Richard Melson
January 2006
CFG Essay: Judeocentrism Part II
CAMBRIDGE FORECAST GROUP:
Globalization blocked by Judeocentrism
Part II
Judeocentrism"is a way of looking at the world through Zionist, Jewish, or neo-con eyes,
a sense that the destiny of the Jews is mysteriously linked to that of humankind and that
humankind should genuflect before it.
Judeocentrism is a major obstacle on the road to a new relationship between the West and the Third World and represents an historical misdirection and "bum steer."
It is blocking the emergence of a new world economy based on Third World development, which we have already descibed in the essay, "CFG Tomorrow," seen on the home page of the site: http://www.cambridgeforecast.org .
This Judeocentrism is not lost on Palestinians.
"Do you know why we are so famous?" the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish asked the Israeli writer Helit Yeshurun in a 1996 interview.
"It's because you are our enemy. The interest in the Palestinian question flows from the interest in the Jewish question....It's you they're interested in, not me!...So we have the misfortune of having an enemy, Israel, with so many sympathizers in the world, and we have the good fortune that our enemy is Israel, since Jews are the center of the world.
You have given us our defeat, our weakness, our renown."
[13] 13.]This Mahmoud Darwish interview, which appears in La Palestine comme métaphore, entretiens (Actes Sud), was adapted by Jean-Luc Godard in his recent film Notre Musique, with Darwish playing himself.For more details on this Darwish quote, see:
See below for more on Godard’s movie, "Notre Musique":
Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
Writing credits
Jean-Luc Godard
"Notre Music"
is divided in three kingdoms: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise like in the Dante's Inferno in the Divine Comedy. Hell shows footages of many wars; Purgatory mixes reality and fiction in Sarajevo; and Paradise is a surrealistic view of a beach "protected" by the American Marines."Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy,
Jean-Luc Godard’s "Notre Musique" is a timeless meditation on war as seen through the prisms of cinema, text and image.Largely set at a literary conference in Sarajevo, the film draws on the conflagration of the Bosnian war, but also draws on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the brutal treatment of Native Americans, and the legacy of the Nazis."Notre Musique" is structured into three Dantean Kingdoms: "Hell," "Purgatory" and "Heaven."
In the film, real-life literary figures (including
Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish and Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo) intermingle with actors; and documentary meshes with fiction."Notre Musique" also follows the parallel stories of two Israeli Jewish women, Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler) and Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu);
one drawn to the light and one drawn towards darkness.Through evocative language and images,
Godard explores a series of conflicting forces:death; life
dark, light;
good; bad
negative, positive;
real; imaginary;
activists; storytellers
vanquished; victor;
criminals; victims;
suicidal; hopeful
shot, reverse shot.
These opposing movements are eternal. They are the two faces of truth.
They are our music."
The movie is consciously about Judeocentrism and centers around several Jews, including two Israeli women.
This Judeocentrism has now seeped into English-language novels by the current wave of writers from India:
1. Salman Rushdie’s "Shalimar the Clown."2. Vikram Seth’s "Two Lives."
Movies in recent decades are always somehow about Jewish ways of looking at the world:
More Movies With Jewish Themes:
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As already stated at the beginning of this essay:
Judeocentrism is a major obstacle on the road to a new relationship between the West and the Third World and represents an historical misdirection and "bum steer."
It is blocking the emergence of a new world economy based on Third World development, which we have already described in the essay, "CFG Tomorrow," seen on the home page of the CFG website: http://www.cambridgeforecast.org .
Judeocentrism as Major Historical Obstacle to Globalization
February 1, 2006