Gilad Atzmon -
The Primacy of the Ear
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Road from Music to Ethics
An alternative take on the Israeli Palestinian conflict
and peace activism
(Postscript by Manuel Talens)
Rather often I face the same question when interviewed by
Arab media outlets: Gilad, how is it that you
observe that which so many Israelis fail to see?
Indeed, not many Israelis interpret the Israeli ethical
failure as an inherent symptom. For many years I
didnt have any answer to offer. However, recently I
realised that it must have something to do with my
Saxophone. It is music that has shaped my views of the
Israeli Palestinian conflict and formed my criticism of
Jewish identity.
Today I will talk about the road from music to ethics.
It is known that life looks like a meaningful event when
reviewed retrospectively from its end to its very
beginning. Accordingly, I will try to scrutinise my own
battle with Zionism through my late evolvement as a
musician. I will explore my struggle with Arabic music. I
will try to elaborate retrospectively on the role of
music on my understanding of the world that surrounds me.
To a certain extent, this is the story of my life to date
(at least one of them).
I grew up in Israel in a rather Zionist secular family.
My Grandfather was a charismatic poetic veteran
terrorist, an ex prominent commander in the right wing Irgun terror organisation.
I may admit that he had a tremendous influence on me in
my early days. His hatred towards anything that failed to
be Jewish was a major inspiration. He hated Germans;
consequently he didnt allow my dad to buy a German
car. He also despised the Brits for colonising his
promised land. I assume that he didnt
detest the Brits as much as he hated the Germans because
he allowed my father to drive an old Vauxhall Viva. He
was also pretty cross with the Palestinians for dwelling
on the land he was sure belonged to him and his people.
Rather often he used to wonder about the Palestinians:
these Arabs have so many countries, why do they
have to live exactly in the land we want to live
in? But more than anything, my grandfather hated
Jewish Leftists. However, it is important to mention that
since Jewish leftists have never produced any cars, this
specific loathing didnt mature into a conflict of
interests between himself and my dad. Being a follower of
Zeev Jabotinsky, my Grandfather
obviously realised that Leftist philosophy and the Jewish
value system is a contradiction in terms. Being a veteran
right wing terrorist as well a proud tribal Jew, he knew
very well that tribalism can never live in peace with
humanism and universalism. Following his mentor
Jabotinsky, he believed in the Iron Wall
philosophy. He supposed that Arabs in general and
Palestinians in particular should be confronted
fearlessly and fiercely. Quoting Betars
anthem he repeatedly said, in blood and sweat, we
would erect our race.
My Grandfather believed in the Jewish race, and so did I
in my very early days. Like my peers, I didnt see
the Palestinians around me. They were no doubt there,
they fixed my fathers car for half the price, they
built our houses, they cleaned the mess we left behind,
they where schlepping boxes in the local food store, but
they always disappeared just before sunset and appeared
again around dawn. They had never socialised with us. We
didnt really understand who they were and what they
stood for. Supremacy was no doubt brewed in our being, we
gazed at the world via a racist, chauvinist binocular.
When I was seventeen, I was preparing myself for my
compulsory IDF service. Being a well-built teenager
fuelled with Zionist spirit and soaked in
self-righteousness, I was due to join an air force
special rescuing unit. But then the unexpected happened.
On an especially late night Jazz program, I heard Bird (Charlie Parker) with Strings .
I was knocked down. It was by far more organic, poetic,
sentimental and yet wilder than anything I had ever heard
before. My father used to listen to Bennie Goodman and
Artie Shaw, these two were entertaining, they could play
the clarinet, but Bird was a different story altogether.
He was a fierce libidinal extravaganza of wit and energy.
The morning after, I decided to skip school, I rushed to
Piccadilly Record, Jerusalems No 1
music shop. I found the jazz section and bought every
bebop album they had on the shelves (probably two
albums). On the bus, on the way home, I realised that
Bird was actually a Black man. It didnt take me by
complete surprise, but it was kind of a revelation, in my
world, it was only Jews who were associated with anything
good. Bird was a beginning of a journey.
***
At the time, like my peers, I was pretty convinced that
Jews were indeed the chosen people. My generation was
raised on the Six Day War magical victory, we were
totally sure of ourselves. Since we were secular, we
associated every success with our omnipotent qualities.
We didnt believe in divine intervention, we
believed in ourselves. We believed that our might is
brewed in our resurrected Hebraic soul and flesh. The
Palestinians, on their part, were serving us obediently
and it didnt seem at the time as if this was ever
going to change. They didnt show any real signs of
collective resistance. The sporadic so-called
terror attacks made us feel righteous, it
filled us with some eagerness to get revenge. But somehow
within this extravaganza of omnipotence, to my great
surprise, I learned to realize that the people who exited
me the most were actually a bunch of Black Americans.
People who have nothing to do with the Zionist miracle.
People that had nothing to do with my own chauvinist
exclusive tribe.
It didnt take more than two days before I hired my
first saxophone. The saxophone is a very easy instrument
to start with, and if you dont believe me you
better ask Bill Clinton. However, as much as the
saxophone was an easy instrument to pick up, playing like
Bird or Cannonball looked like an impossible mission. I
started to practice day and night, and the more I
practiced, the more I was overwhelmed with the tremendous
achievement of that great family of Black American
musicians, a family I was then starting to know closely.
Within a month I learned about Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson,
Hank Mobley,
Monk, Oscar Peterson and Duke, and the more I listened
the more I realised that my initial Judeo-centric
upbringing was totally wrong. After one month with a
saxophone shoved up my mouth, my Zionist enthusiasm
disappeared completely. Instead, of flying choppers
behind enemy lines, I started to fantasize about living
in NYC, London or Paris. All I wanted was a chance to
listen to the great names of Jazz and in the late
1970s, many of them were still around.
Nowadays, youngsters who want to play Jazz tend to enroll
in a music college, in my days it was very different.
Those who wanted to play classical music would enroll in
a college or a music academy, however, those who wanted
to play for the sake of music would stay at home and
swing around the clock. Nonetheless, in the late
1970s there was no Jazz education in Israel and in
my hometown Jerusalem there was just a single Jazz club.
It was called Pargod and it was set in an old converted
pictorial Turkish Bath. Every Friday afternoon they ran a
jam session and for my first two years in jazz, these
jams were the essence of my life. Literally speaking, I
stopped everything else, I just practiced day and night
preparing myself for the next Friday Jam. I
listened to music, I transcribed some great solos, I even
practiced while sleeping. I decided to dedicate my life
to Jazz accepting the fact that as a white Israeli, my
chances to make it to the top were rather slim. Without
realising it at the time, my emerging devotion to jazz
had overwhelmed my Zionist exclusive tendencies. Without
being aware, I left the chosenness behind. I had become
an ordinary human being. Years later, I realised that
Jazz was my escape route. Within months I felt less and
less connected to my surrounding reality, I saw myself as
part of a far broader and greater family. A family of
music lovers, a bunch of adorable people who were
concerned with beauty and spirit rather than land and
occupation.
However, I still had to join the IDF. Though later
generations of Israeli young Jazz musicians just escaped
the army and ran away to the Jazz Mecca NYC, for me, a
young lad of Zionist origin in Jerusalem, such an option
wasnt available, a possibility as such didnt
even occur to me.
In July 1981 I joined the Israeli Army but, I may suggest
proudly, that from my first day in the army I was doing
my very best to avoid any call of duty. Not because I was
a pacifist, not because I cared that much about the
Palestinians or subject to a latent peace enthusiasm, I
just loved to be alone with my saxophone.
When the 1st Lebanon war broke, I was a soldier for one
year. It didnt take a genius to know the truth, I
knew that our leaders were lying. Every Israeli soldier
realised that this war was an Israeli aggression.
Personally I couldnt feel anymore any attachment to
the Zionist cause. I didnt feel part of it. Yet, it
still wasnt the politics or ethics that moved
alienated me, but rather my craving to be alone with my
horn. Playing scales at the speed of light seemed to me
far more important for than killing Arabs in the name of
Jewish redemption. Thus, instead of becoming a qualified
killer I spent every possible effort trying to join one
of the military bands. It took a few months, but I
eventually landed safely at the Israeli Air Force
Orchestra (IAFO).
The IAFO was made of a unique social setting, you could
join in either for being an excellent promising Jazz
talent or just for being a son of a dead pilot. The fact
that I was accepted, knowing that my Dad was amongst the
living reassured me for the first time that I may be a
musical talent. To my great surprise, none of the
orchestra members took the army seriously. We were all
concerned about one thing, our very personal musical
development. We hated the army and it didnt take
time before I started to hate the state that had such a
big army with such a big air force that needed a band
that stopped me from practicing 24/7. When we were called
to play in a military event, we always tried to play as
bad as we could just to make sure that we would never get
invited again. In the IAFO orchestra I learned for the
first time how to be subversive. How to destroy the
system in order to achieve immaculate personal
perfection.
In the summer of 1984, just 3 weeks before I took off my
military uniform, we were sent to Lebanon for a tour of
concerts. At the time, Lebanon was a very dangerous place
to be in and the Israeli army was dug deep in bunkers and
trenches avoiding any confrontation with the local
population. On the 2nd day we arrived at Ansar, a
notorious Israeli concentration camp on Lebanese soil.
This event changed my life.
It was a boiling day in early July. On a dusty dirt track
we arrived at hell on earth. A huge detention centre
surrounded by barbed wire. On the way to the camp
headquarters we drove through the view of thousands of
inmates being scorched under the sun. It is hard to
believe, but military bands are always treated as VIPs.
Once we landed at the officer command barracks we were
taken for a guided tour in the camp. We were walking
along the endless barbed wire and the post guard towers.
I couldnt believe my eyes. Who are these
people? I asked the officer. They are
Palestinians he said, here are the PLO on the left
and here on the right are the Ahmed Jibrils ones,
they are far more dangerous (Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine PFLP-GC)
so we keep them isolated.
I looked at the detainees and they looked very different
to the Palestinians I saw in Jerusalem. The ones I saw in
Ansar were angry. They were not defeated and they were
many. As we moved along the barbed wire and I was gazing
at the inmates, I realised that unbearable truth, I was
walking there in Israeli military uniform. While I was
still contemplating about my uniform, trying to deal with
some severe sense of emerging shame, we arrived at a
large flat ground in the middle of the camp. We stood
there around the guide officer and learned more from him,
some more lies about the current war to defend our Jewish
haven. While he was boring us to death with some
irrelevant lies I noticed that we were surrounded by two
dozen concrete blocks the size of one square meter and
around 1.30 cm high. They had a small metal door and I
was horrified by the fact that my army may have decided
to lock the guard dogs in these constructions for the
night. Putting my Israeli Chutzpah into action, I asked
the guide officer what these horrible concrete cubes
were. He was fast to answer. These are our solitary
confinement blocks, after two days in one of these you
become a devoted Zionist.
This was enough for me. I realised already then in 1984
that my affair with the Israeli state and Zionism was
over. Yet, I knew very little about Palestine, about the
Nakba or even about Judaism and Jewishness. I just
realized that as far as I was concerned, Israel was bad
news and I didnt want to have anything to do with
it. Two weeks later, I gave my uniform back, I grabbed my
alto sax, took the bus to Ben Gurion airport and left for
Europe for a few months. I was basking in the street. At
the age of 21, I was free for the first time. In December
it was too cold and I went back home with a clear
intention to make it back to Europe.
***
It took me another 10 years before I could leave Israel
for good. In these years I started to learn closely about
the Israeli Palestinian conflict, about oppression. I
started to accept that I was actually living on someone
elses land. I started to take in that devastating
fact that in 1948 the Palestinians didnt really
leave willingly but were rather brutally ethnically
cleansed by my Grandfather and his ilk. I started to
realize that ethnic cleansing has never stopped in
Israel, it just took different shapes and forms. I
started to acknowledge the fact that the Israeli legal
system was totally racially orientated. A good example
was obviously the Law of Return, a law that
welcomes Jews to come home after 2000 years
but stops Palestinians from returning to their land and
villages after 2 years abroad. All that time I had been
developing as a musician, I had become a major session
player and a musical producer. Yet, I wasnt really
involved in any political activity. I scrutinised the
Israeli left discourse and realized that it was very much
a social club rather than an ideological setting
motivated by ethical awareness.
At the time of Oslo agreement (1994), I just
couldnt take it anymore. I realized that Israeli
peace making equals piss taking.
It wasnt there to reconcile with the Palestinians
or to confront the Zionist original sin. Instead it was
there to reassure the secure existence of the Jewish
state at the expense of the Palestinians. The Palestinian
Right of Return wasnt an option at all. I decided
to leave my home, to leave my career. I left everything
behind including my wife Tali, who joined me later. All I
took with me was my Tenor Saxophone, my true eternal
friend.
I moved to London and attended postgraduate studies in
Philosophy at Essex University. Within a week in London I
managed to get a residency at the Black Lion, a legendary
Irish pub in Kilburn High Road. At the time I didnt
understand how lucky I was. I didnt know how
difficult it is to get a gig in London. In fact this was
the beginning of my international career as a Jazz
musician. Within a year I had become very popular in the
UK playing bebop and post bop. Within three years I was
playing with my band all over Europe.
However, it didnt take long before I started to
feel some homesickness. To my great surprise, it
wasnt Israel that I missed. It wasnt Tel
Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem. It was actually Palestine. It
wasnt the rude taxi driver in Ben Gurion airport,
or a shopping center in Ramat Gan, it was the little
Humus place in Yafo at Yesfet/Salasa streets. It was the
Palestinian villages that are stretched on the hills
between the olive trees and the Sabbar cactuses. I
realized that whenever I felt like visiting home, I would
end up in Edgware Road, I would spend the evening in a
Lebanese restaurant. However, once I started to explore
my thoughts about Israel in public, it soon became clear
to me that Edgware Road was probably as close as I could
ever get to my homeland.
***
I may admit that In Israel, I wasnt at all
interested in Arabic music. Supremacist colonials are
never interested in the culture of the indigenous. I
always loved folk music. I was already established in
Europe as a leading Klezmer player. Throughout the years
I started to play Turkish and Greek music. However, I
completely skipped Arabic music and Palestinian music in
particular. Once in London, in these Lebanese
restaurants, I started to realise that I have never
really explored the music of my neighbors. More
concerning, I just ignored it, though I heard it all the
time. It was all around me, I never really listened. It
was there in every corner of my life, the call for
prayers from the Mosques over the hills. Um Kalthoum',
Farid El Atrash, Abdel Halim Hafez,
were there in every corner of my life, in the street, on
the TV, in the small cafes in old city Jerusalem, in the
restaurants. They were all around me but I dismissed them
disrespectfully.
In my mid thirties, away from my homeland, I was drawn
into the indeginous music of my homeland. It wasnt
easy. It was on the verge of unfeasible. As much as Jazz
was easy for me to take in, Arabic music was almost
impossible. I would put the music on, I would grab my
saxophone or clarinet, I would try to integrate and I
would sound foreign. I soon realized that Arabic music
was a completely different language altogether. I
didnt know where to start and how to approach it.
Jazz music is a western product. It evolved in the 20th
century and developed in the margins of the cultural
industry. Bebop, the music I grew up on is made of
relatively short fragments of music. The tunes are short
because they had to fit into the 1940s record
format (3 min). Western music can be easily transcribed
into some visual content within standard notation and
chord symbols.
Jazz, like every other Western art form, is partially
digital. Arabic music, on the other hand, is analogue, it
cannot be transcribed. Once transcribed, its authenticity
evaporates. By the time I achieved enough humane maturity
to face the music of my homeland, my musical knowledge
stood in the way.
I couldnt understand what was it that stopped me
from encompassing Arabic music. I couldnt
understand why it didnt sound right. I spent enough
time listening and practicing. But it just didnt
sound right. As time went by, music journalists in Europe
started to appreciate my new sound, they started to
regard me as a new Jazz hero who crossed the divide as
well as an expert of Arabic music. I knew that they were
wrong, as much as I tried to cross the so-called
divide, I could easily notice that my sound
and interpretation was foreign to the Arabic true colour.
But then, I found an easy trick. In my gigs, when trying
to emulate the oriental sound, I would first sing a line
that reminded me the sound I ignored in my childhood, I
would try to recall echoes of the Muezzin sneaking into
our streets from the valleys around. I would try to
recall the astonishing haunting sound of my friends Dhafer Youssef and Nizar Al Issa. I would hear myself
the low lasting voice of Abel Halim Hafez. Initially I
would just close my eyes and listen to my internal ear,
but without realizing I started gradually to open my
mouth and sing loudly. I then realised that if I sing
while having the saxophone in my mouth I would achieve a
sound that was very close to the mosques metal
horns. Originally I tried to get closer to the Arabic
sound but at a certain stage, I just forgot what I was
trying to achieve; I started to enjoy myself.
Last year, while recording an album in Switzerland, I
realized suddenly that my Arabic sound wasnt
embarrassing anymore. Once listening to some takes in the
control room I suddenly noticed that the echos of Jenin,
Al Quds and Ramallah popped naturally out of the
speakers. I tried to ask myself what happened, why did it
suddenly started to sound genuine. I realized that I have
given up on the primacy of the eye and reverted to the
primacy of the ear. I didnt look for an inspiration
in the manuscript, in the music notes or the chord
symbol. Instead, I was listening to my internal voice.
Struggling with Arabic music reminded me why I did start
to play music in the first place. At the end of the day,
I heard Bird in the radio rather seeing him on MTV.
I would like to end this talk by saying that it is about
time we learn to listen to the people we care for. It is
about time we listen to the Palestinians rather than
following some decaying textbooks. It is about time. Only
recently I grasped that ethics comes into play when the
eyes shut and the echoes of conscience are forming a tune
within ones soul. To empathise is to accept the
primacy of the ear.
AN AUDIO VERSION OF THIS PRESENTATION CAN BE HEARD BY
FOLLOWING THIS LINK!
(or this
one)
Postscript by Manuel Talens:
Gilad
Atzmon or Exile's redemption
Ever since I met Gilad Atzmon a few years back
for a lengthy interview I've been convinced that this man
listens to the world with the ears of an artist. It
wasn't by chance that I entitled it Beauty as a political weapon, as both his music and his writings
always exude a profound and beautiful poetry, even if
they deal as they usually do with the
unrelenting Palestinian tragedy caused by Israel. This
paper, which is the core of a talk he delivered recently
at Brighton, UK, is no exception to this rule. Yet,
instead of treating the subject from the outside a
literary technique that establishes a distance and
"cools it down" here the former Israeli
Atzmon adopts the painful role of a subject who places
himself at the thick of things and tells us his own
itinerary from the racist hell of the Zionist state,
where he was born, to the only ethical escape he had in
front of him once he heard the light through the
miracle of music: voluntary exile. Exile, as
well-informed readers of this great jazzman already know,
is one of his finest albums. To me, it is also the main
argument of this current piece. It is not by chance if
other Israelis as honest as Ilan Pappe have also chosen
exile like Atzmon as the only way to redeem
themselves from the shame of belonging to a state where
indigenous population are treated as if they were
despicable beasts. But Atzmon's recapitulation has a
wonderful plus in itself at least for music lovers
and it is the sharp narration of his awakening
from the sinful Israeli nightmare he was immersed in to
the liberation of ceasing to belong, all this
thanks to Charlie Parker's art. Art is the communicating
vessel uniting Parker and Atzmon. But there is more: the
fact that Parker was Black a race as looked down
by all-time colonialists as Palestinians by today's
Zionists serves symbolically to the purpose of
Atzmon's redemption: embracing the cause of Black music
meant for him to kill two birds with one stone, as he
simultaneously embraced the cause of liberating
Palestinians through political activism. Texts like this
one, written by people like Atzmon who have decided to
join mankind without tribal discriminations and who
define themselves as ex-Zionists help us to maintain the
hope that one day the land of Palestine will be free of
this racist post-modern plague and all its inhabitants
will live in peace regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Gilad
Atzmon - The Tzabar and the Sabbar: A Refection on Memory
and Nostalgia
Zionism is a total
disaster. It is a colonial, expansionist, nationalist
philosophy based on racial chauvinism. Those who take its
precepts to the letter have been robbing the land of the
indigenous Palestinian people in the name of the Jewish
people. It is regarded by many of us as a major threat to
world peace. Its devoted supportive lobbies around the
world call for more and more bloodshed in the name of ?liberalism?,
?democracy?, 'freedom? and even in the name of the ?Judeo-Christian?
alliance. Yet, Zionism, and we better admit it, has
managed to do something that even God has failed to do:
it united the Jews. Zionism has become the Jewish
symbolic identifier.
In a recent paper of
mine, The Politics
Of Anti-Semitism, I explored the role of Zionism as
the cultural identifier of the contemporary Diaspora Jew.
I argued that Zionism has managed to win its ideological
foes by offering a transparent collective structural set
of symbolic identifiers. Rather than ideology and
politics, it was a Zionist fetish and Hebraic
paraphernalia that made Zionism into a success story.
Accordingly, it established a language (Hebrew), it
provided the Jew with a concrete geographical orientation
(Eretz Israel), it conveyed an image of a culture
(the new Hebraic folklore), it even managed to present a
false image of political and ethical polarity (left and
right). If the founders of Zionism set about to save the
Diaspora Jew from his anomalous condition, we then have
to confess that it has fulfilled its mission. Zionism's
success has nothing to do with its ideology, politics or
even with its devastating practices. Clearly, not many
Jews understand what Zionism stands for (ideologically,
politically, ethically and practically). Not many
Diaspora Jews openly succumb to the Zionist school of
thought nor to its non-ethical praxis. Instead, they
subscribe to 'Israeli folklore', the odd Hebrew word, the
falafel and the humus which they mistakenly identify with
Israel (rather than Palestine). They sing along to
Israeli music whether it is Hava Nagila, Yafa
Yarkoni or Yeuda Poliker. For those who fail
to see it, ?Israeli culture? is a direct product of the
Zionist project. Clearly, modern Hebraic culture has
managed to hijack the world of Jewish symbolism. Zionism
established a new form of Jewish tribal belonging.
Yet, as much as
Zionism conveys a cultural success story within the
Jewish Diaspora discourse, it is rather meaningless as
far as Israelis are concerned. The Tzabar,
native-born Israeli Jew, does not benefit at all from
Zionism being a structural set of symbolic identifiers.
In fact, the Tzabar doesn't need to identify with
any symbolic structure based on geographical aspiration.
He or she is born into a self-sufficient brand i.e.,
Israeliness. Similarly, the Tzabars do not need
the Hebrew language as a means of identification, they
use it as a means of communication. Nor does the Tzabar
need a geographical orientation, he or she is
orientated by birth. The Tzabar doesn't even
subscribe to Israeli folklore, in fact, most Israelis
can't stand Israeli folklore and they by far prefer
foreign pop, rock, Turkish and Greek music and even some
wild free jazz.
As funny as it may
sound, that which is taken by the Diaspora Jew as a
structural symbolic identifier, i.e., the Hebraic fetish,
means very little to the Israelis. By the same token, as
much as the Diaspora Jew subscribes to 'Israeliness',
that very 'Israeliness' means very little to the
Israelis. This shouldn't take us very much by surprise:
the notion of 'Americanism' means far more to
non-Americans than it does to Americans. Similarly, the
tendency to drop the odd French word, a habit that is
apparently so common amongst British or American
pseudo-intellectuals, is a reflection of a similar
fetish. 'Frenchness' attributes very unique meaning to
those who know only very little about France. Yet, not a
single French person thinks that speaking French is
something astonishingly clever. Likewise, the Diaspora
Jew may use the odd Hebrew word to ascertain his tribal
belonging, however, it would take more than just a single
Hebrew word for the Israelis to feel at home on a stolen
land, namely Palestine.
Memory and
Nostalgia
"I am a human
being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. Zionism was an
instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to
the Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who
said that the Zionist movement was the scaffolding to
build the home, and that after the state's establishment
it should be dismantled." Ari Shavit?s
interview with Avrum Burg Interview: Leaving the Zionist
Ghetto,
Haaretz. What
is left for the Tzabar to identify with? Not much, so it
seems: the land on which he lives belongs to some other
people. The food which makes him feel at home (humus and
falafel) is hijacked from those same other people, i.e.,
the Palestinians. The language which he employs when he
is emotionally moved (either very happy or very angry) is
Arabic and it is borrowed again from - guess who? - the
very same 'other people', the Palestinians. The home in
which he dwells was built by those other people? - I
think you know who they are, yes, the Palestinians.
It is rather apparent
that the core of the Hebraic cultural realty, the slang,
the food, the blue sky, the sea, the desert, the spring
and the autumn, the hills and the valleys, the olive
trees, all belong to the land (Palestine) rather than the
swelling apartheid State that seized it momentarily
(Israel).
What could the
Israelis do to escape their fragmented unauthentic
reality in which everything that may look like 'home'
actually belongs to those 'other people'?
Those who visit Israel
learn the answer just a few minutes after they land in
Tel Aviv: cosmopolitanism and Western liberal glamour is
the Israeli answer. The Israelis deal with their hopeless
craving for authenticity by multiplying the symptoms of
their inherent detachment.
New visitors to Tel
Aviv are occasionally astonished by the cultural multiple
choice the town is there to offer. Tel Aviv is indeed one
of the most ?open? cities in the world. You can find
every Western fashion brand and American food chain
there. Every rock star and pop act integrates Israel into
its world tour schedule. In some of Tel Aviv's leading
restaurants you can have Sushi for a starter, Hungarian
Goulash as a secondo, French entrecote for the
main course and Baklava for desert. I learned recently
that Tel Aviv is not only a 'sex attraction' but as well
the next ?gay capital
of the world?.
This is indeed very encouraging to learn that in between
the humus and the falafel the Tzabar can grab a sashimi
and indulge in some highly advanced socio-erotic activity
according to his very personal choice. This may as well
be the ultimate form of freedom that the 'Jews-only
State' can offer: cosmopolitanism soaked in some advanced
Western libidinal liberalism.
Yet, Israel, the
libidinal, liberal, 'only democracy in the Middle East'
is engaged as well in some very different sinister
practices. In spite of the Israelis embodying the
ultimate manifestation of Western broadmindedness, in
spite of their 'culinary openness', they are also
starving millions of human beings to death, namely the
Palestinian people. In spite of the fact that the
Israelis invested some real effort into turning Tel Aviv,
their cultural capital, into a 'town with no boundaries',
Gaza City is a now a boundary with no town. It is a huge
concentration camp, held back by repeated curfews and
shattered by constant artillery barrages and military
raids. Israel has turned Palestinian towns into large
urban prisons that are surrounded by barbed wire,
watchtowers and guard posts.
We are left to ask
ourselves, how is it that the people who are so immersed
in 'cosmopolitanism', 'multi-culturalism' and Western
liberal ideology are so sinister towards the indigenous
population of the land? How should we fit the exclusive
inclination towards segregation reflected by a gigantic
apartheid wall together with the liberal self-image
peppered with 'culinary openness'? How do we fit the
devious tactics employed against the Palestinians
together with the poetic Israeli self-image of being an
enlightened humanist nation? How do we fit the 'Israeli
Shalom seeking' together with 'security walls'?
We may have to admit
that we are dealing here with a severe form of
fragmentation that is on the verge of collective
Schizophrenia. I would argue that here we are confronting
an inevitable collision between 'Memory' and 'Nostalgia'.
Memory is realised as
the ability to store, retain and retrieve information.
Memory refers to the factual recognised past and its
actual interpretation. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is
the wish of returning to the ?native land?. Nostalgia is
usually accompanied by the fear of never seeing it again.
To a certain extent, Nostalgia is the yearning for the
unfulfilled past.
The clash between
Memory and Nostalgia is of the essence of the Israeli
fragmented reality. The Tzabar is torn between the
inclination to see himself as the protagonist in the
serial episode of 'Sex and the City', as much as
his memory takes him to his last visit to London, Paris,
New York and Tokyo. Nostalgically, he is back in the
Ghetto, surrounded by 'security walls' and soaked in
chicken soup.
The yearning for the
Ghetto could be explored in what the Israelis regard as 'Shalom
seeking'. Though Shalom is often translated into
'peace', it has almost nothing in common with peace. When
Israelis talk about 'Shalom' they do not refer to
reconciliation, harmony or the transformation of their
society into an ecumenical community based on universal
values. When Israelis seek 'Shalom' what they mean
is (their) 'security'. This is why Israelis and their
supporters in the West interpret 'unilateral
disengagement' as a 'Shalom seeking' move. While
peace refers to the genuine search for love, harmony and
brotherhood, Shalom means pretty much the opposite:
separation and segregation. While peace means coming out
of one's shell and opening one's heart to one's
neighbour, Shalom means the erection of a
'security fence' and the emergence of some deep
collective loathing towards the rest of the universe.
Yet, this bizarre
Hebraic interpretation of the notion of Shalom is far
from being an Israeli creation. As I mentioned before, Shalom
expresses the nostalgic yearning for the European Ghetto.
Already in 1897, in
his famous speech to the First Zionist Congress, Max Nordau conveyed some real explicit longing
for the 'long lost Ghetto':
'The Ghetto' was for the Jew of the past not a
prison, but a refuge. ?In the Ghetto, the Jew had his own
world; it was to him the sure refuge which had for him
the spiritual and moral value of a parental home. Here
were associates by whom one wished to be valued, and also
could be valued; here was the public opinion to be
acknowledged by which was the aim of the Jew's ambition?.Here
all specific Jewish qualities were esteemed, and through
their special development that admiration was to be
obtained which is the sharpest spur to the human mind. ?.The
opinion of the outside world had no influence, because it
was the opinion of ignorant enemies. One tried to please
one's co-religionists, and their applause was the worthy
contentment of his life. So did the Ghetto Jews live, in
a moral respect, in a real full life. Their external
situation was insecure, often seriously endangered. But
internally they achieved a complete development of their
specific qualities. They were human beings in harmony,
who were not in want of the elements of normal social
life. They also felt instinctively the whole importance
of the Ghetto for their inner life, and therefore, they
had the one sole care: to make its existence secure
through invisible walls which were much thicker and
higher than the stone walls that visibly shut them in.
All Jewish buildings and habits unconsciously pursued
only one purpose: to keep up Judaism by separation from
the other people and to make the individual Jew
constantly aware of the fact that he was lost and would
perish if he gave up his specific character.
Clearly, this old
speech expresses the current Israeli innermost desire.
For the Israeli,
living within 'security walls' is 'not a prison, but a
refuge'. ?In Israel, the Tzabar has 'his own
world'. In Israel, the opinion of the 'outside world' has
'no influence', because it is the 'opinion of ignorant
enemies'. Nordau expresses the exact spirit that led
Ben-Gurion half a century later to say ?It doesn?t matter
what the Gentiles say, what matters is what the Jews do.?
In his speech, Nordau
speaks about the spiritual asset of the Ghetto, which
makes Jew feel 'secure through invisible walls which were
much thicker and higher than the stone walls that visibly
shut them in.' May I suggest here that it is this very
insight that explains the astonishing physical measures
of the Israeli 'apartheid wall'? Yet, while Nordau
referrers to ?invisible? walls, the Israeli 'defence
wall' is rather visible and it is made out of grey
reinforced concrete.
As much as the Israeli
craves celebrating his imaginary cosmopolitan liberal
reality, as much as he wants to enjoy sex in a big city
by recalling his short-term memory, the nostalgic
yearning drops him back into a bowl of steaming 'chicken
soup' in a very small Shtetl. He is longing for a
'secure' Jewish life and it is this yearning that
transforms the 'Jews-only State' into an inflammatory
Ghetto. Yet, unlike the old European Ghetto, where Jews
were rather timid, our contemporary Israeli Shtetl
is a belligerent, expansionist, nuclear superpower.
We may also have to
admit that the Tzabar has failed to generate a
homogeneous reality in which a new civilized being is
reclaiming his place in humanity based on harmony and
peace. As much as Zionism was there to create a new
authentic Jew, it led to the emergence of a commune of
fragmented beings shattered by the inevitable collision
between the short-term cosmopolitan memory and the tribal
clannish nostalgia.
The Tzabar
and the Sabbar
A friend who returned
from Palestine a few weeks ago was kind enough to share
his impressions with me. On his journey from Jerusalem to
Ramallah he noticed that the Israelis invested some real
effort into turning the Israeli side the wall into an
'architectural feature'. In places it was largely tiled
and decorated with Jerusalem stone and with flowers, in
other parts artists created some pastoral imagery of
landscapes, lakes and olive trees. The Israelis also
raised the ground near to the wall on their side just to
make the wall look smaller and friendly. However, once my
friend crossed the checkpoint towards the Palestinian
side, the full disturbing physical scale of the wall was
impossible to ignore. He saw a gigantic grey concrete
wall measuring eight to ten meters high now invading the
skyline of what is left of Palestine.
I thought about it for
a while. I basically reflected about Nordau?s notion of
the Ghetto and his duality between 'prison' and 'refuge'.
And I grasped that as much as the Israelis are inclined
to lock the Palestinians behind walls, the Israeli
apartheid wall was also nothing less than a
self-inflicted imprisonment that the Jewish State imposed
upon itself. Within the Zio-centric discourse set by
Nordau: prison equals refuge.
Consequently, the
Tzabar is nothing less than a tragedy. He was doomed to
failure. The Tzabar was there to erect
the new Hebraic Ghetto, he was there to repair the trauma
of abandonment of the old Jewish Ghetto which was a
result of European enlightenment and the trend towards
Jewish emancipation. The Tzabar was
set to become a new 'civilized being'. Indeed mission
impossible, it aimed simultaneously towards two polar
opposites: universalism as well hardcore tribalism.
Apparently, the seeds of the Israeli apartheid and the
foundations of the 'security wall' were established
already in the First Zionist Congress.
However, as much as
the Tzabar exposes himself as an aggressor and as
a self-inflicted historical tragic entity, it is pretty
clear that not many people fully understand the
conceptual and ideological depth behind that deeply
charged word, namely Tzabar. The Hebrew word tzabar
is derived from the Arabic word Sabbar, which is
the name for the "prickly pear" cactus that is scattered all over rural
Palestine. The allusion is to a tenacious, thorny desert
plant with a thick hide that conceals a sweet, softer
juicy and tasty interior. Israeli-born Jews who call
themselves Tzabar are there to insist upon
regarding themselves as "tough on the outside, yet
sweet and tender on the inside".
The Memory of Land
This very image of the
Israeli native Jew as a duality between 'toughness' and
'sweetness' is now reflected in the topography of the
region. The prickly walls that shred Palestine into
Bantustans are there to protect the sweet juicy image of
'cosmopolitan' Tel Aviv. Tragically, the landscape of
shredded Palestine is now a reflection of the Tzabar
self-image and an extension of his identity. Israeli
aggression towards its neighbours together with
self-proclaimed righteousness is nothing but a reflection
of the 'tough and the sweet' fantasy.
Seemingly, Israelis
insist upon regarding themselves as 'sweet and juicy'. At
the end of the day, self-loving has made it into the
Jewish common stereotype more than a while ago (as
opposed to self-hating, a quality that is attributed
solely to the odd Jewish humanists and thinkers). Yet,
out of Israel, some people share some serious doubts
regarding the sweetness and the juiciness of the Israeli
and the Tzabar. We have recently learned that Israeli
ministers and IDF officers are now formally advised to
refrain from making overseas journeys just to avoid
arrests for crimes against humanity.
However, there is
something that even the majority of the Tzabars
don't know. It is all about the symbolism of the cactus
they are so happy to be called after. This very prickly
pear cactus, actually symbolises the Israeli robbery of
Palestine.
The Sabbar
cactus is actually one of the last remnants of old
Palestine on the ground. The Sabbar cactus grows
in proximity to areas of human settlement, it is
nourished by human waste. The Sabbar was an integral
part of the Palestinian villages rustic landscape. It was an inherent part of
the Palestinian life cycle. Though Israel has managed to
erase the traces of the entirety of pre-1948 Palestinian
villages and rural life, the Sabbars came back
soon after. Wherever you see a cactus in this land, you
are more than entitled to deduce that a Palestinian
village, farm or a house had been wiped out. The Sabbars
are indeed prickly. Yet, their spikes are pointing at the
Tzabars who colonise the land and erased its
history in the name of Jewish history.
For Palestine (the
Land) and Palestinians (the People), the Sabbars are far
from being nostalgia, they are subject to short memory
and a lively present. They are there on the stolen land
craving for the Palestinian Falahs who nourished them all throughout
history. They are there on the land maintaining the
history of the Palestinian villages. They are there
loaded with fruit, awaiting Palestinian kids to come and
grab their pears.
As much as the Tzabar
proclaims to be 'tough and sweet', the Sabbar is
there to depict the facts on the ground:
Palestine is a piece
of Land, Israel and the Tzabar are just another
passing moment in a phantasmic Jewish heroic phase. This
phase is now entering its final stage and it will be
coming to an end very soon.
The
musician, writer and activist, Israeli-born Gilad Atzmon,
lives permanently in Great Britain, where he defends the
cause of the liberation of the Palestinian people. His
most recent novel is My One and Only Love and his most
recent recording is Refuge. His site is http://www.gilad.co.uk.
The
illustrator of ?The Memory of Land?, Spanish-born Juan
Kalvellido is a member of Cubadebate, Rebeli?n and Tlaxcala. His site is http://www.kalvellido.net.
This
article is also available on
Tlaxcala in an Italian translation by Diego
Traversa and a Spanish translation by
Manuel Talens also on Rebelion.
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