Opinion Editorials, February 2012

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, February 6, 2012

On January 12TH at a Martin Luther King Birthday Concert I joined the NYC Meeting House Orchestra to perform a set of my music.  The event was the annual fundraiser for a local homeless shelter and it took place at the auditorium of the Friends Seminary, an elite Quaker private school in Lower Manhattan.  The cause was obviously worthy and fully consistent with Quaker values, the house was packed and the concert was a smashing success.

Apparently, some Zionist parents were devastated by my invitation. A few days before the concert, I learned that an Israeli parent was mounting pressure on the Seminary’s management and a day or two before the concert, notorious ethnic cleansing enthusiast Alan Dershowitz joined in. As he himself proudly admits, he relentlessly threatened and harassed the school and its administration.

According to Dershowitz who along the years has gained for himself quite a reputation as a compulsive liar and a plagiarist,  the Friends Seminary has now acknowledged that it ‘was wrong to invite’ me. And also according to Dershowitz, the Quaker Seminar promised to invite representatives of the notorious racist Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Dershowitz himself to address the students about the “dangers of the sort of anti-Semitic hatred spewed by Atzmon.”

So what’s going on here? Is this a desperate attempt by Dershowitz to be funny? After all, how is it possible that a Quaker institute would invite Jewish supremacists to lecture on tolerance towards one group only? Why would a Quaker institute give a platform to an ADL that is interested in the ‘defence’ of one people only? And why would a Quaker institute give a platform to Alan Dershowitz who is advocating the ‘Case of Israel‘  at the expense of the indigenous people of Palestine? I have never come across a single humanist who supported either warmonger Dershowitz or the Zionist ADL so it would be indeed interesting to see a Quaker institute leading such an unusual move.   

Also, the alleged surrender by the Quakers may not be all that it seems. First, it wasn’t the Seminary that invited me it was the teachers within the Seminary who have been following my writing and clearly saw  a continuum and consistency between my texts and Quaker’s philosophy. And why not? I write about universal human and civil rights. I fight for justice for all and I tour around the world educating students (of all ages) about the ‘primacy of the ear’ and the art of listening to others. I oppose supremacy and I preach only tolerance and brotherhood. True, I do indeed openly oppose Jewish political exclusiveness, but my criticism is humanist and founded in ethical and ideological criticism. I do not oppose the Jewish people and I refrain from criticising Judaism.

Living as I do in London and being supported by Quaker institutes in the past, I was initially pretty perplexed by the Zionist influence within the NYC Quaker Seminary. To start with, I couldn’t understand the logic of it. Why would Zionists send their kids to a Quaker school?  Clearly the discrepancy between Quaker pacifism and Zionist militancy must be blindingly obvious to every Jewish nationalist parent.  

However when I visited the Seminary the fog lifted a little. Apparently there is a dispute at NYC Friends Seminary between a management that is striving to survive within a highly competitive educational market and the teachers who are spiritually driven by Quaker philosophy. Also, once in NYC I was pleased to find out that, in accordance with Quaker ideas of inclusiveness, peace and tolerance, the Seminary is sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause and in fact is about to send a mission of students to Palestine this month.  It didn’t take a genius to work out that the Zionist parents who opposed my visit were also opposing the mission to Palestine.

The practicality of the Zionist parents sending their kids to the school is obvious. The expensive, elitist school (around $40.000 a year) is located in Lower Manhattan, an area thickly populated by very rich people, many of them of Jewish origin so, the percentage of Jewish students is pretty high, maybe as high as 40% according to one of the teachers.

But I still can’t work out why Zionist parents - supporters of Israel and promoters of Jewish, nationalist, militant ideology - would send their kids to a tolerant, pacifist school. I mean, surely those parents must loathe Quaker ideals. So how do they get over the ideological divide? Simple. The Zionist parents, in collaboration with warmonger Dershowitz, are now insisting that the school give up on its Quaker principles and start to operate as a Yeshiva. They openly lobby against tolerance,  freedom of expression and relentlessly suppress freedom of speech. As we always knew - in the ‘land of the free’ money can buy everything.  

In fact, what we see here is a microcosm of the Zionification of America. Once Zionist money changes hands, tribal indoctrination will soon follow. The Wall Street Journal confirmed this week that some parents “vowed to pull their applications in protest” unless their demands are met.  The message to the Quaker seminary was clear - surrender or face financial extinction.

The Quaker Seminary is facing a serious challenge here. It has to decide whether to stand up for its precious principles or surrender to mammon seeking and facing total moral bankruptcy. Interestingly enough, America faces the exact same dilemma. It has to choose between a fight for freedom or total surrender to a foreign materialist ideology conveyed by AIPAC, ADL and other Zionist warmongers.

I wish America and the Friends Seminary’s Quakers lots of luck, because in this battle we are all together. We’re all Palestinians seeking liberation.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/the-american-dilemma-by-gilad-atzmon.html

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Ethnic cleanser Advocate Alan Dershowitz cannot take a defeat. He simply cannot get over the fact that a concert of my music at Friends School, NYC two weeks ago, was an outstanding success. In spite of his relentless attempts, Zionist mouthpiece Dershowitz didn’t manage to cancel the fundraiser concert. In the last two weeks, he has been mounting pressure on the school and NYC papers. By now I would expect Dershowitz to acknowledge that growing familiarity with my writing doesn’t serve his cause, for my writing is humanist as opposed to his own tribal supremacist materials.

Dershowitz was quoted saying "If that same orchestra invited David Duke to play saxophone, it would never have happened." As usual I have to correct the compulsive liar Dershowitz. At the NYC Friends Meeting House, I wasn’t just playing saxophone. The Meeting House Orchestra was playing my music. They decided to play my music because of its harmonious and peaceful message. They played my music because my art is an attempt to cross the divide created by Zionists like Dershowitz. As far as I am aware, David Duke is not a saxophonist. However, I really do not understand why Alan Dershowitz believes himself to be morally superior to Duke.  Dershowitz is a Zionist Jewish supremacist, he is a world leading advocate of a racist and expansionist ideology, namely Zionism. And yet, I wouldn’t say no to an invitation for a musical gathering along together with Dershowitz on tuba and Duke playing the trumpet, just because I believe that music brings people together.

According to The Wall Street Journal “Dershowitz threatened to stand outside the school this week and distribute copies of an essay he wrote critiquing Mr. Atzmon's work unless the school took action.”  I do believe that such an action on behalf of Dershowitz would make a wonderful youtube clip. It would be hilarious to see the kids drifting away from the scary Zionist elder.

School Hits Sour Note

http://online.wsj.com/

Friends Seminary Grapples With Musician's Political Views

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER

Most parents at Friends Seminary were unaware of the writings of Gilad Atzmon when they first saw the posters promoting his participation in a Martin Luther King Birthday concert on the school's campus last month.

But over the past two weeks, administrators and parents at the elite Quaker private school in Lower Manhattan have become quick studies after Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz publicly criticized Friends Seminary for inviting a musician he called a "notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier"—accusations that Mr. Atzmon, who was born Jewish, staunchly denies.

The clash sparked days of discussion at a school that prides itself on tolerance and inclusion and launched debates on parenting sites such as UrbanBaby, where some posters vowed to pull their applications in protest.

In a statement provided to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, school officials expressed "regret" over any offense caused and announced they would be establishing new procedures governing guest speakers and performers.

Although the Jan. 12 concert was on the school campus and directed by a teacher, the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra is an independent organization that was using the concert to raise funds for the Friends Shelter, which is also independent and housed on school grounds.

Mr. Atzmon, a saxophonist, played in the concert. But it was his words, not his music, that drew criticism. In his book "The Wandering Who," he labels the recent global credit crisis a "zio-punch" and argues   that if Israel starts a nuclear war with Iran, "some may be bold enough to argue that Hitler might have been right after all."

"It is a reasonable thing to say," Mr. Atzmon said when reached by phone. He added that he hoped this scenario would not come to pass.

He said he's not a Holocaust denier. "Members of my family perished in [World War II]," he said, though he added that he was less interested in the number of people killed during the war than in how "five years after the liberations of Auschwitz, Israel, the Jewish state, established the law of return that is racially driven and categorically not different from the Nuremberg law."

Mr. Atzmon's performance was his second recent appearance at the school; last year he visited a music class and distributed his book's foreword.

The essay describes his growing engagement with jazz and Arab music even as he becomes increasingly disillusioned with Israel and its leaders. While serving a mandatory stint in the Israeli army, "I knew our leaders were lying," he writes. "Every Israeli solder realized this war was an Israeli aggression."

Ultimately, he writes, he came to realize that Palestinians were victims of a "brutal ethnic cleansing" and left the country because Israel was "bad news." Only by overcoming Israel's "supremacist" culture did he come to appreciate Arab music.

The essay "contains material irrelevant to a music class," Friends Seminary said in the statement, adding that officials "regret" it was assigned.

"Friends Seminary is not anti-Semitic and in no way endorses the political views of Gilad Atzmon," the statement reads. "We regret that we offended anyone."

The teacher, who also leads the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra, couldn't be reached for comment.

It was a beginning, said Mr. Dershowitz, who threatened to stand outside the school this week and distribute copies of an essay he wrote critiquing Mr. Atzmon's work unless the school took action.

"If that same orchestra invited David Duke to play saxophone, it would never have happened," Mr. Dershowitz said. Still, he added, "It's moving forward in the right direction."

Alyssa Sadoff, a co-president of the Friends Seminary Parents Association, learned of Mr. Atzmon's participation in the concert the night before, when a parent called her at home. "I didn't know anything about him so I looked into it," she said. "I was certainly not happy."

After several parents approached her with similar concerns, she met with Principal Robert "Bo" Lauder. "I basically questioned how this could possibly have been an appropriate choice for our school community," she said.

In the past two weeks, "many" parents have met privately with Mr. Lauder, she said, and there have been small group meetings with parents and students. "I really do feel like people have moved on from this," she said, adding that she was satisfied with the resolution. "You don't usually have policies until something bad happens and you have to make one."

Write to Sophia Hollander at sophia.hollander@wsj.com

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/made-it-to-the-wall-street-journal.html

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org