Hey Doug -
This guy from Gosplan is an absolute nutjob. They're an absolutely terrible band, and while some of the observations he makes about the high incidence of Russian ex-pat punk bands in the Israeli scene - Smash Four, for example, are correct - his negative characterization of the Israeli scene is completely off base. His opinions clearly reflect his own political positions, which while very interesting, are totally untrustworthy given the fact that he's a bolshevik.
Israel has had a punk scene for at least twenty years. Its only been over the course of the last decade or so that it's actually turned into something other than a facsimile of western scenes. In the late 90s, Israel got its own version of Crass - Deir Yassin, a truly phenomenal, left-wing HC band, along with the late, great Nekhei Natzaa. The second Intifada has helped birth a plethora of extremely intelligent, articulate left-wing HC bands, such as Nikmat Olalim, Chaos Rabak and Va'adat Kishut.
All of the above mentioned groups, while incredibly young, offer a level of ideology-critique, and music, comparable to anything that happened here in the US in the early 80s, or the UK in the late seventies. no one expected the punk renaissance Israel is experiencing now. Will it last, I don't know. But I'm absolutely taken by how fucking good it is, and how clearly engaged these bands are with the horrific political situation that continues to beset the country.
check out Liz Nord's documentary about Israel HC - http://www.jerichosecho.com. Its a great film, we ran a piece on it last November.
funny to get this email just now - yesterday i got a box of CD-Rs of most of these bands, which I ordered from this teenager named David, in Jerusalem, who runs gutzy.com, the server that hosts most of the websites of all of these groups.
feel free to forward this if you like -
Joel
On Aug 25, 2005, at 3:48 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> >From lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org Thu Aug 25 18:23:23 2005
>>Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:18:50 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
>>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Israeli Punk
>>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>List-Id: lbo-talk.lbo-talk.org
>>
>>
>>
>>--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I discovered today, while surfing through the
>>> National
>>> Bolshevik Party's English-language website, that the
>>> head of the party in Israel is also the leader of a
>>> punk group called Adolph. Talk about brave!
>>> Apparently
>>> there is also a group called the Dead Rabbis. Brian
>>> Atkinsky, any comments? Horrible translation of
>>> interview below:
>>
>>My goof. He is called Adolph. His band is called
>>Gosplan.
>>
>>---
>>
>>Your band's name is "Gosplan"("State Planning
>>Committee").
>>
>>- Gosplan is a universal complete God's plan,
>>expressed in economic program of the highest social
>>justice state. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
>>was the only such state. By the way, I left for
>>Israel, because the system, I had set my hopes upon,
>>collapsed.
>>
>>- But you didn't loose your head, began struggling for
>>the bright present on the historical motherland.
>>
>>- Yes. I'm a commissar of the National-Bolshevik Party
>>in Israel with its centre in Moscow.
>>
>>http://www.nbp-info.org/interview/punkisra.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>>
>>
>>
>>____________________________________________________
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>>http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>>
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