Book review by Paul J. Balles

9 September 2011

Paul J. Balles argues that Gilad Atzmon's new book The Wandering Who? is a rare work that no one having experienced an identity crisis should miss. It courageously deals in a historical perspective with many of the contentious issues involving Jewish identity, politics and Israel.

Gilad Atzmon, scholar, prolific writer and leading jazz saxophonist has authored the book Wandering Who? In it he astutely explores the identity crisis he himself experienced and one faced by many Jews.

Atzmon struggled with the conflict between his early experiences as an Israeli Zionist and his awakening as a humanist.

His book reveals an innate ability to switch between the qualities of a down-to-earth artist (the successful sax player and word-smith) and the knowledgeable philosopher.

Without doubt, The Wandering Who? will awaken many readers– pleasing some and disturbing others.

The pleased will include those who have experienced similar awakenings or resolved identity crises by continuously asking questions.

The book will also find welcome readers among those who have sought honest answers to the many contentious issues involving Jewish identity, Jewish politics and Israel.

The disturbed will include those Atzmon might refer to as "separatist Jews … kind of a bizarre mixture of an SS commander and a Biblical Moses."

Atzmon will also face threats and complaints from those he calls “pro-war Zionist Islamophobes”/

He will undoubtedly find rejection from those who want "to stop proud, self-hating Jews [like Atzmon] from blowing the whistle".

The Wandering Who? navigates between thought-provoking personal experiences, historical and philosophical issues.

In the Foreword, Atzmon tells the most remarkable story of his Jewish upbringing and the challenging questions raised by his early experiences as an Israeli Zionist.

In the chapters that follow, Atzmon remarks that “Israel is the Jewish state and Jewishness is an ethno-centric ideology driven by exclusiveness, exceptionalism, racial supremacy and a deep inherent inclination toward segregation.”

Atzmon draws a distinction between Jews as:

1. Those who follow Judaism.
2. Those who regard themselves as human beings that happen to be of Jewish origin.
3. Those who put their Jewishness over and above all their other traits.

"Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity..."

Atzmon suggests that we read Theodor Herzl “to know that this is what political Zionism is all about: getting superpowers to serve the Zionist cause."

"Jewish political discourse is always set as a form of negation,” according to Atzmon, “The political Jew is always against something, or set apart from something else. This is far from being an ideal recipe for a peaceful, ethical life, driven by reconciliation and harmony.”

“Jews are often proud to define themselves as Jews. However, they will also be gravely offended if they are called a ‘Jew’ by others.

“Emancipated Jews are identified by negation – they are defined by the many things they are not.”

Atzmon asserts that “the Holocaust religion is the conclusive and final stage in the Jewish dialectic; it is the end of Jewish history, for it is the deepest and most sincere form of ‘self-love’”.

Referring to himself as a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian, Atzmon says: “The so-called ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ is also the one that has locked Palestine’s vast populations behind walls and barbed wire for decades.”

Atzmon adds, “The Israel lobby and the Alan Dershowitzes of the world are the voices of Zionism; the third category socialists are there to stop proud, self-hating Jews [like Atzmon] from blowing the whistle.”

Even before the publication of his book, Atzmon, his editor and publisher “have been subjected to immense and intense pressure that included harassment, intimidation, and even anonymous threats, as the demands mounted on my publisher to pull the book.”

Some of the gems of Atzmon ’s wisdom found in The Wandering Who? include:

It is not the idea of being unethical that torments Israelis and their supporters, but the idea of being “caught out” as such...

The more they [Israelis] insist on loving themselves for who they think they are, the more they loathe themselves for what they have become...

Otto Weininger helped me grasp who I am, or rather who I may be, what I do, what I try to achieve and why my detractors invest so much effort trying to stop me.

Thanks to Weininger, I realized how wrong I was – I was not detached from the reality about which I wrote, and I never shall be. I am not looking at the Jews, or at Jewish identity, I am not looking at Israelis. I am actually looking in the mirror. With contempt, I am actually elaborating on the Jew in me...

...the bitterest anti-Semites are to be found amongst the Jews themselves...

Jewish lobbies in the USA and Britain openly advocate for the extension of the ‘War Against Terror’ against Iran, Islam and beyond. I would never claim that this type of warmongering is inherent to Jews as a people, yet, unfortunately, it is rather symptomatic of Jewish political thinking – left, right and centre...

A Judeo-centric political exercise, namely self-determination, which comes at the expense of others...

From Karl Marx through Leon Trotsky to Herbert Marcuse, a sizable fraction of the revolutionary anti-capitalist literature has been authored by Jews...

As a young man, I myself took part in some Jewish righteous parades, ready to grab my sword and join the hunt for a Tsar, a capitalist or any other enemy who might cross my way. But then the inevitable happened: I grew up...

Robbery and hatred is imbued in Jewish modern political ideology on both the left and the right...

“The Israeli” robs in the name of “home-coming”, the progressive Jew in the name of “Marx”, and the moral interventionist murders in the name of “democracy” ...

Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (Pre-TSS) is a fundamental tenet of Jewish and Israeli culture...

The people who rained Lebanon in 2006 with more than a million cluster bombs and showered Gaza with white phosphorus (2008-09) are projecting their homicidal zeal onto their victims, and even onto their future victims...

The more hopeless and defenceless the Palestinians are, the more vicious the Israeli becomes. And yet, the more vicious the Israeli is, the more he or she is horrified by ‘terror’. In reality, the Israelis are actually horrified by their own cruelty...

The “Jewish people” is a made-up notion, consisting of an imaginary past with very little to back it up forensically, historically or textually...

Nor has much been found in the Sinai Desert to prove the story of the legendary Egyptian exodus – apparently three million Hebrew men, women and children marched there for 40 years without leaving a single Matzo Ball behind.

Jews do not have a common origin, that their Semitic origins are a myth. Jews have no origin in Palestine whatsoever, and therefore their act of so-called “return” must be realized as pretext for a tribal expansionist invasion...

If Shlomo Sand is correct, then the Jews, rather than being a race, comprise a collective of many people who have been hijacked by a national movement based on myths...

If Jews are not a race and have nothing to do with Semitism, then “anti-Semitism” is, categorically, an empty signifier. In other words, criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power can only be realized as a legitimate critique of ideology, politics and practice...

Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a Latvian-born philosopher at the Hebrew University, was probably first to suggest that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion...

This new religion is coherent enough to define its “antichrists” (Holocaust deniers), and powerful enough to persecute them (through Holocaust denial and hate-speech laws) ...

The Holocaust religion serves both right and left Jewish political discourse, but it appeals to the goyim [gentiles] as well, especially those who preach and advocate killing in the name of “freedom”, democracy and “moral interventionism”...

That which maintains the Jewish collective identity is fear...

To a certain extent, the Holocaust religion signals the final Jewish departure from monotheism, for every Jew is potentially a little God or Goddess. Abe Foxman is the God of anti-defamation, Alan Greenspan the God of “good economy”, Milton Friedman is the God of “free markets”, Lord Goldsmith the God of the “green light”, Lord Levy the God of fundraising, Paul Wolfowitz the God of US “moral interventionism”. AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the American Olympus, where mortals elected in the US come to beg for mercy, forgiveness for being goyim and for a bit of cash...

To be a Jew is to see a threat in every Goy, to be on a constant alert...

...whatever is good for the Jews is simply good...

The Jewish population in the UK is 280,000 or 0.46 per cent. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons so, as a proportion, Jewish entitlement is only three seats. With 24 seats Jews are eight times over-represented. Which means, of course, that other groups must be under-represented, including Muslims. If Muslims, for instance, were over-represented to the same extent as the Jews (i.e. eight times) they’d have 200 seats. All hell would break loose…

Jewish history engages with the basic question of whether a given account is “good for the Jews” or not…

The dismissal of factuality or lack of commitment to truthfulness are actually symptomatic of contemporary Jewish collective ideology and identity politic…

In the Jewish intellectual insular world, one first decides what the historic moral is, then one invents “a past” to fit…

As long as we fail to ask questions, we will be subjected to Zionist lobbies and their plots. We will continue killing in the name of Jewish suffering. We will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist crimes…

With millions of besieged Palestinians, Israel has given itself the reputation of a pariah state…

How is it that, in spite of the Holocaust, Israel and Jewish lobbies invest so much energy in evoking hatred towards enemies of Israel and world Jewry?...

...envisage an horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called “pre-emptive” nuclear attack on Iran escalates into a disastrous nuclear war, in which tens of millions of people perish…

What do modern emancipated Jews want?...

In his Epilogue, Atzmon  illustrates the difficulties he faced as an inquiring youth:

I asked the emotional tour guide if she could explain the fact that so many Europeans loathed the Jews so much and in so many places at once. I was thrown out of school for a week.

It seems I didn’t learn the necessary lesson because when we studied the Middle Ages blood libels, I again wondered out loud how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matzo out of young goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless. Once again I was sent home for a week. In my teens I spent most of my mornings at home rather than in the classroom.

The Wandering Who? provides a rare perspective on Jewishness, Judaism, Jewish politics, Zionism, identity crises, self-hate and self-love. It’s a book that will awaken many. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon here.

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