Mary: On the subject of academic freedom, Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure at his University, probably for political reasons, and this might be an argument against mixing politics and scholarship. What is your view on this?
Gilad: Why do you say ‘probably’? Certainly for political reasons. More than once I have praised Finkelstein and his work for Palestinian people. I do believe that his contribution is indeed invaluable. I would even say that Palestinian solidarity would look very different without him. I try to keep up with Finkelstein and to read everything he publishes. In most cases I totally agree with him, in some my disagreement is rather marginal.
Yet, I have a single minor criticism of Finkelstein’s attitude rather than his academic work. If his work has as much academic value as we all believe it has, then his personal history may not be relevant to the validity of his argument. Of course, I have no intention of telling Finkelstein what to do or what to say. Finkelstein, as much as anyone else, is entitled to argue: “I have the right to speak out because my parents are survivors,” but we have to accept that there is a down side to it. It simply excludes those who were fortunate enough not to be sons and daughters of Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Similarly, two months ago I saw Ilan Pappe, whom I highly regard as a pillar of academic resistance to Zionism, presenting his argument for the One State Solution. He started his argument by saying: “As a son of German Holocaust survivors…” Again Pappe, whom I view as a very important voice, mistakenly and most likely unconsciously, excluded anyone who failed to be a holocaust victim. I am most certainly sure that both Finkelstein and Pappe are not intending to exclude anyone, I just believe that they should be rather careful and avoid using such argumentation. I am totally convinced that their arguments are strong enough without bringing their personal history into discussion.
Mary: Some people don’t see it that way, some see it as giving more emotional impact to the message, and therefore, making people more open to accepting it. They might think, “If sons of Holocaust survivors are fighting Israel, then it’s okay for anyone to do it.” It might open up a gate that was previously considered shut.
Gilad: I totally accept it. I do not dismiss the emotional value as well as the impact of personal history, but I think that since the crime is so obvious, it is time to open the discourse and to welcome any form of ethical and intellectual intervention.
Anyhow, we were talking about academic argumentation. And I believe that at least academically such tactic is counter-effective. Let’s, for the course of discussion, say that I am unfortunate enough to suffer of impotency. Clearly, it is beyond doubt that such a psychological and physical condition would affect or even shape my vision of reality. Every time I fail in bed, my realisation of the notion of human suffering may get one step further. I for instance could legitimately start my next talk about the Israeli Palestinian conflict by saying: “As an impotent, I can understand Palestinian suffering, as an impotent I can feel the pain, I can understand what hope is all about.” Clearly, it is my impotence that sets me in an empathic journey towards others’ pain. Yet, in spite of the legitimacy, in spite of the fact that I evidently celebrate my symptoms, I fail to establish an academic argument. I reduce ethics into mere sympathy.
Mary: However, sympathy can lead to empathy and that is a necessary quality for an activist. He or she has to identify with suffering and bear witness to it.
Gilad: I accept it, yet I expose its down sides academically and exclusively.
Mary: But I think that another crucial matter is, one can indeed refer to a specific personal experience, but in this instance, quite unlike a personal experience such as impotency, we are dealing with a vicarious experience, someone else’s. It might actually be misleading, promoting the idea that victimhood gets passed from generation to generation, and that those who were survivors of the holocaust survived the worst possible event, making any other experience pale in comparison. In a way, it discounts the enormity of human suffering that we know is not limited to the Holocaust alone.
Gilad: In fact, regarding the argument of a vicarious experience, second-hand trauma, we could easily refine the impotency model. Let us assume for a second that my sexual performance is actually absolutely perfect but it was really my grandfather who was impotent. I can always argue that it was my grandfather’s misery and my grandmother’s frustration that shaped my father’s reality. It is my father’s fears that made me sleepless, and it is these fears that made me into a victim that should receive a constant free supply of Viagra and beyond. I am sorry to say it, listening to people who are my generation talking to me about themselves being Holocaust victims sounds sick and pathetic to me. I feel sorry for them and sorry for those who take them seriously.
And regarding the personal testimony matter, we have to remember that a rational argument should be applicable and valid regardless of the origin or the personal circumstances of its proponent. Newton’s Physics goes beyond gender, race or ethnicity. Scientific laws are supposed to be intelligible regardless of the family history of the ones who bring it to the world. Objects are falling at a certain speed whether your parents were in Auschwitz or in Deir Yassin. This quality of free rational thinking is something we have managed to lose as far as the academic world is concerned. We are witnessing a rapid deterioration in Western reasoning capacity. We are subject to this immense political correcting of the academic world. My advice to academic contributors to the solidarity discourse is to stand out and speak their hearts. To operate as genuine human beings, as proper authentic ethical thinkers rather than corrected politicians who need to send their ancestors back to Auschwitz in order to secure a green light to say what they believe in.
Mary: Back in 2005, you seemed to believe that Amir Peretz’s victory as leader of Israel’s Labor Party was
. Yet, he has turned out to be, at least when one thinks about the bloodbaths endured by Palestinians and Lebanese residents and citizens, a major disaster. Why did he fail so miserably?
Gilad: There was good reason to believe in Peretz, that he was different. He was neither part of the Military Junta nor a member of the Ashkenazi elite. Peretz’s election slogan was very simple: ‘once we address our social problems we will be ready to talk peace with our neighbors’. Indeed, Israeli isn’t ready to discuss peace, neither to its neighbour nor to itself. Peretz was sincere enough to admit it. Yet, he wasn’t modest enough to insist upon taking a socially orientated ministry. He insisted upon becoming the security minister, something that would qualify him as the future Prime Minister. The end of the story is known. Lacking the necessary military background, the man and his PM over-reacted to a simple kidnap operation and ended up in a total military defeat to a miniature paramilitary organisation. It is beyond doubt that once Peretz took his seat at the defense ministry, he refrained from acting as an Arab Jew, instead he followed the Zionist traditional Ashkeno-Centric world view of the Iron Wall. He let the Army escalate a minor border event into a war. However, I still want to believe that eventually, after all the belligerent Baraks and Netanyahus, a true and genuine second or even third generation Arab Jew Israeli may come to reflect about the peaceful conditions Jews enjoyed in Arab countries. At the end of the day, anti-Semitism and endless conflicts belong to the history of European Jews, it is something European Jews brought to the region. It has nothing to do with Arab Jews and their history.
Moreover, I still want to believe that if there is chance of a true willingness for peace within Israeli society, it will have something to do with the realisation of the largely oppressed Arab Jews in Israel that their true brothers in the region are the oppressed Palestinians. Such an act would shatter once and for all the Ashkenazi political hegemony in the Israeli realm.
Mary: You’re very heavily involved with “political scuffles”, people who attack you politically as well as insisting that your influence could damage “honest and principled activists”, just to take a recent quote by a blogger who focuses on Jewish identity issues and ties that in to his protest against Zionism. It’s normal and natural to be attacked by Zionists, but why are attacks from these anti-Zionist quarters so virulent?
Gilad: Let us first try to be precise, as it seems now, those who indeed attack me are five Bundists, socialist Jews, people who may have been an important voice at a certain stage but had gradually become a burden or even white noise. They indeed exhaust all their energy fighting me and other free thinkers, they run motions, dedicate blogs but they had been defeated time after time. But I cannot complain, their attack contributed a lot to the circulation of my thoughts. They as well helped me refine my view of Zionism and Jewish modern identity.
As you know, I am not a politician, I have never been one and I do not have any plans to become one. Being involved with Palestinian discourse for a decade I have come across the most enlightening people. None of them were politicians or politically orientated activists. In fact they were always attacked by politicians and largely by this miniature group of people who for some odd reason regard themselves as ‘Progressive’ Jews. It took me some time before I realised that Progressive Jews are manifestly seeking hegemony within the Palestinian solidarity discourse. They insist that the case of Israel must be realised solely via the very limited materialist spectrum. They love working class politics.
Mary: Well, you will have to admit, in the West, most of the supporters of Palestinians approach it from a leftist point of view, just as in the Arab world it would be an issue of Arab liberation. It might be unavoidable to treat it in the ways we do, we can’t create activists from a vacuum.
Gilad: I do not agree. It is rather obvious to me and I see it in my concerts night after night all over the world. The vast majority of Western people are devastated by Israeli brutality. The support of Palestine is a natural ethical reaction. Yet, when ordinary people follow their hearts and join the solidarity movement, this is where rather often they meet a bunch of decaying non dialectical socialists who insist upon telling them how to think and what to say according to some pre-WWII text books. This fact alone explains why there are hardly any Palestinians in the Solidarity movement and why this movement doesn’t expand into a mass movement.
Mary: Would you argue that socialist thinking is dead?
Gilad: Not at all, I am in total favour of a dynamic dialectical socialist worldview. A week ago I played in huge solidarity event in Germany put together by the Communist party. It was a gathering event of artists from all over the world. It was a solidarity event with refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Kurds, Iranians. In a few days I will perform at Marxism 2007, again as far as I can tell, the Socialist Worker’s Party in the UK tries to move forward with the flood of events. They understand that Working Class is a dynamic notion. They understand that if there is a working class in Britain, this notion has changed radically in the last 30 years.
However, we can’t choose who is claiming to be on the side of the Palestinians, and if people whose interpretation of reality is only understood from the viewpoint of working class politics, I am obviously convinced that they are totally deluded as to the interpretation of the Middle East problem. They make the reality fit the worldview they have rather than adapting their view to reality. They are entitled to do so as long as they do not try to silence other people’s views. Israel regards itself as a Jewish State and in order to understand the scope of its activity we have to understand what Jewishness stands for. What racial brotherhood is all about. Moreover, the industrial revolution is yet to make it to Gaza, hence, Marxist ideas have never become overwhelmingly popular amongst the Palestinian people. However, I wouldn’t resist a limited colonial interpretation of the conflict but the insistence to limit the discourse to working class interpretation is moronic and somehow emblematic to these five ‘Progressive’ Jewish activists.
Mary: But basically you disagree with their view that bringing about a kind of secular socialism for Palestinians and Israelis will resolve the problem of oppression.
Gilad: Have you ever tried to talk ‘socialism’ to a Palestinian? I actually tried. They usually tend to laugh or just lose interest. Marx, or shall we rather say Marxism, has nothing to do with their reality. However, I believe that by now, after 110 years of Zionism, 60 years of the Nakba, 40 years of occupation, our beloved Socialists, Marxists, Mazpenists, Bundist ‘Progressive Jews’ and the Jewish Socialists had enough time to resolve the conflict and liberate us all by turning the entire region into a red haven. May I reveal for the first time that as an 18-year-old red activist, while being an IDF soldier, I was affiliated with some radical anarchist groups in Israel. Like the rest of my comrades, I was convinced that sooner or later ‘Arab and Israeli working class would unite against the bourgeoisie Zionist colonial evil’. It took a few years before I opened my eyes to the astonishing fact that there was no ‘Jewish working class’ and Palestinians refused to fit into the Eurocentric class model. That was when I realised that I was left with no other option but shelving my red shirt at least momentarily.
Mary: That’s pretty interesting, both the fact of the activism of your youth and that you claim that there is no Jewish working class. But, as to socialist ideas having no truck with Palestinians, I would think that the case of the FPLP in some small way contradicts this, even though, they are a different breed of socialists, basically a nationalist movement with progressive ideas.
Gilad: Indeed, and even they disappeared. Moreover, from time to time I meet the odd Palestinian Matzpenists, mainly in Europe. I do not try to argue that Palestinian Marxists are non-existent, I just come to acknowledge the clear fact that their voice is as less than marginal. This is not a criticism but rather an observation.
Mary: But, back to where we were, you are saying that the Western progressives’ activism is stuck in a vision of reality that never was: the belief that if class issues are addressed, the rest will be resolvable, but the reason of oppression in Israel has never been class, but rather a question of race, is it not?
Gilad: Race may sound a bit abstract. Let’s call it racial brotherhood, cultural supremacist views, blood orientation and so on. Anyhow, the problem with the Jewish activists who attack me is actually centred on the fact that my views sit outside their narrow political thinking. I am focused on ethical thinking. My criticism of Israel as a racially orientated paradigm actually exposes as well the sickening aspect of Jewish socialism. The argument is so easy. If you are a socialist, you are my comrade and I do not care whether you are a Jew, a Muslim, Black or Buddhist. Yet, our progressive Jews insist to import their exclusive blood system into the progressive discourse. By doing so they located themselves within the Zionist discourse, like Zionists, they say we are ‘people like other people’ yet we are ‘slightly different’.
I will admit that I initially I took these people seriously, these progressive Jewish left activists, but then I have learned that when it comes to being morally pure, the most vocal protester against me, the one who was obsessively trying to teach me ethics, actually has a list of acts of petty criminal activity under his belt. I wouldn’t hold his past against him, yet, I cannot let a shoplifter teach me or anyone else morality. As if this is not enough, he and his friends were banned from different academic institutes for being anti-Semitic. With all due respect, I cannot let such a person call me an anti Semite. Another anti-Atzmon ‘progressive’ smear activist happened to run a Jews only blog where attacks against me are pretty constant. He can make any kind of blog he wants, but it’s pretty clear that progressive Jews are always operating in racially orientated cells, and I am free to feel that his blog is exclusivist and will remain that way. It’s the nature of the club. Not ‘many’ Abeds and Mohammeds are registered with the Jews against Zionism group, and I don’t see any articles about Palestinians on that blog either. It’s obviously a second-rate issue to the Jewish progressive identity.
Mary: Well, two little-known activists in Great Britain shouldn’t be such a threat. Why do you respond to their provocations and why not simply just ignore them?
Gilad: Actually, I wouldn’t necessarily blame them for provoking me, it is more likely that I actually provoke them, I expose their fallacy. At a certain stage, and not that long ago, I realised that these Bundists embody the essence of the Jewish secular tragedy. They are the epitome of the emancipated Jewish emptiness. On the one hand they failed to make it into the universalist discourse. On the other hand they are left detached from their own cultural heritage. In their misery they praise their Yiddish culture without understanding the role of this language and without even speaking the language. These Bundists embody the collapse of Jewish progressive cosmopolitanism. It would be impossible to understand where Zionism came from without confronting this unique bizarre identity. For me, monitoring them is no different from visiting the safari of rare animals.
As we know, the Bund doesn’t exist anymore, it was actually defeated in WWII. As far as Jewish people are concerned, Zionism won the Jewish street. Monitoring the UK cell and their activity explains to me what Zionism was there to repair. They are microcosms of Jewish extreme wrong thinking. In my eyes they are actually far worse than proper Zionists.
Mary: Don’t you think that this is an exaggeration?
Gilad: Actually, I am totally convinced about that. One of the most decent beings amongst them is the award-winning poet Michael Rosen. Rosen publicly defines himself as: a ‘Socialist’, a ‘secular Jew’, a ‘progressive man’. Recently I found out that Rosen has been expressing himself pretty eloquently in support of the Boycott. Nothing is obviously wrong with that, but then to my great astonishment, I found out that the same Rosen, the one who calls to Boycott Israel, was as well taking part in a notorious right wing London Jewish Book Week as a family entertainer. For those who do not understand yet, the Jewish Book Week is supported by the Israeli Embassy and the rabid Zionist organisation UJIA, an organisation that currently sets gala tours for the 60th anniversary of the Israeli State. Looking at it from a progressive point of view, I cannot make up my mind whether Rosen’s behaviour is treason or just total hypocrisy. When we asked Rosen how come, how is it that he, of all people, a boycott enthusiast, ended up participating in a Zionist event, he was stupid enough to admit that he gave it some real thought, “I had my doubts about appearing at JBW and so I asked all sorts of people whose opinions I trust whether they thought it was a good idea or not.” Rosen, the one who calls to boycott Israeli academics ended up in bed with the Israeli Embassy.
Mary: Not that I’m familiar with Rosen’s writing…
Gilad: Good point, there is no writing. There is no contemporary body of work, no critical or political body of writing. Along with him, there are just some forum comments, really only concerned with stopping the Palestinian discourse becoming what he and his friends call anti-Semitic. To a certain extent they operate as an ADL mole within the Palestinian solidarity discourse. In short we are facing here an unacceptable level of hypocrisy and ignorance on the verge of complete betrayal.
Mary: In some of your writings you defined these folks as crypto-Zionists and Third Category Jews.
Gilad: I am afraid that my argument is now even more conclusive. When a Marxist politician is found lying, we are entitled to call him a Marxist liar. When a Republican politician is found spying for the enemy we are entitled to call him a `Republican spy’. Yet, when a Boycott campaigner who insists to act politically under the ‘Jewish’ banner (as a Jewish Socialist, or a Jew against Zionism, etc.) is found in bed with some ultra-Zionist institutes, we must refrain from calling him a Jewish hypocrite. Here is the trick. Jewish progressive ethnic campaigners are interested in a singular one-sided discourse. They are happy to act as ‘Jews’ but refuse to be criticised as Jews. When they act politically they say we are ‘people like other people’ but when you criticise them politically they hide behind their racial identity. Whether this is funny or revolting is a matter of taste. However, this is a complete repetition of the Zionist tactic. In other words, we are entitled to conclude that Jewish Socialists and any form of Jewish exclusive activism is nothing but another form of Zionism.
Thanks to these so-called ‘Progressive Jews’ I have understood the validity of the criticism of Jewish cosmopolitanism, the bizarre notion of peoplehood devoid of soil. I realised why these few Bundists could never establish a true authentic solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian cause is primarily about soil. Cosmopolitans may be able to recognise Palestinian misery, yet they cannot identify with the yearning to their land. While Bundists talk about their peoplehood, Palestinians do not need to talk about peoplehood, they do not have to invent or reinvent their culture. Like Germans, French and Albanians, they simply live through their culture. Unlike Zionists and Bundists included, who aim to be ‘people like other people’, Palestinians are there to start with. They are ‘people like other people’. They do not have to aim towards cultural renaissance. People who are culturally orientated can simply transcend themselves beyond the awareness of their culture. They are moulded and transfixed by their by their own soil, cuisine, language and landscape. They live their culture and move it forwards by the means of creation.
This is why Zionism with its Hebrew revival may have been more successful than the Bund. Rosen and his ilk are telling us about their unique Jewish culture, about their Yiddish, yet, they don’t even speak the language. Their creativity within their own culture is zilch. They don’t write Yiddish books, they don’t read Yiddish papers, they don’t have Yiddish Rock & Roll they do not translate anything into Yiddish. And there is very little to translate from Yiddish anyway. They are basically spreading some ghetto nostalgic nonsense, they basically bullshit for the sake of bullshitting. And as I said many times before, they have the full right to do so, yet, I am there to remind them that chicken soup is neither a political argument, nor it is a moral stand.
Mary: So, as long as you continue to criticise your detractors and present the inconsistencies of their reasoning, they will continue to run smear campaigns against you, call you an anti-Semite and try persuade people from hosting you at political and public events. As long as they keep doing that, you will continue to have reason to criticise their logic. Kind of a vicious circle. Is there going to be an end to it?
Gilad: Seemingly, in spite of all the smears, I survive. In fact I won in every battle I decided to take on. As it seems, by fighting me they have managed to annihilate themselves. Every time, they raise their head I learn more about the level of Jewish ideological secular delusion. It will be very boring when they raise their white flag, but this will never happen. In spite of them being humiliated at the PSC AGM recently, in spite of bandleader being exposed as a convicted criminal, in spite of Rosen’s shameful crypto-Zionist behaviour, they never surrender. Only people with dignity can admit defeat, and dignity is exactly what they lack. People who lie to themselves so extensively find it far easier to lie to others.
Though they have managed to silence some of the most important contributor to the Israeli Palestinian discourse they have totally failed with me. There are two secrets here, which I am happy to share.
One: Rather than talking to Jews, I am talking about Jews and the subject I am interested in is basically Jewishness. Many of my readers and supporters are actually orthodox Jews, assimilated Jews and ex-Jews. But it obviously goes far beyond Jews. Since more than a few scholars identify the current emerging global conflict with some extensive Zionist lobbying in America, the questions to do with the Jewish issue are becoming more and more relevant and popular. A while ago I have taken the risk of saying what I believe to be the truth and as it seems, people around do appreciate my truth-seeking endeavour. Some Jews called me an anti-Semite, some Elder Londoners picketed my readings, it didn’t stop me and it didn’t stop anyone from booking me again. Quite the opposite, it made me far more popular than I have ever wanted to be.
Two: I do not join any organisation or organised religion. I do not let politicians into my world. Generally speaking, I despise any form of political activity and activism in general. I believe in ethical orientation. I keep independent. At the end of the day I am primarily an artist and light cultural terrorist.
Mary: A recent
The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai says “no” also to the Book Fair of Paris. Here is the letter he sent to negatively respond to the invitation of the director of the book fair, dedicated, as is the Turin edition, to Israel.
peacepalestine 