Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

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Book review of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?

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

Image

The first thing to wander is why the selection of those colors for a book about some/most/all? Jews? The colors look (so to speak) to be pretty much the Nazi colors:

Nazi symbolism
The Nazis' principal symbol was the swastika flag. The black-white-red colour scheme is based upon the colours of the flag of the German Empire.
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During the book review let's count the number of times Atzimon says, "Hitler", "Nazis" and "Holocaust". Let's turn it into a drinking game. Every time one of those words is said we will do a shot of the Palestinians' favorite drink. Unfortunately, no one seems to know what the Palestinians' favorite drink is. Maybe Nouzo? James Zogby has recently famously claimed that Israelis are guilty of cultural genocide against the Palestinians by claiming that hummus is Israeli (a redundant claim since he also claims that Israel is guilty of simple genocide against the Palestinians). Has Israel likewise genocided the Palestinian national drink? Atzmon could be the person to ask.


Joseph

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

Post by neilgodfrey »

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. But I actually read it. Cover to cover and all the words in between, not just the ones looking like hitler and nazi. I found myself identifying with the author -- and, yes, even identifying with and understanding fearful tribalists like yourself. Here's why I liked it: The Wandering Who. You should read yourself, Joe. It has a lot to say about you as well as me, oh yes, and the impact of the Holocaust on pre-traumatic stress conditions.
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The Jewish Question?

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Who Are Jew?

JW:
In addition to the book's Nazi colors the title of the book The Wandering Who? also evokes furkingroovin memories of Nazi's/SS super sized antisemites just putting out there The Jewish Question/Problem:

Jewish question
The expression has been used by antisemitic movements from the 1880s onwards, culminating in the Nazi phrase "the Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Similarly, the expression was used by proponents for and opponents of the establishment of an autonomous Jewish homeland or a sovereign Jewish state.

More recently, white nationalists, members of the alt-right, and neo-Nazis have used the acronym "JQ" to refer to the Jewish question.[1]
Asskers of the question imply that "The Jews" are uniquely deserving of having the question asked of them and as that great 20th century philosopher Bill Murray famously said, "There is something seriously wrong" connected with "The Jews" that needs to be brought out into the open and publicly discussed for the benefit of all societies and humankind. Thus NAtzmon joins the illustrious ranks of likewise great questioners on the subject such as Adolf Hitler, Henry Ford and Freddy Laker. To make the question connection krystal clear, Atzmon even adds a question mark at the end of his title.

For Neil Godfree:
Let's not kid ourselves Godfree, Mein Kampf, is exponentially better written than The Wandering Who?. So why stop at reviewing/finding the good in The Wandering Who?? Do a book review of Mein Kampf. Don't you think it should be put out there? Maybe Hitler had some points. What was there about The Jews that motivated Hitler/Nazis/Germany/Europe? What are you afraid of? Shouldn't intellectual honesty and inquiry take priority over being accused of being an anti-semite?:

Wimp.

Unkosher chicken.

Or to use your favorite phrase, "Have you not read it?". Atzmon did.



Joseph

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I'm Calling Out To Atzman

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
Hidden amongst the many 5 star reviews for Atzmon'ss Treatise is a one star group review titled "Palestinian activists, intellectuals & academics denounce Atzmon" from the likes of:

Nada Elia (Canary Mission):
During Mazzig’s talk, Elia reportedly called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. When Mazzig asked Elia, “Where do you want them [Jews in Israel] to go?” Elia reportedly answered, “I don’t care. I don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be there.”
Hatem (yes "Hatem") Bazian (Berkeley's News | The Daily Californian):
UC Berkeley ethnic studies lecturer Hatem Bazian came under public criticism Nov. 20 for retweeting a meme that many have since called anti-Semitic.

The meme, originally posted on Twitter by a user named Ron Hughes, portrays a Jewish man holding his hands in the air with text below stating, “I can now kill, rape, smuggle organs & steal the land of Palestinians.” The tweet also contains a meme with a photo of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, and it compares converting nations to Judaism to legalizing nuclear warfare and seizing countries.
Adolf Hitler (called back from the dead during seance in Berkeley):
After reading Atzmon's book maybe I did go a little too far.
Here's the Jewel of their review:
We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.
Now I know Godfree that you are unnaturally suspicious of any source that criticizes criticizers of Israel (and I confess that the combination of "Palestinians" and "intellectuals" in the title above does sound suspicious) so by all meanness, confirm the quotes.


Joseph

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

Post by iskander »

Gilad Atzmon
http://www.gilad.co.uk/

On The Current International Zionist Smear Campaign

A Statement by Gilad Atzmon

"The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the west.” Glenn Greenwald 19.7.2017


And Writings,

Atzmon has defined himself variously as a "secular Jew",[4] a "proud self-hating Jew" in the style of Otto Weininger,[26][27] an "ex-Jew",[54] "a Jew who hates Judaism",[55][56] and "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian".[4]

Atzmon told interviewer Theo Panayides: "I don't write about politics, I write about ethics. I write about Identity. I write a lot about the Jewish Question – because I was born in the Jew-land, and my whole process in maturing into an adult was involved with the realisation that my people are living on stolen land."[26]

Atzmon has said that his experience in the military of "my people destroying other people left a big scar" and led to his decision that he was deluded about Zionism. He has condemned "Jewishness" as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency", but he has also stated that "I don't have anything against Jews in particular and you won't find that in my writings".[4] Regarding the one-state solution, Atzmon concedes that such a state probably would be controlled by Islamists, but says, "That's their business".[5]

Atzmon has compared "the Jewish Ideology" to that of the Nazis and has described Israel's policy toward the Palestinians as genocide.[57]

David Hirst, in his 2003 book The Gun and the Olive Branch, quotes Atzmon as saying America was "about to lose its sovereignty...becoming a remote colony of an apparently far greater state, the Jewish state.”[58] In 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cited Atzmon's written comment "Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty" during a debate with Israeli president Shimon Peres.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon


Born
Gilad Atzmon
9 June 1963 (age 54)
Tel Aviv, Israel

Residence
London, England

Citizenship
British[1]
Formerly Israeli (renounced)[2]

Education
Rubin Academy of Music, University of Essex
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Sometimes You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
Let's also take a look at Amazon's list of other books purchased by those who chose The Wandering Who?:

Oprahser's book club (no, really, a club)
  • The Invention of the Jewish People

    The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

    Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question (David Duke)

    1-4: The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem: The Complete 4 Volumes (Henry Ford)

    The Jews and Their Lies (Martin Luthifer)

    Mein Side of the Story: Key World War 2 Addresses of Adolf Hitler (Gil Nudfree)

    The Art of the Deal
So in summary, regarding the cover page of Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who? at Amazon:

1) The color scheme is eerily similar to the colors of the antisemitic Nazis.

2) The title's combination of Jews, question and insult is remarkably similar to the traditional antisemitic The Jewish Question/Problem.

3) The reviews include condemnations from notorious antisemites disassociating themselves from the book and author for being too antisemitic.

4) Purchasers of this book are also likely to favor other books that everyone, except apparently Neal Godfree and iskander, would agree are highly antisemitic, written by a veritable Who's Jew? of antisemitic authors, Martin Luther, Henry Ford, Adolf Hitler and David Duke. One would be hard pressed to think of another author exceeding these in antisemitism (no doubt Louis Farrakhan would be on the list if only he was able to write).

My old wise (Jewish) boss used to say, "Joe (he said "Joe" because that was my name), sometimes if you wait long enough, a problem does go away." Likewise, sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover.


Joseph

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Re: The Jewish Question?

Post by neilgodfrey »

JoeWallack wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2018 7:59 am For Neil Godfree:
Let's not kid ourselves Godfree, Mein Kampf, is exponentially better written than The Wandering Who?. So why stop at reviewing/finding the good in The Wandering Who?? Do a book review of Mein Kampf. Don't you think it should be put out there? Maybe Hitler had some points. What was there about The Jews that motivated Hitler/Nazis/Germany/Europe? What are you afraid of? Shouldn't intellectual honesty and inquiry take priority over being accused of being an anti-semite?:

Wimp.

Unkosher chicken.

Or to use your favorite phrase, "Have you not read it?". Atzmon did.



Joseph

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So I take it you have not bothered to read the book and have intention of doing so. Seriously, you should. It might help direct you to a little self-awareness.
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Re: Sometimes You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

Post by neilgodfrey »

JoeWallack wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:09 am JW:
Let's also take a look at Amazon's list of other books purchased by those who chose The Wandering Who?:
OMG you are hilarious, Joe. Anything but read the book. Any effort to find any new way of slanting dirt on anyone who prefers justice to racism is preferable to actually reading the book!! :-) You really take the cake, Joe. Come on, now tell me how antisemitic you "know" I must be because I despise your tribalist mentality.
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Nu Antisemitism

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JW:
Since we already have good reason to think the book is going to be antisemitic based only on the cover (sadly Nein Godfree thinks that so much evidence already in such a short sample of The Book is a defense against charges of antisemitism) let's create a Czeck list of the historically documented meinifestations of antisemitism:

Manifestations

Cultural antisemitism
charges the Jews with corrupting a given culture
Religious antisemitism
antipathy towards Jews because of their perceived religious beliefs.
Economic antisemitism
Jews perform harmful economic activities or that economic activities become harmful when they are performed by Jews.
Racial antisemitism
the idea that the Jews are a distinct and inferior race compared to their host nations.
Political antisemitism
hostility toward Jews based on the belief that Jews seek national and/or world power.
Conspiracy theories
Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracy theories
New antisemitism [Especially for Neil Godfree]
the language of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are used to attack Jews more broadly. In this view, the proponents of the new concept believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and they attribute this to antisemitism. Jewish scholar Gustavo Perednik has posited that anti-Zionism in itself represents a form of discrimination against Jews, in that it singles out Jewish national aspirations as an illegitimate and racist endeavor, and "proposes actions that would result in the death of millions of Jews".[107]
What the above definitions have in common is attributing negative characteristics to Jews in general. Not all Jews and not necessarily almost all or even most Jews, but a significant percent of Jews so the observation is considered worth mentioning.

A common attempted defense against charges of antisemitism for those who criticize Israel is the separation/limitation defense where the defender claims their criticism is limited to criticizing Israel and is separate from criticizing Jews in general. The practical problem is criticizers/haters of Israel will normally expand to supporters of Israel and most Jews support Israel. So even though the base criticism is limited to Israel the collateral criticism is expanded to Jews. Anyone who limits their criticism to only or primarily Israel (as opposed to any other country) is already guilty of New antisemitism since they are applying unique negative standards to Israel. And as explained, by extension, to some extent are applying unique negative standards to Jews (supporters of Israel).

To the extent the criticizer of Israel fails to criticize Israeli opponents, the one-sided criticizer is even guiltier of New antisemitism and possibly spilling over into other types of antisemitism as likewise critical examination of Israel's/Jewish opponents may provide some defense against criticism of Israel. Especially here, a failure to criticize Palestinians and Palestinian Terrorism implicitly accepts such terrorism.

So, moving beyond the cover of Atzmon's book, regarding his criticism as evidence of antisemitism, the key question is the limit of the target of his criticism. To what extent does it go beyond Israel? Where does it fall between Israel and "The Jews"?


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Re: Nu Antisemitism

Post by neilgodfrey »

JoeWallack wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:37 pmThe practical problem is criticizers/haters of Israel will normally expand to supporters of Israel and most Jews support Israel.
Oh Joe, You are not really trying to tell us that anyone critical of a country is to be equated with being a hater of that country.

Seriously?
JoeWallack wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:37 pmAnyone who limits their criticism to only or primarily Israel (as opposed to any other country) is already guilty of New antisemitism since they are applying unique negative standards to Israel.
Well I'm glad you will notice that my own criticisms of Israel are based on a standard applied to all countries. The question is about the application of natural justice and international law.
JoeWallack wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:37 pma failure to criticize Palestinians and Palestinian Terrorism implicitly accepts such terrorism.
Answered most aptly by Israel's "most hated man". See http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/is-this- ... an/9198800

I'm sure that being the heavy reader of Vridar that you are, Joe, you know that I have posted many times on terrorism and terrorists without a single hint of support for any of their actions. All of it critical-historical and psychological. But you have never acknowledged any of those posts. Anyone would think you cannot tolerate someone who is critical of both sides but that the only position that will satisfy you is if one never breathes a word of criticism of your own side.
JoeWallack wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:37 pmSo, moving beyond the cover of Atzmon's book....
You are making a fool of yourself by reading so many subtleties into the book's cover. That sort of subtlety would be enough to prove Paul McCartney died decades ago. Anything but actually read the book. You cannot bring yourself to read anything that might seriously confront your tribalism, can you.
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