The Children of Amalek

Religion, Race, and Retribution

And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish what Am′alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am′alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’ - 1 Samuel 15

The Conquest of Canaan

Toward the beginning of the invasion of Gaza, the longest-serving prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, invoked a reference to a mythological adversary of Israel, the Amalekites. According to the Tanakh, a canon of literature traditionally revered by Jews (and by Christians, Muslims, and Mormons to an extent), the Amalekites attacked Moses and his followers during their journey out of Egypt into Canaan. Because of that attack, Yahweh, the character the Tanakh claims is an omnipotent god who created humans, Earth, and the universe, commands his devoted servants to exterminate the Amalekites. The command was thorough — it included men and women, “sucklings”, and livestock. The Amalekites, according to the Tanakh, are the descendants of Amalek, who is the grandson of Esau, who is the brother of Jacob (later named Israel by Yahweh).

These are the descendants of Esau the father of the E′domites in the hill country of Se′ir. These are the names of Esau’s sons: Eli′phaz the son of Adah the wife of Esau, Reu′el the son of Bas′emath the wife of Esau. The sons of Eli′phaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, and Kenaz. (Timna was a concubine of Eli′phaz, Esau’s son; she bore Am′alek to Eli′phaz.) - Genesis 36:9

The genealogy is primarily relevant because it demonstrates that the Amalekites are conceptualized in a racial way by the Tanakh. The Amalekites are not simply people who practice a different religion; they are a biological lineage. The Tanakh is filled with racial lineages; indeed, Canaan is promised by Yahweh to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac specifically.

I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you.

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. - Genesis 17:6-8

It is interesting to note that Amalek and Israel (Jacob) share common ancestors, Isaac and Abraham, but the promise of Canaan to Isaac only passed on through to Israel. Furthermore, because of Israel’s deceptions, Esau didn’t receive his birthright or the blessing from Isaac. Isaac wanted to pass on a blessing to Esau, the grandfather of Amalek, but Israel, with the assistance of his mother, camouflaged himself to resemble Esau when his blind father gave the magical blessing.

Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son; and the skins of the kids she put upon his hands and upon the smooth part of his neck; and she gave the savory food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob. - Genesis 27:15

When Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Amalek, he was referring to the Amalek of these stories.

You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions of Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes; a chain that started 3000 years ago from Joshua until the heroes in 1948 the six day war, the 73 October war and all other wars in this country. - Benjamin Netanyahu

How are people to interpret such a statement? When there was backlash about the fact that, on the face of it, it seems like an incitement to genocide, Netanyahu assured the world that his genocidal references were not to be taken in such a way. His office released a statement:

So too Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek was not an incitement to genocide of Palestinians, but a description of the utterly evil actions perpetrated by the genocidal terrorists of Hamas on October 7th and the need to confront them.

Thus, Likud, the party of Netanyahu, has no problem accusing Hamas of being genocidal, but finds it preposterous why people may suspect that a government is committing genocide when it is systematically starving a civilian population and its Prime Minister is invoking clear genocidal references. References like that of course found their way to the International Court of Justice, including Tik Tok clips of soldiers dancing and singing about wiping out the “seed of Amalek” and that there are no “uninvolved civilians”.

Even if we very charitably grant that Netanyahu was referencing Hamas specifically, and not Gazans generally, we are left with the fact that the command in the Tanakh in reference to the destruction of Amalek includes ostensibly innocents, including infants and animals. It doesn’t matter, as it was pointed out by the Prime Minister’s office, that references to remembering Amalek also appear in places like the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum for Jews murdered in World War 2 by Nazis. References to passages of wanton murder and destruction should not be invoked at any memorial that I’m aware. Why are some people still invoking such passages these days? When is it acceptable to wantonly murder infants out of retribution for what some ancestors of those infants did?

Personally I have yet to conceive of such a scenario. And how would such references apply to Hamas? Some members of Hamas have committed atrocities — does that imply it’s justified to murder the infants of everyone who is a member of Hamas (which seems to be an amorphous blob of people identified at the whim of anyone who supports Likud)? After all, the dancing soldiers’ song suggests all Gazans are Amalekites. But it disturbs me that people try to defend not simply the use of the reference in the context of the invasion of Gaza, but even within the context of the Tanakh. Why did the children of Amalek deserve to be slaughtered, why do people worship the character who supposedly commanded it, and why do people revere the book that glorifies it?

Remember what Am'alek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and cut off at your rear all who lagged behind you; and he did not fear God. Therefore when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Am'alek from under heaven; you shall not forget. - Deuteronomy 25:17-19

When Netanyahu invoked Amalek, he also praised the “soldiers” and “combatants” who are fighting in Gaza, which logically includes those soldiers filmed dancing and singing about killing Palestinian civilians. In his televised speech and in a letter to the Israel Defense Forces(IDF) soldiers he specifically mentions a “chain of Jewish heroes” and includes “Joshua”. In the Tanakh, Joshua is the original commander who is given responsibility by Moses to complete the mission of conquering the land of Canaan, aka Palestine, thousands of years ago in a mythical past. The story about the conquest of Canaan in the Tanakh is a brutal and pitiless series of murder and destruction. For example, in the conquest of Jericho, Joshua is commanded by Yahweh to kill “everything” in it.

On the seventh day they rose early at the dawn of day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times: it was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times.

And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, "Shout; for the LORD has given you the city.

And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction, and bring trouble upon it.

But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD."

So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword.

- Joshua 6:12-21

Netanyahu is praising the soldiers who did that. He venerated Joshua, the man who according to the Tanakh gave innocent human sacrifices to Yahweh (“devoted to the Lord for destruction”), as a hero. Personally, I think anyone who gladly gives innocent human sacrifices to an imaginary tyrannical god is a villain. And for some historical context, the idea that the Jewish homeland is Palestine, and that because Jews once lived there it justifies the right for Jews today to have a pseudo ethno-theocratic state in Palestine called Israel — is fundamentally dependent on the notion that because Joshua conquered Canaan through genocide Jews have a right to rule Canaan (Palestine). Based on the Tanakh, ancient Jews would never have ruled Canaan if it were not for the command to exterminate all the people in Canaan.

When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace.  If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God. -Deuteronomy 20:10

Personally I don’t believe that if the forebears of a religious tribe once conquered some territory thousands of years ago through slavery and genocide and settled there that future members of that religious tribe have a right to rule that territory in the future. The idea that Jews have some kind of historic right to the land of Canaan can be found expressed by organizations like PragerU or in the words of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel:

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

It is a pillar of modern “Zionism.” We can debate about exactly what establishes a just and righteous state but I think that it should not be controversial that past genocidal conquests by religious forebears should not grant people the right to rule a territory. Neither should a right to rule be granted by having had people from your religious tribe once living in that territory. If I joined a cult of Jupiter, I wouldn’t have a special right to rule Europe.

But What About Hamas?

By now, some of you might be thinking: how could you have written so many paragraphs without explicitly denouncing Hamas?!?? Actually, I have no problem denouncing Hamas; I do not think Hamas deserves to rule Palestine anymore than Likud (Netanyahu’s party). And I think most of what Hamas did on October 7th was a moral abomination and was unjustified.

However, in the context of the grossly oppressive regime of Israel, a revolution is justifiable, albeit its virtue still depends on the way it is carried out and the aspirations of its leaders. For example, Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt in the U.S. in 1831 was morally justified to revolt — that is, it would have been morally righteous for there to be a slave revolution intended to bring liberation to the enslaved population before the civil war. On the other hand, Nat Turner was not the right person to do it, and some of the things that some of his followers reportedly did were detestable, such as killing infants.

Furthermore, the slave revolt of 1831 exemplifies the moral complexities of any “right to self-defense”, which is often invoked as a justification for Israel’s retaliation to the actions of Hamas. Did the slave aristocracy of the American south have a “right to defend itself” during Turner’s revolt? Well, in some sense, it did have the right to defend the innocent, such as the infants, but it didn’t have any “right” to defend the slavers. And it certainly did not have the right to kill innocent people, including infants, in retaliation for what Turner did. The same applies to the current situation in Palestine. Israel has the right to go after those men from Hamas who wantonly killed innocent people, and defend innocent people, but they do not have the right to wantonly kill innocent people in the process. And they do not have the right to defend any of the people who are directly responsible for the continued occupation of Palestine (except for defending against excessive and cruel unjust punishment).

They certainly do not have the right to starve “sucklings”, or destroy the majority of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and universities, or coerce them with violence to leave the territory:

According to an interim assessment by the World Bank, over 60 per cent of residential buildings and nearly 80 per cent of commercial facilities had been damaged or destroyed in Gaza between October 2023 and January 2024, with 80 per cent of total damage concentrated in the governorates of Gaza, North Gaza and Khan Younis.

Whether it is to try to make Hamas surrender, give up hostages, carry out collective retribution, or to possess land they erroneously think they have a right to, much of what the Israeli government has done and is doing is not justified.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.

The right thing would be to end the occupation, just like the right thing after Nat Turner’s failed rebellion would have been to abolish slavery—how to deal with those people who carried out atrocities during the failed rebellion would be an important consideration, but separate, just as it would be an important but separate consideration about how to deal with the people in Hamas who were responsible for the atrocities on October 7th.

Human Shields

When people start talking about killing “Amalek” because they are such an existential threat, the children of Amalek don’t tend to matter much. There are a few common arguments people make when defending Israel’s behavior and are a reflection of that sentiment.

One is that Hamas is uniquely evil; they point out that Hamas has a history of suicide bombing civilian populations, or using their own civilians as “human shields”. But such arguments should not be relevant as to whether Palestinian infants should be starved; such arguments can only be compelling if a person feels the “human shields” that Israel will inevitably kill to get to the supposed targets are not worth the effort to keep alive. There are undoubtedly people who belong to Hamas in Israel itself, as well as the U.S., but Israel is not killing innocent Israelis or innocent Americans in Israel or the U.S. to get to those “Amalekites”. If the “human shields” were Israeli Jewish children or American Christian children, I don’t imagine the IDF would be so careless about blowing them up. The moral calculation becomes that Amalek is so evil and dangerous, and the innocent lives that will be destroyed in the process of getting to Amalek are so minimal in value, that whatever is done to get to Amalek, which includes systematically starving millions of people, is worth it. The U.S. government would not tolerate Likud bombing a neighborhood in New York to maybe kill one Hamas commander. Yet, the U.S. government doesn’t just tolerate it when it comes to Gaza, it supplies the bombs. There may be some exotic philosophical thought experiments where such utilitarian calculations might make moral sense, but what’s happening in Gaza isn’t one of them. There’s also the troubling fact that the Israeli military has been documented using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

From the New York Times:

After Israeli soldiers found Mohammed Shubeir hiding with his family in early March, they detained him for roughly 10 days before releasing him without charge, he said.

During that time, Mr. Shubeir said, the soldiers used him as a human shield.

…The Times interviewed seven Israeli soldiers who observed or participated in the practice and presented it as routine, commonplace and organized, conducted with considerable logistical support and the knowledge of superiors on the battlefield. Many of them said the detainees were handled and often transported between the squads by officers from Israel’s intelligence agencies, a process that required coordination between battalions and the awareness of senior field commanders. And though they served in different parts of Gaza at different points in the war, the soldiers largely used the same terms to refer to human shields.

Israel also has military infrastructure in civilian areas; from Haaretz:

Israeli military headquarters hides behind the civilian residents of central Tel Aviv and the patients at Ichilov Hospital just 450 meters from the office of the commander in chief. Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv protects the Tel Hashomer military base. The navy base in Haifa hides in the shadow of the Rambam medical center. Even “our nuclear family” hides among the resolute and pastoral rural population.

And Israel's leaders? The prime minister hides behind the civilian residents of Jerusalem’s Talbieh neighborhood, and his designated successor does the same in Ra'anana. The defense minister hides in Rosh Ha'ayin, and the military chief on Moshav Adi. His deputy is surrounded by a wall in the form of the civilians of Hod Hasharon. And so on; they're all sheltering behind civilians, as if they were Hamasniks.

Some people also argue that “war is hell” — and they point to the fact that in other military conflicts, such as World War 2, the U.S. and other allied forces carried out operations that killed enormous numbers of civilians, such as the bombing of Dresden, the fire bombing of Tokyo, or the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ignoring the fact that these operations were carried out after millions of people had already died years into a global war that included the occupation of much of Europe by Nazis — after the war, during the Geneva convention, countries including the U.S. agreed that such acts were horrendous and that they shouldn’t happen again.

The “war is hell” argument relies on the notion that because other countries commit and have committed what international agreements now define as “war crimes”, Israel should somehow have the right to as well. The problem with that argument is that people condemned operations like Dresden or Hiroshima when they occurred, and still do, both from a strategic and moral line. The only reason countries get away with it is because they are too powerful to be held accountable, not because there aren’t people who find the acts detestable. There is no “double-standard” being applied to Israel — at least by the people who have the highest integrity who are opposing what Israel is doing. Right now Israel is getting away with it precisely because it is being supported by the U.S. military, which is the most powerful in the world.

Another argument made is that “if Hamas just gave back the hostages it could end the massacre and destruction”, and that suggests it is morally justified for Likud to starve and terrorize millions of people because the ruling faction in Gaza, Hamas, holds Israeli hostages. Essentially, the lives of all Gazans are made hostage to Israel, and the bargaining chip becomes massive numbers of Palestinian lives: “We will allow food and medical supplies for Palestinian infants, our hostages, and stop sniping random civilians, if you return the hostages you captured.”

But Hamas is a monster—so why would anyone expect to have a monster care about innocent infants? Palestinians are often presented as victims of Hamas, rather than Likud. If that is the case, why would there be any leverage gained for Likud by starving innocent Palestinian infants? Why would a monstrous regime care if the people it ruled got slaughtered and starved? We are told that Hamas steals aid—if that is the case, then how is a starving Palestine infant something that’s going to affect their actions? Israel may as well be starving Canadian infants. Would that be okay? Because it seems like it would be around as effective. How much food and supplies does Hamas have stored in its tunnels? If Hamas doesn’t care about Gazans, what reason, other than cruelty or complete callous stupidity, could explain why Likud is massacring Gazans? And if Likud is concerned about the hostages Hamas has why is it starving the whole population or bombing “indiscriminately”, as even Biden has said (while incoherently continuing to give weapons)? Does Likud and the American politicians who support Likud believe that the hostages who are held are going to be miraculously fed or avoid being hit by the same indiscriminate bombing that the Palestinian civilians are being killed and maimed by?

Furthermore, Hamas could make the same argument: if Israel just releases the Palestinians it has in its prisons, Hamas won’t kill their hostages. How is that a moral argument? That is simply an argument from power. A threat. Before October 7th, Hamas members and Palestinians were in Israeli detention centers, often “kidnapped” without any meaningful due process. Hamas then attacked. If Hamas had, before carrying out its massacre, first told Israel that it would carry out its massacre if Israel didn’t release their hostages, would that have made the massacre alright if Israel didn’t capitulate to their demands? Because that’s essentially the argument of “if Hamas returned the hostages, the massacre would cease.” If Hamas is to blame for not releasing hostages, would Israel be to blame for Oct 7 if they didn’t release the prisoners they held before Hamas attacked? And, after all, since the West Bank and Gaza have been occupied by Israel, if Hamas had simply demanded that the occupation ended before carrying out its attack, would Israel be entirely at fault for the atrocities of Oct 7 if it didn’t end its occupation?

We are dealing with perverse conditions. The only reason Likud and their supporters can make that [very bad] argument is the massive power differential between Likud and Hamas. Had Hamas told Likud what it was going to do before October 7th Likud could have stopped it. Hamas does not have the power to stop an aerial bombardment and a blockade even as Likud announces it to the whole world. Actually scratch that — according to Israeli news sources the IDF knew about Hamas’ plans, down to meticulous blueprints, but somehow the IDF didn't prevent it. So, perversely, even if Hamas had sent a personal letter to Netanyahu with the blueprints the IDF already had, Likud would plausibly “accidentally failed” to stop it. From Haaretz:

A newly surfaced document reveals that Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence systems had detailed knowledge of Hamas' plan to raid Israel, including the number of hostages to be taken and specific instructions for their treatment while in captivity.

According to a Monday night report presented by Israel's public broadcaster, Kan, the document, which is based on information from military intelligence's 8200 Unit, began circulating on September 19, less than three weeks before the October 7 massacre.

Israel, from the River to the Sea

Which brings us to the even more damning contextual issues with those arguments. Hamas, it so happens, was cultivated by the Israeli government, including Likud and Netanyahu specifically, because Likud doesn’t want a “two-state solution”; Likud wants all of “Greater Israel”; according to its original platform of 1977:

The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty

And to this day, that is the situation. Israeli domination spans between the sea and the Jordan. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank do not live in a separate state; they live in a sprawling, discontinuous, modern ghetto surveilled and controlled by the government of Israel. A lot of outrage has been expressed about the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, but the charter of Likud predates Hamas, and it expresses a sentiment that is a mirror-image of the Hamas platform of 2017 which states “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”. The sentiment of complete control over Palestine is the policy of Israel under Likud.

Likud has sought to cultivate Hamas precisely because of its passionate opposition to a two-state solution. From the Times of Israel:

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.

From the New York Times:

Shlomo Brom, a retired general and former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, said an empowered Hamas helped Mr. Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state.

“One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” he said in an interview. The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, Mr. Brom said, adding that he can say, “I have no partner.”

Mr. Netanyahu did not articulate this strategy publicly, but some on the Israeli political right had no such hesitation.

Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.

“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”

Benjamin Netanyahu has also been recorded on video admitting he undermined the peace process and boasting about his deceptive influence over the United States. From Haaretz:

No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he's even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse's mouth.

And how did he do it? He recalled how he conditioned his signing of the 1997 Hebron agreement on American consent that there be no withdrawals from "specified military locations," and insisted he choose those same locations, such as the whole of the Jordan Valley, for example. "Why is that important? Because from that moment on I stopped the Oslo Accords," he boasts. The real Netanyahu also brags about his knowledge of America: "I know what America is. America is something that can be moved easily."

In the video he reveals that his public persona toward Americans is fraudulent and manipulates the United States to get what he wants for Israel, which is territorial expansion. Watch the video yourself:

That is the man who came to the United States a few months ago and received a standing ovation from much of congress.

If it is true that Hamas could not have developed the capacity to carry out the attacks of October 7th without the support of the Israeli government, it means the Israeli government was willing to risk the lives of Israeli citizens in order to fulfill its dream of a “Greater Israel.” The religious zeal of Likudites and like-minded Zionists who desire sovereignty over Palestine, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, propelled Israel to cultivate a monster. Holding Palestinians collectively responsible — for example, arguing that Israel has a right to starve Palestinian children in order to kill the monster that Israel helped breed — is an abomination.

While I agree that the suicide bombings by Hamas targeting random civilians have been depraved, I also think the Israeli soldiers dancing and singing about bombing and starving innocent people in Palestine is equally depraved. The former certainly demonstrates more desperation, but not greater depravity. The blind generalized violent hatred of Israeli Jews who try to block aid from reaching Gazan civilians so that they are more likely to starve is no less meaningfully alarming than the blind generalized violent hatred that has been demonstrated by Hamas. Apparently it’s not enough that the Israeli government is systematically restricting aid to the brink of famine and a dire lack of medical supplies such as anesthesia for amputations, many Israeli citizens want to stop the flow of international aid entirely.

There is a video of Palestinian children expressing bigoted violent hatred toward Jews. The interviews show some Palestinian children saying they want to kill Jews or fight Jews, who they view as their captors, given that it is the “Jewish State” their parents hold responsible for the apartheid (which has recently been even acknowledged in an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice).

Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them - Benjamin Netanyahu

There shouldn’t be anything surprising about the bigoted hatred held by many Palestinians, anymore than you might be surprised to learn that many slaves had a bigoted hatred toward “white” people or “Americans” in the 1800s or that many Native Americans had bigoted hatred toward Christians. It’s understandable intellectually, based on a sober acceptance of common human nature, that humans often come to hate their captors or people who’ve destroyed their homes, in a bigoted way, even though the bigotry itself is a vice. After all, many Americans were abolitionists and fought and even died to end slavery, and many Jews are sympathetic with ending the apartheid of Palestinians. But that doesn’t change the human tendency to poorly generalize hate (or love). And of course, the hatred held by many of the captives, as much of a vice as it may be in its bigoted form, wouldn’t justify racial slavery, racial cleansing, or apartheid, nor would it justify blind collective violent hatred directed toward all of the enslaved and the captured. There is also a video of Israeli children singing about the destruction of Gazans:

Just as such murderous bigoted hate displayed by Israeli children wouldn’t justify the oppression or wanton destruction of Israelis, nor should bigoted hatred displayed by Palestinian children justify the oppression and destruction of Gazans.

What came first, the Israeli children’s bigoted hatred toward the Palestinian children or the Palestinian children’s bigoted hatred toward the Israeli children? Regardless, we know for sure that Zionist children at some point in the early 1900s were raised to believe that Palestine belonged to Jews and eventually that it was justified to cleanse Palestine of non-Jews. Before then there simply were no “Zionists” in Palestine. And that’s because Zionists, who were at the time primarily a subset of European Jews, colonized Palestine.

Population data source from the Jewish Virtual Library

And “colonize” is not simply a hyperbolic term thrown about by hysterical social justice warriors in this instance. It’s clearly reflected in the data and it’s the language the earliest Zionists like Theodore Herzl, the man who is commonly viewed as the founder of modern Zionism, and who is memorialized in the Israel Declaration of Independence, used:

Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.

The Society of Jews will treat with the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan. We could offer the present possessors of the land enormous advantages, assume part of the public debt, build new roads for traffic, which our presence in the country would render necessary, and do many other things. The creation of our State would be beneficial to adjacent countries, because the cultivation of a strip of land increases the value of its surrounding districts in innumerable ways.

We have evidence of Likud cultivating Hamas, but we don’t have evidence of Hamas cultivating Likud in an analogous fashion. Hamas didn’t cultivate the Zionist groups that are responsible for trying to starve Palestinian civilians or teaching their children to sing about the destruction of Gaza. That is Israeli, totally home-grown. But Hamas was encouraged to grow and inevitably teach their children to hate Jews, by Zionists. It’s perverse, but true. History didn’t begin on October 7th. Thus anything that Hamas does the Israeli government holds substantial moral responsibility for — it has consciously contributed to its cultivation.

It would be as if the U.S. government had known about Nat Turner’s “organization”, permitted funds to go toward it, but blocked funds that went to organizations that weren’t itching to annihilate white people. And then when Nat Turner and his gang murdered a bunch of infants following a plan that the U.S. government had detailed knowledge of because the U.S. government meticulously surveilled everything the slave population did, the U.S. government turned around and decimated the slave population under the pretense it was necessary to eliminate the people responsible for the atrocities. When evaluating Israel’s response to October 7th, the history of Israel and its relationship to Hamas should not be set aside.

The [Zionist] Jewish State

Knowledge of the history of modern Israel is understandably not something that is very common, in the U.S. particularly. Americans aren’t given much information about Israel in school. I know I don’t remember reading about anything related to Israel in grade school. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned independently. Furthermore, America has been under the influence of increasingly powerful propaganda on behalf of Israel since the beginning of the 20th century. Having an attitude toward Israel that much of the country has toward China and Russia, for example, would be demonized as anti-Semitic by much of the corporate media and the Establishment wings of both political parties. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S., and certainly the most powerful lobby connected to a foreign government—and it is a foreign lobby that doesn’t register as a foreign agent. Recently the U.S. house voted on a motion that declared “anti-Zionism” is “anti-Semitism.” It passed in the house 311-14. That kind of ideological consensus between the two parties is rare, and it is largely due to the effectiveness of the Israel lobby, which includes AIPAC.

Before AIPAC was AIPAC, it was the “American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs.” The keyword being “Zionist.” AIPAC has a very rich history of trying to influence American politics on behalf of Zionist Israel. For example, in 2010 in a legal brief by the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, a case was submitted for AIPAC’s registration as a foreign agent:

1. AIPAC is a spinoff of an organization already ordered by the DOJ to register as an Israeli foreign agent.  In November of 1962 the American Zionist Council was ordered by the Attorney General to begin filing disclosures as an Israeli foreign agent under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act.  http://www.IRmep.org/1962Order.pdf  Six weeks later, former AZC  employees incorporated the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, DC, taking over the AZC's lobbying activities.  http://www.IRmep.org/AIPAC.pdf  AIPAC did not register as a foreign agent.  

2. AIPAC's founder Isaiah L. Kenen was the chief information officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York and for a time duly registered in that role.  http://www.IRmep.org/Kenen.pdf The Justice Department ordered Kenen to personally re-register after he formally left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to head up private lobbying and publicity for the Israeli government at the nonprofit American Zionist Council.  Kenen never complied with the order. http://www.IRmep.org/order.pdf  

3. Espionage related FBI investigations in 1984 and 2005 reveal AIPAC's ongoing stealth foreign agency activities.  Declassified FBI files released on the Internet last week reveal that in 1984 AIPAC and the Israeli Ministry of Economics were investigated for jointly obtaining and circulating classified US economic data to obtain favorable trade benefits for Israel.  http://www.irmep.org/ila/economy In 2005 Pentagon Colonel Lawrence Franklin pled guilty and two AIPAC employees were indicted for obtaining and circulating classified US national defense information to Israeli government officials allegedly in the interest of fomenting US action against Iran.

4. AIPAC's executive committee consists of the original member organizations of the AZC in addition to newer members.  The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group of AIPAC's executive committee, is housed in the same New York office as the World Zionist Organization – American Section, a registered foreign agent that is heavily involved in illegal settlement expansion according to Israeli prosecutor Thalia Sasson.

AIPAC has been trying to get U.S. politicians to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism for a while now. Understandably — it is a Zionist organization and associating an ideological opposition to Zionism with something widely socially taboo like racism, let alone a form of racism that is associated with Nazism, is politically potent. Five years before this bipartisan bill was passed secretary of state Mike Pompeo, under the Trump administration, spoke at an AIPAC conference where he pledged to DNC and RNC Zionist donors that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

The stupidity of that though was pointed out even by Representative Jerry Nadler, whose constituency happens to include many Orthodox Jews belonging to Jewish communities that are essentially anti-Zionist. Political slander though is not supposed to be rational; when wielded by powerful actors it is a weapon used to try to harm a person’s reputation and act as a deterrent to others. Calling people racist for disparaging the ideology of Zionism or the state of Israel is simply slander. The definition of anti-Semitism now promoted by many of the most powerful Zionist organizations is slanderous. While people can disparage Zionism or the state of Israel in a racist manner, their racism stems not from their disparagement of Zionism or the state of Israel, but any bigotry they hold toward people because of their conceived race.

These days, much of the antagonism towards Zionism and Israel has nothing to do with racial bigotry. And that antagonism is often reasonable given that Zionism—as characterized by the history of the the creation of the ideology and the most powerful people and groups that call themselves Zionist — promotes the idea that:

• Palestine should be governed by a Jewish nationalist state, Israel, that gives special rights to Jews

• It was justified for Zionists to bar Palestinians from returning to their homes after fleeing violence or that Palestinians have no right to return to their homes or that Palestinians have no right to any form of reparations for that injustice

• Israel is justified, while it invades Gaza, to restrict food and medical supplies from reaching the immediate descendants of that population to maintain its conceived security

Israel currently gives special rights to Jewish citizens. It is explicitly written in its Nation State Laws:

1 — Basic principles

A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.

B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.

C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

Likewise it gives other privileges to Jews, particularly privileges related to property; from a report by Human Rights Watch:

The Israeli state directly controls 93 percent of the land in the country, including occupied East Jerusalem. A government agency, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), manages and allocates these state lands. Almost half the members of its governing body belong to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose explicit mandate is to develop and lease land for Jews and not any other segment of the population. The fund owns 13 percent of Israel’s land, which the state is mandated to use “for the purpose of settling Jews.”

It also gives the right to Jews, globally, to immigrate to Israel — the “law of return”, which it does not give to, for example, the survivors among hundreds of thousands of people who were violently terrorized out of their homes in 1948 during what is called the Nakba (the population cleansing visually represented in the population bar chart in the previous chapter) and millions of their immediate descendants. From the “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe:

ON A COLD WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches on a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from vast areas of the country. The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expelling residents; demolishing homes; and, finally, planting mines in the rubble to prevent the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued its own list of villages and neighborhoods to target in keeping with the master plan. Code-named Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), this was the fourth and final version of vaguer plans outlining the fate that was in store for the native population of Palestine. The previous three plans had articulated only obscurely how the Zionist leadership intended to deal with the presence of so many Palestinians on the land the Jewish national movement wanted for itself. This fourth and last blueprint spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to go.

The plan, which covered both the rural and urban areas of Palestine, was the inevitable result both of Zionism’s ideological drive for an exclusively Jewish presence in Palestine and a response to developments on the ground following the British decision in February 1947 to end its Mandate over the country and turn the problem over to the United Nations. Clashes with local Palestinian militias, especially after the UN partition resolution of November 1947, provided the perfect context and pretext for implementing the ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine.

Once the plan was finalized, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, over 750,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods had been emptied of their inhabitants. The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear case of what is now known as an ethnic cleansing operation.

The law of return for Jews includes both converts to Judaism and children / grandchildren of parents / grandparents who are / were Jews. Which means that a “Jew” who doesn’t have any significant pious appreciation of the Tanakh, for example, has a right to “return” to Israel while the people who were forced from their homes by militant Zionists 75 years ago or their children or grandchildren do not. According to Israeli law, American Jews born in Brooklyn like billionaire Jerry Seinfeld have a greater right to live in Israel than the refugees in the West Bank who were violently forced from their homes.

Jerry Seinfeld, showing his support for the soldiers fighting Amalek

Modern Judaism, unlike any other major religion, has a relatively popular pseudo-racialist ideology that establishes membership not only by fealty to an ideology or tribe, but also by a mythological genealogy (which is itself further ideology). There are some Jews who are obsessed with trying to demonstrate a racial unity among Jews, even when anyone can convert, regardless of their biological ancestry. Because anyone can convert, and people did and do continue to convert, there can logically be no racial unity to Judaism. Jews are therefore not a race. We cannot convert to a race. It’s quite simple. I cannot become Ashkenazi or Han by choice or ritual; I can become Jewish, Christian, or Buddhist. Biological ancestry is a fixed state for any individual, but religious identity is not.

The idea of Jews as a race and not a religious tribe became very prominent around the time of modern Zionism in the late 19th century. During that time, racial tribalist ideologies in general were booming; and some Jews, especially impious Jews who no longer believed the supernaturalist myths of their religious forebears, embraced a naturalist myth of a Jewish race. And given the racialist mythology that exists in the foundational stories of the Tanakh, like Abraham and his “seed”, it should not be a surprise. Racialist mythology is a foundational element of the religion of Judaism, even though Jews are not a race. Other than my earlier references to the inheritance of Israel that was racial in character, the Tanakh contains passages that explicitly rebuke members of the tribe for having wives and children outside the mythical race:

After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Per′izzites, the Jeb′usites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.” Ezra 9:1-2

And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken thy commandments, which thou didst command by thy servants the prophets, saying, “The land which you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land unclean with the pollutions of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore give not your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.” Ezra 9:10-13

Zionism, and by Zionism I only mean modern Zionism, and the state of Israel were established substantially by impious Jewish mytho-racial tribalists who wanted dominion over territory—what they called the “Jewish State”. Theoretically “Zionism” can be traced back before the self-identified “Zionists” of the late 19th century popularized the term all the way back to the mythologies of the Tanakh where Yahweh promises Abraham the land of Canaan (Palestine). “Zion” is another term for Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is in the land of Canaan. Furthermore, the Jewish longing to “return to Zion” can also be found in the Tanakh.

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
    when we remembered Zion.
 On the willows there
    we hung up our lyres.
 For there our captors
    required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

 How shall we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy! -Psalm 137

Indeed, even the modern impious Zionists themselves referred to the Tanakh, recognizing the poetic appeal to a state in Palestine. The founding modern Zionists generally didn’t believe Yahweh existed, but they wanted the land Jews were commanded to conquer by him in the mythological pseudo-history of the Torah (the first five books of the Tanakh). Theodore Herzl stated:

Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvellous potency. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence. The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status such as is well-known to the law of nations. We should form a guard of honor about these sanctuaries, answering for the fulfilment of this duty with our existence. This guard of honor would be the great symbol of the solution of the Jewish Question after eighteen centuries of Jewish suffering.

The “Jewish Question” could be solved, in Herzl’s mind, if Jews were given Palestine to colonize to create a bulwark against the “barbarians” of Asia. The people already living there, the vast majority not Jews, were insufficiently civilized according to Herzl. And while past Jewish suffering was at the forefront of Herzl’s mind, he wasn’t particularly concerned about the future suffering that a Jewish colonizing enterprise could (and did) bring to non-Jewish Palestinians. But the Jewish state that Herzl longed for was not a theocratic state, it was an imaginary ethno-state, one ruled by magnanimous Cosmopolitan European Jews who worked on the sabbath, ate lobster, and had little in common with their pious brethren other than a mythological common descent — the “Faith of our Fathers.”

But not his own faith. At least, other than his faith in that mythological common descent. In a letter, Herzl wrote:

I am in favor of absolute freedom of conscience. Everyone should believe in, or not believe in, whatever he wants.

I know very well what gratitude Judaism owes to orthodoxy, because the latter, with its steadfastness, has contributed much to the preservation of Judaism. But allow me to hope that in our State, when we achieve it, there will not be any falling out on matters of faith among us Jews. Everyone should serve God in his own way. Within himself, he should be as free as he wishes and as he is able to be.

Sounds like what we might read from someone who has been imbibing the writings of Voltaire and Montesquieu, not the Tanakh. It was only due to relatively recent political changes external to Jewish communities that Jews were emancipated from Rabbinical authority to the point where people who espoused heretical ideas like that were not ostracized or punished by other Jews. For example, the excommunication of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza in 1656 by the Jewish community in Amsterdam isn’t strange, given that his pantheistic conception of “God” was so radically incompatible and conceptually hostile to Yahweh and the Tanakh:

The Senhores of the ma’amad [the congregation’s lay governing board] having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, have endeavored by various means and promises to turn him from his evil ways. However, having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds, and having for this numerous trustworthy witnesses who have deposed and borne witness to this effect in the presence of the said Espinoza, they became convinced of the truth of this matter. After all of this has been investigated in the presence of the honorable hakhamim [“wise men,” or rabbis], they have decided, with the [rabbis’] consent, that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day.

It's also not strange that Herzl, who had tasted a freedom to “believe whatever he wants”, didn’t want a theocracy for the state he dreamt. He didn’t want the kind of people running the government who “cursed” Spinoza for teaching that “God” isn’t Yahweh. In his Jewish state, Herzl explicitly writes that he wanted the theocrats out of government:

We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks.

Decades later, by the time the state of Israel had been formed and Herzl was no longer alive, such a scenario didn’t play out exactly as he had hoped. The “priests” acquired significant political influence in the state, along with Jews who simply embraced the Torah. Furthermore, the majority of the adult civilian population would be soldiers. Creating a “Jewish State” without most of Judaism proved to be more complicated in reality.

From the foundation of modern Israel, the mythology of the Tanakh, especially the mythology of books like Joshua, inspired the leaders and followers of Zionism. Ben Gurion, a Zionist military strategist who lead the planning of the racial cleansing of Palestine and who was the first prime minister of Israel, regularly held a Tanakh study group. The book of Joshua was one of his favorite books, and saw the genocide of Canaan (Palestine) depicted in it as a model for what Zionists were to do in 1948. The Nakba was a modern reenactment of Jewish mythology. From a speech by Ben Gurion to the Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society shortly after the Nakba:

None of the commentators of the Bible—Jewish or non-Jewish—in the Middle Ages or today—could have been able to interpret the chapters of Joshua as the IDF did last year.

A Century of Likud

As we observe the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by Likud it should not be conceived as incongruent with the history of Israel. Likud, today, is the logical blossoming of a fruit whose seed was planted at the beginning of Israel. In fact, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, [Rabbi] Jessurun Cardozo, and many other Jews wrote a letter to the New York times in 1948, shortly after the formation of the modern state of Israel warning about Likud.

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

Menachem Begin, before the creation of the state of Israel, was a leader of the Irgun — a Zionist paramilitary organization described by the United States and British governments as a terrorist organization in the same way Hamas is described as a terrorist organization today:

Apart from the Haganah, two further illegal armed organizations exist, both having cut away from the parent body. One is the "Irgun Zvai Leumi", which was formed in 1935 by dissident members of the Haganah. The other is the "Stern Group" which broke away from the Irgun early In the war when the latter announced an "armistice". The Irgun operates under its own secret command mainly in sabotage and terrorism against the Mandatory; its strength is estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000. The Stern Group engages in terrorism; its strength is said to be between 200 and 300.

After the creation of the state of Israel, Begin founded the Herut Party. Then in 1973, through various consolidations and unions of parties and sub-parties that shared the views of Herut, Likud was formed (Likud can be translated from Hebrew as “The Consolidation”). And in 1977, Manachem Begin would become Prime Minister of Israel and leader of Likud; the biggest party in the Knesset.

As Einstein and others observed, it could be predicted what Israel would become were it to be substantially led by a party like Likud. They were right, and here we are today. The cruel savagery by the IDF that marked the massacre at Deir Yassin, which Einstein and others had referred to, is being repeated at a massive scale. Furthermore, the misrepresentation and deceit that they ascribed to Begin and the party can be seen today with Netanyahu and Likud. Netanyahu and propaganda commissars tell the world that the IDF is the “most moral army in the world” while state officials make genocidal references, soldiers dance and sing about all Palestinians representing Amalek, and Palestinians, some of whom are innocent, are allegedly held in horrific detention camps where some are reportedly tortured.

The obscene and audacious lies about the behaviors of the Zionist military being moral had been called out by Jews who wrote to the New York Times in 1948, and was again on display during the genesis of AIPAC a few years later shortly after the foundation of Israel. One of the first missions of AIPAC (at the time the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs) for the budding “Jewish State” was public relations damage control over a massacre in 1953 of over 60 Palestinian villagers by the Israeli army in the village of Qibya in retribution for the murder of an Israeli woman and her two children. There was a description of it in the October 26th issue of Times Magazine:

… the Israelis moved into Kibya with rifle and Sten guns. They shot every man, woman and child they could find, then turned their fire on the cattle. After that, they dynamited 42 houses, a school and a mosque …. The villagers huddled in the grass could see Israeli soldiers slouching in the doorways of their homes, smoking and joking, their young faces illuminated by the flames. By 3 a.m., the Israelis' work was done, and they leisurely withdrew.

The resemblance of this description and what’s found in the Tanakh along with the perverse Tik Tok videos of IDF soldiers making jokes about their destruction is uncanny. They killed not just every person, but the cattle, and then they made “jokes”.

I think it should be clear that if we want to understand how the IDF and the Israeli state operates, all we need to do is go to the “Holy Bible” that Netanyahu and Ben Gurion invoked and read the descriptions of the savage annihilation that is carried out by the “Jewish heroes,” which Netanyahu referred to, such as Joshua. Simply project the modern international eye onto mythical Canaan and you would get a Joshua that is a lot more circumspect and less transparent about his machinations, but is driven by the same spirit.

The notion that Israel is operating honestly and ethically is absurd. It’s absurd because we have documented video of the contrary, and it’s absurd because the state officials reference the Tanakh as their inspiration, which is a book filled with cruelty, tyranny, and deceit directed for the exact same territory of Palestine. Remember, Israel (aka Jacob) deceived his father and his brother to gain his inheritance and blessing; why we should expect behavior by a state which bears and honors his name to be any different bewilders me. Israel’s history with the U.S. has been sordid.

For example, Israel stole nuclear material and secrets from the U.S. From The Guardian:

In fact, US involvement went deeper than mere silence. At a meeting in 1976 that has only recently become public knowledge, the CIA deputy director Carl Duckett informed a dozen officials from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the agency suspected some of the fissile fuel in Israel's bombs was weapons-grade uranium stolen under America's nose from a processing plant in Pennsylvania.

Not only was an alarming amount of fissile material going missing at the company, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (Numec), but it had been visited by a veritable who's-who of Israeli intelligence, including Rafael Eitan, described by the firm as an Israeli defence ministry "chemist", but, in fact, a top Mossad operative who went on to head Lakam.

Israel once attacked a U.S. ship, the USS Liberty in 1967. From the Intercept:

In a statement to The Intercept, Ernie Gallo, who currently serves as the president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said, “We now know that the Navy Court of Inquiry was merely for show, as the officers were told to come to the conclusion the Liberty did [its] job and the attack was accidental.” Bamford also references the magnitude and length of the attack as proof of its deliberateness: The ship was hit repeatedly, first by planes dropping thousand-pound bombs and napalm, and then by torpedo boats. Israeli forces also jammed the Liberty’s antennas and communication channels, took out the four .50-caliber machine guns on board, and reportedly shot at life rafts and crew members as they attempted to evacuate the vessel. “It was an attack in broad daylight,” said Bamford. “They were flying a large U.S. flag. [The ship] said USS Liberty on the back. … I mean, what do you need?”

The incident and its aftermath took a significant psychological toll on survivors, many of whom were reported to suffer from PTSD. One survivor and member of the Liberty Veterans Association, James Ennes, was shot in the femur during the attack, and was then instructed never to discuss it. Ernie Gallo had a fellow crewmate die in his arms. It was decades before survivors began sharing their experiences, and they were sometimes criticized for being anti-Semitic or slanderous of Israel for doing so.

Israel once attempted to carry out a false flag terrorist attack on American civilian targets and blame it on the Muslim Brotherhood and Communists. From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

In 1954, Israeli Military Intelligence (often known by its Hebrew abbreviation AMAN) activated a sleeper cell that had been tasked with setting off a series of bombs in Egypt. In this risky operation, a small number of Egyptian Jews were to bomb Western and Egyptian institutions in Egypt, hoping the attacks could be blamed on Egyptian opponents of the country’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Communist Party. The ensuing chaos, it apparently was hoped, would persuade Western governments that Nasser’s regime was unstable and, therefore, unworthy of financial and other support.

From the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:

Now the networks were to explode small incendiary bombs in American installations in Egypt, presumably to set off a chain of mutual recriminations to spoil the budding Eisenhower-Nasser courtship. After completing their sabotage of American installations, the same networks next were to bomb public places in Cairo and Alexandria, actions that Nasser would attribute to the Muslim Brotherhood, which supported the deposed General Naguib, and thus create a climate of Egyptian instability during the British-Egyptian Canal Zone negotiations.

Yet despite Israel’s atrocious historical relationship with the U.S., Israel has received more aid since its creation than any other country; and out of the countries receiving the most aid, it is also the country with the smallest population. Zionists often make the irrelevant observation that Israel has a small population or that other countries do bad things too — well, Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. aid, thus it should also be the number one country under scrutiny for its behavior by Americans.

It continues to receive aid from congress and the Biden administration as it carries out a genocide in violation of U.S. law, per the Leahy Law, which prohibits:

[the] U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights (GVHR).

Will all politicians who are violating U.S. law by voting to send military aid to Israel be held accountable in any legal way? Unfortunately, I think that’s highly unlikely.

Israel, the 51st State

Every government in the world deserves skepticism. And that of course includes the U.S. government. Right now, the U.S. government is funding the genocide being carried out by Likud: the vast majority of the U.S. congress and the Biden administration is willingly providing weapons, funds, and diplomatic support for it. Using a phrase that has become increasingly popular these days — there is little daylight between the U.S. government and Likud’s genocide of Palestinians. The Establishment wings of both parties currently support it sufficiently enough that the House passed a bill on April 21 that would give $26.4 billion from American taxes in funding to help Israel, a relatively wealthy sovereign state whose standard of living for many citizens is greater than that of U.S. citizens, to carry out its genocide against “Amalek” — it passed 366 to 58 (the chart earlier does not include that and only goes to 2023). The only difference between the two parties in this case is that the Republican Party is generally unambiguous about its support, while the Democratic Party, including Biden, verbally expresses some criticism but still provides financial and military support. The Democratic Party is simply aware that a lot of its voter base doesn’t support Likud and is trying to rhetorically satisfy some of its base’s concern while simultaneously acting in a way that is beneficial to Likud. It wants to keep its bombs and drop them.

Ultimately, the behavior of both parties demonstrates that they have no care about representing the interests of the “people”, only the interests of the deepest pockets and powerful factions. Polls demonstrate that only 36% of Americans favor providing military aid to Israel, yet the vast majority of congress, and the executive branch, provided and continue to provide taxpayer funded military supplies to Israel.

AIPAC boasts about its power and influence, but if you bring it up you just might be called an “anti-Semite.”

After all, as the AIPAC PAC boasts: “BEING PRO-ISRAEL IS GOOD POLICY AND GOOD POLITICS." Indeed, the PAC boasts:

The AIPAC PAC was founded in December 2021 to support pro-Israel candidates and members of Congress, and in just one year we delivered more money directly to candidates than any other PAC in America.

And that is just its latest PAC. The Israel Lobby is much bigger, and much more powerful, than just the AIPAC PAC. One of the reasons why being “Pro-Israel” is such good politics is because the Israel Lobby aggressively attempts to undermine and destroy politicians who express criticism of Israel, especially the ideology of Zionism. And the way they do it generally isn’t by bringing the public’s attention to a politician’s views on Israel, as one might expect, but rather by spending millions of dollars on smear campaigns about things that have nothing to do with Israel.

As such, there is very little opposition to Zionism in congress, but the little that exists is even too much for AIPAC. Howard Kohr, the CEO of AIPAC, recently had this to say:

the rise of a very vocal minority on the far left of the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel and seeks to weaken and diminish the relationship. Our view is that support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is both good policy and good politics. We wanted to defend our friends and to send a message to detractors that there’s a group of individuals that will oppose them.

Lots of Zionists aren’t Jewish, they are Christian. In fact, statistically, in the U.S. there are more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists, partly because there is simply a lot more Christians than Jews; around 30 million Americans are Christian Zionists, while there are only around 6 million Americans who are Jewish, not all of which are even Zionist (albeit probably still a majority that are). A significant part of the Israel Lobby are Christians who believe that the state of Israel is an essential element of an “End Times” prophecy that will ultimately usher in the second coming of Jesus. There are members of congress who apparently believe that. And they want to ensure that Israel remains a Jewish pseudo ethno-theocratic state so that Jesus comes — even if it means that all Jews there will ultimately be destroyed by Jesus, like anyone else who doesn’t eagerly become his slave [albeit there are some sectarian disagreements about the details of Armageddon].

Israel being a theocratic ethno-state is important for Christian Zionist retribution fantasies

In some sense, Christian Zionism actually predates the Herzl strand of modern Jewish Zionism. For example, two years before Theodore Herzl wrote his “Jewish State”, an Anglican Christian Chaplain, William Hechler wrote “The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine.” Hechler believed that Jews returning to Palestine would be essential for fulfilling a prophecy related to Jesus. He ended up providing Herzl access to the German and British political establishment, which eventually contributed to the 1917 Balfour Declaration: a public letter from Arthur Belfour to Walter Rothschild that promised the British government’s support for creating a home in Palestine for Jews. That public declaration though contained a lie. In it Balfour makes the promise:

that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

But in a private letter, Balfour made it clear that the he and the British government didn’t care at all about the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine:

For in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are…

The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land…

I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine, it is not now an ‘independent nation’, nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the view of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I under­stand the matter, to consult them. In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate…

Zionism, “be it right or wrong”, sounds just about how Biden views things. However, I suspect most U.S. politicians are not ideologically Zionist, Christian or otherwise; I’d wager most are just the average hollow hustler that views politics as a lucrative and exciting career with ample opportunities to flex power. Zionists, Jewish and Christian, provide them with ample amounts of cash to augment their campaigns and since most of the American population doesn’t view the fate of Palestine as a high priority, the politicians can support a genocide, get paid, and have no concerns about it deeply eroding their voting base. And for the average American, wading into the murky waters of a century old conflict with terrorists, religious zealots, propaganda, and billionaires, is fraught with dangers — social, financial, and mortal.

But I think it should be a high priority; the resources and lives that the U.S. has invested into protecting Israel’s choice to be a pseudo ethno-theocratic state that is perpetually attempting to expand its territory has been deeply detrimental to the prosperity and security of the vast majority of Americans. Billions of dollars of taxes are sent every year to a small relatively wealthy foreign country which could be used domestically to help Americans. Trillions of dollars of debt and taxes have been sunk into military campaigns that had a relationship to Israel — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria; much of the “forever wars” have been driven by “neocons” and Zionists who have steered American foreign policy in the middle east that converged with the interests of a Likudite Israel. Millions of lives have been destroyed or traumatized because of it; and I suspect millions more will be if history continues to repeat. That has affected the way many countries and people perceive the US, contributing to events like 9/11. Supporting Israel’s atrocities harms America’s national security and prosperity, and not for any worthy cause. I do believe there are theoretically virtuous wars, but the wars that Zionists have dragged the U.S. into have not been. And certainly, the latest conflict, the genocide that Zionists now conduct and defend, is not.

From the Transparent Cabal, by Stephen J. Sniegoski:

Some significant United States government figures, mostly retired or about to retire, also commented about the Israeli role in the [Iraq] war. On May 23, 2004, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, stated on the popular “60 Minutes” television program that the neoconservatives’ role in pushing the war for Israel’s benefit

“was the worst-kept secret in Washington .. . And one article, because I mentioned the neoconservatives who describe themselves as neoconservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that’s the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it.... I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the President and the secretary to do.

And I don’t believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.”

Zinni had been in charge of all American troops in the Middle East as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command, and had also served President George W. Bush as a special envoy to the Middle East.

Regardless of how relatively small the population of Israel is it would be foolish to discount its power and influence, even though Zionists would like people to look away or erroneously think it’s racist for having suspicions about the influence Israel or Zionists have over U.S. foreign policy. Historically small populations have routinely dominated much larger populations, from the Spartans over the Helots to the British over much of the Earth. Its banal. The concentration of enormous power in the hands of the few is the norm.

However Zionism will not be purged from the upper power structures of the U.S. until most Americans understand the pernicious effects on the government and American citizens that being an “ally of Israel” has caused. I wouldn’t call a country an “ally” of the U.S. if it steals nuclear secrets and materials, napalms its soldiers, and attempts to manipulate its policies with false flag terrorism all while having the gall to slander challenging the right to do that as “anti-Semitism.” Americans must come to accept that Israel is no more of an ally than Russia or China, and arguably even more dangerous to American interests. But before that can happen the political weaponization and manipulation of “anti-Semitism” accusations must be challenged.

Zionism is Anti-Semitic

It is irrational slander for the anti-Semite label to be recklessly thrown about for disparaging Zionism, Israel, or Judaism since “Semites” are a racial category first constructed in the 18th century of people whose ancestors lived in regions that spoke “Semitic” languages, including Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Discussions about the history of “anti-Semitism” today tend to be anachronistic in the sense that they suggest that “anti-Semitism” can be observed in the disparagement of Jews and Judaism that goes back thousands of years. A prime example is the common irrational victimhood Olympics description of anti-Semitism as “the world’s oldest hatred”.

Humans have been hating each other, as individuals and part of a collective, for all sorts of reasons far before Jews even existed. Ancient Israel itself was mythologically formed, according to the Tanakh, through a genocidal hatred of various people of Canaan.

Furthermore, the use of the term “anti-Semitic” only came into existence in the 19th century, and early included a reference to all “Semites”, not just “Semitic Jews.” The earliest usage of “anti-Semitic” seems to be found in a 1860 criticism by Moritz Steinschneider of Ernest Renan’s article "New considerations on the general character of the Semitic peoples, and in particular on their tendency towards monotheism." Steinschneider criticized Renan’s “anti-Semitic prejudices” in regard to Renan’s analysis of the religions that came from Semitic people, including Islam and Judaism. Only after the term was adopted by German ethno-nationalists who used it specifically toward Jews in general, did it become popularly associated only with hatred toward Jews based on a conceived Jewish race. “Anti-Semitism” is in fact one of the world’s youngest hatreds.

The history of “anti-Semitism” is intimately tied to the erroneous belief that Jews are a race. Due to imagined racial characteristics of a Jewish race, German ethno-nationalists, such as Wilhelm Marr, argued that Jews wouldn’t be able to assimilate into German society even if they did renounce Judaism, as religion wasn’t his issue.

I may have erred. It might be that Semitism and Germanism will enter a political social peace. I just don’t believe in such a peace. I only believe what I see: our social, political subjugation by you. But instead of boastfully rattling the chains as is done by many, I admit that we have been fettered “hand and foot”, “heart and soul” --- from palace to hovel.

We can count him as the originator of the terms “anti-Semite” and “Semitism” and identified himself as an anti-Semite. His hostility to Jews wasn’t simply due to his dislike of their religion, it was due to his bigotry about their imaginary “Semitic” racial characteristics— aka “Semitism”. Before the 18th century, there was less of a racial tinge to hostility toward Jews. It was commonly driven by religious and cultural hostility, which could often be relieved if a Jew converted. Some of the Palestinians being starved in Gaza by Likud are probably descendants of “Semitic” people who converted to Islam or Christianity from Judaism. The anti-Semites of the 19th and 20th century thought Jews could not convert though because they didn’t recognize Jews as a religious group, but a race. That erroneous notion was explicitly expressed by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf:

From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, where as in reality they are a race?

Zionist organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), like to disparage people for believing what they label “anti-Semitic tropes”. The list of beliefs the ADL finds unacceptable and racist includes things like “Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street” and “Jews in business go out of their way to hire other Jews”; but what it doesn’t include is “Jews are a race or ethnic group.” It probably doesn’t include that “trope”, which was a belief shared by Nazis that contributed to genocide of Jews and non-Jews, because the ADL itself expresses that trope. Jews are not a race, but here is Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the ADL, calling Jews an ethnic group.

Let's be clear that the Jews, again, are complicated. And a lot of this doesn't fit neatly into the boxes that we use today to think about difference. Yes, they are a religion. They are also an ethnic group.

And here we see the ADL defining racism as connected with “ethnicity”:

Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.

Often people try to use “ethnicity” as a way to smuggle in race without actually using the word race. “Ethnic pride” became a way for racial tribalists to be proud of their race while using a slightly different rhetoric that is less taboo. Ironically, even by the definition of racism by the ADL itself and Jonathan Greenblatt’s [mis]conception of Jews as an ethnicity, the state of Israel is racist because it gives favorable treatment to Jews.

A lot of Muslims and Jews share common biological ancestry, especially Arab Muslims in Palestine and Mizrahi Jews—aka Arab / Middle Eastern Jews. And many Ashkenazi Jews—aka European Jews—could be genetically closer to any random Italian Christian than any random Mizrahi Jew.

Our results, primarily from the detailed analysis of the four major haplogroup K and N1b founders, but corroborated with the remaining Ashkenazi mtDNAs, suggest that most Ashkenazi maternal lineages trace their ancestry to prehistoric Europe… Overall, it seems that at least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of mtDNAs indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion.

It makes no rational sense to classify Jews as a race anymore than it makes sense to classify Christians as race. The same goes for “ethnicity”; it makes no more sense to call Jews an ethnic group than it is to call Christians an ethnic group. That “trope” was a pillar of Nazi ideology; and it is a pillar of modern Zionism. It doesn’t matter that many Jewish groups have been relatively more endogamous than some other religious groups; there has nonetheless been a substantial amount of conversion and intermating among Jews and non-Jews. And a religion doesn’t magically become a race based on the percent of its population that shares ancestry anyway. Zionists have been trying to locate the “Jewish gene” for decades now, engaging in pseudo-scientific race research. Bringing up “science” that shows some of the Jewish population shares ancestral biological descent is logically irrelevant. No one can convert to a race. Religion is a separate empirical and logical category from race, just as gender is.

Most Europeans were Christians for over a thousand years, but there is no big confusion about a “Christian European” race, except maybe within the Klan. The vast majority of Klan people are European, it doesn’t follow that a person born into family belonging to the Klan are part of the Klan race, nor would that change if they added to their doctrine that anyone with a mother in the Klan is automatically a member of the Klan. Nor would that doctrine prevent anyone from leaving the Klan if they wanted to. The Klan could be around for a million years and it still wouldn’t be a race; it would still just be the Klan, a cult. Ancestry does not dictate our religious tribes. Choice does. Any tribe that claims to assert authority over individuals and demands loyalty based on ancestry is spiritually despotic.

I did a genetic ancestry test through Ancestry.com. Here it is:

According to Ancestry.com, about 55% of my ancestry can be traced to Europe / England / Russia, which for the past 1000 years has been mostly Christian. My parents were also both raised Christian. But I am not Christian. And it’s not complicated like Jonathan Greenblatt wants people to believe. I have no Christian “component”; or “part”. I am 0% Christian. I am not Christian, period, regardless of what religion my European ancestors practiced. Nor do I belong to whatever religion(s) that my ancestors in various regions of Africa practiced. My religion has nothing to do with my biological ancestry—aka my “race”. Hence, the only "racial component” that many Jews share is the erroneous religious idea that Jews are a race. No one’s religion has anything to do with race, except by choice. And what my racial ancestry is or what my ancestors’ religions were should have no bearing on my right to conquer or rule a territory. Many Jewish Zionists disagree though and seem to think that because some of their distant ancestors might have lived in Palestine observing the Torah (we will find some do not have any such ancestors) they, and their “people”, have the right to rule Palestine, their “homeland.”

Additionally, the fact that 50% of my relatively recent ancestry can be traced to England or Cameroon doesn’t make me “British” or “Cameroon”. Those are national designations; and while some of my ancestors may have been British citizens or members of a society in Cameroon, I am not. I am only a U.S. citizen, and I was born in North America. While it’s quite plausible that some of my ancestors were Roman citizens, or living in the Roman Republic or Empire, it doesn’t follow that I am personally “Roman”. I could certainly make the decision to identify as Roman and ally myself with the “diaspora of Romans”, but that would be quite the metaphysical, religious, and tribal choice.

To slander people for disparaging Judaism or Zionism (both religions / ideologies) as supposedly promoting “anti-Semitism” (the erroneous and degenerate ideology that Jews are a race of Semites sharing nefarious racial characteristics) when a significant portion of Muslims and Christians and none-of-the-above (like Zoroastrians) have Semitic ancestry, is actually something that can be reasonably classified as “anti-Semitic” (racism toward Semites), as it assumes that only Jews have “Semitic” ancestry or only people with Semitic ancestry are Jews; it assumes Muslims with Semitic ancestry or Jews with Caucasian or Asian ancestry don’t exist. And it assumes all Jews have Semitic ancestry, which they do not. I’m quite confident Sammy Davis Jr didn’t.

Which is why it is also slanderous to call someone anti-Semitic simply because they say something disparaging about an individual Jew: not all Jews have “Semitic” racial ancestry, nor is disparagement always necessarily related to racial animosity toward an imagined Jewish race. For example, arbitrary disparagement of Jewish billionaires and their influence on politics like George Soros or Sheldon Adelson (two Jews with actually substantially different political views) is often labeled anti-Semitic. There are plenty of plausible reasons people may dislike Soros or Adelson outside of what some people imagine their racial ancestry to be. Bill Gates and the Koch brothers are billionaires deeply involved in politics, lots of people don’t like them, but they are not Jewish. I have yet to hear anyone be accused of racism for disparaging Bill Gates. Just because some of Soros detractors are racist doesn’t mean all are, and to simply assume they are is slanderous. Albeit, of course, as a method of deterring people from disparaging a politically powerful Jew, it is probably effective.

I think clinging to a delusional notion of Jews and Semites created by 19th and early 20th century German ethno-nationalists, such as Nazis, is not a rational or ethical position. As it is now, the concept of anti-Semitism as promoted by Zionist organizations, the U.S. Government, Israel, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is being weaponized to suppress opposition to a genocide by Israel against Gazans, many of whom are themselves “Semites”. Their definition of “anti-Semitism” is itself anti-Semitic.

A specific example of supposed “anti-Semitism” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that is being weaponized to maintain an apartheid and carry out genocide:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

The idea that every “people” has a right to rule a state (“self-determination”) is just nonsense. Nazis were a people. Scientologists are a people. Any religious or ideological group is a “people”; and if you throw in every conceivable ethnic group as well, it only compounds the nonsense. None of these “people” have an essential natural right to rule territory regardless of how they govern. First of all, there simply isn’t enough land on this planet to satisfy the desires of all the “people”. Does anyone’s “people” have a right to racially cleanse any territory they wish? And would it be racist to suggest they were in fact racist if they racially cleansed a territory and established laws that conceptualized their “people” as a race (even if they weren’t) and privileged them? No, it would be accurate.

The American Revolution was fueled by the notion that any “people” has the right to revolution if the state (government) the people live under is sufficiently unjust. Any government, such as the current [state] government of Israel, or the United States government today, has no inherent right to exist. From the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Zionists have the hubris to tell Americans that it is racist to argue that the government of Israel should be abolished, when the U.S. government was established through a revolution. Was the American revolution driven by racism toward Englishmen? Dumb.

Just as the existence of a “Christian State”, “Muslim State”, or “Buddhist State”, is unjust, so is a “Jewish State”. I don’t like such theocratic states, and feel people should have a right to alter them, and if any of those states, like any state, becomes despotic, people should have the right to abolish it. And them doing so is absolutely not racist. To suggest otherwise is idiotic slander. Israel isn’t holy; and right now it is a genocidal pseudo ethno-theocratic state. The U.S. isn’t holy; and right now the government is enabling Israel’s genocidal behaviors. Furthermore, suggesting that a revolution against a government would be just does not imply that murdering every civilian of that government is the intended end, which is an insane and detestable assumption.

Suggesting that a revolution against Britain would be just during the American revolution didn’t imply a desire to kill every British citizen (or subject), which Americans themselves were at the time. Simply suggesting that it would be just to alter or abolish the North Korean government today doesn’t imply racism or genocidal intent. Suggesting that it would have been just for anti-Nazi Germans to alter or abolish the government of Nazi Germany immediately prior to or during World War 2 would have of course not been racist. The same applies to Israel today: suggesting that it would be just to alter or abolish the Israeli government to end the Palestinian apartheid and genocide would not imply a desire to kill every Israeli citizen — Israeli citizens could even propose it themselves. Theoretically, it could even be done without any violence, such as what happened with the South Korean June Democratic Struggle.

But as I wrote earlier with the example of Nat Turner, not simply any revolutionary group will be just even if a revolution, in theory, would be just given the political situation of a society. A government established by Hamas that ruled all of Palestine could be no more just than the current government of Israel and possibly even worse. But a revolution by virtuous Palestinians (or Israelis) who aspired for a virtuous government would be righteous. And of course, because a government by Hamas would be unjust doesn’t justify a genocide against Palestinians or an apartheid anymore than the fact that the government of Israel being unjust justifies a genocide against Israelis or an apartheid. It is anti-Semitic to suggest that Palestinian infants are justified to be massacred by Likud because of what Hamas has done or is. And when it comes to the relationship of the U.S. toward Israel and Palestine — the U.S. government does not need to financially or militarily support either Hamas or Likud.

Perversely, the “remembrance of the Holocaust”, and the horror that was inflicted upon millions of people during World War 2, is being used as a way to try to imprison peoples’ minds— a mental vice that can create fear and guilt about blaming Israel, the self-declared “Jewish State,” of genocide, the crime millions of its own people or their immediate ancestors were victims of themselves. But it is the state of Israel, and those who enable it’s atrocities (such as most of the U.S. Congress) that corrupts the memory of the horrors of World War 2 by perpetuating similar horrors, not the people who hold the state of Israel responsible for what it has done and what it is doing to Palestinians. Zionists are using the memory of the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis as a psychological weapon to emotionally manipulate people, arguably even at times themselves, into accepting a racial cleansing, an apartheid, and a genocide of Palestinians. That is an abomination.

Zionists sometimes claim that “anti-Semitism” is some sort of evolving metaphysical amoeba that constantly changes — when in fact it is Zionists who have tried to change the meaning of anti-Semitism to slander people for challenging whatever some politically powerful Zionist organization thinks is in the interest of Israel and Zionism. People should not cede the meaning of anti-Semitism to a cult; we can include both Jewish and Christian Zionists at the helm. Especially a cult that is currently carrying out a genocide under the delusional pretext that they have a right to starve millions of “Semitic” people to protect a government established through racial cleansing and maintained through an apartheid.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Jews

There is a common notion, especially among Zionists, that Judaism should have some sort of special exemption from disparagement, and that disparagement of Judaism is somehow essentially sinister and based on racial hatred while disparagement of other religions isn’t essentially sinister or racist and other religions are legitimate targets of disparagement. For example, no one is going to be accused of racism for disparaging Scientology or ridiculing Mormonism. No Zionist organization that I know of accused the musical The Book Of Mormon of being murderously hateful or racist toward Mormons.

One longstanding Jewish trope that isn’t discussed much is the anti “gentile” or anti “goy” (terms that often have been used by Jews to refer to non-Jews) perspective that anyone, particularly non-Jews, who disrespects Judaism or the behavior and ideology of some Jewish sects, especially modern Zionism, secretly harbors Nazi-like “hate” toward all individual Jews in general. For example, “Anti-Semitism” and “Jew-hate” are sometimes attributed to the most ridiculous things, like giving an insufficient amount of privilege to Jews. Recently a group of entertainment professionals, aka actors, including Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing, Julianna Margulies, Tiffany Haddish, David Schwimmer, Josh Gad, and Michael Rapaport wrote an open letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences accusing the entertainment organization of anti-Semitism:

While we applaud the Academy's efforts to increase diverse and authentic storytelling, an inclusion effort that excludes Jews is both steeped in and misunderstands antisemitism….

While many mistakenly believe that Judaism is only a religion, Jews are actually an ethnic group, with varied spiritual practices that not all observe…

Jewish people being excluded from the Motion Picture Academy's Representation and Inclusion Standards is discriminating against a protected class by invalidating their historic and genetic identity…

A space like this has never existed for Jews in Hollywood, and the Motion Picture Academy has an opportunity to combat Jew-hatred by creating a framework for nuanced and authentic representation.

Jews are marginalized and hated in Hollywood? It sounds like an SNL skit, but it’s a real letter. In that letter we can strangely hear echos of Hitler’s notion that Jews aren’t a religious group. While Jews certainly have varied spiritual practices that not all observe (just like Christians) they all have some shared spiritual practices because Jews are a distinct religious group, not an “ethnic group” with a “genetic identity”. The primary shared Jewish spiritual practice of the authors is believing they belong to a mythological Jewish “genetic identity.” The authors don’t seem to be aware of their own religious belief, but that is irrelevant; most people think their religion is true, and we can observe some who will assert that their religion is not a religion but simply Truth. Black Hebrew Israelites believe they are descendants of a lost tribe of Israel; the state of Israel currently considers that belief erroneous, a myth (which I agree), but is ignorant of the racial mythology that is the foundation of the state of Israel itself.

The expectation for special treatment that reveals itself in that letter isn’t just shared by some Hollywood Zionist Jews, it’s common to Israeli Jews. According to a Pew poll in 2016, 79% of Israeli Jews think that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel. Which shouldn’t be all to surprising, since Jews actually do receive preferential treatment in Israel, by Israeli law. And Zionists are trying to have that in the U.S. as well. But if we consider the weapons delivered and the tax money disproportionately shoveled to the apartheid “Jewish State”, arguably they already do have that, given how important Israel is to the vast majority of American Jews. Which isn’t surprising because the creation of Israel through the conquest of Canaan is one of the foundational and central myths of the religion of Judaism found in the Torah.

In fact in the Torah before even the state of Israel was formed the followers of Moses were collectively called Israel. Before there were “Jews”, there was the cult of Israel, which sought to conquer and rule the land of Canaan (Palestine).

Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it [Palestine]; that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life; and that your days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them; that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. - Deuteronomy 6

Gentile Conspiracies, Gentile Phobia, and other “Canards”

The Tanakh often promotes a distrust of gentiles. Fears about “Jew-hate” from non-Jews and fears about non-Jews conspiring together to destroy all Jews can be found in the Tanakh. For example:

O God, do not keep silence;
do not hold thy peace or be still, O God!
  For lo, thy enemies are in tumult;
    those who hate thee have raised their heads.
 They lay crafty plans against thy people;
    they consult together against thy protected ones.
 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation;
    let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”
 Yea, they conspire with one accord;
    against thee they make a covenant—
 the tents of Edom and the Ish′maelites,
    Moab and the Hagrites,
 Gebal and Ammon and Am′alek,
    Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
 Assyria also has joined them;
    they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. -Psalm 83

And even though it is true that there have been groups that have desired to destroy all Jews, such as Nazis, the Nazis were ultimately defeated by other nations. And Nazis now face cooperative effort for their elimination. Nazism is one of the most hated ideologies in the world and Nazis today are a common symbol of evil (and I have no desire to dispute it). Public displays of Nazi symbols are banned in many countries, including Germany, China, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, and Israel. And Nazi’s didn’t desire to only massacre Jews, they also carried out genocides against Roma and Slavs, and crafted eliminationist laws against homosexuals and people with various disabilities. There are unfortunately people from many demographic groups who can lay claim to being genocidally hated by Nazis.

While Zionists incessantly preach about the historical persecution of Jews as if it’s exceptional, the persecution of religious groups is not a historical oddity. Christians were, after all, persecuted by some Jews and Romans when they first came about. Allegedly their founder, Jesus, was crucified by some Jewish and Roman authorities for blasphemy and sedition (a more modern example is Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, who was lynched by Christians who hated the growing power of Mormons). Jesus may have been raised Jewish but he was arguably as much a Jew when he died as Joseph Smith was a Christian. Following his death, Jesus’ followers were then persecuted by the same authorities. Those followers were not only ex-Jews, but people who had once followed Greco-Roman religions. During the 20th century, Christians, and many other religious groups faced brutal persecution by various Communist regimes, such as the Soviet Union — where millions of people of various religious and political persuasions were systematically tortured or executed for being essentially heretics and insufficiently loyal to the totalitarian ideology.

Some religious groups, furthermore, simply don’t exist anymore because they were completely extinguished by hostile forces. The Tanakh contains passages (some of which I have already quoted) that encouraged the genocide of various groups who practiced various religions in Canaan. Ancient Israelites, according to the mythology of Judaism, were commanded to extinguish those groups and Zionists today proclaim it was justified — Netanyahu, as mentioned earlier, expressed reverence for Joshua who supposedly committed genocide in the past.

The genocide of Jews by Nazis was used by Zionists to lobby the U.N. for partition in 1947 of Palestine, which is still today used to legitimize the Nakba, and the Holocaust continues to be used as a way to justify the existence of an apartheid “Jewish State” and the genocide being carried out by Israel today. Israel has a history of trying to present the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust as an event that should be viewed as uniquely sacred by everyone, to be held apart from the suffering of other humans. For example, in 1982 Israel’s Foreign Ministry set out to curtail an academic conference that was going to cover the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. From Haaretz:

The list of people whom Foreign Ministry emissaries contacted to persuade them not to participate included local officials such as Yad Vashem chairman Yitzhak Arad and Yad Vashem council chairman Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial two decades earlier. The idea was to try to persuade the Holocaust remembrance center of the problematic nature of the conference, which, in dealing with both with the Shoah and the Armenian genocide, would detract from the uniqueness of the former.

To this day, Israel has not officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, as it’s imagined it would possibly damage the public perception of the Holocaust. From Haaretz:

Because there’s a basic, fixed issue, far less influenced by outside parties and events, but one that uniquely influences Israeli policy in regard to recognition of the Armenian genocide: the memory of the Holocaust as "unique."

In Israel, there is a commitment to "never again," a watchword in Israeli society, politics, and diplomacy ever since the birth of the State of Israel. But it has been embraced in its particularist form: "never again" to Jewish vulnerability in the face of murderous antisemitism, rather than the "never again to anyone," the form in which it is widely understood in, for example, the liberal American Jewish community.

That same particularism works retroactively, too. Analogies to the Holocaust are often slammed as the "trivialization" of Jewish suffering. That anathema to "sharing" the idea of being genocide victims, or the fear of competing genocide commemorations, has a specific locus.

A man who was specifically asked in 1982 to pull out of the conference and agreed was Zionist and author Elie Wiesel. Not only did he pull out, he shared internal documents with the Israeli government and tried to convince others who were attending the conference to back out as well by concocting lies about it. Elie Wiesel was a prolific author and survived imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps himself. His parents died at the hands of Nazis. And after he was rescued by Allied troops he went on to be one of the most prominent marketers of the Holocaust for the sake of Israeli state and Zionist interests. He actually received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, about 4 years after he chose to work with the Israeli state to “reduce and diminish” the death marches and killing fields of the Armenian Genocide.

It is the Committee's opinion that Elie Wiesel has emerged as one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression and racism continue to characterise the world.

It is my opinion that Elie Wiesel didn’t deserve any Peace Prize. Giving him that prize was a travesty. But he may deserve a prize for living out the time-honored Zionist canard of using the suffering of Jews during World War 2 as an excuse for the atrocities of Israel. After being saved from the concentration camp he was inspired by Irgun’s terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, shortly prior to the Zionist racial cleansing of Palestinians, and wanted to join the Zionist militants:

Interviewer: "Why after the war did you not go on to Palestine from France?

Wiesel: I had no certificate. In 1946 when the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel, I decided I would like to join the underground. Very naively I went to the Jewish Agency in Paris. I got no further than the janitor who asked: "What do you want?" I said, "I would like to join the underground." He threw me out. About 1948 I was a journalist and helped one of the Yiddish underground papers with articles, but I was never a member of the underground."

Interviewer: I am surprised to hear you say you wanted to join since the notion of killing is so foreign to you.

Wiesel: Still, at that point, I felt I had to do something. I could only hope that if I had become a member I would not have had to kill. In 1946 I wanted to to do something. The Jewish people were awakening, and my place was with the Jewish people. Whatever the Jews were doing, I had to be with them. Everything about the underground was alien to me. I was against killing, against violence.

Interviewer: A Christian friend of mine recently told me that being in Israel in the wars of 1967 and 1973, I was indirectly helping to kill...

Wiesel. I was there in 1967 and in 1973 too. But I didn't have a gun I came to help the Israelis. To say that they were killers is not true. They were being killed as well. They were fighting. It's a paradox. I don't pretend to be able to solve the paradoxes in me. There are many paradoxes which are part of my life. I am absolutely a pacifist, against violence, surely against killing, and yet I am totally for Israel. Maybe because I believe that they really don't want to fight. And whenever they do, they don't fight as others do. They never celebrate their military heroes. In 1967, when they won, and it was a just war, they were sad. All the generals were sad. In 1973, they were so sad they didn't talk. I remember that when I came back from a one-day visit to the Golan Heights, I couldn't talk.

He wasn’t part of the underground he said, he was just writing their propaganda. I have often detected a level of reflexive respect or deference given to people who survive horrific events like concentration camps, as if suffering has an automatic ennobling effect. I can understand a reflexive compassion, but I do not understand the deference. Sometimes suffering doesn’t affect a person’s character at all, and unfortunately sometimes it can even degrade their character, or simply reveal the true depravity of it.

Seemingly Elie came out of that event with a heightened sense of tribal devotion to his “people” and an absolute callousness toward any people who Israel needed to destroy to establish and maintain itself as a pseudo ethno-theocratic state. He went through his life fanatically devoted to Israel, even to the point of delusion — thinking that “they don’t fight as others do.” Or was he just lying? Did he really think the “generals” were “sad” about the Americans who were napalmed by Israeli fighter jets in 1967 in a war, which Elie thinks of as a “just war”, that expanded the territory occupied by the state of Israel? Did he really think he was a “pacifist” when he was “totally for Israel?” That’s not a paradox, that is a hypocrisy; a contradiction; a falsehood. Was his belief about Israel “not celebrating military heroes” a lie or just massive ignorance? I don’t suspect Elie Wiesel was ignorant.

Just as the current Prime Minister honored Joshua, the first Prime Minister honored Joshua as well. Ben Gurion wrote this in his book about the 1956 Sinai campaign:

The Israel Defense Forces is not continuation of the (pre-state) Haganah, but it is a new turning point in the history of Jewish heroism, such as the war of Joshua Ben-Nun, the wars of King David and the Hasmoneans.

The notion that Israel doesn’t celebrate military actors is idiotic. Not only does Israel celebrate military “heroes”, it celebrates some of the most vile military actors ever imagined in human history and directly connects its behavior to those “heroes.”

In fact on the morning of the beginning of the war that Elie honored, which led to the napalming of U.S. soldiers, the Israeli Air Force Commander Mordecai Hod invoked Joshua and the “heroes” of 1948 and 1956:

The Spirit of Israel‘s heroes accompany us to battle . . . From Joshua Bin-Nun, King David, the Maccabees and the fighters of 1948 and 1956, we shall draw the strength and courage to strike the Egyptians who threaten our safety, our independence, and our future. Fly, soar at the enemy, destroy him and scatter him throughout the desert so that Israel may live, secure in its land, for generations. - from Michael Oren’s, Six Days of War, P 170.

At a speech that Elie gave at an opening for a Holocaust museum, he said this:

Only those who were there know what it meant being there. And yet – we are duty bound to try and not to bury our memories into silence – we try. I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won’t agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man’s inhumanity to man. NO! It was man’s inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews! It is because they were Jews that it was so easy for the killers to kill!

…And so we go through the museum and what should we do? Weep? No!

My good friends – we never try to tell the tale to make people weep. It is too easy. We did not want pity. If we decided to tell the tale - it is because we wanted the world to be a better world – just a better world and learn and remember...

I’m not sure who he was referring to when he said “we”, but I suspect the reason that Elie told his tale (based on his behavior and loyalties) wasn’t because he wanted the world to be a “better world”; he wanted the world to look away when Israel carried out atrocities.

The notion that the Holocaust was “man’s inhumanity to Jews” is even more misleading than the suggestion it was “man’s inhumanity to man.” The Holocaust, the genocide of Jews by Nazis (and some collaborators) during World War 2, was, more precisely, Nazi genocidal hatred toward Jews; it wasn’t “man’s”. Very particularly, it wasn’t Palestinian genocidal hatred. It wasn’t Swahili. It wasn’t American. It wasn’t British. It wasn’t Elton John’s. It was, in fact, a relatively small minority of humanity’s genocidal hatred. Elie slanderously assigns guilt to “man” for what happened to millions of Jews during World War 2. He essentially blames “the goyim”— all non-Jews — for what happened to Jews during World War 2. Furthermore, while Nazis specifically genocidally hated Jews, they also specifically genocidally hated Roma, Slavs, and Communists. Elie demanded the specificity of one group of victims, yet disregarded the specificity of the victimizers. Not only that, he collaborated with an apartheid state established through the racial cleansing of Palestinians to deny the Armenian genocide. It seems Elie Wiesel had no qualms about “inhumanity” to not just Armenians, but Israel’s inhumanity to Palestinians. To this day Israel has laws punishing the acknowledgement of the racial cleansing. From Human Rights Watch:

The second law would heavily fine any government-funded institution, including municipalities that provide health and education, for commemorating the "Nakba" - the Arabic term to describe the destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents after Israel's declaration of independence - and for expression deemed to "negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

Imagine if the U.S. government heavily fined any government funded institution that commemorated the Trail of Tears, or the Atlantic Slave Trade. Zionists insist that “the nations” (the goyim) hyper-focus and flagellate themselves over the Holocaust, even though most non-Jews had nothing to do with the Holocaust, while the Israeli government cannot even acknowledge the suffering it has unjustly inflicted on innocent people using the Holocaust as an excuse.

The persecution of Jews at various times throughout history has sometimes been very bad, but it doesn’t give any Jews the right to conquer and rule Palestine anymore than the decimation of the religion of the Aztecs by the Spanish Christian conquistadors gives any descendants of people who followed that religion (or current followers if there can be said to be such a thing now) the right to conquer and rule Mexico. Nor does it create a moral right for Jews to have the religion they choose to be protected from disparagement, any more than the persecution and destruction of the Aztecs’ religion creates a moral right for it to be protected from disparagement. The conquistadors had no right to do what they did, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t disparage the idea that people should sacrifice humans to the god, Tlaloc. Likewise, just because people who worship Yahweh have been persecuted (often by other people who worship Yahweh) doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disparage the idea that humans should be sacrificed to Yahweh (it happens, for example, in Joshua, and it happens in the New Testament as well; that’s right, Jesus is a human sacrifice) or the idea that Israelites have the right to racially cleanse Canaan (Palestine) because a genocidal character in a book written by ancient totalitarian barbarians supposedly gifted the land to them and commanded them to kill everyone on it.

In the U.S., we have a legal right to disparage any religious idea we wish, even though most of our current congress wants to intimidate people for disparaging Zionism, and I’d argue it’s a human virtue to disparage bad religious ideas. One such bad religious idea is that it’s essentially racist to disparage Zionism, Judaism or the state of Israel, or that disparaging Zionism, Judaism or the state of Israel fundamentally implies Nazi-like hate of all Jews. I dislike Scientology and I think it is a pile of turds dumped by a charlatan, L. Ron Hubbard, but it doesn’t mean I have a murderous hatred of Tom Cruise, a Scientologist; in fact, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I even like some of the movies he has acted in.

Certainly there are some people who have a murderous bigoted hatred of the Jews, and those people should be loathed, just as there are some people who have a murderous bigoted hatred of the Communists. Indeed, wars have been launched, and millions of people have been killed trying to destroy communists. Communists were among the first prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. Nazis had a bigoted murderous hatred of communists. But there aren’t many Americans who would find that fact to be a compelling argument for why people should not disparage communism or specific individual communists or communist organizations, like the Chinese Communist Party.

The fear that Herzl expressed as the primary motivation for building a state in Palestine was that there was nowhere safe for Jews, and the only way Jews would be safe is if they had a sovereign state:

We might perhaps be able to merge ourselves entirely into surrounding races, if these were to leave us in peace for a period of two generations. But they will not leave us in peace. For a little period they manage to tolerate us, and then their hostility breaks out again and again. The world is provoked somehow by our prosperity, because it has for many centuries been accustomed to consider us as the most contemptible among the poverty-stricken.

Of course that idea has proven disastrously false. The genocide Israel is currently carrying out is because it was attacked by its prisoners and now Israelis don’t feel safe — this despite there being a “Jewish State”. Israel is arguably less safe for Jews than many other countries, such as the U.S, and it has been for more than “two generations”.

We are one people--our enemies have made us one without our consent, as repeatedly happens in history. Distress binds us together, and, thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State, and, indeed, a model State. We possess all human and material resources necessary for the purpose.

Unfortunately, the state formed is absolutely not a “model State” as Herzl had envisioned. As it is now, it is a genocidal pseudo ethno-theocratic state; one of the worst sorts of states that can be. Being bound by the belief that all people will be forever racially tribal and will always come to hate Jews as an imagined race is not a good reason to bind together to form a state. That seems, strangely, to be a very impactful argument for why some Jews remain Jews though. An impious Jew may think “oh, if I reject being a Jew just as I reject Yahweh, the gentiles will still view me as a Jew and I’ll end up being persecuted as if I were a Jew; I will therefore stay a Jew, declare myself racially Jewish, and take upon myself the erroneous conception of my persecutors.”

What does that say about that Jew and his view of “gentiles” though? It reflects a belief that there aren’t non-Jews who will see him as an individual free to choose his own tribe(s) and religion and isn’t defined by his mythological ancestry— that is, he holds a view that all non-Jews are delusional racial bigots, this despite the historical record of non-Jews rescuing people conceived as Jews, whether they identified as Jews or not, at risk of their own lives, from monsters. An Academy and Golden Globe award winning movie was even directed and produced by some Hollywood-Jews, who Michael Rapaport believes to be an oppressed race, about one such gentile — Schindler’s List. The Israeli government even designated Schindler “Righteous among the Nations”— an award given to non-Jews who saved Jews during World War 2 despite risk to their own lives. But that would also imply that gentiles who didn’t do that were, I suppose, not righteous? The opinion of Israel about the “Nations” is demonstrably not particularly high. And I suspect that a person today, who attempted to save Palestinians despite risk to their own lives, would not be given the same award. Or imagine I created my own award: “Righteous among the Jews.” Yah, I don’t think Jerry Seinfeld would appreciate that, and not only because he wouldn’t be getting one.

Zionism is Kinda Anti-Jewish

Modern Zionism is deeply atheistic in comparison to medieval Judaism (by “medieval” I simply refer to the Judaism that gradually developed after the failed revolutions against Rome, and eventually found its greatest expression in the Talmud — so Judaism loosely after 400 CE). Just like any other major religion, Judaism isn’t monolithic and there has been and is a lot of intense inter-religious conflict and disagreement. But for Jewish history until the 19th century, worship of Yahweh and obedience to the laws of the Torah was a cornerstone of being Jewish. Furthermore the notion of establishing a sovereign Jewish State wasn’t popular among Jews for most of the past 2 millennia. In fact, according to research done by the Israel Prize winner professor Aviezer Ravitzky of Hebrew University, the earliest usage of the phrase “State of Israel” in Hebrew in reference to the Zionist movement was written in 1900 by a Jewish Rabbi, Elyakum Shlomo Shapira. He was very critical of the new budding impious movement:

For I know the devastation they are wrecking upon the Congregation of Israel. My heart sinks within me, my eyes grow dark, and my ears wax heavy at what is being done and said. Their valor in the land is not for the sake of the true faith, nor is it for this that they wave their banners (while we raise the banner of God). What sort of ‘nation’ can they have if they throw over our holy Torah and its precepts (perish the thought). How can I bear that something be called ‘the State of Israel’ without the Torah and the commandments (heaven forbid)?

Indeed, Shapira wasn’t the only Rabbi, he was among the majority of Orthodox rabbis who also condemned it.

Why? Given all we have seen in the Tanakh about Yahweh’s genocidal commands to conquer Canaan (Palestine) to Joshua and others, why didn’t Judaism maintain a zeal to conquer Palestine throughout its lifespan and only within the last 100 or so years did it again pick up the sword of conquest?

After the failed Jewish revolts against Rome in the first and second century, and the devastating effects on the Jewish community — the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the death or displacement of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Jews — Rabbis became the the primary authorities of Judaism. The Talmud became a centerpiece of Jews, and the Talmud portrays the condition of Jews after the revolts as a punishment from Yahweh for not following the Torah in various ways the Rabbis thought was right:

Rabbi Yehuda said: Jerusalem was destroyed only because they disparaged the Torah scholars in it, as it is stated: “And they mocked the messengers of God and disdained His words and taunted His prophets, until the wrath of God arose against His people, until it could not be healed”

The messianic zeal that drove the rebels in the revolts of 70 C.E. and 132 C.E. against Rome proved to be dangerous. Exile was commonly conceived as the proper state of Jews until some unknown time in the future. It didn’t mean Jews didn’t hope to return or rule “Zion”, but the prospect of trying to reacquire Palestine became commonly perceived as folly and a violation of Yahweh’s punishment. That attitude prevailed for the most part among Rabbis until the rise of modern Zionism. The modern Zionist sect of Judaism has now substantially displaced more medieval attitudes. Although Zionists try to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Judaism, for that to be rational one would have to dismiss the fact that anti-[modern]Zionism was once the standard attitude of pious Jews. Indeed Rabbis, such as Hayyim Soloveichik, suggested that the new sect was an attack on the religion of Judaism:

Regarding the ‘Zionist sect,’ which has now banded and united together by force… Have they not a bad reputation in their places, and is not their purpose to uproot the fundaments of [our] religion—and to this end also take control of all the Jewish communities… The people of Israel [Jews; the state of Israel did not yet exist] should take care not to join a venture that threatens their souls, to destroy religion, and is a stumbling block to the House of Israel.

It’s clear that a significant part of the antipathy toward Zionists was the fact that they were impious Jews, which are held with contempt in the Torah and Talmud. Regardless, medieval anti-Zionist Judaism was soon overshadowed by the “Zionist sect” that would eventually declare all anti-Zionism an expression of racism and anti-Judaism. And it’s that Zionist sect that is currently the foundation of the genocide that is being carried out by Israel. Gradually, the majority of pious Jews viewed the new “State of Israel” as ordained by the Torah.

Anti-Gentilism

While the origin of modern Zionism primarily began with Jews who had abandoned much of the Torah (except the racial and territorial mythology), there were some early Zionists who revered the Torah, such as the Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine Abraham Isaac Kook, who led the theological transformation of much of the “orthodox”. While his ideas were often viewed as heretical by other Rabbis of the time, it is his and his son’s students who formed Gush Emunim, a movement that was largely responsible for “the settlers” who continue to colonize land in Palestine.

Kook’s attitude toward the impious Zionists were that they were useful - in particular, he used a metaphor of “the Messiah’s Donkey” to refer to them. The impious Zionists, aka “secular” Zionists, would be a tool that the Torah zealous Zionists, such as himself, would ride on to conquer and build the “Jewish State” that would ultimately be ruled by the Torah Zionists. The donkey is the “secular” Zionists and the “Messiah” is the Torah Zionists. If you feel that was a bit insulting to impious Jews, well he had even worse things to say about non-Jews; here is a passage from “Lights”, a book he wrote in 1920:

The difference between the Israeli [Jewish] soul - its essence, its inner desires, its aspirations, its nature and its position - and the soul of all the gentiles, on all their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the human soul and the animal soul. Between the latter, only a quantitative difference is found, but between the former, an intrinsic, qualitative difference prevails. - Orot Yisrael (Lights of Israel), Chapter 5, Passage 10

Yup. He wrote that. And guess what, he is still widely celebrated in Israel. Personally, other than being insulting to non-Jews I think that is deeply insulting to lots of animals (ignoring that humans are animals), who I’d argue have a much greater and deeper soul than Rabbi Kooky, like all cats and dogs; a qualitative distinction in fact. I don’t judge a soul only by what religion it claims to identify with. I know a lot of people who are much better than the religions they express loyalty to.

If we look at the relationship between the U.S. and Israel today, it appears that the donkey is not merely the impious Jews, but also U.S. politicians and Christian Zionists. Thousands of people in Israel spend all day studying the Torah and the Talmud and are paid stipends by the state of Israel that ends up costing millions of dollars while the U.S. sends, on average, over 4 billion a year in taxes to subsidize Israel. Although the money is supposed to go to particular causes, any money that a government receives that would go toward stuff it would already need to pay for, like military defense, is going to allow it to offset costs for anything else. Orthodox Jews in Israel can study Rabbi Kooky and learn why Israeli souls are superior to American souls on the dime of American tax payers. Careful though, if you find that repulsive, you might be labeled an anti-Semite by some Zionists. After all, if you were to read from the Sefer HaChinuch (the Book of Education), which is today, among the pious, still a fairly popular work of Jewish law and ethics derived from the Torah and Talmud by a Rabbi in 13th century Spain, you would discover that gentiles are naturally meant to be slaves to Jews:

It is from the roots of the commandment [the commandment about owning a Canaanite slave forever] [that] since the people of Israel are the choicest of the human species and they were created to recognize their Creator and to serve in front of Him, it is fitting that they should have slaves to serve them. And if they do not have slaves from the nations, they would nonetheless need to subjugate their brethren, and [those subjugated] would be unable to strive in His service, blessed be He. We were therefore commanded to retain these for our use — after they have been readied and have had idolatry removed from their mouths, lest they be a snare in our homes. And this [is the meaning of] the verse afterwards (Leviticus 25:46), “and as for your brothers, the Children of Israel, a man shall not subjugate his brother.” That is to say that with this, you will not need to subjugate your brethren and you will all be prepared for the service of God. And even though the understanding of the verse is to warn not to subjugate a Hebrew slave with oppressive labor, there are seventy faces to the verses.

Kook’s attitude toward non-Jews isn’t just found in his Zionist flavored theology. Before there were Zionists, there were still lots of Jewish anti-Gentilists. And that is because anti-Gentilism is a fundamental element of Judaism. It’s found in the Torah, in some of the most extraordinary expressions of “discrimination” in human literature, thus it should be no surprise that for the past few thousand years, it has produced various strands of Jewish ideology that is deeply hostile or ruthless toward non-Jews. After all, the passage from that 13th century Rabbi is derived from the Torah. Check out how the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Jewish Orthodox organizations in the United States today, describes the author of that passage:

The anonymous author of the “Sefer HaChinuch,” the “Book of Training,” or “Education,” who in his modesty identifies himself only as “a Levite from Barcelona,” was a student of the Rashba, Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet, in the thirteenth century.

“Modesty” is a peculiar term to use for someone who believed he was entitled, on being in his fantasy among the “choicest of the human species”, to enslave the vast majority of the human species. I think a more accurate term would be hubris. But I don’t suspect the authors of that little bio would have the self-awareness to identity his hubris if it was pointed out, given they live vicariously through it. “The Levite from Barcelona” was a member of the Jewish priestly caste of Levites, whose incestual pedigree may have competed with the royal Christian houses of Europe at the time. As much as there is some emphasis to supposedly care about fellow Jews in the Torah, there is also a hierarchy among Jews themselves in the Torah; and the priests traditionally placed themselves on the top. It was an imperialist priest, Ezra, who may have been among the first to impose some form of the Torah on the people of Judea. In a revealing passage from the book of Ezra (from the Tanakh), we are told that Ezra is given authority by the Persian King to impose laws on all the people of Judea, regardless of whether they knew of them or not.

We also notify you that it shall not be lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toll upon any one of the priests, the Levites, the singers, the doorkeepers, the temple servants, or other servants of this house of God.

And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God which is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God; and those who do not know them, you shall teach. Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed upon him, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods or for imprisonment. -Ezra 7:24

Those people “Beyond the River” were violently coerced to be subject to the laws of the Levites.

When reading the Torah carefully, a person may come to realize that there are often two sets of rules. Rules for Israelites (“Jews”), and rules for everyone else (gentiles). In that sense, Israel today follows the same path. Just as today Jews in Israel are granted special privileges with regard to access to land, property, and other resources, Jews in the Torah are granted various rights and privileges that differ from non-Jews. For example, while Jews are told not to enslave other Jews as property, they are granted the right to do so with non-Jews, which is where the 13th century Spanish Rabbi got his ideas that he had a right to enslave non-Jews from:

And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave:  he shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee [7 years];  then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family, and return to the possession of his fathers.  For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.  You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness. - Leviticus 25:39

It’s okay to be harsh to gentiles, but not to Jews. That is one of the fundamental messages of the Tanakh, as exemplified by passages like that and the behavior of the main characters — such as the genocidal behavior of Moses and Joshua, and of course Yahweh. Thus, when we come across a passage such as “love your neighbor as yourself”, which also appears in Leviticus and is probably most well known as coming out of the mouth of Jesus — context is extremely important. How does a genocidal barbarian like Joshua who kills or enslaves anyone who doesn’t share his mythical ancestry he believes in “love his neighbor” like himself? Well, for that particular passage, simply looking at the source is sufficient:

The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Say to the people of Israel, When you come into the land which I give you…

You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand forth against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff. -Leviticus 19:16

Unlike what is commonly thought today, “neighbor” in the Tanakh isn’t a reference to a universal humanity — it is a reference to other people in the cult of Yahweh: Israelites. Prohibitions applied to “slandering” Israelites, not “the nations.” There are though passages that grant some consideration for non-Israelites, such as Leviticus 19:33:

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

But, again — context: this passage comes shortly before the passage declaring it alright to enslave people among the nations but not Israelites and is spoken to the people who are on the way to commit genocide by the command of the same character. So, it has become the vocation of superstitious hyper-legalistic Rabbis to figure out how to reconcile how Jews should do no wrong to “sojourners” while simultaneously it’s okay for Jews to enslave strangers from “the nations” (gentiles) or exterminate them. Clarity, consistency, or integrity probably shouldn’t be something to expect from authors who think it’s a sin to make garments made of two kinds of stuff but a duty to wantonly butcher sucklings.

That of course hasn’t stopped Rabbis from trying to square that circle. The incoherent message was not lost on many Jews since it was written. So-called “sages”, people medieval Judaism has given honor as being particularly wise or knowledgeable about the Torah, such as Maimonides, spent years contemplating the madness of the Torah with the erroneous assumption it is Holy. Maimonides was an 11th century Rabbi and the personal physician of the Sultan of Egypt, Saladin. He was such a prolific author that, if you happen to waste your life studying his medical theories on phlegm and bile, you could miss some of the gems buried in his other writings that offer great value to understanding medieval Judaism.

For example, the Mishneh Torah is a compendium of Jewish law, Halakha, that he wrote derived from the Torah and Talmud. The Yigdal Prayer, which is based on Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith, is frequently sung by Jews around the world today. Maimonides has arguably more prestige in medieval Judaism than someone like Augustine in Catholicism. Today, he is still cited as an authority in political and religious debates on popular Israeli television.

On the topic of murder and the preservation of life he wrote this:

With regard to a gentile idolater with whom we are not at war, a Jewish shepherd of small livestock, and the like, by contrast, we should not try to cause their deaths. It is, however, forbidden to save their lives if their lives are threatened. For example, if such a person fell into the sea, one should not rescue him. Leviticus 19:16 states: "Do not stand idly by while your brother's [neighbor’s] blood is at stake." This does not apply with regard to such individuals, because they are not "your brothers." - Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Avodah Kochavim 10:1-2

On the topic of robbery and lost property he wrote this:

It is permissible to keep an object lost by an idolater, for Deuteronomy 22:3 speaks of returning "an object lost by your brother." Indeed, if one returns such an article, one transgresses a prohibition, for one strengthens the power of the wicked peoples of the world. If, however, one returns it to sanctify God's name, so that others will praise the Jewish people and know that they are trustworthy, this is praiseworthy.
When there is a possibility of the desecration of God's name, it is forbidden to keep an object lost by an idolater, and it must be returned. As part of "the ways of peace," we should always bring in their utensils from the outside, lest they be taken by thieves, as we do for utensils owned by Jews. - Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikin, Hilchot Gezelah va'Avedah 11:3

When he quotes Leviticus in the first quote, he is quoting the same passage from the Torah I quoted earlier about slandering and loving your neighbor. According to Maimonides’ interpretation of Jewish Law, Halakah, if the life of a gentile is threatened, it is forbidden to save them. And it is okay to keep a gentile’s lost wallet; it is not okay to keep a Jew’s lost wallet. But if you do return it, make sure gentiles know a Jew is doing it, so that gentiles will praise the Jewish people for being trustworthy. I don’t feel that the sort of the thing he is honest about is anything to be proud of nor is it worthy of sending American taxes to Israelis to study.

Maimonides also had quite a bit to say about Jesus. And its especially relevant because Christians today are routinely being lectured by modern Jewish Zionists that the idea that “Jews killed Jesus” is in someway “classically anti-Semitic” — by the words of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Now, if someone were to claim that Jews killed Jesus and Jews are a race and everyone in that race is morally responsible for the execution of Jesus — I’d argue, yes, that is anti-Semitism. But, simply claiming that Jews, specifically some Jews, killed Jesus, or even that Judaism killed Jesus, is not anti-Semitism. It’s simply historically plausible and basic Christianity. Every gospel and Acts suggests that Jewish leaders plotted to have Jesus executed because of blasphemy / apostasy. And such an execution is in alignment with the Torah. Furthermore, the Talmud itself has passages that suggest that someone named “Yeshu”, was killed for sorcery and inciting people to idol worship. Its commonly believed to refer to Jesus, and that includes Jewish interpreters:

The mishna teaches that a crier goes out before the condemned man. This indicates that it is only before him, i.e., while he is being led to his execution, that yes, the crier goes out, but from the outset, before the accused is convicted, he does not go out. The Gemara raises a difficulty: But isn’t it taught in a baraita: On Passover Eve they hung the corpse of Jesus the Nazarene after they killed him by way of stoning. And a crier went out before him for forty days, publicly proclaiming: Jesus the Nazarene is going out to be stoned because he practiced sorcery, incited people to idol worship, and led the Jewish people astray. Anyone who knows of a reason to acquit him should come forward and teach it on his behalf. And the court did not find a reason to acquit him, and so they stoned him and hung his corpse on Passover eve. — Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a

This traditional Jewish view of Jesus is collaborated by Maimonides who wrote a letter to the Jewish community of Yemen:

The first one to have adopted this plan was Jesus the Nazarene, may his bones be ground to dust. He was a Jew because his mother was a Jewess although his father was a Gentile. For in accordance with the principles of our law, a child born of a Jewess and a Gentile, or of a Jewess and a slave, is legitimate. (Yebamot 45a). Jesus is only figuratively termed an illegitimate child. He impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions. The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.

Daniel had already alluded to him when he presaged the downfall of a wicked one and a heretic among the Jews who would endeavor to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for himself, make pretenses to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah, as it is written, "Also the children of the impudent among thy people shall make bold to claim prophecy, but they shall fall." (Daniel 11:14). Quite some time after, a religion appeared the origin of which is traced to him by the descendants of Esau, albeit it was not the intention of this person to establish a new faith. For he was innocuous to Israel as neither individual nor groups were unsettled in their beliefs because of him, since his inconsistencies were so transparent to every one. Finally he was overpowered and put a stop to by us when he fell into our hands, and his fate is well known. After him arose the Madman who emulated his precursor since he paved the way for him.

Here, Maimonides is using collective language himself referring to the execution of Jesus. It was sages, us, and our hands, which led to his execution. Jesus’ execution was in accordance with the religious laws of Judaism and the leaders of Judaism according to a Jewish “sage” who is still widely revered by Jews today. The fact that Neo-Nazis believe that Jesus was killed by the Jews , and Neo-Nazis are anti-Semites, doesn’t mean that people who believe that Jesus was killed by some Jews are anti-Semites. Maimonides believed Jesus was killed by Jews, but I don’t suspect Zionists will accuse him of anti-Semitism. Thus, accusing people of anti-Semitism for believing Jews killed Jesus is simply slander. Based on the evidence we have its reasonable to believe Jesus was killed by Jews. All Jews? Certainly not all Jews, but some Jewish leaders at the time — “the sages of blessed memory”. No Jew today should personally be held morally responsible for the execution of Jesus. However, Jews should still be disparaged for choosing to belong to a religion that traditionally views “sorcery” as a crime deserving of torture and death.

Jewish Power

Now, if you find it concerning that someone like Kook ushered in the theological reformation of Judaism toward Zionism in the 20th century, unfortunately Kook is relatively “moderate” in modern Israeli piety. There is another sect of pious Judaism that has strongly affected Israel, and that is Kahanism.

Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli Zionist Jew who killed dozens of random Palestinian civilians at a mosque, aka “terrorism”, was a Kahanist. And he is fairly popular in Israeli politics. People regularly visit his grave. A poll conducted in March 2023, before the Hamas attack, showed that a good 43% of Israelis either believe he is a national hero or aren’t sure whether to regard him as a national hero or terrorist. Ambivalence about whether someone is a hero or terrorist suggests to me that a person leans more toward thinking they are a hero. Imagine if someone told you they were ambivalent about whether Dylann Roof, the man who carried out a mass shooting at a [black] Christian church, was a national hero or a terrorist. That’s the attitude almost half of Israeli Jews have about Baruch Goldstein.

The current National Security Minister of Israel Ben Gvir, before joining the Knesset in 2020, had a portrait of Baruch Goldstein up on his living room wall.

“Faced with the fact that the fate of the Jewish people and the land of Israel hang in the balance, I’m declaring that for the sake of unity and a right-wing victory in the elections, I’m removing the photograph in my living room,” Ben Gvir says in his response on Facebook.

And he still openly honors him. Imagine if in the U.S. there were cabinet members who had once hung portraits of Dylan Roof in their living room and only took them down for “the sake of unity and a right-wing victory in the elections” and still spoke at gatherings that venerate him: that is the political environment that exists in Israel. The “right-wing” of Israeli politics is the vast majority of Israeli politics. “Left”, “Right” or “Center” aren’t particularly useful terms in general for politics, but its certainly worthless for Israel. The dissolution of Likud plausibly wouldn’t end the apartheid or even the genocide. Lots of Israelis don’t like Netanyahu, but it’s not primarily because he supports an apartheid or is carrying out a genocide. According to a Pew poll in 2016, 48% of Israeli Jews think Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel. That was of course even before what happened on October 7th 2023.

Ben Gvir loves telling Jews to follow the Torah. In May he was at a large rally where reportedly 50,000 attended and he explained how encouraging “voluntary” emigration, aka starving Gazans and bombing them until they “choose” to leave, is “humane”:

And second, encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary departure of Gaza’s residents…It is ethical! It is rational! It is right! It is the truth! It is the Torah and it is the only way! And yes, it is humane,”

Ben Gvir is essentially a Kahanist who has learned to be a good politician.

Ben Gvir, of the Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit alliance, said that although he admired Kahane, he would not advance legislation to expel all Arabs from Israel and the West Bank or to create a regime of ethnic segregation — as Kahane advocated.

Ben Gvir is the leader of the party Otzma Yehuditm, which is Hebrew for “Jewish Power.” In 2008 he was convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. As National Security Minister, among other things, he now oversees the police; he oversees the people responsible for making sure aid is delivered to Gaza without being hindered by fanatical settlers blocking it. Netanyahu chose him specifically to please his coalition. And of course that above quote about his admiration of Kahane is from 2 years ago; now he is participating in a genocide.

Imagine if a politician today said that he admired Hitler but he wouldn’t advance legislation to expel all Slavs, Jews and Roma from the U.S. — and the audience he was addressing booed the fact that he said he wouldn’t advance that legislation rather than the admiration of Hitler. Imagine if the U.S. had a position that oversaw the police nationally, and the president appointed that politician to that position. And comparing Kahane to Hitler is not an exaggeration — the primary difference is that Hitler acquired a lot more power; their aspirations were analogous. Rabbi Meir Kahane:

When I’m Prime Minister no Arab will be hurt by Jewish Terrorism because there won’t be an Arab left in Israel.

I want to remove the Arabs from Israel because I do not want to kill them every week.

They will come to me, bow to me, lick my feet, and I will be merciful, and will allow them to leave. Whoever does not leave will be slaughtered.

Notice how Kahane formulates his bigoted hatred toward Arabs, a racial category. Sometimes it is ignored, or forgotten, but not all Arabs are Muslims. Some are not particularly religious at all. Some are even Jewish. And some are, for example, Christians. Christians were among those terrorized in the Nakba of 1948. Oftentimes Zionists will point to how bad some Muslim factions were before 1948 or today, but what is totally lost in their arguments is that not all Palestinians belong to those factions or even the religions of those factions. People were essentially targeted because they were not Jews. Innocent Christians are being maliciously attacked along with other civilians in Gaza, regardless of their individual religious or political views.

Samar Anton, 49 a Gaza City church worker, knew there was a risk in helping her mother Nahida, a grandmother in her seventies who was weak from two months of war and little food, to the bathroom.

It required crossing a palm-tree-lined courtyard that in any other year a week before Christmas would have been crowned with a towering tree and packed with children singing Christmas songs.

Now it was exposed.

A sniper bullet cracked through the air and into Samar’s head. Another hit Nahida, a grandmother of 15, in the stomach.

Ben Gvir admires Rabbi Kahane. And Ben Gvir is who Netanyahu chose to appoint to manage the security of Israel. And Netanyahu is the head of the Israeli government, which the U.S. government chooses to fund.

Ben Gvir once demonstrated his political evolution from Kahane and how to express murderous racial sentiment with political correctness:

When you shout “Death to Arabs!” you can say “Death to terrorists!” “Death to terrorists” is legal, with an official stamp.

After the IDF bombed the World Central Kitchen convoy, some people were quick to believe it was an accident. But, given the depravity of some Likud officials and IDF soldiers, it isn’t implausible it was done intentionally and knowingly. When the majority of Israeli citizens think humanitarian aid should be restricted from Gaza and police are assisting the citizens who are trying to block the already insufficient aid that is being let in, it wouldn’t be implausible that someone like Baruch Goldstein, who once served in the IDF, felt like sending a message to people meddling with the plan to starve Palestinian civilians. Apparently, while working as a physician in the IDF, he at times allegedly refused to treat non-Jews.

A recent Human Rights Watch article reports there have been 8, eight, strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises since October 2023:

Israeli forces have carried out at least eight strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since October 2023, even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli authorities did not issue advance warnings to any of the aid organizations before the strikes, which killed or injured at least 31 aid workers and those with them. More than 250 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 assault in Israel, according to the UN.

Given the pattern, I’d argue it isn’t only plausible that an attack on an aid workers’ convoy is intentional — it is likely. And the U.S. government should certainly be assuming it is intentional until there is extraordinary evidence provided to the contrary.

Unfortunately, it is the “Jewish Power” faction in the Israeli government that seems to be inspiring current Israeli policy. The genocidal references by politicians and soldiers, the wanton bombing and massacre of civilians, and the systematic starvation of the Gazan population resemble the horrifying and sinister machinations of Rabbi Kahane — and let us not forget: Moses.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. Deuteronomy 7:1

After Kahane was assassinated in Brooklyn in 1990, a mourner at his eulogy described him as the second Moses:

“He was the second Moshe Rabbeinu — Moses took the Jews out of Egypt and Kahane took the Jews out of anti-Semitic countries,” said Bernard Berkowitz, 58, a mourner at the funeral.

Based on the atrocities that followed Moses’ commands and the atrocities being carried today by Israel that match the vision of Kahane, the description appears pretty accurate.

One of America’s “founding fathers”, Thomas Paine, the writer of “Common Sense”, the pamphlet that inspired the American Revolution, happened to be an ardent critic of Moses. He wrote the “Age of Reason” after America’s successful revolution against the British Crown. In it, he states:

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation, of which I will state only one instance.

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers, chap. xxxi., ver. 13:

"And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the ñthous ands, and captai commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true.

…People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty!

After writing the Age of Reason, most of America shunned him, despite all that he had done for the newborn nation. Apparently after he died only six people attended his funeral. At the time, most Americans, who were primarily Christians, didn’t like a deist (he believed in a god, just not Yahweh) disparaging their genocidal heroes or the “book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy” they cherished. Remember, the books of the Tanakh are also commonly revered by Christians as the “Old Testament.” Perhaps one day most of America will catch up to the man whose religious sentiments were far ahead of his time but who still managed to seed the country with a love for liberty from unjust power — something that is foreign to the slave morality of the Torah, the fictional god of Moses, and to Israel.

Leaving the Fold

Despite the relatively high percentage of atheists among Jews I have not heard of or come across many ex-Jews — that is people who are no longer Jewish, but were once Jewish. I know of and have heard about lots of ex-Christians, but even people like Sam Harris or Bill Maher who make no qualms about their contempt for the Tanakh, still identify as Jewish. Jews like Sam Harris or Bill Maher, self-identify as Jewish but are Jews that only seem to accept the racial mythology of Judaism and not the other stuff, like Yahweh. It’s ironic though because they are often quite disdainful of “religion”. Mythological deities — ridiculous! Mythological races — sign me up! Bill Maher even said he didn’t “know he was half-Jewish” until he was a teenager when he learned that his mother (who clearly didn’t give a shit about the Torah or traditional Judaism) was “Jewish”. The incoherence is astonishing. To glimpse the peculiarity of Judaism regarding this, consider this Pew poll about religious views of Americans:

Among Jewish adults, 26% believe Yahweh exists; while 80% of Christian adults believe Yahweh exists. Frankly, I was more bewildered by the Christian statistic. There are people who still consider themselves Christian even though they don’t believe in the existence of Yahweh? There are I suppose “protestant atheists” — people who believe that Jesus was a wise sage of some sort and they are very dedicated to what they conceive his philosophy was and thus consider themselves Christian. Though I’m really reluctant to grant them a place in my epistemology as Christians, just like I wouldn’t consider Mormons Christians.

There are also very sad cases like Richard Dawkins, who: somehow wrote a book titled the “God Delusion”, suggests Islam is uniquely barbaric while the “Jewish State” of Israel carries out a genocide supported by his government, is a professor of evolutionary biology at a state funded university, and simultaneously thinks he lives in a “Christian culture” and considers himself a “cultural Christian.” But modern-day U.K. doesn’t have much left of Christianity except statues and the dilapidated remnants of the “Church of England” which now blesses same sex couples (I approve even though it is incongruent with Christianity) and is considering gender netural language for Yahweh — the character who supposedly commanded Joshua to murder everyone in Jericho, exults in innocent human sacrifices, and commanded his followers to murder homosexuals in Leviticus 20:13:

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.

Maybe poor Richard thinks he is a Christian too. But again, I personally wouldn’t classify him as a Christian anymore than a Scientologist who says he likes Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha and considers himself a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim Scientologist. The culture of Christianity includes the fundamental practice of worshipping Jesus as a human sacrifice, which Richard does not. Unlike some people, I do not believe “self-identification” is always valid. Sometimes it is irrational. Rachel Dolezal isn’t black. Lia Thomas isn’t a woman.

However, Sam Harris and Bill Maher — I’d argue are indeed Jews because they self identify as Jews and the religious pillars of Judaism include an ethno-mythology that Sam Harris and Bill Maher seem to accept and have an attachment to. They may be atheists, but they are still religious Jews (albeit impious with regard to most of the Torah) with a loyal attachment to Israel, arguably the most essential myth of the Torah. You can find both of them, Sam Harris and Bill Maher, playing defense for Israel’s behavior. But Jewish atheists such as them have no business expressing contempt toward Islam for its alleged unique barbarity while the particular religious state they frequently defend maintains an apartheid and carries out a genocide.

I currently know of the writing of only 3 ex-Jews, Shlomo Sand, David Dworkin and Jake Klein. But I hope to see a lot more. There are though many honorable Jews who reject the Torah and are anti-Zionist, such as some Jews who belong to “Jewish Voice for Peace” — and by “reject the Torah” I mean, at minimum, they are atheists or agnostics and would probably not try to rationalize the genocidal stories in the Tanakh. And by anti-Zionist, I mean they oppose an ethno-theocratic government that privileges Jews in Palestine that was created and is being expanded by racial-cleansing and oppose U.S. military and financial support of it.

In fact, I currently intend to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for President, who is Jewish — and my intention to vote for her derives overwhelmingly from her strong opposition to military aid to Israel. I disagree with her on a lot of other issues, but I think today ending the genocide being carried out by Israel and funded by American taxes should be the top priority of all Americans. And I encourage other people to vote for her as well, for the same reason. Americans should not vote for either candidate of the two major political parties, as they both believe that Israel has the right to defend its apartheid and expansionist state through genocide. Both parties are subservient to the Zionist lobby. The only way to break that is if one party realizes that it will lose without the support of anti-Zionists. Zionists make Israel their number one priority and that’s why they can get politicians to do whatever they want with regard to Israel. If a politician doesn’t give them what they want the most then they don’t vote for them. If people vote for a politician even though they don’t give them what they want then the politician will learn that they don’t need to give them what they want. This is why Bernie Sanders supporters, for example, don’t ever get what they want from the Democratic Party — Bernie Sanders, a controlled opposition candidate, always tells his supporters to vote for the Democratic Party even when it criminally torpedoes his campaign and doesn’t care about the policies his supporters care about. Sanders is a fraud. He spent a year expressing opposition to Likud, and now endorses its biggest funder. It’s how the machine works. It only cares about money and power. People who care about justice must be willing to exert power. That often means withholding a vote.

No other current issue should take precedence over American foreign policy on Palestine. It is the fulcrum of injustice and corruption in American politics. When it comes to the Democratic and Republican parties right now there is no “lesser evil” when voting for congressional or presidential candidates unless they explicitly oppose funding Israel and its apartheid and genocide. It’s better not to vote than to vote for either.

I personally know Jews who view the Tanakh as superstition and mythology, don’t support the U.S. military and financial support of Israel, but continue to be loyal to Judaism, entirely because of their acceptance of the racial mythology. Their opposition to Zionism is honorable though, and their next virtuous step should be to reject Judaism altogether, and that includes their attachment to the racial mythology and the attachment to the “Faith of their Fathers” even though it isn’t a faith they have themselves. Like Abraham, they should leave the faith of their fathers, and forge a new path, and if they must join a tribe, they should join one that does not traditionally revere superstitious genocidal tyrannical slavers.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. - Genesis 12

The aspiration of many modern “progressive” or “liberal” Jews to reform Judaism into a social justice club is folly and simply provides cover for a core that is rotten. Judaism shouldn’t be reformed anymore than the Klu Klux Klan should be reformed. From ABC News:

"The KKK is for a strong America," Abarr told the newspaper. "White supremacy is the old Klan. This is the new Klan."

Judaism should be renounced and denounced, and that includes rejecting the identity of being a “Jew”. The racial cleansing of Palestine in 1948 wasn’t a deviation from Judaism; a blueprint is in the Torah. The genocide that is being carried out by Israel is not a deviation from Judaism, it is unfortunately one very logical expression of it. Both Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and Netanyahu, the current and longest running prime minister of Israel, derived inspiration from the genocidal book of Joshua for their military campaigns. Zionists are not manipulating Judaism to do bad stuff; they are doing bad stuff and it’s clearly and explicitly reflected in the Tanakh.

The most honorable response by people who are Jewish but: find the racial tribalist and supremacist mythology of Zionism to be contemptible, the racial cleansing of Palestine repulsive, or the superstitious genocidal slaver morality of the Torah detestable, is not to remain loyal apologists to the tribe, but to leave it. For example, when a Scientologist becomes disillusioned with Scientology, they typically defect and denounce Scientology. They don’t cling to the Church, defend it from disparagement, call detractors racist, continue identifying as a “Scientologist”, and with futility try to reform it. I can empathize with why some Jews might be afraid to do that given the ostracism that might follow from their families and social network and even the murderous hatred expressed by the Torah, Talmud, and various “sages” toward apostates:

It is a mitzvah[commandment] to kill minim and apikorsim.
The term minim refers to Jewish idolaters or those who perform transgressions for the sake of angering God, even if one eats non-kosher meat for the sake of angering God or wears sha'atnez for the sake of angering God.
The term apikorsim refers to Jews who deny the Torah and the concept of prophecy.
If there is the possibility, one should kill them with a sword in public view. If that is not possible, one should develop a plan so that one can cause their deaths.
What is implied? If one sees such a person descend to a cistern, and there is a ladder in the cistern, one should take the ladder, and excuse oneself, saying: "I must hurry to take my son down from the roof. I shall return the ladder to you soon." Similarly, one should devise other analogous plans to cause the death of such people. - Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Rotze'ach uShmirat Nefesh 4:10

But that will be the more effective way of ending further oppression and genocides —like the one being carried out today with American taxes under the banner of the Star of David. When more people stop identifying as Jewish and insist that Zionists stop erroneously racializing former Jews like Nazis did it will help dilute the power of Zionists to effectively wield false accusations of racism. Furthermore, the myth of a Jewish race provides necessary oxygen for the existence and perpetuation of actual anti-Semitism. However, if they believe genuine apostasy would lead to dangers they do not wish to face, there is still honor and value in leaving privately and only sharing their apostasy with other non-Jews they can trust. We exist.

But is it really “genocide”?

Frankly at this point I’m strongly convinced that “genocide” is a good term for it, but I’m also aware that some people have not been following what’s been happening in Palestine as closely as I have and I’m also aware that the popular meaning of genocide is associated with some of the largest and longest massacres of the 21st century and that invoking the term genocide when “only” 30000 (on the conservative side) people have been killed might seem hysterical to reasonable people.

On July 5th the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, published a report that gave estimates about the current catastrophe in Gaza:

Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.

The term genocide became stamped into the collective consciousness after World War 2 following the millions of people who were systematically killed by Nazis, including Roma, Jews, and Slavs with the intent of eradicating them. But the genocides didn’t happen overnight. The war ended in 1945, but Nazis were killing people for years before that. Germany had years to carry out its genocides. Israel began its genocide a year ago. World War 2 began toward the end of 1939, but before 1941, “only” thousands of people had been murdered by Nazis related to its genocides. Had more of the world known and recognized the genocidal intent of the Nazis earlier, a lot fewer lives may have been lost, and the genocides that became iconic in their horror would have potentially been stopped earlier. That is the possibility that exists still now, and that is one reason why it is important that what’s happening is conceptualized as a genocide. The gravity of the destruction to Gaza and the potential destruction that still remains demands it; the motivation and the means it has been taking is properly understood as genocidal.

Unlike many other genocides, this genocide has been carried out with the intent early-on clearly publicly expressed by various politicians, soldiers, and members of the press. Denying its nature now because millions of Palestinians have yet to be buried due to starvation and bombs is like denying the nature of a deadly bacterial infection because a patient has not died yet, even though the patient has a fever, lost a leg, and the bacteria has been observed. Hopefully it will come to an end before it progresses further. More people recognizing what it is will help ensure that. There is a strong possibility that this will end with it being another “mowing of the lawn”, as Israeli government officials describe the routine slaughter of Palestinians; this round though will have been a clear act of genocide.

Twenty years ago in 2004 then Secretary of State Colin Powell called the killing of Darfuri people by the Sudanese government “genocide”. In 2010 the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, was charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was the first arrest warrant ever issued by the ICC for the crime of genocide. The genocide of Darfur though, dubbed “the first genocide of the 21st century”, didn’t reach the scale of the genocides of World War 2. That, however, did not stop the U.S. government and the U.N. from conceiving it as a genocide. Elie Wiesel, the man who never could find it in his heart to see the crimes committed by Israel, but was eager to report crimes everywhere else, even rebuked the world for its “silence”:

Sudan has become today’s world capital of human pain, suffering and agony. There, one part of the population has been – and still is – subjected by another part, the dominating part, to humiliation, hunger and death. For a while, the so-called civilized world knew about it and preferred to look away. Now people know. And so they have no excuse for their passivity bordering on indifference. Those who, like you my friends, try to break the walls of their apathy deserve everyone’s support and everyone’s solidarity.

…How can a citizen of a free country not pay attention? How can anyone, anywhere not feel outraged? How can a person, whether religious or secular, not be moved by compassion? And above all, how can anyone who remembers remain silent?

According to the museum that Elie Wiesel himself was the founding Chairman, the data around the the Darfur genocide is very similar to what the Lancet projected for Palestine:

For several years in the early 2000s, soldiers of the military-led government in Sudan and their proxy militia, known as Janjaweed, fought rebel groups in Darfur. Between 2003 and 2005, an estimated 200,000 civilians died from violence, disease, and starvation as a result of the conflict. Another 2 million were displaced from their homes.

One should expect the museum that urged the world to recognize the Darfur genocide to be at the vanguard of demanding the world recognize the Gaza genocide. But, perhaps not surprisingly, given Elie Wiesel’s history of denial of crimes related to Israel, the Museum that he chaired remains not only silent and indifferent about the genocide, but has specifically expressed compassion for only the Israeli victims of the October 7th attack, and has explicitly only called on American colleges to address anti-Semitism and take action to protect Jewish students. It has not mentioned anything about the systematic starvation and and wanton bombing that is being inflicted on Gazans by the state of Israel, about the U.S. funding of it, about the increasing violence toward Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, or the increasing attempts by Zionists to restrict freedom of speech to protect a genocidal apartheid state from being disparaged. The behavior of the museum reminds me of that legal interpretation by Maimonides:

Indeed, if one returns such an article, one transgresses a prohibition, for one strengthens the power of the wicked peoples of the world. If, however, one returns it to sanctify God's name, so that others will praise the Jewish people and know that they are trustworthy, this is praiseworthy.

By remaining indifferent and silent toward the genocide being carried out by Israel, yet myopically concerning itself with speech on American college campuses, the museum is demonstrating that its purpose is not to “prevent genocide” as it claims, but to selectively use the Holocaust and other genocides as a PR tool for Israel and a tool to chill protests against atrocities committed by Israel, including a genocide.

Given the power of Zionists in the U.S., labeling what’s happened and happening in Gaza a genocide can lead to potential negative consequences — other than being slandered as an anti-Semite by Zionists. The punishment could come even if you are a Jewish Israeli-American genocide scholar, such as what happened to Raz Segal. He was offered a position to head the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but then after a campaign by Zionists, had the offer revoked. The campaign was launched in retribution for an article he wrote in Jewish Currents calling what’s happening in Gaza a textbook case of genocide.

Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared it in no uncertain terms on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

…It’s not only Israel’s leaders who are using such language. An interviewee on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 called for Israel to “turn Gaza to Dresden.” Channel 12, Israel’s most-watched news station, published a report about left-leaning Israelis calling to “dance on what used to be Gaza.” Meanwhile, genocidal verbs—calls to “erase” and “flatten” Gaza—have become omnipresent on Israeli social media. In Tel Aviv, a banner reading “Zero Gazans” was seen hanging from a bridge.

Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed.

Protest

The catastrophe in Gaza happening right now is significantly due to the participation of various Yahwehist factions (Zionist Christians and Zionist Jews on one side and Jihadist Muslims on the other) fighting over who will rule the land of Palestine and oppress everyone else. Each views the other as Amalek, and each is willing to wantonly murder the children of the people who they view as Amalek, or at least support and honor those who will do it for them. The Israeli government, with the assistance of the U.S. government, currently has considerably more power than Hamas, and is carrying out a genocide on the civilian population of Gaza.

The majority of the U.S. population doesn’t support military aid, but congress is now passing bills to intimidate students protesting the actions of a foreign government, Israel, and is providing money and weapons to that state. I believe the right thing for the U.S. government to do is to cease all military support and funding to Israel and to restrict any U.S. company from selling any arms that could contribute to the genocide that is currently happening in Palestine — and to stop passing bills that violate the spirit of free speech that is enshrined in the first amendment of the U.S. constitution. That could be enough to stop Israel from continuing. Israel is dependent on U.S. financial and diplomatic support to continue its expansionist vision and maintain any semblance of prosperity. But the U.S. government should also actively insist, and coerce if necessary with the help of international allies, that sufficient food and supplies are delivered to Gaza to prevent further deterioration of life there. And it should honor the recent arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. From Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant have warrants for their arrest. From Hamas, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh have warrants for their arrest. The U.S. government should honor the warrants for both Likud and Hamas leaders. The way the U.S. government approaches Israel and Palestine should radically change if it actually wishes to begin to cultivate peace and justice there.

Many people who were angry about attempts by “woke progressives” to suppress speech on college campuses that is offensive to their views, such as Ben Shapiro, Florida governor Desantis, or Georgia governor Kemp, are now eagerly supporting the suppression of speech on college campuses when it comes to Israel. Just 2 years ago, Kemp signed legislation that would ban “free speech zones” created by colleges to restrict where students could protest. He stated:

Freedom of expression is one of this great nation’s fundamental liberties… Here in Georgia, we will protect those rights and that which is appropriate for any place of higher learning — the ability to learn of different ideas.

But, now that Israel is the target of protests, Kemp has adjusted his view of free speech and protests. He suggests the protesters are terrorists, although there have been yet no recorded acts of terrorism on Georgia campuses.

Across the country, Americans have watched with horror as radicals have terrorized Jewish students and forced them to evacuate from their dormitories and classrooms. College campuses are designed to be places of learning and often civil discourse, but in Georgia they will never be a safe haven for those who promote terrorism and extremism that threatens the safety of students.

Ironically, many of the protests “across the country” are being coordinated in part by Jewish student groups, and the students being arrested by police are sometimes Jewish. The framing of the opposition to Israel’s ongoing genocide by the Establishment wings of both parties has been that it consists largely of fanatical Islamic terrorists who want to kill all Jews, when the reality is that the opposition is diverse and heterogenous, and includes many righteous among Jews who recognize that the state that is committing genocide under the Star of David is not worthy of their support. The goal is primarily to end the U.S. government’s financial and military support of a genocide and to get their schools to divest from investments related to the genocide. Those are two goals I support.

Protests aren’t just happening on campuses though, and some of the media distortion surrounding it can be astonishing. Take for example the protest at a Jewish synagogue in L.A. at the end of June. The news reports about it often highlight the dramatic and violent scuffle that broke out between the protestors and anti-protestors. And politicians, from the mayor of Los Angeles, Bass, the governor of California, Newsom, and the President of the United States, Biden, expressed the sentiment that the protestors were unequivocally in the wrong and the violence was seemingly only their responsibility and that it was somehow “anti-Semitic” to protest at a synagogue.

Biden, the man who is arguably most responsible for funding the genocide, for example, had this to say:

I’m appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American.

Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship – and engaging in violence – is never acceptable.

What Biden fails to be appalled by though is the fact that the synagogue was hosting a real estate event by a company that promotes West Bank property to Jews in the U.S. Here is the ad from the Jewish Journal:

My Home in Israel is one of those companies that participated in the real estate event that was being protested. According to the Biden administration itself, Israeli settlements in the West Bank are “inconsistent with international law”. But Biden is incapable of even supporting the sentiment behind the protest of that criminal activity. Most politicians are so concerned about showing themselves on the side of Zionists that they will remain silent about them hosting events in a “house of worship” to sell homes in one occupied territory as the occupying force carries out a genocide in another. From the Intercept:

Most Jewish Americans who exercise their right to emigrate to Israel don’t move to the West Bank, experts say, but hundreds still make the choice to do so each year.

Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a visiting professor at the University of Haifa and an expert on Jewish American settlers, estimates that among the 3,000 Jewish Americans who move to Israel each year, about 15 percent of them are moving into settlements. There are about 500,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. About 60,000 are American, according to Hirschhorn. This excludes the more than 200,000 Israeli settlers who live in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967.

There is actually a story that I’m reminded of by these real estate events. It’s about that guy Jesus, perhaps the most famous ex-Jew ever. Sometime in his ministry while casting demons into pigs, cursing fig trees, commanding people not to resist evil people, threatening people with supernatural torture if they didn’t spiritually enslave themselves to the god he believed in, and promising a reward if they did, Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem:

And Jesus entered the temple of God and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers.” — Matthew 21:12

Clearly, Zionists shouldn’t turn a “house of worship” into a den of robbers by marketing real estate built on occupied territory in it? What would just warm my heart is if a Christian Zionist, when asked about Jesus’ actions in the temple, said something like Biden: “Jesus had a right to peaceful protest. But driving out all the people in a house of worship — and engaging in violence — was unacceptable.” That though will never happen.

Protests are also happening in Israel, and by people Zionists wish didn’t exist, because they demonstrate clearly that modern Zionism doesn’t represent all Jews. Recently, Israeli courts ruled that youth from the Haradi ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism will no longer receive an exemption from military conscription. Thousands demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem. From +972 Magazine:

Avraham, a man in his late twenties, attended the protest with several friends. “We are now in a fight for the existence of Judaism, the existence of yeshivot, the existence of the Torah,”  he told +972. “Our entire existence in the Land of Israel is in order to keep the Torah, so when they want to recruit yeshiva students [into the army], we will not allow it, we will go to the streets, we will fight, because this is the only way to express what we want.

“We are prepared to die before we enlist,” he added, repeating a slogan that is ubiquitous at every Haredi anti-draft demonstration. “This is an apostate country. It [says it speaks] in the name of Judaism, but it doesn’t. That’s why we will all go to prison happily before we enlist, God forbid.”

Zionists and Congress would like the world to believe that the Haradi anti-Zionist protestors are racist toward Jews, that their views are “anti-Semitism.” It is an absurdity. Judaism is a religion with competing sects just like Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism, and Zionist sects of Judaism just happen to have the most popularity and power today. That though is what Americans are now up against — the Congress and White House have been captured by Zionist sects of Judaism and Christianity. They wish to associate opposition to the state of Israel and the ideology of Zionism with racism and to do what they can to criminalize protesting its apartheid and genocide so they can fulfill their dream of a “Jewish State”, from the river to the sea.

We should protest anyway.