Gilad Atzmon - Activism

Activism

Gilad Atzmon's service as a paramedic in the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War caused him to conclude that "I was part of a colonial state, the result of plundering and ethnic cleansing." He told an interviewer that it was there he first learned about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, legislation to prevent their return, and the wiping out of Palestinian villages. “We were indoctrinated into a denial of the Palestinian Cause. We were not aware of it.”

Atzmon supports the Palestinian right of return and the one-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Music journalists have commented on the link between Atzmon’s jazz and radical politics. Peter Bacon has written that Atzmon reminds us of "the strong link between jazz and the radical politics that are sometimes the only way to ensure its – and our – freedom." Chris Searle's book entitled Forward Groove: Jazz and the Real World from Louis Armstrong to Gilad Atzmon, which chronicles the development of jazz alongside political protest movements, holds that "the torch continues to be carried by contemporary musicians such as Israeli-born alto saxman Gilad Atzmon who dreams of a free and united Palestine." Atzmon’s activism has included conducting musical fundraisers, contributing to activist publications, and speaking engagements. In 2010 he appeared on the Russian RT television network to speak about the Israeli raid on the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla".

Atzmon has defined himself variously as a "secular Jew", a "proud self-hating Jew", an "ex-Jew""a Jew who hates Judaism" and "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian." Atzmon told interviewer Theo Panayides “I don’t write about politics, I write about ethics. I write about Identity. I write a lot about the Jewish Question – because I was born in the Jew-land, and my whole process in maturing into an adult was involved with the realisation that my people are living on stolen land.” Atzmon has said that his experience in the military of “my people destroying other people left a big scar” and led to his decision that he was deluded about Zionism. He has condemned “Jewishness” as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency". He states that "I don't have anything against Jews in particular and you won't find that in my writings." Regarding the one-state solution, Atzmon concedes that such a state probably would be controlled by Islamists, but says, "That's their business."

Atzmon has compared the Jewish Ideology to that of the Nazis and has described Israel's policy toward the Palestinians as genocide. David Hirst, in his 2003 book The Gun and the Olive Branch, quotes Atzmon as saying America was “about to lose its sovereignty...becoming a remote colony of an apparently far greater state, the Jewish state.” In 2009 Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cited Atzmon's written comment "Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty" during a debate with Israeli president Shimon Peres.