NOVANEWS
by crescentandcross in Uncategorize
http://nahidaexiledpalestinian.wordpress.com/
In his new book “The Wandering Who”, Gilad Atzmon reflects on his transforming journey from an IDF “Israeli”, a racist tribalist, self-ghettoized Zionist, with exclusionist mentality, who was greatly influenced as a child by his “veteran Zionist terrorist” grandfather, into simply a Universalist and Humanist.
A courageous and enthralling journey that began in the most unexpected places, in one of the suburbs of occupied Jerusalem, Al Quds, and by no other tool than a musical instrument, a saxophone!
A journey that he didn’t choose initially, rather, he stumbled upon. He came to discover that in the world out there, where gentile live, raw talents, daring intelligence and breathtaking beauty not only exist but also thrive. This realization took him by surprise; it contradicted his basic supposition of his own and his people’s superiority as Jews. This revelation pressed on him by necessity to take a good look in the mirror, the inner mirror of the self.
Gilad describes how he fell in love and became fascinated with Afro-American music; it was that love that opened the door of escape for him and enabled him to flee the narrowness of the Ghetto of tribalism to the wide world of humanism. As he discovered the brilliance and the captivating beauty of the music played not by Jews, but by gentiles, moreover, most of those musicians were actually black, Atzmon explains: “… it was kind of a revelation. In my world, it was only Jews who were associated with anything good”.
An article by “progressive” Philip Weiss
Thus was the beginning of the young Gilad’s voyage.Gilad’s long journey started as he explains by asking himself serious questions about his own identity. With all the frankness, dignity and courage, Gilad admits to himself and later to his readers, that he did not like what he saw. He was hit with the fact that he as Jew, might not be the fairest-one-of-all after all, as he was brought up to believe. What he realized is in fact other human beings, who are not Jews but gentiles, might be just as good! This was the first revelation in Gilad’s journey of self discovery.
Gilad reflects on how they learned -as young Jews – to view Palestinian as workers and providers of cheap labour, those nameless, faceless people who roam around:
“We never socialised with them. We didn’t really understand who they were and what they stood for. Supremacy was brewed in our souls, we gazed at the world through racist chauvinistic binoculars. And we felt no shame about it either”
The breaking point of his attachment was his visit to Ansar prison camp in South Lebanon in 1994. His IDF orchestra team was invited to visit. Gilad describes how did this journey affected him and changed him forever: “As we continued past the barbed wire I continued gazing at the inmates and arrived at an unbearable truth: I was walking on the other side, in Israeli military uniform. The place was a concentration camp. The inmates were the “Jews” and I was nothing but a “Nazi””.
He then goes on to tell the tale of the last straw that broke the camel’s back: “while I contemplated the resonance of my uniform, trying to deal with the great sense of shame in me, we came to a large, flat ground at the centre of the camp. The officer guiding us offered more platitudes about the current war to defend our Jewish haven. While he was boring us to death with these irrelevant Hasbara (propaganda) lies, I noticed that we were surrounded by two dozen concrete blocks each around 1m² in are and 1.3m high, with small metal doors as entrances. I was horrified at the thought that my army was locking guard dogs into these boxes for the night. Putting my Israeli chutzpah into action, I confronted the officer about these horrible concrete dog cubes. He was quick to reply: “these are our solitary confinement blocks; after two days in one of these, you become a devoted Zionist!”. This was enough for me. I realized that my affair with the Israel state and with Zionism was over”
Gilad then goes on to say: “it took me another ten years before I could leave Israel for good. During that time, however, I began to learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and to accept that I was actually living on someone else’s land. I took in the devastating fact that in 1948 the Palestinians hadn’t abandoned their homes willingly –as we were told in school- but had been brutally ethnically cleansed by my grandfather and his ilk.”
Discovering these exterior realities around him helped him to understand the atrocious role his people -including his much admired grandfather- played in creating the catastrophe of the Palestinian people.Then came the time when young Gilad thirsted for answers and needed to dive deeper in his own self; he began to reflect upon the question of identity, and what it means to him to be defined as a Jew.Years of observation and reflection he came to notice that those who call themselves Jews could be divided into three main categories:
- Those who follow Judaism.
- Those who regard themselves as human beings that happen to be of Jewish origin.
- Those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of other traits.