Gilad Atzmon highlights the double standards of Israeli leaders and urges US President Barack Obama to distance himself from this by according to the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbours what the Jews and Israel claim as their exclusive right.
Earlier today [22 October], at a conference in Jerusalem titled “Facing tomorrow”, Israel's leading politicians shared their vision of Israel's future.
Following the recent announcement by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei of a draft deal on Iranian uranium enrichment, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak called on the international community “to give Iran a deadline for halting its nuclear programme and impose additional sanctions against Tehran”. For some reason the Israelis are convinced that nuclear energy is a “Jews-only property”. The Jewish state insists on keeping its neighbours in a state of nuclear panic alert.
Tzipi Livni, another dedicated warmonger, is now an enthusiastic supporter of the “two-state solution”. The “establishment of a Palestinian state is the only way of preserving Israel's Jewish character”, she said. At last, the left- and right-wing Zionists are in agreement with each other. Someone should remind the “born-again dove” Livni that the Jewish state she refers to is located on stolen Palestinian land; Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva and Haifa and are all part of occupied Greater Palestine.
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai of Shas (an Israeli religious party) blamed the Palestinians for the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “Unfortunately, the other side [Palestinians] lacks the ability to make brave decisions,” he said.
Minister Yishai is absolutely right. The Palestinians are not “brave” enough to agree to live in concentration camps; they do not agree to the occupation of their land either. These facts take the Jewish leadership by total surprise. I’ll tell you why. The history of the Holocaust teaches us that the Jewish leadership at the time was actually very willing to collaborate with the Nazis all the way through. In fact, it was the Judenräte* that managed and organized the mass deportation of European Jews from the ghettos to the camps. To follow Yishai’s logic, unlike the Palestinians, the Nazi-era Jewish councils were taking some brave decisions. Seemingly ,the Palestinians are not “brave” enough to do the same.
Even President Obama engaged himself with issues to do with the Jewish future. Here is his message to the conference: "The American people and the Israeli people share a faith in the future, a belief that democracies can shape their own destiny and that opportunities should be available to all."
The only question to be asked here is whether Obama meant “opportunities for all” or opportunities for Jews only. As far as nuclear energy is concerned, already in June Obama reiterated that Iran has some “right to nuclear energy, provided it takes steps to prove its aspirations are peaceful”. I would urge Obama to accept that opportunities for nuclear weapons should also be “available to all”. Not just for the Israelis but for every country in the region. In order to be consistent, Obama has to choose between either clearing Israel of its pile of weapons of mass destruction or encourage every other country in the region to pile up nuclear bombs just to restrain Israel's proven murderous inclinations through deterrence.
However, far more crucial at this stage is to urge Obama to make it clear to the Israelis that, by saying “opportunities should be available to all”, he means also for the Palestinian children who are starved and slaughtered by the Israeli armed forces on a daily basis.
By now, after 10 months in office, President Obama should grasp that the notion of “opportunities to all” is not just alien to Israel but is in total opposition to the philosophy of the Jewish state, an apartheid racially-orientated state.
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner. His latest jazz album, "In loving memory of America", was released on 1 March 2009 and can be purchased here.
