Friday, November 10, 2006
Gilad Atzmon - Deconstructing David Grossman: If he is the Israeli Left, then who needs the Right?
In the photo, David Grossman with Amos Oz and Abraham Yehoshua, two other "Israeli Left Intellectuals" whose political commentary seems to imply that they shed little tears for the plight of the Palestinian people, and rather, demonstrates that they have very little problem with ideas of transfer (deportation), discrimination (racism) and the "security wall" (apartheid rape of Palestine).... as long as it is happening to other people, they make excuses for it and justify it. Gilad Atzmon
The world, so it seems, is giving a standing ovation to the new Israeli orator, the author, David Grossman. Israel's public relations desperately needs a righteous intellectual, an author who ‘talks peace’, a man who preaches ‘reconciliation’, a man of shalom . Yesterday the Guardian published Grossman’s last week speech at the Yitzchak Rabin memorial in Tel Aviv. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1941046,00.html).
Grossman is a ‘matured enlightened Israeli’, a light left Zionist who craves for a change. I read Grossman’s speech, and I must say that though the man is seen by some as an Israeli left intellectual, I see in his speech nothing but hard core Jewish supremacy and even maintenance of the old crude Zionist racial agenda. Grossman, like other Israelis, is totally submerged within a Zio-centric chauvinist discourse, a discourse of denial of the Palestinian cause; i.e., the right of return.
I have collected and highlighted some outrageous extracts made by the newly emerging Hebraic left orator.
Grossman And The Myth Of ‘Jewish Universal Values’
Grossman, the Israeli some of us love to love, serves us with a major glimpse into the Zionist secular mind. “I am”, so he says about himself “a man entirely without religious faith”. However, Grossman doesn’t stop just there. “For me, the establishment - and very existence - of the state of Israel is something of a miracle that happened to us as a people; a political, national, human miracle.” And I ask myself, since when do secular beings believe in miracles? One may have to remind the ‘Israeli secular intellectual’ that a miracle is ‘an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause’. Indeed, Grossman, like many other Israelis, has managed to follow a new form of secularism. It is an atheism that ‘ascribes to some supernatural cause’. Bizarrely enough, the Zionist seculars are pretty fundamentally orthodox about their new pathetic religion. I may help Grossman and suggest to him that there is no real truly heroic miracle about Israel. Israel is just a vulgar racist ultra nationalist state. Israel's relative success seems miraculous just because it took its Arab neighbors a few generations to adapt to the level of Zionist barbarism.
According to Grossman, Israel wasted that ‘miracle’, that “great and rare opportunity that history granted it, the opportunity to create an enlightened, properly functioning democratic state that would act in accordance with Jewish and universal values.”
Following Grossman's glimpse into the Jewish spirit, enlightenment and democracy are foreign to Jews and their occurrence within the Jewish sphere should be realised as a miracle. Probably without realizing Grossman admits here that ‘enlightenment’ and ‘democracy’ oppose the Jewish spirit. Certainly, this intellectual current is not new, neither is it original. The early waves of Zionist ideologists believed that in Zion, a new Jew would emerge: a civilized, secular, democratic and enlightened Jew who rebels against his morally degenerate Diaspora ancestor.
More worryingly, Grossman bluntly deceives his listeners by referring to ‘Jewish universal values’ as if such values are nothing but an accepted common knowledge. As bizarre it may seem to some, there is no general accepted set of ‘Jewish universal values’. Is there a book that presents a notion ‘Jewish universal values’? I don’t think so. If there is a set of values that should be realised as ‘Jewish universal values’, those are properly conveyed by the Judaic core. I believe that Torah Jews who genuinely support the Palestinian cause may know something about universal values. Yet, Grossman portrays himself as a secular man. Surely it isn’t the Judaic orthodox interpretation he thinks of when referring to Jewish universality. In fact, it is Christianity that translates Judaism into a universal value system. It is Christianity that transforms the ‘neighbor’ into a ‘universal other’. Without a doubt, there are plenty of universal humanists who happen to be Jewish by origin, yet there is no recognized set of ‘Jewish universal values’. Grossman and other Jewish intellectuals who spread the myth of ‘Jewish universalism’ are deceiving themselves and their listeners. Moreover, the fact that Jewish secularism lacks a philosophical background may explain the general moral bankruptcy of the Jewish state. As we will read soon, even Grossman himself, falls into the same trap. He may be aware of the concept of morality but he fails in presenting a consistent moral worldview. He may be aware of the negative effect of racism but he himself, manages to fall into supremacist bigotry rather easily.
Grossman The Blunt Racist
Grossman is courageous enough to stand up and admit that “violence and racism” has taken control of his home, Israel. So far so good. For a second I tend to believe that Grossman is indeed an enlightened anti racist secular Jew but then, just a sentence later he asks, "how can it be that a people with our powers of creativity and regeneration” has managed to find itself today “in such a feeble, helpless state”? The critical reader may ask oneself what Grossman really refers to when he says “people with our powers of creativity and regeneration”? It is rather simple. Grossman truly believes in the uniqueness of the chosen people. In other words, Grossman is not more than a biological determinist. The question to be asked here is how come the Guardian dedicates three pages to a Jewish supremacist? I believe that Jews do enjoy some freedoms the rest of humanity lack. For instance, I find it hard to believe that the Guardian would give a voice to a German philosopher who praises Aryan people’s ‘powers of creativity and regeneration’. Somehow, a Jewish intellectual can get away doing just that. Although Grossman is honest enough to admit that the Palestinians have placed Hamas in their leadership, he calls Olmert to “appeal to the Palestinians over Hamas's head. Appeal to the moderates among them, to those who, like you and me, oppose Hamas and its ideology”.
Mr. Grossman, if you are indeed a universal humanist, something I obviously suspect, you then better learn to listen to the Hamas rather than speaking to the Palestinians over their elected leader’s heads. Grossman obviously fail to respect his neighbor, he fails to respect their democratic choice. Generally speaking, I suggest that we leave the despicable method of speaking over heads to Bush and Blair. Intellectuals have the privilege to listen and to act ethically.
Grossman the Victim
But Grossman's Jewish chutzpah doesn’t stop just there. “Look at the Palestinians, just once” he tells Olmert. “You will see a people no less tortured than we are.” Yes, this isn’t a joke.
Grossman, the colonialist Jew who dwells on occupied Palestinian land while practicing ethnic cleansing of an indigenous nation, is looking at the Palestinian terrorised victims while saying ‘they are almost as tortured as me’. This probably says it all. It summarizes the level of the Zio-left blindness. Indeed, if these are the Israeli Leftists, who needs the Right?
Indeed, in his concluding paragraph Grossman admits: “The differences between right and left are not that great today”. He is correct. Within the European political discourse, Grossman, the Israeli left intellectual icon, is nothing other than a banal right wing neocon. A man who preaches racism in the name of goodwill. A man who talks over the heads of other people.
Grossman and the Two State Solution
Grossman is deceiving himself and his listeners by saying that “the land will be divided, that there will be a Palestinian state”. You are partially wrong, Mr. Grossman. This land will never be divided. I will make it very simple so you and your very few Zio leftists may realise once and for all. Palestine is a land, Israel is a state. Palestine will always be Palestine; i.e., a land. Israel, on the other hand, is a racist nationalist state and will disappear. The land won’t be divided. It will re-unite into One Palestine. Rather than maintaining a racist nationalist state I call Grossman and his friends to join the one Palestine movement. A movement that endorses equality in the land of Palestine. Palestine, where values are universal.
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