[News] The Helen Thomas' Resolution & Time for world to confront Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

2 articles follow

The Helen Thomas' Resolution by Gilad Atzmon

Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:08PM
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/the-helen-thomas-resolution-by-gilad-atzmon.html?printerFriendly=true

Gilad Atzmon

Those who are  engaged in the Palestinian 
solidarity discourse are familiar with two 
visions of conflict resolution: the ‘Two State 
Solution’ and the  ‘One State Solution’. This 
week we have learned about a third possible 
resolution that seems to me the most reasonable 
and ethical considering the 
circumstances.   Helen Thomas, the 89 years old 
doyenne of the White House press corps,  sketched 
it in one sentence. When asked by a Rabbi holding 
a camera: "where should Israelis go", she said 
Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine”. When 
the Rabbi challenged her, she made it plainly 
clear: “they should go home to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere”

Thomas was quick to be reminded who runs Capitol 
Hill. A global war was declared against her.  She 
had to resign and to apologise. However, her 
brief yet transparently clear solution is sound and should be elaborated upon.

It is an obvious fact that the Israelis do not 
belong to the region. The Jewish claim for Zion 
i.e. Palestine is beyond pathetic. It is in fact 
as ridiculous as a bunch of  Italian settlers 
invading London's Piccadilly Circus claiming 
their right to return to a land once occupied by 
their Roman forefathers. Obviously Italians would 
not get away with it, Zionists, on the other 
hand, have managed to fool the nations for more than a while.

Unlike our Western politicians and Media, Helen 
Thomas was not impressed by the Zionist argument. 
Let’s try to understand what she is saying. She 
suggests  primarily that Jews don’t belong to 
Palestine and Palestine  certainly doesn’t belong 
to the Jews. She also argues that the home for 
Jews is somewhere else. Thomas suggested for 
instance that Jews should go to Germany. Surely 
this is not such a rude idea considering the love 
Germany pours on Israel. We shouldn’t also forget 
that the Israeli nuclear submarines that have 
been on their way to the Gulf (according to The 
Times), were given to Israel by Germany as a 
‘present’ at the time that Israel flattened 
Lebanon (2006). If Angela Merkel is sincere, she 
should welcome the Israelis to return to her 
country and save the world from another world conflict.

As it happens, most Western leaders support the 
Two State Solution, they believe that such 
a  solution is fair and ethical. I wonder what is 
so ethical about it, the Two State Solution 
doesn’t address the Palestinian Cause. It largely 
ignores the Palestinian Right of Return to their 
land, homes, villages, fields and orchards. It 
accepts the outrageous circumstances in which 
millions of Palestinian refugees will be left dispossessed forever.

Most humanists seem to support the One State 
Solution, they are convinced that such a solution 
is fair and ethical. Again, I am rather perplexed 
here. As much as we accept that sharing the land 
is reasonable and ethical, it is completely 
foreign to Jewish ideology and Zionism in 
particular. Early Zionist immigrants were more 
than welcome to share the land with the 
Palestinian indigenous population. But they had a 
completely different plan in mind, they wanted a 
‘Jews only State’. They eventually ethnically 
cleansed the Palestinians (1948), Those who 
managed to cling  to the land were 
eventually  locked behind walls and barbed wire. 
The One State Solution dismisses the Jewish 
ideology. As much as I myself tend to support the 
One State Solution, I am fully aware of the fact 
that such a solution may become  possible only 
when the Israeli Jewish population gives up its 
supremacist ideology. Needless to say that when 
this happens,  the Jews in Palestine  would 
become Palestinian Jews:  ordinary people of 
Jewish ethnic origin  who happen to live on Palestinian land.

Those who are repulsed by Helen Thomas’ 
resolution, blame her for being discriminatory 
towards Jews.  The truth of the matter is that 
Thomas’ suggestion is not at all different or 
more discriminatory than  the notorious Two State 
Solution. While Thomas suggests that millions of 
Jews would peacefully go back to their true home, 
the Two State Resolution suggests that millions 
of  Palestinian refugees would be left with no 
home whatsoever. Clearly, the Israeli State 
mentions again and again that  it would 
never  allow Palestinian refugees to return to their land.

Considering the latest Israeli barbarian military 
operations, bearing in mind the disastrous 
starvation in Gaza, learning about  the serious 
threat to world peace imposed by repeated nuclear 
threats made by Israel against its neighboring 
States and Iran in particular, we should move the 
discourse one step further. We better look at the Helen Thomas’ solution.

Seemingly,  the Rabbi who assaulted Helen 
Thomas,  is not impressed by  Thomas’ solution. 
He was concerned about six million Jews who 
perished in Europe. Someone should remind the 
Rabbi that the European Judeocide has nothing to 
do with Palestine or the Palestinians. However, 
his own behaviour towards  Thomas together with 
the Israeli repellent murderous behaviour in the 
high seas, in  Palestine, and the Jewish lobbies 
around the world, all contribute together to a 
necessary revision of the notion of ‘Jewish 
suffering’ in history. At the end of the day, our 
vision of the past is constantly shaped by our present understandings.

Like the rest of humanity, Old Helen Thomas is 
tired of Jewish power and Israeli barbarism, she 
touched the nerve exactly where it hurts by 
saying the plain truth.  “Get the hell out of 
Palestine”. Truth, it seems, echoes ethics and reason.

Article originally appeared on Gilad Atzmon (http://www.gilad.co.uk/).
*************************************************************************
By SHABANA SYED | ARAB NEWS


Time for world to confront Israel: Gilad Atzmon

http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article66233.ece

Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon

According to the famous Israeli-born Jazz 
musician, Gilad Atzmon, "The ideology that 
carried out execution-style killings on the Gaza 
aid flotilla the 'Mavi Marmara' is the same 
ideology that carried out the massacres at Deir 
Yassin, Qibya, Sabra and Shatilla, Qana, Gaza, 
Jenin and the murder of Rachel Corrie ­ more than 
that it is the same ideology that killed Christ."

He continues: "there is no biological, racial or 
ethnic continuum between the ancient Israelites 
and the contemporary Israelis. The attack on the 
aid convoy is a continuum of the same ideology 
that killed Christ. Christ's killing is a symbol 
of a brutal assault against goodness, in the same 
way the attack on the aid convoy was against 
humanity and compassion." Speaking to Arab News 
after the deadly attack on the aid Flotilla where 
9 peace activists were shot dead and around 50 
injured Atzmon was scathing against Israel's 
actions and demanded that it should be stripped of its UN membership.

Atzmon is a former Israeli soldier who now lives 
in London. He is not only a renowned author and 
writer but also a famous award-winning jazz 
musician. Described as a musical genius he has 
recorded with the likes of Robbie Williams, 
Sinead O Connor, Robert Wyatt Paul McCartney, 
Tunisian singer Dhaffer Youssef and countless others.

With a strong presence on and off stage and a 
disarming smile, Atzmon has a huge following not 
only for his music but for being a unique thinker and philosopher.

Admired for his fearless stance against 
oppression, he is also at the forefront of a 
taboo discourse that many will not venture into 
out of fear of being branded anti-Semite; and 
that is the discourse on the Jewish identity, Zionism and Israel.

Because of this stance, he has been branded a 
"Jew self-hater." Atzmon smiles: "in fact I 
correct them 'I am not only a self-hater but a 
proud self- hater.'" The accusations do not deter 
him as he is quite vocal about the self-hatred he 
feels for the Israeli part of him. He argues: "We 
are dealing here with a morbid collective that 
sets itself against humanity.” He believes the 
reason why he is at the forefront of this 
discourse is because he is more able than others 
to understand Israeli mentality because, "I come 
from them, and I know how they think." He himself 
has studied for many years the issue of the 
Jewish identity, and in his talks is often found 
quoting philosophers like the Austrian Otto 
Weininger, Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Lacan, 
Marx as well as Eastern philosophers.

He explains: "Israel has violated all 
international laws, it has never been held 
accountable for the countless massacres." 
However, he argues the latest massacre of peace 
activists on the aid flotilla with the emerging 
forensic reports which suggest Israeli 
execution-style killings of the 9 peace activists 
has resulted in shock horror around the world.

"The remarkable fact is they don't understand why 
the world is beginning to stand against them in 
the same way they didn't understand why the 
Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. 
Instead of asking why we are hated they continue 
to toss accusations on others." In his latest 
article titled "Jewish Ideology and World Peace," 
he argues: "Within the discourse of Jewish 
politics and history there is no room for 
causality... Within the Jewish tribal discourse 
every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain 
establishes itself. ...It also explains why for 
most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in 
the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I 
have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to 
understand the circumstances that led to the 
clear resentment of Europeans toward their Jewish neighbors in the 1920s-40s.”

Born and brought up as a Zionist in Israel, 
Atzmon believes it was his love of music that 
first opened his eyes to the world. "I was 
brought up to believe that Jews were the chosen 
people and no one was better than us. Then I 
discovered jazz and found out that many of the 
great jazz musicians were black Afro-Americans. 
That was the first dent in the theory of our 
greatness and as I picked up the stones more 
truths began to come out." At 19, Atzmon was 
stationed as a soldier to Lebanon where he saw 
for the first time thousands of Palestinians 
living as refugees. "We were told that the 
Palestinians had left and gone to other Arab 
countries, so when I saw thousands of refugees 
living without the basics I realized that we had 
stolen their land." Atzmon also witnessed the 
atrocities the Israeli Army was committing 
against the Palestinians; so as soon as he could, 
he left the army and left the country for good.

"My studies have shown me that the Jewish 
identity is foreign to humanism, it is tribal and 
has evolved as an outcome of an exilic culture." 
He argues that we can learn a lot about Jewish 
collective ideology by looking closely to the 
biblical "Story of Esther" which he argues 
teaches Jews the art of infiltration into politics and governments.

He continues: "This form of infiltration is 
clearly evident in America today where the Jewish 
lobby (AIPAC) dominates the political discourse. 
Also in Britain we have the British Jewish lobby, 
and the 'Friends of Israel', we also have people 
like David Aaronovitch, The Times columnist and 
Nick Cohen of The Observer, who advocated for war 
with Iraq. Both write for the Jewish papers, are 
known sympathizers of Israel and have contributed 
extensively to the growing Islamophobia in 
Britain. Lord Levy, a rabid Zionist was funding 
the Labour Party when it went into an illegal war 
with Iraq which led to over a million Iraqi fatalities.”

He continues: "We have the likes of David 
Miliband the Labour MP; I wonder how many people 
know that he is listed on the Israeli propaganda 
site as an Israeli propagandist author. Did you 
know that under the last government, when 
everyone was talking about Israel's killing of a 
Hamas leader in Dubai by using forged British 
passports, David Miliband was busy attempting to 
amend the laws of universal jurisdiction so 
Israeli war criminals could enter Britain.”

In his latest article Atzmon writes: "Enough is 
enough; it is time to name and shame every 
Israeli and Zionist infiltrator within political 
circles, media and academia." Maybe it is the 
soldier in him but there are not many subjects 
that Atzmon is not afraid to confront. The 
biggest taboo subject today is to question the 
holocaust. In many European countries one can be 
jailed for questioning the numbers killed or to 
what extent gas chambers were used? Atzmon 
however has no fear when he says: "I do not deny 
that Jewish suffering took place, I also lost 
family in it. However if the established 
holocaust narrative is true why do we need laws 
to protect it?" He continues: "We want a coherent 
narrative open to scrutiny. We owe it to 
ourselves, to history to find out the truth and I 
don't mean the truth through emotionally charged 
Hollywood films. Also I reiterate that those 
involved in an academic and historic inquiry 
should not be threatened with law suits and abuse.”

To stop further world conflicts, Atzmon believes 
that governments should confront Israel. He 
argues that unlike the last Labour government 
that indulged Israel to continue its brutal 
assaults, while its leaders Blair and Brown were 
honorary patrons of the Jewish National Fund UK, 
the new government has to take a stronger stand. 
"In order to end one of the most brutal 
occupations of Gaza we need to ban Israeli 
aircraft from British airspace, impose EU trade 
sanctions against Israel and strip Israel of its 
UN membership." For Atzmon the tide is turning 
and humanity which is bound together by human 
ethics and morals need to stand together against 
Israel before it takes us to war with Iran which 
according to him "is its next step.”







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