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.
(Republished from Gilad Atzmon by
permission of author or representative)
