MAY 2007
Gilad
Atzmon - Jazz and Jihad: the discourse of solidarity
Speech given at University of Denver,
13 April 2007
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
For many years I
considered America as my promised land. As a young Jazz
musician I was pretty convinced that sooner or later I
would end up living in NYC. My Jerusalem was Downtown
Manhattan and of course my holy scriptures were the old
Blue Note vinyls. My Rabbis were named Coltrane, Bird,
Miles, Duke, Dizzy, Bill Evans and naturally, there were
many others. I was convinced of this reality for a while,
and in fact, it took time before I realised that Jazz was
far more than mere music. It took a while before I
gathered that Jazz was something else, that it was
actually a form of resistance. Nowadays I realise that
Jazz is no different from Jihad, accordingly, playing
Jazz is my personal Jihad. I do grasp that some people in
this room may already find my ideas nostalgic, some may
even be convinced that I am either totally deluded or
just out of my mind. I can live with it. I do realise
that ‘things have changed’, they’ve
changed for you as much as they’ve changed for me. I
do realise that Jazz is not exactly a form of resistance
anymore. May I mention that America isn’t my
promised land either. In fact, at the time of writing
this talk, I wasn’t even sure whether I would be
allowed entry into your country. As much as Jazz, the
classical music of America, has been a call for freedom,
America is not a free place anymore. I often argue that
before liberating others, it is the American people who
should first liberate themselves. I am pretty sure that
sooner or later they will.
Iraq, Afghanistan
and Palestine
I have been
participating in some public debates lately concerning
the common denominator between Palestine, Iraq and
Afghanistan. I’m glad to mention that it is rather
noticeable that more and more people are now happy to
admit what some of us realised years ago. The
Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghanis are paying a
very dear price for the Ziocentric shift within the
Anglo-American decision-makers circuit. Seemingly, Iraq,
Afghanistan and Palestine are just the aperitif for an
endless feast. The Ziocons have some big appetite to
satisfy. The same lobbies that led America towards this
disastrous invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan are now doing
whatever they can to push America towards intervention in
Iran and Syria. For those few who still fail to realise
it, America has been operating officially as an Israeli
mission force. It currently fights the last sovereign
pockets of Muslim resistance.
Often enough, the true
aim of the Zionist lobbies is concealed. Instead the
Zionist lobbies promote some righteous phoney
humanitarian alternatives. The American Jewish Committee
(AJC), for instance, is aggressively lobbying against
human rights abuse in Iran and Darfur. Since human rights
issues are really close to my heart, I find myself
wondering whether the Jewish organisation shouldn’t
rather be concentrating on the colossal war crimes that
are daily repeated by Israel in Palestine. Rather
occasionally we read about AIPAC equating Iran and Syria
with Nazi Germany. Again, someone should remind the
Zionist lobbyists that actually it is Israel, the
“Jews Only State”, that happens to be the one
and only ideological remnant of racist nationalism.
Three weeks ago the
Palestine Chronicle made an on-line poll (http://www.palestinechronicle.com/). It asked
the following question.‘Does the Israel Lobby
control US policy on the Middle East?’
Needless to mention,
no one would even have dared raising such a question five
years ago. Now this question is asked repeatedly and as
it seems, people aren’t shying off from telling what
they really think. 80% said yes, 15% said no, and 4% were
not sure. Looking at these results points to the reality
many want us to deny. The vast majority of
English-speaking Palestinians, Palestinian solidarity
campaigners and anti-war activists are now ready to admit
that the Israel Lobby controls US policy in the Middle
East. We are ready to accept the fact that America
operates as an Israeli mission force. America straightens
the line with Israeli interests and sacrifices its sons
and daughters maintaining Israeli regional hegemony.
But here is an
interesting twist. I do not intend to talk to you about
Zionised America. I want to believe that the majority of
Palestinian supporters and anti-war activists in this
room know far more about it than me. I would like to try
taking the discussion further. I would like to elaborate
on the notion of solidarity and empathy.
Those who are familiar
with my writings know that I am not exactly a political
scientist. I am not interested in politics and I am even
far less interested in politicians who, generally
speaking, evoke nothing but a strong sense of repulsion
in me.
Rather than politics
per se, it is humanity and the notion of humanism that I
am interested in. Often I find myself wondering what
being in the world may entail. And I better admit it; I
am puzzled by the fact that as a society, as a collective
bunch of individuals, we have managed to continuously
fail to act for the people of Iraq, Palestine and
Afghanistan. I think that this very collective failure is
in itself an alarming message. Thus, rather than looking
into the crimes committed by Blair, Bush and the Ziocons,
I am becoming gradually interested in the general Western
apathy. To be more precise, I would argue that the common
denominator between Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine is
our collective indifference to a crime that is committed
on our behalf and in our names.
As some of us may
remember, in the days leading to the doomed illegal
invasion of Iraq, the anti-war movement was extremely
successful in mobilizing millions of people into protest.
We saw them in every capital. They were calling Blair and
Bush to withdraw their military plans. Millions of people
questioned the sickening Anglo-American intelligence
hoax. We could all see through the lies, we could all
foresee the emerging crime, we were outraged, and we were
convinced that we were doing the right thing. Yet,
strangely enough, just four years later, with hundreds of
thousands dead, with millions of casualties, with many
millions of displaced people, when it is clear that
everything went as wrong as it possibly could, when it is
openly established that “the danger of Iraq’s
WMDs” was nothing but a lie, not very many care
about it all anymore. Now when the grim prophecy turns
into reality of genocide with no end, we are collectively
sinking into apathy. What are the logos behind this
collective indifference, why did we lose interest? Why
don’t we fight? Why aren’t we a mass movement?
I am not so sure
whether I have the exact answers at my disposal, yet, I
may be able to throw some light on the issue.
Cultural Clash
I am inclined to admit
that the notion of Cultural Clash has indeed some deep
meanings especially when it comes to the discourse of
solidarity. Naturally, we tend to expect the subject of
our solidarity to endorse our views while dumping his
own. As much as Blair and Bush insist upon democratising
the Muslim world, we, the so-called left humanists have
our own various agendas for the region and its people. In
Europe some archaic Marxists are convinced that
‘working class politics’ is the only viable
outlook of the conflict and its solution. Some other
deluded socialists and egalitarians are talking about
liberating the Muslims of their religious traits. The
cosmopolitans within the solidarity movement would
suggest to Palestinians that nationalism and national
identity belongs to the past. Noticeably, many of us love
Muslim and Arabs as long as they act as white,
post-enlightenment Europeans. In other words, we love
Muslims as long as they stop being Muslims.
For those who fail to
realise, I may as well mentioned that ‘working class
politics’ has nothing to do with Palestine, Iraq or
Afghanistan. For those who fail to see the obvious truth,
I may as well mention that the industrial revolution has
never made it to Gaza. Furthermore, the landslide victory
of the Hamas proves beyond doubt that Palestinians are
not exactly on the verge of dropping Islam. The million
Shias that protested in Najaf last Monday were not
exactly secular Arabs either. It is crucial to mention
that the Palestinian struggle is a national struggle. The
million Iraqi Shias who followed their Cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr last Monday were overtly burning American flags
while raising their own Iraqi ones as high as they could.
In other words, we have good reason to believe that they
may hold a consistent and genuine nationalist vision of
their conflict and its resolution. Again, to expect
Palestinians or Iraqis to become secular, cosmopolitan
and working class ideologists is to expect Arabs and
Muslims to act as European Marxists. It has noting to do
with solidarity; it is actually nothing but projection.
We project our solipsistic worldviews on others.
Self-centred
activism
In Lacanian
terminology, love means loving oneself through the other.
At large, our notion of solidarity is not much different:
we run a constant risk of performing solidarity with
ourselves through the suffering of Palestinians and
Iraqis. We are at risk of using Palestinians and Iraqis
as an approval of our greatness. Alternatively I would
suggest that to support the other means to accept
otherness, to accept that which you may never grasp. To
accept otherness is to let in the unknown and the
unfamiliar. To support Palestine is to back the Hamas and
to support Iraq is to back the Iraqi resistance and
liberation struggle. Simply speaking, to show solidarity
is to support and accept other people and their will.
But somehow, instead
of doing just that, in most cases we happen to transform
our subject of solidarity into a fetish. We self indulge
with peace ideologies at the expense of other
people’s pain. We instrumentally use the cry of the
other as a reassurance of our own goodness. This may
explain why so many of us have lost interest in Iraq and
Palestine. If all we are interested in is just making
love to ourselves, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and
Syria are more than replaceable. As it happens, once in a
while we may show up in mass demonstrations and then just
fade away into apathy for a decade or so.
We get away with it
Why do we fade away?
Because we get away with it. Legally speaking, America
and Britain are responsible for the colossal carnage in
Iraq. Bearing in mind the fact that America and Britain
are democracies and adding the embarrassing fact that the
people of these two ‘great democracies’ have
re-elected war criminals, leaves no other option but
admitting a collective guilt. To a certain extent, every
American and British citizen is liable for the crimes in
Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Yet this state
of criminality means very little to most of us. Americans
and Brits at least for the time being simply get away
with it.
America has lost 3,000
of its sons and daughters in the Iraqi war. As much as I
feel sorry for those who lost their beloved, for a
superpower the size of America, such a scale of loss is
nothing but a negligible casualty rate. In comparison, on
D-Day, America lost more or less the same number of
combatants in a few hours. In modern warfare, superpowers
are mainly engaged in killing innocent people from afar.
America doesn’t risk its soldiers. It doesn’t
provide occupied Iraq and Afghanistan with even
elementary security. Seemingly, the American Generals
realise that this would cost lives of their troops. How
come the Americans fail to provide security? They simply
get away with it. Why are we sinking into apathy? More or
less because of the same reason, we get away with it.
A bridge too far
As I am getting to the
end of my talk, I may conclude that supporting Muslims
and Jihad is probably a bridge too far for most
Westerners. The typical Westerner doesn’t know how
to bridge the gap between ‘materialism’ and
‘Jihad’ or between ‘self-loving’ and
‘martyrdom’. We happen to regard our lives as a
precious gift with an immense value. We submitted to the
post-enlightenment notion of individuality and
individualism. Succumbing to the school of orthodox
rationalism we believe in the ultimate power of reason.
We adore science and admire technology. We are
libidinally aroused by electronic gadgets.
Seemingly, spirit and
beauty means very little to us unless attached to a
commodity. In our Americanised reality, existence means
market value. Yet, spirit of resistance and beauty are
invaluable. I may suggest that we will never be able to
fully understand what the Palestinian and Iraqi struggle
means to its people unless we liberate ourselves from our
narrow material vision of reality. We can never grasp
people who sacrifice the ultimate unless we acknowledge
that there is far more to life than just life. We can
never understand Iraqi insurgency and the Palestinian
liberation struggle unless we try to understand what soil
may mean to people who refuse to get drunk on Coca-Cola.
The search for the
meaning of solidarity is a personal issue. I believe that
the meaning of solidarity is probably a very dynamic
notion. I am starting to realise that within the current
structure of affairs, the left who was pretty effective
in mobilizing anti-imperial campaigns for years, may not
provide anything for Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. The
left, being a rational, post-enlightenment outlook, has
its problem to solve with Islam and religious devotion. I
hope that I am wrong here. I can see some isolated
islands of left dialectic thinkers are ready to
acknowledge that Muslim resistance may as well convey an
alternative vision of reality and resistance.
I can speak for
myself. For me, Jihad and Jazz are very similar forms of
commitment. For me, the generations of Black Americans
who sacrificed everything for the sake of beauty and
resistance were actually engaged in a holy war. For me it
was Bird, Max Roach, Dizzy, Coltrane and others who went
far beyond the American dream of materialism and market
value. Jazz was their voice of freedom. Jazz was their
call for a change. Jazz was an ideology, a spirit, and a
way of living as well as dying. To be a Jazz musician is
to fight for beauty, to create and recreate, to construct
and deconstruct, to question while knowing that answers
may not be available for a while. To play Jazz is to get
lost deliberately. To play Jazz is to leave the self
behind.
giladatzmon@mac.com
Jazz and Jihad the discourse
of solidarity
