I recently made the mistake of purchasing a DVD entitled 'Dylan: Busy Being Born Again - inside Bob Dylan's Jesus years. Dylan is neither a contributor nor a feature. Instead, a number of individuals chunder on about the topic, talking as much about themselves as the supposed feature, and presumably making money out of associating themselves with Dylan.
Most of the contributors appear to be Jewish, including Mitch Glaser who speaks for Jews for Jesus. On the face of it I assumed I was going to hear Jews indicate how they came to Christianity in some form, including their associate Bob Dylan, because it enhanced the limitations of Judaism. Not a bit of it. Their emphasis was on the fact that Jesus and his disciples were Jewish and that therefore it was not they who needed converting but the Gentiles.
What can I say? Without appearing anti-Semitic?
When the man Jesus was baptised in the Jordan something important happened. The spirit of the Christ descended into him. From that moment for the next three years of his life (and his mission) he was no longer Jewish Jesus but the universal Christ on earth. And it showed. The Jewish establishment did not like what he said and what he did at all and became the primary instruments of his crucifixion. They and their followers and descendants certainly needed conversion.
Paul began taking the universal Christ to the world which also needed conversion, and Christianity ceased to be a Jewish cult.
By concentrating on the man Jesus, Jews for Jesus and others are taking a superficial and materialistic view of Christ. The spiritual Christ is non-personal, but so long as you emphasise Jesus you can talk to him with closed eyes as if he is listening in the room next door ready to respond to all your ridiculous and ambitious expectations. To emphasise Jesus rather than the Christ is to emphasise the subjective feeling life of the soul instead of the objective thought-filled life of the spirit.
I can fully understand the wish not to be involved in Christian institutions and the Christian establishment, but this is not solved by ditching Christ.
Update. I have since found in the local library a new book on Dylan by a Jewish-American academic which is yet another fanciful manipulation of the subject in the author's own image. This one is a bit too distasteful. The author is intent upon turning Dylan into a fanatic orthodox Jew conversant with the mysteries of Judaism. Is there a movement to claim him before the man dies? The book is not worth reading in full, but on the principle of a drop giving a taste of the whole ocean, there is a wilful manipulation of complex facts to produce a limited ideological purpose and consciousness in the artist. So despite Dylan writing and speaking of his significant connection to Woody Guthrie, for example, who must not be Jewish, the Jewish academic sets out to destroy this fact with absurd and superficial argument. Gentile that I am, I like and admire Dylan on the basis of his being an unpredictable and independent artist whose stature in modern life is truly outstanding. Behind ethnicity, or nationality, or gender, or religion, or culture stands the individual human spirit and the true artist works from this and the individuality of the other responds. If either Dylan or any other wants to see his work in the conditioned terms of religion, etc. then the work will be rendered barren.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
ORWELL IN TRIBUNE
'As I Please' and other writings 1943-7. I know that Orwell is the independent journalist that all contemporary independent journalists look up to. Even people who have no right to quote him do so. Here he is performing the luxury of writing an uncensored column. The range of his subject matter and the depth of his insight are impressive. What is an insight? In Orwell's case it seems to be extreme common sense and logic. With these he makes many an uncanny prediction.
What is actually most remarkable about Orwell's journalism for me is the complete lack of egoism. This absence produces the impression that he has rather a lacklustre style. He writes his perceptive comments in a matter-of-fact and unemphatic manner. His style does not button-hole you, hold you by the collar, or grab you by the throat. You are fully responsible for your attention.
Orwell comes across as a thoroughly decent and civilised man, and also perhaps as a somewhat reserved Englishman concerned with particulars. He is an undoctrinaire socialist. Statements he makes during these years on topics such as world peace and international affairs turn out to be completely valid and relevant today. They turn out to be true.
Rating: Very good
What is actually most remarkable about Orwell's journalism for me is the complete lack of egoism. This absence produces the impression that he has rather a lacklustre style. He writes his perceptive comments in a matter-of-fact and unemphatic manner. His style does not button-hole you, hold you by the collar, or grab you by the throat. You are fully responsible for your attention.
Orwell comes across as a thoroughly decent and civilised man, and also perhaps as a somewhat reserved Englishman concerned with particulars. He is an undoctrinaire socialist. Statements he makes during these years on topics such as world peace and international affairs turn out to be completely valid and relevant today. They turn out to be true.
Rating: Very good
Sunday, February 14, 2010
THE ROLL CALL
An extract from Drinking the Sea at Gaza : Days and Nights in a Land under Siege, by Amira Hass appears in Tell Me No Lies : Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs, edited by John Pilger. Amira Hass is an Israeli correspondent regarded as the most courageous reporter of occupied Palestine. The injustices she reports in Gaza in the 1990s literally take your breath away.
Why should I be so concerned? Why cannot I be like most of Hass's Israeli readers, among the best of them, who read one of her items, have their breath taken away, but then put the knowledge aside and get on with their lives? Of course we do get on with our lives, we have to, but surely the putting aside is a consciously wilful action. We are choosing not to have a response. We are choosing to be an unresponsive bystander. This is the role the New Zealand media plays in relation to Gaza.
Amira learned from her mother the evil of the unresponsive bystander when being transferred from cattle truck to concentration camp German women stood on the side just looking. (Her father and mother survived, went to Israel where they refused to accept a house offered them which had been taken from Palestinians).
I am afflicted with an inner compulsion to react to injustice, to bullies. It is involuntary and I cannot put it aside. I do not know why injustice in the Middle East affects me more than in other parts of the world. I fully realise that the victim in this life may be the bully in the next. So why can I not say to myself: why worry? I wish I could. I dare say all those magnificent investigative journalists wish they could. All those people involved with human rights.
Amira Hass, choosing to live among the Palestinians, details the military and bureacratic inhumanity and torment they are subjected to. They are unable to live normally. Suffice to say that in the 10 - 15 years since it has become abundantly clear that Israel intends giving the Palestinians nothing and the only reason it insists upon a moderate Palestinian leader is because he will be amenable to management and the perpetuation of occupation and oppression.
The life of Gazans states Hass is synonymous with mass internment and suffocating constriction. One Gazan joke is that you can get an exit permit if you are about to die. Another joke is that only the roll call is missing. (The point of this latter not seen or appreciated by many Jewish Israelis). Another piece of humour: It's a good thing the roads are in such bad shape - it takes a whole hour to get from one end of the Strip to the other and you don't notice how small it is. If you drive really slowly, say fifteen miles an hour, you can pretend that you're actually going a very long way".
Here I am standing on the sideline wondering what on earth can the Gazans do to have some notice taken of them. They are concentrated into a sealed camp and that mythical international community does not give a damn. What if they adopted a measure of mass demonstration by secretly making or having made a concentration camp uniform? And everyone, literally everyone, began walking about their daily business in these camp clothes?
In what way would Israel go ballistic? Would it mow everyone down with machine guns? Would it put everyone into prison? Would it drive them into the sea? Would it turn the level of deprivation from malnutrition to mass starvation? Would we see the Israeli army back in Gaza full-time administering every neighbourhood and instituting a morning roll call?
Would we international bystanders find ourselves looking into the Gaza camp at skeletons in camp uniforms, some crawling, some dying, some dead? The question has to be asked: does Israel actually know to what depth of fascism it is prepared to sink? Would it even see the irony?
Or would the real international community get the point and refuse to cooperate with the United States, which would of course be blaming the victims for their outrageous bad taste.
Why should I be so concerned? Why cannot I be like most of Hass's Israeli readers, among the best of them, who read one of her items, have their breath taken away, but then put the knowledge aside and get on with their lives? Of course we do get on with our lives, we have to, but surely the putting aside is a consciously wilful action. We are choosing not to have a response. We are choosing to be an unresponsive bystander. This is the role the New Zealand media plays in relation to Gaza.
Amira learned from her mother the evil of the unresponsive bystander when being transferred from cattle truck to concentration camp German women stood on the side just looking. (Her father and mother survived, went to Israel where they refused to accept a house offered them which had been taken from Palestinians).
I am afflicted with an inner compulsion to react to injustice, to bullies. It is involuntary and I cannot put it aside. I do not know why injustice in the Middle East affects me more than in other parts of the world. I fully realise that the victim in this life may be the bully in the next. So why can I not say to myself: why worry? I wish I could. I dare say all those magnificent investigative journalists wish they could. All those people involved with human rights.
Amira Hass, choosing to live among the Palestinians, details the military and bureacratic inhumanity and torment they are subjected to. They are unable to live normally. Suffice to say that in the 10 - 15 years since it has become abundantly clear that Israel intends giving the Palestinians nothing and the only reason it insists upon a moderate Palestinian leader is because he will be amenable to management and the perpetuation of occupation and oppression.
The life of Gazans states Hass is synonymous with mass internment and suffocating constriction. One Gazan joke is that you can get an exit permit if you are about to die. Another joke is that only the roll call is missing. (The point of this latter not seen or appreciated by many Jewish Israelis). Another piece of humour: It's a good thing the roads are in such bad shape - it takes a whole hour to get from one end of the Strip to the other and you don't notice how small it is. If you drive really slowly, say fifteen miles an hour, you can pretend that you're actually going a very long way".
Here I am standing on the sideline wondering what on earth can the Gazans do to have some notice taken of them. They are concentrated into a sealed camp and that mythical international community does not give a damn. What if they adopted a measure of mass demonstration by secretly making or having made a concentration camp uniform? And everyone, literally everyone, began walking about their daily business in these camp clothes?
In what way would Israel go ballistic? Would it mow everyone down with machine guns? Would it put everyone into prison? Would it drive them into the sea? Would it turn the level of deprivation from malnutrition to mass starvation? Would we see the Israeli army back in Gaza full-time administering every neighbourhood and instituting a morning roll call?
Would we international bystanders find ourselves looking into the Gaza camp at skeletons in camp uniforms, some crawling, some dying, some dead? The question has to be asked: does Israel actually know to what depth of fascism it is prepared to sink? Would it even see the irony?
Or would the real international community get the point and refuse to cooperate with the United States, which would of course be blaming the victims for their outrageous bad taste.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
LAOR, YITZHAK. THE MYTHS OF ZIONISM
There is a sense of spontaneity about the writing of this work, of creative insight and courage which gives it its form, and I respond to the challenge to the best of my ability.
I approached this work hoping that it would give me better understanding about why Israel is the way it is, and why it behaves the way it does. I remain uncertain, but the exercise has been very worthwhile.
Some of the myths, which appear to be held by all Israelis and not just liberal Zionists, are as follows. The vulnerable child soldier who, no matter what atrocities he/she may commit, requires the protective excuses of the population. The besieged few surrounded by the inveterately hostile many. The victimising victim, from father to son, from Israel to its perceived enemies. The weak merciless father figure or authority figure for whose actions God will take responsibility. (Has Zionism replaced God with the United States for this role?) The learnt cruelty from past history and generations. The 'native' Jewish pioneer, pre-World War II, who has replaced the real native Palestinian. The European Israeli, the modern Jew, who requires the Arab Jew (and the Arab) to put off "backward' culture.
Such myths are in many instances interesting and helpful, but the question remains: why? Why, for example, does Israeli society continue to exemplify the story of Abraham who is prepared to bind and sacrifice his son unless a more caring God intervenes? Why is there so much emotional blackmail in the Israeli (Jewish) family and in Israel's approach to other nations of the world? Why do the sons and daughters conform to the blackmail and carry it on in their own later lives? (This must make the few young men and women who refuse to serve in the military among the bravest individuals in Israel). Why, for example, does the poor East European forebear (and holocaust victim) have to fill the modern Israeli with shame? Why not just have an interest in one's forebears without judgement?
Having carelessly misread the title of this work I began reading as if about the myth of liberal Zionism, but in a way the book is also very much about this topic. The author is to be commended for trying to crack a formidable nut, the liberal Zionist who passes himself off as a member of the Israeli peace camp. He illustrates the hypocrisy of three such high profile persons in David Grossman, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. These persons exhibit not only a lack of liberalism, if by this we mean civilised tolerance and compassion, but also subscribe to all the myths of the modern Israeli. The fear and hatred of Arabs - and the threat of their return - is self-induced and pathological.
These liberal Zionists, pretending peace, are the most difficult enemies of truth. They appeal to the same sort of pretenders in the West. The author indicates for me that the Left of the 1960s and 1970s who supported the Palestinian cause have been replaced by the Greens, who are pro-Israel. Even though in New Zealand we have a Green foreign spokesman who happens to be very good on the Middle East, I believe there is general truth in what the author says. For the Greens are essentially not an alternative radical party, but an alternative establishment party. Its followers tend to be comfortable people, more or less content with privatisation, tasteful and even precious in their brand of self-preservation.
The author indicates that The Holocaust remembrance is a recent development which allows Israel to take a seat among the world's elite nations, while allowing the Western world to put all the emphasis upon the victims of this one event and forget about the conditions and crimes within their own societies which allowed this and many other events, then and now, to happen. The Holocaust, besides being the only allowable holocaust to be remembered internationally and officially, is also the only allowable definition of evil. This allows the West and Israel to carry out contemporary evil unchecked.
Once again, how does it come about that the countries of the West fall over themselves to act in the same way toward Israel and holocaust remembrance? I can only think that it is a bit like all the copy-cat behaviour to implement unrestrained capitalism in the 1980s. The behaviour of mediocre minds all over the world, or minds with a low cunning rather than a decent intelligence. Or, worse still, are these negative changes, like supposedly positive ones, simply blowing in the wind? Does this then degenerate into believing that whatever will be, will be?
Having divested themselves more or less honourably of colonialist status the West now allows colonialist Israel to tap into this historical mind-set and find affinity there. The West and its establishment intellectuals are now able to turn their hate from the 20th century Jews toward the 21st century Muslims. Apparently for mediocre minds there always has to be a segment of humanity on the outer which can be treated as non-human.
A thought-provoking book.
Rating: Very good
I approached this work hoping that it would give me better understanding about why Israel is the way it is, and why it behaves the way it does. I remain uncertain, but the exercise has been very worthwhile.
Some of the myths, which appear to be held by all Israelis and not just liberal Zionists, are as follows. The vulnerable child soldier who, no matter what atrocities he/she may commit, requires the protective excuses of the population. The besieged few surrounded by the inveterately hostile many. The victimising victim, from father to son, from Israel to its perceived enemies. The weak merciless father figure or authority figure for whose actions God will take responsibility. (Has Zionism replaced God with the United States for this role?) The learnt cruelty from past history and generations. The 'native' Jewish pioneer, pre-World War II, who has replaced the real native Palestinian. The European Israeli, the modern Jew, who requires the Arab Jew (and the Arab) to put off "backward' culture.
Such myths are in many instances interesting and helpful, but the question remains: why? Why, for example, does Israeli society continue to exemplify the story of Abraham who is prepared to bind and sacrifice his son unless a more caring God intervenes? Why is there so much emotional blackmail in the Israeli (Jewish) family and in Israel's approach to other nations of the world? Why do the sons and daughters conform to the blackmail and carry it on in their own later lives? (This must make the few young men and women who refuse to serve in the military among the bravest individuals in Israel). Why, for example, does the poor East European forebear (and holocaust victim) have to fill the modern Israeli with shame? Why not just have an interest in one's forebears without judgement?
Having carelessly misread the title of this work I began reading as if about the myth of liberal Zionism, but in a way the book is also very much about this topic. The author is to be commended for trying to crack a formidable nut, the liberal Zionist who passes himself off as a member of the Israeli peace camp. He illustrates the hypocrisy of three such high profile persons in David Grossman, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. These persons exhibit not only a lack of liberalism, if by this we mean civilised tolerance and compassion, but also subscribe to all the myths of the modern Israeli. The fear and hatred of Arabs - and the threat of their return - is self-induced and pathological.
These liberal Zionists, pretending peace, are the most difficult enemies of truth. They appeal to the same sort of pretenders in the West. The author indicates for me that the Left of the 1960s and 1970s who supported the Palestinian cause have been replaced by the Greens, who are pro-Israel. Even though in New Zealand we have a Green foreign spokesman who happens to be very good on the Middle East, I believe there is general truth in what the author says. For the Greens are essentially not an alternative radical party, but an alternative establishment party. Its followers tend to be comfortable people, more or less content with privatisation, tasteful and even precious in their brand of self-preservation.
The author indicates that The Holocaust remembrance is a recent development which allows Israel to take a seat among the world's elite nations, while allowing the Western world to put all the emphasis upon the victims of this one event and forget about the conditions and crimes within their own societies which allowed this and many other events, then and now, to happen. The Holocaust, besides being the only allowable holocaust to be remembered internationally and officially, is also the only allowable definition of evil. This allows the West and Israel to carry out contemporary evil unchecked.
Once again, how does it come about that the countries of the West fall over themselves to act in the same way toward Israel and holocaust remembrance? I can only think that it is a bit like all the copy-cat behaviour to implement unrestrained capitalism in the 1980s. The behaviour of mediocre minds all over the world, or minds with a low cunning rather than a decent intelligence. Or, worse still, are these negative changes, like supposedly positive ones, simply blowing in the wind? Does this then degenerate into believing that whatever will be, will be?
Having divested themselves more or less honourably of colonialist status the West now allows colonialist Israel to tap into this historical mind-set and find affinity there. The West and its establishment intellectuals are now able to turn their hate from the 20th century Jews toward the 21st century Muslims. Apparently for mediocre minds there always has to be a segment of humanity on the outer which can be treated as non-human.
A thought-provoking book.
Rating: Very good
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