Professor John Mearsheimer is subject to a Zionist-trans-Atlantic-attack for supporting my latest bookThe Wandering Who.
Earlier this year John Mearsheimer, the highly respected international relations theorist and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, wrote the following preliminary front matter for my book:
‘Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it increasingly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of their ‘Jewishness.’ Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism (blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering (the threat of another Holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim. As Atzmon’s own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish. The Wandering Who? should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.’
It seems as if the Zio-cons on both sides of the pond are now in a state of panic — In an obviously orchestrated attack, the Zionist mouthpiece The Jewish Chronicle of London, the Islamophobic Award winning ‘Harry’s Place’ and the ex-Israeli concentration camp guard Jeffrey Goldberg* , all launched a typical Hasbara smear & intimidation campaign, in which they labeled both Professor Mearsheimer and myself anti Semites. I was also called a ‘neo Nazi’, a ‘Hitler apologist,’ a ‘Holocaust denier’ and a ‘hatemonger’.
To be honest, it is somewhat amusing that an ex concentration camp guard like Goldberg should label me a ‘Hitler apologist’ or a ‘Holocaust denier’: after all, since Goldberg is an ardent pro-war Zionist who openly and enthusiastically supports a Jews-only, racist, expansionist state, it is clear that he is actually the one who is an advocate of a distinctly Nazi-like ideology and practice.
In addition, I learned from Goldberg that Adam Holland (yet another notorious Zionist zealot), also cannot quite believe that Professor’ Mearsheimer would endorse my book.
Adam Holland wrote: “I had trouble believing that a distinguished professor at one of the world’s greatest universities would link himself to a hatemonger like Atzmon. So I sent Professor Mearsheimer an email quoting the blurb and asking him to verify its accuracy. I also gave him an opportunity to amend it or add to it. Here’s what he ( Mearsheimer) wrote back:
“The blurb below is the one I wrote for ‘The Wandering who’ and I have no reason to amend it or embellish it, as it accurately reflects my view of the book.” John J. Mearsheimer
What is clear to the rest of us is that our Zionist detractors are fighting a lost battle. I really wonder what they hope to achieve: after all, those who have taken the time to actually read my work know very well that there is no hatred, no anti Semitism, and no racism in my entire body of work. Instead, I believe that truth is a dynamic process – I believe in the power of reason and in free debate.
If Jeffrey Goldberg has any dignity left at all, then he should start again — He should apologise to Professor Mearsheimer, myself, the Palestinians, and to humanity. He would do better to also try to present an argument, and if he actually has anything to say, he would be best advised to then learn how to argue and encounter in debate.
* In the light of Goldberg’s smears on both myself and Professor Mearsheimer, it is worth bearing in mind that Jeffrey Goldberg decided to make Aliya when he was eighteen: he left America for Israel, joined the IDF and served as a prison guard in an Israeli concentration camp during the First Intifada.
Middle East atemporal 
The Holocaust Religion
„Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant orthodox Jew, told me once: „The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from the Holocaust.” (Uri Avnery[3])
Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew University professor, was probably the first to suggest that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. ‘The Holocaust’ is far more than historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come).
It has its commandments and dogmas (‘never again’, ‘six million’, etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.).
It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and now the UN). If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman Finkelstein).
Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent enough to define the new ‘antichrists’ (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws).
Critical scholars who dispute the notion of ‘Holocaust religion’ suggest that though the new emerging religion retains many characteristics of an organised religion, it doesn’t establish an external God figure to point at, to worship or to love. I myself cannot agree less. I insist that the Holocaust religion embodies the essence of the liberal democratic worldview.
It is there to offer a new form of worshiping. It made self loving into a dogmatic belief in which the observant follower worships himself. In the new religion it is ‘the Jew’ whom the Jews worship. It is all about ‘me’, the subject of endless suffering who makes it into redemption.
However, more than a few Jewish scholars in Israel and abroad happen to accept Leibowitz’s observation. Amongst them is Marc Ellis, the prominent Jewish theologian who suggests a revealing insight into the dialectic of the new religion. „Holocaust theology,” says Ellis, „yields three themes that exist in dialectical tension: suffering and empowerment, innocence and redemption, specialness and normalization.”[4]
Though Holocaust religion didn’t replace Judaism, it gave Jewishness a new meaning. It sets a modern Jewish narrative allocating the Jewish subject within a Jewish project. It allocates the Jew a central role within his own self-centred universe. The ‘sufferer’ and the ‘innocent’ are marching towards ‘redemption’ and ‘empowerment’. God is obviously out of the game, he is fired, he has failed in his historic mission, he wasn’t there to save the Jews. Within the new religion the Jew becomes ‘the Jews’ new God’, it is all about the Jew who redeems himself.
The Jewish follower of the Holocaust religion idealises the condition of his existence. He then sets a framework of a future struggle towards recognition. For the Zionist follower of the new religion, the implications seem to be relatively durable. He is there to ‘schlep’ the entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the project is slightly more complicated.
For him redemption means setting a new world order, namely a socialist haven. A world dominated by dogmatic working class politics in which Jews happen to be no more than just one minority amongst many. For the humanist observant, Holocaust religion means that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the struggle against racism, oppression and evil in general.
Though it sounds promising, it happens to be problematic because of obvious reasons. In our current world order it is Israel and America that happen to be amongst the leading oppressive evils. Expecting Jews to be in the forefront of humanist struggle sets Jews in a fight against their brethren and their supportive single superpower. However, It is rather clear that all three Holocaust churches assign the Jews a major project with some global implications.
***
As we can see, the Holocaust functions as an ideological interface. It provides its follower with a logos. On the level of consciousness, it suggests a purely analytical vision of the past and present, yet, it doesn’t stop just there, it also defines the struggle to come. It defines a vision of a Jewish future. Nevertheless, as a consequence it fills the Jewish subject’s unconsciousness with the ultimate anxiety: the destruction of the ‘I’.
Needless to say, a faith that stimulates the consciousness (Ideology) and steers the unconsciousness (Spirit) is a very good recipe for a winning religion. This structural bond of ideology and spirit is fundamental to the Judaic tradition. The bond between the legal clarity of the halacah (ideology) and the mysteriousness of Jehovah or even Kabala (spirit) makes Judaism into a totality, a universe in itself.
Bolshevism, the mass movement rather than the political theory, is built upon the same structure, the lucidity of pseudo-scientific materialism together with the fear of the capitalistic appetite. Neoconservative’s politics of fear is again all about locking the subject in the chasm between the alleged forensic lucidity of WMDs and the inexpressible fright of ‘terror to come’.
This very bond between consciousness and unconsciousness brings to mind the Lacanian notion of the ‘real’. The ‘real’ is that which cannot be symbolized i.e., expressed in words. The real is the ‘inexpressible’, the inaccessible. In Zizek’s words, ‘the real is impossible’, ‘the real is the trauma’. Nevertheless, it is this trauma that shapes the symbolic order. It is the trauma that forms our reality.
The Holocaust religion fits nicely into the Lacanian model. Its spiritual core is rooted deeply within the domain of the inexpressible. Its preaching teaches us to see a threat in everything. It is the ultimate conjunction between the ideology and the spirit that has materialised into sheer pragmatism.
Interestingly enough, the Holocaust religion extends far beyond the internal Jewish discourse. In fact the new religion operates as a mission. It sets shrines in far lands. As we can see, the emerging religion is already becoming a new world order. It is the Holocaust that is now used as an alibi to nuke Iran[5].
Clearly, Holocaust religion serves the Jewish political discourse both on the right and left but it appeals to the Goyim as well, especially those who are engaged in merciless killing ‘in the name of freedom'[6]. To a certain extent we are all subject to this religion, some of us are worshipers, others are just subject to its power.
Interestingly enough, those who deny the Holocaust are themselves subject to abuse by the high priests of this religion. Holocaust religion constitutes the Western ‘Real’. We are not allowed to touch it or to look into it. Very much like the Israelites who are entitled to obey their God but never to question him.
***
The Scholars who are engaged in the study of the Holocaust religion (theology, ideology and historicity), are engaged mainly with structural formulations, its meanings, its rhetoric and its historical interpretation. Some happen to search for the theological dialectic (Marc Ellis), others formulate the commandments (Adi Ofir), some learn its historical evolution (Lenni Brenner), other expose its financial infrastructure (Finkelstein).
Interestingly enough, most scholars who are engaged in the subject of Holocaust religion are engaged with a list of events that happened between 1933-1945. Most of the scholars are themselves orthodox observants. Though they may be critical of different aspects of the exploitation of the Holocaust, they all accept the validity of the Nazi Judeocide and its mainstream interpretations and implications.
Most of the scholars, if not all of them, do not challenge the Zionist narrative, namely Nazi Judeocide, yet, more than a few are critical of the way Jewish and Zionist institutes employ the Holocaust. Though some may dispute the numbers (Shraga Elam), and others question the validity of memory (Ellis, Finkelstein), no one goes as far as revisionism, not a single Holocaust religion scholar dares engage in a dialogue with the so-called ‘deniers’ to discuss their vision of the events or any other revisionist scholarship.
Far more interesting is the fact that none of the Holocaust religion scholars have spent any energy studying the role of the Holocaust within the long-standing Jewish continuum. From this point onward, I will maintain that Holocaust religion was well established a long time before the Final Solution (1942), well before the Kristalnacht (1938), well before the Nuremberg Laws (1936), well before the first anti-Jewish law was announced by Nazi Germany, well before the American Jewish Congress declared a financial war against Nazi Germany (1933) and even well before Hitler was born (1889). The Holocaust religion is probably as old as the Jews.
AICI
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