|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
Zionism and the culture of retributionBy Gilad Atzmon 2 January 2007Gilad Atzmon looks at how Zionism has corrupted Western political culture, culminating in the lies of George Bush and his vassal, Tony Blair, which led to the war against Iraq. We live in a global village, a sealed monolithic ghetto in which medieval pornographic images of barbarism travel around the world at the speed of light for our consumption. Looped images of the executed Saddam Hussein are looping on every news network. We are supposed to be cheered by the victory of "justice". But we all know that what has been performed in front of our eyes is nothing but banal retribution. We are well aware that it has nothing to do with justice. Not only was the trial of Saddam a farce, but if there are persons who should be locked behind bars, they should be the perpetrators of the war. We are now also learning, and had better admit, that we have been deluded and misled by the notion of liberal democracy, a modern Western political precept that originally portrayed itself as a great promise. We have been clearly dragged into some very dark era that will be remembered as a global manifestation, a unique form of evil far beyond banality. While Saddam is on the verge of becoming a martyr, his executors, Bush and Blair, have already secured their place in the premiere league of war criminals. It resembles very much the case of the Inquisition: it is once again the executer who is there to be stained in the eyes of future generations. Blair and Bush, the men who lied to their peoples, the men who started an illegal war, the men who are, according to the Geneva Conventions, liable for a genocide in Iraq on a grandiose scale, have eventually decided to bin the notion of justice as well. Considering their other crimes, taking into account the 650,000 dead Iraqis, the total support of Israeli destruction in Lebanon and assisting the Zionist crimes in Palestine, killing justice is indeed just another minor sin. But Bush and Blair are not alone. Like the medieval crowd who assembled in town centres to stare at the angel of death, like the Jerusalemite who gathered along Via Dolorosa to spit on Jesus on his final march, we all gather together around our TV screens. We sat to watch how "liberated Iraq" dishes out Anglo-American "justice". Seemingly, when it comes to the issue of the human condition, 2000 years are no doubt a very short time. Humans are still rather enthusiastic about the consumption of bloody images of vengeance. The question that is left open is" how did it happen to us? Not that long ago we all foolishly wanted to believe that humanity may have learned its lesson and has been transformed into something else, that evil belongs to our past. How did we let these messengers of retribution take over? Recently, I have come across the words of Leo Strauss, the ideological founder of the neo-conservative school of thought. The intellectual mentor for those who claim to know what America's new century should look like says:
It didn't take Strauss long to grow out of his relatively non-violent beliefs. It was the reading of Carl Schmitt, the post World War I right-wing German political scientist, who made Strauss into an overt opponent of liberal cosmopolitan ideology. For Schmitt, "the political meant, above all, that peoples are pitted against one another in a condition of war or readiness for a war" [Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, Chicago, p.61]. Very much like Jabotinsky, Schmitt and Hitler, for Strauss the essence of political life comes into play within a conflict rather than within a liberal pacifist environment in which "art" and "entertainment" flourish. While the academic debate on whether Jabotinsky's ideology took ground in Israeli politics is still raging, it is quite clear that right-wing ultra-militant Zionist philosophy, which is no different from the German romantic, anti-enlightenment, confrontational worldview, has deeply taken root, not to say invaded, the current American administration and its surrounding lobbies. While Strauss was merely an academic, though a proponent of some hardcore hawkish Zionist ideologies, his followers happen to be those who design American foreign policy. It is slightly embarrassing to admit that the "clash of cultures", the emerging hatred towards Islam and the current phase of Anglo-American expansionism are all ideologically rooted in the right-wing German nationalist ideology that was carried to America by the overtly militant Zionist Leo Strauss. We do indeed live in a global village, in a sealed monolithic ghetto in which medieval pornographic images of barbarism travel around the world at the speed of light. The only way out of this vicious loop of zeal is to de-Zionizee our universe and to disengage from global Zionism. We had better do just that without delay. *Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician and writer, and a proponent of a secular and democratic one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the two peoples live in one state as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Copyright © Redress Information & Analysis. All rights reserved. |
|