Book Review of Gilad Atzmon’s “The Wandering Who”

Elias Davidsson, November 16, 2011

A compendium to Mein Kampf

At the outset, the author, whose main qualities are neither modesty nor civility, makes sure to inform the reader about his courage and fame as a jazz saxophone player. His book, presented as an essay on Jewish identity politics, is essentially a fraud. The object of the book is to demonstrate the existence of a global Zionist network, that according to the author determines U.S. foreign and domestic policy, in short a network whose purpose and effect is world domination.

The author makes it clear at the outset that he rejects the view of Zionism as a national, colonial movement for a Jewish State in the Middle East. Under the subheading Zionism, a Global Network, he writes: “Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity of third category members (…) While in its early days, Zionism presents itself as an attempt to bring the world Jewry to Zion, in the last three decades it has become clear to the Zionist leadership that Israel would actually benefit from world Jewry, and especially the Jewish elite, staying exactly where they are.” (page 19). Adolf Hitler reveals a similar view in his book Mein Kampf: “For [a] while Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb “Goyim”. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states.” Hitler then goes on to describe the nefarious machinations of this Jewish world cabal.

Rejecting the common view of Zionism as a nationalist ideology, the author presents Zionism as a headless, amorphous “organismus” (German in the original): “It is more than likely that `Jews’ do not have a centre or headquarters. It is more than likely that they aren’t aware of their particular role within the entire system, the way an organ is not aware of its role within the complexity of the organism….Looking at Zionism as an organismus (sic) would lead to a major shift in our perspective of current world affairs.”(page 21). The author appears to have borrowed the German term organismus from Hitler, who used it in Mein Kampf to designate the organic nature of a state. Borrowing again from Mein Kampf, the author asks in all innocence: “How did America allow itself be ENSLAVED by ideologies inherently associated with foreign [Zionist] interests”? (page 26 – emphasis added). In Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly warned against the “enslavement” of the German nation by world Jewry.

The idea of a Zionist organismus or network appears widely throughout the book. Here another example: “Within the Zionist network there is no need for a lucid system of hegemony. In such a network, each element is complying with its role. And indeed the success of Zionism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (page 69) By such description, the author establishes the appearance of an amorphous but well synchronized functional entity that must necessarily possess a brain. Other would simply call it a secret organization.

The author reveals his desperate efforts to demonstrate the existence of such organismus and its responsibility for the initiation of wars of aggression when he arbitrarily selects three leading American Jews, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Alan Greenspan, to represent, as it were, this “collective functioning system”, or as he prefers to call it “third category brotherhood”, an expression that he equates with “racial solidarity” and with “Zionism” (page 21).

Ascribing perfidy to Wolfowitz and his friends, Iraqis are described by the author “as the victims of those third category INFILTRATORS within British and American administrations” (emphasis added). The Bush administration is said to have “complied” with Wolfowitz’s political philosophy (page 25), implying that he had the power to coerce the Bush administration, which duly “complied”. The author makes it clear that according to him the former two individuals are part of a group of Zionist infiltrators who are responsible for the Iraq war: “THEY planned to rob the Arab oil and to simultaneously `secure’ their beloved Jewish state.”(page 26 – emphasis added).

The author asks in what appears as contrived innocence: “How is it that America failed to restrain its Wolfowitzes? How is it that America let its foreign policy be shaped by some ruthless Zio[nist]-driven think tanks?”(page 27). But he does not provide an answer. Had he attempted to answer his own question, he would have had to inquire why the numerous American billionaires and board members of the largest US corporations, including Boeing, Enron, Halliburton, and IBM, did not oppose this alleged Zionist perfidy, if the Zionist plans were contrary to their interests. The inference left unexpressed by the author is, that absent Zionist infiltration, the US ruling circles would not have attacked Iraq (or Panama, or Grenada, or Afghanistan, or Libya) and that US imperialism is actually a Jewish enterprise.

A similar, yet somehow less successful effort, is undertaken by the author to impute to Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, a plan to manufacture the credit crunch and defraud the American people, in order to serve Israel. In order to emotionally prepare the reader for such insinuations, the author mentions, in passing, that Jewish bankers have had a “reputation” as “backers and financiers of wars and even [of] one communist revolution.”(page 27) This casual remark is clearly intended to suggest that Alan Greenspan – by virtue of his Jewish background – is also one of these perfidious bankers. After making these highly suggestive remarks regarding Alan Greenspan, but sensing the danger that readers might regard him as peddling the idea of a “Zionist plot or even a Jewish conspiracy” to defraud America, he says that the US credit crunch was after all nothing but “an accident”.(page 30)

Readers who have not read Atzmon’s writings before, might be surprised to discover that he spends inordinate efforts to discredit anti-Zionist leftist groups such as “Jews Against Zionism” and “Jews for Justice in Palestine”(page 62), i.e. groups who oppose Israeli policies and support Palestinian rights in the name of Jews. For him, such groups exemplify a pathological clinging to Jewish identity. The author takes issue with a long defunct Jewish organisation in Tsarist Russia, the Bund, which opposed Zionism and attempted to represent the interests of Jewish workers. Another defunct organisation that appears to greatly bother the author is the leftist, socialist Israeli organisation Matzpen, one of the first ones to oppose Zionism and the occupation of Palestinian lands. The author writes, under the sub-heading “Matzpen and Wolfowitz”: “For the Matzpenist, to liberate Arabs is to turn them into Bolsheviks; the neocon [who attacked Iraq] is actually slightly more modest – all he wants is for Arabs to drink their Coca-Cola in a Westernized democratic society” (page 108). Leaving aside the absurdity of the claim that Matzpen intended or had the capacity to “liberate Arabs” or turn them into Bolsheviks and that the primary aim of U.S. imperialists is to make Arabs drink Coca-Cola, he reveals hereby his deep hatred towards Jewish socialists and his shallow understanding of imperialism.

Not content to lambast Jewish socialists, the author cites approvingly Karl Marx who believed that “in order for the world to liberate itself from Capitalism it had better emancipate itself from the Jews.” (page 115) The author then writes: “Within the modern Jewish national and political context, Jews kill and rob…[T]he progressive Jew [robs] in the name of `Marx'”(page 123) For Adolf Hitler Marxism was actually a Jewish theory.

The reader will probably be shocked to discover that the author – who claims to support Palestinian rights – actually rejects the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because “it impedes an authentic moral exercise” and because it “fails to provide answers to some different questions that arise as we proceed in time and live through some dramatic changes.”(page 63) He does not explain what he means by these laconic statements and does not appear to base his opposition to racism and to Zionism on any normative ground.

While showing no interest for rights, norms or principles, the author displays a surprising interest in Holocaust Denial: “65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we (…) should ask for historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws.”(pages 174-175). He does not reveal what should be asked and why. Is the author doubting that Jews were industrially exterminated by the Nazis? Or does he believe that the Jews themselves organized the Holocaust? He also suggests that we ask “Why were the Jews hated” (page 174), leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. And lest we will not heed his advice, the author admonishes us that should we fail to ask the above questions “we will continue to kill in the name of Jewish suffering.”(page 176).

As these glimpses demonstrate, this is a book that deals primarily with the concept of a Jewish (or Zionist) global and omnipotent conspiracy, notwithstanding the author’s objection that there is no such conspiracy, because Jewish control is exercised openly. The German elite used successfully the deadly myth of a Jewish world conspiracy to divert anti-capitalist sentiment and prevented thereby a Socialist revolution. The price was paid by millions of deaths. This book might one day serve the same purpose for the U.S. elite, particularly as it is written by a bona fide Jew and Israeli. It purports to offer evidence that Israeli agents in the garb of American citizens had for decades manipulated and deceived patriotic Americans, politicians, public officials, journalists and others, to act against the interests of America. In that sense, this book represents a danger both to ordinary Jews and to those who oppose U.S. imperialism. The book is not recommended for the general public.