“Any system you contrive without us/ Will be brought down.” —Leonard Cohen, “Any System”
Part One: The Western Real
“The Holocaust religion constitutes the Western ‘real.’ We are neither allowed to touch it, nor are we permitted to look into it. Very much like the ancient Israelites who were to obey their God but never question Him, we are marching into the void.” —Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who (p. 153)
Zero Parallels
Gilad Atzmon published The Wandering Who with Zero Books in 2011, three years before they published Seen and Not Seen (which was when Zero was still run by Tariq Godard, but mere weeks before Doug Lain took over). I wasn’t going to mention this seeming triviality, much less lead with it; but then it occurred to me that the two books share some striking similarities.
The Wandering Who is a polemic on Jewish identity, written by an “ex-Israeli” (a self-identified “Hebrew-speaking Palestinian”). It blends cultural, social, and political analysis with autobiographical detail, and maintains a personal voice throughout. In large part (as I read it), the book is Atzmon’s attempt to extricate himself from Jewish-identification, and in the process, to examine (and expose) those collective “mind shackles” (Blake’s phrase) from the inside.
All of which might be said of Seen and Not Seen (subtitle: Confessions of a Movie Autist), regarding my (parasocial) relationship to “Hollywood,” and how writing it was a literary effort to separate myself from a similarly fake (movie-generated) identity, sourced in a Fabian family background of leftist, celebrity worshiping, Anglo- entrepreneurs.
There, however, the parallels end. For all the stones it overturned in my own psyche, Seen and Not Seen, as predicted in the book, came and went, leaving barely a trace on the cultural landscape it was attempting to raze. (It’s a safe bet that no one in Hollywood ever heard about the book—unless they read 16 Maps of Hell.)
Atzmon’s book, on the other hand, did all but bring down a Jewish fatwa on its author’s head.
Zero Attacks
Among countless denunciations, The Wandering Who evoked an attack from Zero Books authors at the time of its release, including my occasional confederate, Nina Power.
In an open letter, published on September 26, 2011, “Zero Authors’ Statement on Gilad Atzmon posted by Richard Seymour,” Zero authors includes several Atzmon quotes that they see as anti-Semitic, including references to a “Jewish conspiracy” and (what they regard as) a defense of Holocaust denial.
That none of these quotes come from The Wandering Who suggests, either that Zero authors hadn’t read the book at the time of their statement, and/or that they didn’t care what was actually in it, and were satisfied to denounce it sight unseen, because of things the author said or wrote prior to it (the quotes it cites range from 2003 to 2009, with only one from 2011).
The authors’ statement ends with this:
The thrust of Atzmon’s work is to normalise and legitimise anti-Semitism. We do not believe that Zero’s decision to publish this book is malicious. Atzmon’s ability to solicit endorsements from respectable figures such as Richard Falk and John Mearsheimer shows that he is adept at muddying the waters both on his own views and on the question of anti-Semitism. But at a time when dangerous forces are attempting to racialise political antagonisms, we think the decision is grossly mistaken. We call on Zero to distance itself from Atzmon’s views which, we know, are not representative of the publisher or its critical engagement with contemporary culture.
A read of the Wikipedia page on Atzmon confirms that he is widely denounced in similar terms. It rolls out the same basic tropes, including at least one quote taken so far out of context as to constitute defamation.
“Some brave people will say that Hitler was right after all” is the (mis-)quote. In fact, the correct quote (from The Wandering Who) refers to an imaginary scenario in which an Israeli pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran leads to nuclear war, and tens of millions of people perish. “I guess that amongst the survivors of such a nightmare scenario,” Atzmon writes, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’”
The distinction is striking and can hardly be chalked down to an honest mistake by lazy editors at Wiki- (cough ADL) pedia.
So, while it seems likely that Zero Books editors had some influence on getting Atzmon to soft-pedal his views, making them more palatable for this work, it’s also possible—likely even—that Atzmon took the time to make his arguments more nuanced and thoughtful for his first nonfiction book, and that he resisted the urge to be intentionally provocative. In other words, that The Wandering Who more accurately represents what Atzmon believes (or did at the time he wrote it) than some of the racier quotes used by the Zero Books authors, to worry the publishers into attrition.
The book I read was a measured, fair-minded, highly intelligent work that, while uncompromising and incendiary in its sustained denunciation of a certain ideological mindset, always leads with evidence, and with well-reasoned arguments, rather than emotional charge or anything that smacks of hatred, rage, or resentment.
I can only deduce, therefore, that the people it offended (self-identified Jews or not) were offended, not because of anything in the book that was either untrue or unfair, but due to the precise opposite.
A Primary Quality of Jewishness
The Wandering Who strikes me, in 2024, as a seminal, nigh-indispensable text on the Jewish Question. Like all essential works, is has the potential to bridge a gulf, and is every bit as essential for those on the “anti-Semitic” end of the wedge as it is for the philo-semites or pro-Zionists, in terms of correcting misapprehensions.
I seriously doubt the latter class are likely to ever be receptive to Atzmon’s arguments, however, any more than they are to be reading this substack. Consequently, my focus is more on those who are genuinely trying to understand the “JQ,” and/but who may have been pulled into the gravitational field of a controlled counter-narrative about some sort of “Jew world order” (or an equivalent over-literalization/sensationalization of evidence).
Atzmon’s viewpoint, being from the inside out, is immeasurably subtler and more complicated than this.
What follows is a comprehensive summation of the book, with extensive quotes that make up about half of the review (which comes in at about 6.5 thousand words, and is broken in two parts).
This is not meant as an alternative to reading the book, and I encourage everyone to do so, whether before or after reading this review.
Atzmon’s book begins by dividing Jews into three main categories:
1. Those who follow Judaism.
2. Those who regard themselves as human beings that happen to be of Jewish origin.
3. Those who put their Jewishness over and above all of their other traits (p. 16).
He then focuses on the third category for the remainder of the book, as the only one he considers seriously problematic.
Its definition may sound inflammatory to some. And yet, bizarrely enough, it was the formulation given on the eve of the 20th century by Chaim Weizmann, a prominent early Zionist figure and later the first Israeli President: “There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.” In just a few words, Weizmann managed to categorically define the essence of Jewish-ness. It is basically a “primary quality.” . . . It is about viewing Jewish-ness as the key element and the fundamental characteristic of one’s being. Any other quality is secondary. This is exactly the message the early Zionists were interested in promulgating. . . . These racist ideas predate Nazism (p. 16-17, emphasis added).
Sayanim: An Ex-Mossad Perspective
Atzmon does not flinch from the question of Jewish conspiracy, but he approaches it strategically, and one might say “diplomatically,” such as when he claims (on two occasions) that he does “not believe in Jewish conspiracies [because] everything is done in the open” (p. 76).
Yet well before making this disclaimer, in the first chapter, he introduces a long quote from “deserter” ex-Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, on the sayanim, “a unique and important part of the Mossad’s operation.” According to Ostrovksy, sayanim (meaning assistants):
must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. . . . There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs (p. 18).
If that doesn’t constitute a Jewish conspiracy, I don’t know what does. But, as I wrote in last week’s piece (“Suspension of Belief: A Conspiracy Primer”), the question of what constitutes secrecy (or criminality), and hence conspiracy, is a highly subjective one.
To many (self-identifying) Jews at least (of which Atzmon was once one), this network of sayan may be very much the open secret. It might come as news to most goyim, however. With an irony rich enough for an Arabian dessert, it might even be regarded as a wholly anti-Semitic suggestion.1
The Ostrovsky quote continues: “You have at your disposal a non-risk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It’s much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere” (p. 19).
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