilad Atzmon
IDF’s colossal defeat in Gaza this week leaves Israel and Israelis with just three political and personal options:
1. Mass expulsion – ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population from territories controlled by Israel. Such action may sound unreasonable or even phantasmic, but it is actually consistent with Zionist ideology and has many supporters within Israel and within the current Israeli cabinet. Moreover, oppression and brutality are embedded within Jewish political culture and even within the culture of the Jewish Left*. Clearly Israel possesses the military capability and fire power to proceed with such a plan for Nakba II.
2. Exodus – mass emigration of Israelis who, quite reasonably, prefer to run for their lives. This option is obviously embedded within the exilic Jewish culture and completely consistent with Jewish diaspora identity. Emigration is available to most Israelis at the moment. However, it is likely that as violence in the region continues to escalate and Israel finds itself complicit in more and more war crimes and human rights abuse, Israelis may find out that their freedom to travel around the world is gradually restricted.
3. Buying time –Israel’s favourite option. And certainly Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred policy.
While both the 1st and the 2nd options are consistent with Jewish ideology, heritage and culture, it is the 3rd option that has been chosen by Israel’s governments for decades. It entails constant devastation of Gaza by means of medium scale massacres in the hope that Palestinians will eventually surrender and accept the domination of the Jewish State.
Just a month ago it seemed as if only divine intervention could save the Palestinians. However, as things stand at the moment, even God may find it difficult to rescue his favourite people. Israel has sunk into a fatal political, military and ideological paralysis. The destiny of the Jewish State has been revealed. It has no future in the region.
The key to understanding of Israel’s paralysis is not complicated. As much as Israelis favour the deployment of their devastating military might and its fire power, Israelis do not like to be caught with blood on their hands. As much as they like to kill, they hate to be the killers. This dilemma has matured into a political, ideological, strategic and spiritual deadlock. It puts the Jewish State into an impossible scenario that makes dwelling on someone’s else land simply unimaginable.
Noticeably absent among the viable options above is peace. Reconciliation is not a viable concept anymore. The notion of ‘peace’ as we understand it in the west (harmony and reconciliation) does not exists in modern Hebrew. The word ‘shalom’ that is commonly translated as ‘peace” is understood by Israelis as ‘security for the Jews.’ Israel has had plenty of time to reach harmony and reconciliation with the Palestinians. But it didn’t happen and for a reason. Israel is the Jewish State, it is ethno centric to its core, it is blind to the notion of universal rights and totally dismissive of the Palestinians and their rights.
It may be crucial at this point to add that the final stage of the Jewish State and the genocidal enthusiasm in which it manifests itself, throws a devastating light on Jewish culture and the dangerous aspects that are entangled with Jewish identity politics and Jewish national collectivism.
The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity politics and Jewish Power in particular – available on Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk
* It was Stalin’s ‘willing executioners’ who wiped out millions of Ukrainians in the name of ‘collectivization’ in the 1930s (Holodomor). It was the Yiddish Speaking International Brigade that massacred Catholics and burned their churches in Spain (1936), once again in the name of the ‘revolution.’ It was the Zionist Left which expelled the Palestinians in 1948. Killing en masse in the name of a great ideal, be it Moral interventionism, Gay rights, or even Jewish suffering, is unfortunately, consistent with Jewish political culture and attitude.
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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
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