Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

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Wow, so I can tell from the cover alone -- I wasted so much time bothering to read all the words in between the covers of the same book! -- that the author is a nazi! And I was so fooled! But now I look at the obvious. It's not orange and black like Atzmon's Wandering Who and my local optometrist's business card. It's red and black like Joe the Willy says is a sure slam dunk proof of Nazi sympathies!
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http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/defa ... nti-5.jpeg

JOE WALLACK AND ALL WHO CONDEMN ANY CRITIC OF ISRAEL ARE NAZIS -- the RED and BLACK Colours of the BOOK COVER PROVE IT!!!!!!
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iskander
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

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Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

Post by neilgodfrey »

iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 am Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
I have tried so hard to get Joe the Willy to actually read the "book" and not just play games with its cover. He won't, of course.

So I gave up. I decided to play his game. Judge books attacking my views from his point of view from the color designs of their covers.
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iskander
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

Post by iskander »

iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 am Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
"Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of ' Jewishness.'
Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism ( blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering ( the threat of another holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim.
As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish.
The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike. "

John J. Mearsheimer is the R, Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
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JoeWallack
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Conspiracy Theories Antisemitism

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
Going beyond Atzmon's cover let's play a New Antisemitism game. Hold your breath and start counting until Atzmon invokes "Hitler", "Nazi" or "Germany". I have faith it won't take long. The quote that starts the book:

"The" [one]

So far so good. let's goose the second step:

"Nazis" [two]

So it took Atzmon two word orders to invoke the verboten.

Now the full quote:
‘The Nazis made me afraid to be a Jew, and the Israelis make me ashamed to be a Jew.’ Israel Shahak
Note that the Nazis are past tense and the Israelis are present tense. These two groups are both shown as bad with the implication that since both are really bad and the only bad things shown they are comparable:

Nazis = bad

Israelis = bad

The quote does two things:

1) It reduces support for the historical necessity of Israel to provide protection from those with Nazi type views by showing Nazi persecution as past tense and instead of acknowledging that extreme Nazi type security threats to Israel past and present
justify stronger Israeli defense measures -

2) Flips the traditional major reason to support Israel as being a haven against what did happen and could happen again as illustrated by Nazis and Christian Europe into a supposed parallel between Nazis and Israel.

For those who need points sharply explained, like iskander on everything and Godfree on Israel, this is like the New York Yankees deciding they are going to buy a major free agent. The decide to buy a Boston Red Sox free agent because it is a double bonus. Not only do they add a major free agent, they subtract one from their rival.

One form of antisemitism is denying/questioning the Holocaust to some extent. Another type is equating Israel with the Nazis. Antisemites are often in the hypocritical position of on one hand claiming that the Holocaust is in the past, has no current significance and it's unfair to use it as support for Israel against the Palestinians since the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Nazis (even though they did as their 3 main leaders during the War of Independence all had close ties to the Nazis) and on the other hand freely comparing Israel to the Nazis. You see this hypocrisy on Godfree's site.

This is Conspiracy Theories antisemitism, denial/questioning of historical Nazi conspiracy (or at least the continuing significance) to discriminate/persecute/exterminate Jews and promotion of a fictional conspiracy that Israel is going Nazi on the Palestinians.

And again, the key question here, what is pAtzmon's separation/limitation between Israel and "The Jews". Here it is "The Jews", "ashamed to be a Jew". Not just Israel, or Zionists, or Israel and its supporters or most Jews. Jews.


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iskander
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

Post by iskander »

iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:55 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 am Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
"Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of ' Jewishness.'
Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism ( blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering ( the threat of another holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim.
As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish.
The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike. "

John J. Mearsheimer is the R, Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
"Atzmon's insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement is explosive.

The Wandering Who? tears the veil off Israel apparent civility, its apparent friendship with the United states and its expressed solicitude for Western powers, exposing beneath the assassin ready to slay any and all that interfere with its tribal focused ends."

Professor William A. Cook, Professor of English at the University of LA Verne in Southern California and author of The Rape of Palestine.
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JoeWallack
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The Strange Chapter of Dr. Jewkyll and Mr. Heil

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
Onward Christian Nazi soldiers to Atzmon's Foreward. Atzmon's Foreword reads like The Strange Case of Dr. Jewkyll and Mr. Heil. A gradual transformation of Atzmon from Israeli and Jewish to not Israeli and Jewish. Often authors start with their endings (conclusions), what they are feeling and thinking. Atzmon's start:
My grandfather was a charismatic, poetic, veteran Zionist terrorist.
Atzmon's grandfather probably experienced the worst kind of terrorism and hate by Nazis and Christians. Most of his relatives and people he knew were probably murdered by Nazi terrorism and hate in Christian Europe. Atzmon makes no mention of the persecution his grandfather experienced and fails to note that the only reason Atzmon is free to slander his grandfather is because his grandfather was willing to defend himself. His freedom fighting grandfather is only described negatively:

"prominent commander in the right-wing Irgun terror organisation"
"unrelenting hatred toward anything not Jewish"
"He hated Germans"
"He also despised the British"

And here come the anti-Jewish (not anti-Israel) comments:
Leftist philosophy together with any form of Jewish value system is a contradiction in terms.
Likewise, throughout the book he always fails to note that the negative qualities he accuses Jews of can just as easily be applied to the Israeli/Jewish opponents here Palestinians/Arabs:
tribalism can never live in peace with humanism and universalism.
His journey from Jew to not Jew starts by rejecting Jewish music for black music because black music had been hidden from him and is better (who likes Gershwin, Neil Diamond and Elvis (his maternal grandmother was Jewish making him Jewish under Jewish Tribalism) anyway). During the Israeli/Hezbollah war he decides he is no longer Jewish. As an Israeli soldier in Lebanon he makes every backwards conclusion:
  • Hezbollah, which everyone agrees is a terrorist organization, is not a Terrorist organization.

    Even though Israel completely defeats Hezbollah and drives them all the way to Beirut and would have rooted them out of Beirut if not for International pressure, Hezbollah was not defeated.

    The defeated Hezbollah Terrorists that are captured are not defeated.

    Israel is the Terrorist for defeating the Hezbollah Terrorists.
He claims the Israeli government feeds the Israelis propaganda. I guess he doesn't speak Arabic. Otherwise he would know what the Palestinians eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He claims to know Israeli/Palestinian history but apparently doesn't know that generally Israel/Jews has been willing to accept a two State solution and the Palestinians/Arabs have not. That's a bad thing not to know or say when writing this kind of book. He moves from Israel to London and gets a job at a "legendary Irish pub". Ireland was probably the second most antisemitic country in Europe next to Germany but I'm sure that was just a coincidence. He then becomes homesick for Israel. But not Israel (Jewish) but Palestine (Palestinians). Little homy places. Not the beaches of Tel Aviv or the oranges in the desert or the high tech start ups but the hummus in Jaffa.

The end of his journey from Jew to not Jew is when he replaces Jewish music with Arab music and listens to the great Palestinian musicians...well, he can't think of any, but he assures us they are great.

The irony here is that Atzmon is correct that he has made a conversion from Jew to not Jew and it is because he no longer has Jewish values. Jewish values though are not to publicly and repeatedly criticize an entire group of people based only on your personal experiences, observations and feelings and not based on surveys, research, studies and concern for what the public effect might be for unilateral criticism of a group of people, especially a group that everyone would agree has been unfairly criticized historically.

Even though Atzmon is discriminating against a group of people, fortunately for him he is on the "right" side. If he said the same type of things about Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims he would be be bunking with Salman Rushdie (and maybe a guest appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher). Since he is only an antisemite and his target is "The Jews" the worst he faces are book reviews like this.


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iskander
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

Post by iskander »

iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:31 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:55 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 am Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
"Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of ' Jewishness.'
Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism ( blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering ( the threat of another holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim.
As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish.
The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike. "

John J. Mearsheimer is the R, Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
"Atzmon's insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement is explosive.

The Wandering Who? tears the veil off Israel apparent civility, its apparent friendship with the United states and its expressed solicitude for Western powers, exposing beneath the assassin ready to slay any and all that interfere with its tribal focused ends."

Professor William A. Cook, Professor of English at the University of LA Verne in Southern California and author of The Rape of Palestine.
"Perhaps only a musician could have written this sensitive, perceptive lament over how so many Jews, believing themselves to be doing 'what is good for the Jews', have managed to carve the heart out of the Palestinian nation and make this tragedy look like the natural order of things."


Kathleen Christison, former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation
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JoeWallack
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Who Let The Dogmas Out? Who, Jew?

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
In Chapter 1 PAtzmon threatens to rightly divide "The Jews" into which group of "The Jews" are like the Nazis. Unfortunately for these Jews Atzmon tries to do it in about 6 pages. If you are demonizing some group of "The Jews" that falls between Israelis + Zionists + Jews that support Israel and Israelis + Zionists + Jews that support Israel + the eighteen that don't you really should try to do it in more than six pages to be fair and make room for surveys, research, studies and arguments on the other side. Otherwise you might just sound like some idiot with a blog who posts a certificate that he has a certified top blog and posts a favorable review of Atzmon's book and censors all criticism of it and than have other idiots who don't know any better think there must be something to it. You could even end up with top posters at the top Religion Skeptical forum who either interact with this idiot at his blog or at least here because they have religious skepticism in common but ignore his recommendation of Atzmon's book because... Even if they are owners of the Forum, or Jewish or German.

Before we get into Chapter 1 let me say that maybe Atzmon isn't the copulating, truth-challenged, antisemitic piece of bathroom material that I think he is. Maybe to some extent he is just not a very good writer, like Neil Godfree, or maybe he is just stupid like iskander.

The lead in to the Chapter is "Identity vs. Identifying". This harkens back to the title which includes "A Study of Jewish Identity Politics". "Identity Politics"? Now where have I heard that phrase before:

Identity politics

Most famously used by the Nazis and most famously used by the Nazis against "The Jews". Now Atzmon is cutting it from the Nazis and pasting it on the Jews.

The start of Chapter 1:
In London, in what I often define as my ‘self-imposed exile’, I grasped that Israel and Zionism were just parts of the wider Jewish problem.
Again, "The Jewish Problem". Clearly from this sentence it is not just more but much more than Israelis and Zionists. Atzmon had Godfree at heilo but what about others who are more open minded? Atzmon keeps sounding like he is talking about Jews in general or at least most Jews (And if he is going to be antisemitic London is a great place to do it from. Hell, if he keeps it up he'll probably be made a Minister in the Labour party).
Israel is largely supported by world Jewry institutionally, financially
No, Israel is not largely supported by world Jewry financially. Israel does have an economy and largely supports itself. It's the other side that is funded by outsiders, the Palestinians and Hezbollah.
hardly any commentator is courageous enough to wonder what the word Jew stands for. This question, it seems, is still taboo within Western discourse.
Right, no one in the West ever writes similar books comparing "The Jews" to Nazis and the powerful Jewish Kaballah has prevented the publication of his book just like they prevented the release of Mel Gibson's movie whose name escapes me at the moment.

Halfassed, er halfway through the Chapter he gives his definition of the group of "The Jews" that he is going to put a yellow target on:
Those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits.
He quotes a few Holocaust era Jews to develop this definition. Yes, why would Holocaust era Jews consider themselves Jews first and citizens of a country second? Because that's how all of Europe thought of them. Most European countries at the time either actively participated with the Nazis, didn't resist their persecution of Jews or didn't care. Now most Israeli Jews consider themselves Israelis first and Jews second and most American Jews consider themselves Americans first and Jews second. It's like Atzmon had that creepy brain surgeon from Get Out! somehow take the Holocaust Jewish mentality and transfer it into the consciousness of modern Jews. For that matter, why is some Jews considering they are Jews first a bigger/the only problem compared to Christians/Muslims thinking they are Christians?Muslims first? Who has the greater rate and which religion has a more significant effect on the World level? Where are the surveys, studies and research?


Joseph

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iskander
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Re: Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

Post by iskander »

iskander wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:23 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:31 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:55 am
iskander wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 am Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?:

"Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from a hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and a passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people.

It is a transforming story told with unflinching integrity that all (specially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely"


Professor Richard Falk. Professor of International Law Emeritus , Princeton University
"Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of ' Jewishness.'
Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism ( blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering ( the threat of another holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim.
As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish.
The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike. "

John J. Mearsheimer is the R, Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
"Atzmon's insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement is explosive.

The Wandering Who? tears the veil off Israel apparent civility, its apparent friendship with the United states and its expressed solicitude for Western powers, exposing beneath the assassin ready to slay any and all that interfere with its tribal focused ends."

Professor William A. Cook, Professor of English at the University of LA Verne in Southern California and author of The Rape of Palestine.
"Perhaps only a musician could have written this sensitive, perceptive lament over how so many Jews, believing themselves to be doing 'what is good for the Jews', have managed to carve the heart out of the Palestinian nation and make this tragedy look like the natural order of things."


Kathleen Christison, former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation
Gilad Atzmon decided to open Pandora's Box, and ignite a debate that has been frustratingly dormant for too long. His experiences are most authentic, views are hard- hitting, and at times, provocative. It must be read and discussed.

Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle
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