Gilad Atzmon - "The Wandering Who?"
By Gilad Atzmon • Sep 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 • Category: Analysis, Education, Gilad Atzmon, Gilad's Choice, Israel, Newswire, Our Authors, Palestine, Religion, Zionism
Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism quoting Karl W. Deutsch:
A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours” [1]
As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote above eloquently summarises the figment of reality entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and especially within the concept of Jewish identity. It obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews tend to make whenever referring to their ‘illusionary collective past’ and ‘collective origin’. Yet, in the same breath, Deutsch’s reading of nationalism throws light upon the hostility that is unfortunately coupled with almost every Jewish group towards its surrounding reality, whether it is human or takes the shape of land. While the brutality of the Israelis towards the Palestinians has already become rather common knowledge, the rough treatment Israelis reserve for their ‘promised soil’ and landscape is just starting to reveal itself. The ecological disaster the Israelis are going to leave behind them will be the cause of suffering for many generations to come. Leave aside the megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into enclaves of depravation and starvation, Israel has managed to pollute its main rivers and streams with nuclear and chemical waste.
“When And How the Jewish People Was Invented” is a very serious study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish nationalism and by far, the most courageous elaboration on the Jewish historical narrative.
In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a 'nation-race', they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion.
Hitler Won After All
Rather often when asking a ‘secular’ ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew what it is that makes him into a Jew, a shallow overwhelmingly chewed answer would be thrown back at you: “It is Hitler who made me into a Jew”. Though the ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew, being an internationalist, would dismiss other people’s national inclinations, he insists upon maintaining his own right to ‘self determination’. However, it is not really he himself who stands at the core of this unique demand for national orientation, it is actually the devil, master-monster anti-Semite, namely Hitler. Apparently, the cosmopolitan Jew celebrates his nationalist entitlement as long as Hitler is there to be blamed.
As far as the secular cosmopolitan Jew is concerned, Hitler won after all. Sand manages to enhance this paradox. Insightfully he suggests that “while in the 19th century referring to Jews as an ‘alien racial identity’ would mark one as an anti-Semite, in the Jewish State this very philosophy is embedded mentally and intellectually” [3]. In Israel Jews celebrate their differentiation and unique conditions. Furthermore, says Sand, “There were times in Europe when one would be labelled as an anti-Semite for claiming that all Jews belong to a nation of an alien type. Nowadays, claiming that Jews have never been and still aren’t people or a nation, would tag one as a Jew hater”. [4] It is indeed pretty puzzling that the only people who managed to maintain and sustain a racially orientated, expansionist and genocidal national identity that is not at all different from Nazi ethnic ideology are the Jews who were, amongst others, the leading targeted victims of the Nazi ideology and practice.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine mentioned that in the time of the Middle Ages in the moments between major wars, knights would charge a very high price for their readiness to die in the name of their kingdoms, in the 20th century youngsters have rushed to die en masse without demanding a thing in return. In order to understand this mass consciousness shift we need an eloquent methodical model that would allow us to understand what nationalism is all about.
Like Karl Deutsch, Sand regards nationality as a phantasmic narrative. It is an established fact that anthropological and historical studies of the origins of different so-called ‘people’ and ‘nations’ lead towards the embarrassing crumbling of every ethnicity and ethnic identity. Hence, it is rather interesting to find out that Jews tend to take their own ethnic myth very seriously. The explanation may be simple, as Benjamin Beit Halachmi spotted years ago. Zionism was there to transform the Bible from a spiritual text into a ‘land registry’. For that matter, the truth of the Bible or any other element of Jewish historical narrative has very little relevance as long as it doesn’t interfere with the Jewish national political cause or practice.
One could also surmise that the lack of clear ethnic origin doesn’t stop people from feeling an ethnic or national belonging. The fact that Jews are far from being what one can label as a People and that the Bible has very little historical truth in it, doesn’t really stop generations of Israelis and Jews from identifying themselves with King David or Terminator Samson. Evidently, the lack of an unambiguous ethnic origin doesn’t stop people from seeing themselves as part of a people. Similarly, it wouldn’t stop the nationalist Jew from feeling that he belongs to some greater abstract collective.
In the 1970’s, Shlomo Artzi, then a young Israeli singer who was bound to become Israel’s all-time greatest rock star, released a song that had become a smash hit in a matter of hours. Here are the first few lines:
All of a sudden
A man wakes up
In the morning
He feels he is people
And he starts to walk
And to everyone he comes across
He says shalom
To a certain extent Artzi innocently expresses in his lyrics the suddenness and almost contingency involved in the transformation of the Jews into people. However, almost within the same breath, Artzi contributes towards the illusionary national myth of the peace-seeking nation. Artzi should have known by then that Jewish nationalism was a colonialist act at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people.
Seemingly, nationalism, national belonging and Jewish nationalism in particular create a major intellectual task. Interestingly enough, the first to deal theoretically and methodically with issues having to do with nationalism were Marxist ideologists. Though Marx himself failed to address the issue adequately, early 20th century uprising of nationalist demands in eastern and central Europe caught Lenin and Stalin unprepared.
“Marxists’ contribution to the study of nationalism can be seen as the focus on the deep correlation between the rise of free economy and the evolvement of the national state.” [5] In fact, Stalin was there to summarise the Marxist take on the subject. “The nation,” says Stalin, “is a solid collaboration between beings that was created historically and formed following four significant phenomena: the sharing of tongue, the sharing of territory, the sharing of economy and the sharing of psychic significance…” [6]
As one would expect, the Marxist materialist attempt to understand nationalism is lacking an adequate historical overview. Instead it would be reliant upon a class struggle. For some obvious reasons such a vision was popular amongst those who believe in ‘socialism of one nation’ amongst them we can consider the proponents of a leftist branch of Zionism.
For Sand, nationalism evolved due to the “ rapture created by modernity which split people from their immediate past” [7]. The mobility created by urbanisation and industrialisation crushed the social hierarchic system as well as the continuum between past, present and future. Sand points out that before industrialisation, the feudal peasant didn’t necessarily feel the need for an historical narrative of empires and kingdoms. The feudal subject didn’t need an extensive abstract historical narrative of large collectives that had very little relevance to the immediate concrete existential need. “Without a perception of social progression, they did well with an imaginary religious tale that contained a mosaic of memory that lacked a real dimension of a forward moving time. The ‘end’ was the beginning and eternity bridged between life and death.” [8]In the modern secular and urban world, ‘time’ had become the main life vessel which illustrated an imaginary symbolic meaning. Collective historical time had become the elementary ingredient of the personal and the intimate. The collective narrative shapes the personal meaning and what seems to be the ‘real’. As much as some banal minds still insist that the ‘personal is political’, it would be far more intelligible to argue that in practice, it is actually the other way around. Within the post-modern condition, the political is personal and the subject is spoken rather than speaking itself. Authenticity, for the matter, is a myth that reproduces itself in the form of symbolic identifier.
Sand’s reading of nationalism as a product of industrialisation, urbanisation and secularism, makes a lot of sense when bearing in mind Uri Slezkin’s suggestion that Jews are the ‘apostles of modernity’, secularism and urbanisation. If Jews happened to find themselves at the hub of urbanisation and secularisation it shouldn’t then take us by surprise that the Zionists were rather creative as much as others in inventing their own phantasmic collective imaginary tale. However, while insisting on their right to be ‘like other people’ Zionists have managed to transform their imagined collective past into a global, expansionist, merciless agenda as well as the biggest threat to world peace.
It is an established fact that not a single Jewish history text had been written between the 1st century and early 19th century. The fact that Judaism is based on a religious historical myth may have something to do with it. An adequate scrutiny of the Jewish past was never a primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One of the reasons is probably the lack of a need of such a methodical effort. For the Jew who lived during ancient times and the Middle Ages, there was enough in the Bible to answer most relevant questions having to do with day-to-day life, Jewish meaning and fate. As Shlomo Sand puts it, “a secular chronological time was foreign to the ‘Diaspora time’ that was shaped by the anticipation for the coming of the Messiah".
However, in the light of German secularisation, urbanisation and emancipation and due to the decreasing authority of the Rabbinical leaders, an emerging need of an alternative cause rose amongst the awakening Jewish intellectuals. The emancipated Jew wondered who he was, where he come from. He also started to speculate what his role might be within the rapidly opening European society.
In 1820 the German Jewish historian Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) published the first serious historical work on Jews, namely “The History of the Israelites”. Jost avoided the Biblical time, he preferred to start his journey with the Judea Kingdom, he also compiled an historical narrative of different Jewish communities around the world. Jost realised that the Jews of his time did not form an ethnic continuum. He grasped that Israelites from place to place were rather different. Hence, he thought there was nothing in the world that should stop Jews from total assimilation. Jost believed that within the spirit of enlightenment, both the Germans and the Jews would turn their back to the oppressive religious institution and would form a healthy nation based on a growing geographically orientated sense of belonging.
Though Jost was aware of the evolvement of European nationalism, his Jewish followers were rather unhappy with his liberal optimistic reading of the Jewish future. “
From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a ‘kingdom’, expelled into ‘exile’, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.” [9]
The ideological path from Hess’s pseudo scientific racist orientation to Zionist historicism is rather obvious. If Jews are indeed an alien racial entity (as Hess, Jabotinsky and others believed), they better look for their natural homeland, and this homeland is no other than Eretz Yizrael. Cleary, Hess’s assumption regarding a racial continuum wasn’t scientifically approved. In order to maintain the emerging phantasmic narrative, an orchestrated denial mechanism had to be erected just to make sure that some embarrassing facts wouldn’t interfere with the emerging national creation.
Sand suggests that the denial mechanism was rather orchestrated and very well thought out. The Hebrew University decision in the 1930’s to split Jewish History and General History into two distinct departments was far more than just a matter of convenience. The logos behind the split is a glimpse into Jewish self-realisation. In the eyes of Jewish academics, the Jewish condition and Jewish psyche were unique and should be studied separately. Apparently, even within Jewish academia, a supreme status is reserved for the Jews, their history and their self-perception. As Sand insightfully unveils, within the Jewish Studies departments the researcher is scattering between the mythological and the scientific while the myth maintains its primacy. Yet, it often gets into a stalling dilemma by the ‘small devious facts’.
In Palestine, the new Jews and later the Israelis were determined to recruit the Old Testament and to transform it into the amalgamate code of the future Jew. The ‘nationalisation’ of the Bible was there to plant in young Jews the idea that they are the direct followers of their great ancient ancestors. Bearing in mind the fact that nationalisation was largely a secular movement, the Bible was stripped of its spiritual and religious meaning. Instead, it was viewed as an historical text describing a real chain of events in the past. The Jews who had now managed to kill their God learned to believe in themselves. Massada, Samson and Bar Kochva became suicidal master narratives. In the light of their heroic ancestors, Jews learned to love themselves as much as they hate others, except that this time they possessed the military might to inflict real pain on their neighbours. More concerning was the fact that instead of a supernatural entity - namely God - who command them to invade the land and execute a genocide and to rob their ‘promised land’ of its indigenous habitants, within their national revival project it was them as themselves, Herzl, Jabotinsky, Weitzman, Ben Gurion, Sharon, Peres, Barak who decided to expel, destroy and kill. Instead of God, it was then the Jews killing in the name of Jewish people. They did it while Jewish symbols decorate their planes and tanks. They followed commands that where given in the newly restored language of their ancestors.
Surprisingly enough, Sand who is no doubt a striking scholar, fails to mention that the Zionist hijacking of the Bible was in fact a desperate Jewish answer to German Early Romanticism. However, as much as German philosophers, poets, architects and artists were ideologically and aesthetically excited about pre-Socratic Greece, they knew very well that they were not exactly Hellenism’s sons and daughters. The nationalist Jew took it one step further, he bound oneself into a phantasmic blood chain with his mythical ancestors, not before long he restored their ancient language. Rather than a sacred tongue, Hebrew had become a spoken language. German Early Romanticist never went that far.
German intellectuals during the 19th century were also fully aware of the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem. For them, Athens stood for universal, the epic chapter of humanity and humanism. Jerusalem was, on the contrary, the grand chapter of tribal barbarism. Jerusalem was a representation of the banal, non-universal, monotheistic merciless God, the one who kills the elder and the infant. The Germanic Early Romantic era left us with Hegel, Nietzsche, Fichte and Heidegger and a just a few Jewish self-haters, leading amongst them, Otto Weininger. The Jerusalemite left us with not a single master ideological thinker. Some German Jewish second-rate scholars tried to preach Jerusalem in the Germanic exedra, amongst them were Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzveig and Ernst Bloch. They obviously failed to notice that it was the traces of Jerusalem in Christianity, which German Early Romanticists despised.
In their effort to resurrect ‘Jerusalem’, archaeology was recruited to provide the Zionist epos with its necessary ‘scientific’ ground. Archaeology was there to unify the Biblical time with the moment of revival. Probably the most astonishing moment of this bizarre trend was the 1982 ‘military burial ceremony’ of the bones of Shimon Bar Kochva, a Jew rebel who died 2000 years earlier. Executed by the chief military Rabbi, a televised military burial was given to some sporadic bones found in a cave near the Dead Sea. In practice suspected remains of a 1st century Jew rebel was treated as an IDF casualty. Clearly, archaeology had a national role, it was recruited to cement the past and the present while leaving the Galut out.
Astonishingly enough, it didn’t take long before things turned the other way around. As archaeological research become more and more independent of the Zionist dogma, the embarrassing truth filtered out. It would be impossible to ground the truthfulness of the Biblical tale on forensic facts. If anything, archaeology refutes the historicity of the Biblical plot. Excavation revealed the embarrassing fact. The Bible is a collection of innovative fictitious literature.
As Sand points out, the Early Biblical story is soaked with Philistines, Aramaeans and camels. Embarrassingly enough, as far as excavations are there to enlighten us, Philistine didn’t appear in the region before the 12th century BC, the Aramaeans appears a century later and camels didn’t show their cheerful faces before the 8th century. These scientific facts lead Zionist researchers into some severe confusion. However, for non-Jewish scholars such as Thomas Thompson, it was rather clear that the Biblical is a “late collection of innovative literature written by a gifted theologian.” [10] The Bible appears to be an ideological text that was there to serve a social and political cause.Embarrassingly enough, not much was found in Sinai to prove the story of the legendary Egyptian Exodus, seemingly 3 million Hebraic men, women and children were marching in the desert for 40 years without leaving a thing behind. Not even a single matzo ball, very non-Jewish one may say.
The story of the Biblical resettlement and the genocide of the Canaanite which the contemporary Israelite imitates to such success is another myth. Jericho, the guarded city that was flattened to the sounds of horns and almighty supernatural intervention was just a tiny village during the 13th century BC.
As much as Israel regards itself as the resurrection of the monumental Kingdom of David and Salomon, excavation that took place in the Old City of Jerusalem in the 1970’s revealed that David’s kingdom was no more than a tiny tribal setting. Evidence that was referred by Yigal Yadin to King Solomon had been refuted later by forensic tests made with Carbon 14. The discomforting fact has been scientifically established. The Bible is a fictional tale, and not much there can ground any glorifying existence of Hebraic people in Palestine at any stage.
Quite early on in his text, Sand raises the crucial and probably the most relevant questions. Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? How is it that in different historical periods they appear in some very different and remote places?
Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to exile because such an expulsion has never taken place. The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.
“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land” says Sand in an Haaretz interview [11], “but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”
Indeed, in the light of Sand’s simple insight, the idea of Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of Roman Imperial navy was working 24/7 schlepping Moishe’le and Yanka’le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel important as well as schleppable, but common sense would suggest that the Roman armada had far more important things to do.
However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah must be the Palestinians.
“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years” says Sand. [12] “But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.’”
In his book Sand takes it further and suggests that until the First Arab Uprising (1929) the so-called leftist Zionist leaders tended to believe that the Palestinian peasants who are actually ‘Jews by origin’ would assimilate within the emerging Hebraic culture and would eventually join the Zionist movement. Ber Borochov believed that “a falach (Palestinian Peasant), dresses as a Jew, and behaves as a working class Jew, won’t be at all different from the Jew”. This very idea reappeared in Ben Gurion’s and Ben-Zvi’s text in 1918. Both Zionist leaders realised that Palestinian culture was soaked with Biblical traces, linguistically, as well as geographically (names of villages, towns, rivers and mountains). Both Ben Gurion and Ben-Zvi regarded, at least at that early stage, the indigenous Palestinians as ethnic relatives who were holding close to the land and potential brothers. They as well regarded Islam as a friendly ‘democratic religion’. Clearly, after 1936 both Ben-Zvi and Ben Gurion toned down their ‘multicultural’ enthusiasm. As far as Ben Gurion is concerned, ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seemed to be far more appealing.
One may wonder, if the Palestinians are the real Jews, who are those who insist upon calling themselves Jews?
Sand’s answer is rather simple, yet it makes a lot of sense. “The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others.” [13]
Clearly, monotheist religions, being less tolerant than polytheist ones have within them an expanding impetus. Judaic expansionism in its early days was not just similar to Christianity but it was Judaic expansionism that planted the ‘spreading out’ seeds in early Christian thought and practice.
“The Hasmoneans,” says Sand, [14] “were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. It was this tradition of conversions that prepared the ground for the subsequent, widespread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the 4th century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions - pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”
The Jews of Spain, whom we believed to be blood related to the Early Israelites seem to be converted Berbers. “I asked myself,” says Sand, “how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber Kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.”
As one would expect, Sand approves the largely accepted assumption that the Judaicised Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, which he calls the Yiddish Nation. When asked how come they happen to speak Yiddish, which is largely regarded as a German medieval dialect, he answers, “the Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the east, and thus they adopted German words.”
In his book Sand manages to produce a detailed account of the Khazarian saga in Jewish history. He explains what lead the Khazarian kingdom towards conversion. Bearing in mind that Jewish nationalism is, for the most part, lead by a Khazarian elite, we may have to expand our intimate knowledge of this very unique yet influential political group. The translation of Sand’s work into foreign languages is an immediate must. (It is forthcoming in French, as reported in Are the Jews an invented people?, by Eric Rouleau).
What Next?
Professor Sand leaves us with the inevitable conclusion. Contemporary Jews do not have a common origin and their Semitic origin is a myth. Jews have no origin in Palestine whatsoever and therefore, their act of so-called ‘return’ to their ‘promised land’ must be realised as an invasion executed by a tribal-ideological clan.
However, though Jews do not constitute any racial continuum, they for some reason happen to be racially orientated. As we may notice, many Jews still see mixed marriage as the ultimate threat. Furthermore, in spite of modernisation and secularisation, the vast majority of those who identify as secular Jews still succumb to blood ritual (circumcision) a unique religious procedure which involves no less than blood sucking by a Mohel.
As far as Sand is concerned, Israel should become “a state of its citizens”. Like Sand, I myself believe in the same futuristic utopian vision. However, unlike Sand, I do grasp that the Jewish state and its supportive lobbies must be ideologically defeated. Brotherhood and reconciliation are foreign to Jewish tribal worldview and have no room within the concept of Jewish national revival. As dramatic as it may sound, a process of de-judaification must take place before Israelis can adopt any universal modern notion of civil life.
Sand is no doubt a major intellectual, probably the most advanced leftist Israeli thinker. He represents the highest form of thought a secular Israeli can achieve before flipping over or even defecting to the Palestinian side (something that happened to just a few, me included). Haaretz interviewer Ofri Ilani said about Sand that unlike other ‘new historians’ who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, “Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years.” This is indeed the case, unlike the ‘new historians’ who ‘unveil’ a truth that is known to every Palestinian toddler i.e., the truth of being ethnically cleansed, Sand erects a body of work and thought that is aiming at the understanding of the meaning of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity. This is indeed the true essence of scholarship. Rather than collecting some sporadic historical fragments, Sand searches for the meaning of history. Rather than a ‘new historian’ who searches for a new fragment, he is a real historian motivated by a humanist task. Most crucially, unlike some of the Jewish historians who happen to contribute to the so-called left discourse, Sand’s credibility and success is grounded on his argument rather than his family background. He avoids peppering his argument with his holocaust survivor relatives. Reading Sand’s ferocious argument, one may have to admit that Zionism in all its faults has managed to erect within itself a proud and autonomous dissident discourse that is far more eloquent and brutal than the entire anti-Zionist movement around the world.
If Sand is correct, and I myself am convinced by the strength of his argument, then Jews are not a race but rather a collective of very many people who are largely hijacked by a late phantasmic national movement. If Jews are not a race, do not form a racial continuum and have nothing to do with Semitism, then ‘anti-Semitism’ is, categorically, an empty signifier. It obviously refers to a signifier that doesn’t exist. In other words, our criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power can only be realised as a legitimate critique of ideology and practice.
Once again I may say it, we are not and never been against Jews (the people) nor we are against Judaism (the religion). Yet, we are against a collective philosophy with some clear global interests. Some would like to call it Zionism but I prefer not to. Zionism is a vague signifier that is far too narrow to capture the complexity of Jewish nationalism, its brutality, ideology and practice. Jewish nationalism is a spirit and spirit doesn’t have clear boundaries. In fact, none of us know exactly where Jewishness stops and where Zionism starts as much as we do not know where Israeli interests stop and where the Neocon’s interests start.
As far as the Palestinian cause is concerned, the message is rather devastating. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are at the forefront of a struggle against a very devastating philosophy. Yet, it is clearly not just the Israelis whom they fight with rather a fierce pragmatic philosophy that initiates global conflicts on some gigantic scale. It is a tribal practice that seeks influence within corridors of power and super powers in particular. The American Jewish Committee is pushing for a war against Iran. Just to be on the safe side David Abrahams, a ‘Labour Friend of Israel’ donates money to the Labour Party by proxy. More or less at the same time two million Iraqis die in an illegal war designed by one called Wolfowitz. While all the above is taking place, millions of Palestinians are starved in concentration camps and Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. As it all happens, ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews and Jews in the left (Chomsky included) insist upon dismantling the eloquent criticism of AIPAC, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power posed by Mearsheimer and Walt. [15]
Is it just Israel? Is it really Zionism? Or shall we admit that it is something far greater than we are entitled even to contemplate within the intellectual boundaries we imposed upon ourselves? As things stand, we lack the intellectual courage to confront the Jewish national project and its many messengers around the world. However, since it is all a matter of consciousness-shift, things are going to change soon. In fact, this very text is there to prove that they are changing already.
To stand by the Palestinians is to save the world, but in order to do so we have to be courageous enough to stand up and admit that it is not merely a political battle. It is not just Israel, its army or its leadership, it isn’t even Dershowitz, Foxman and their silencing leagues. It is actually a war against a cancerous spirit that hijacked the West and, at least momentarily, diverted it from its humanist inclination and Athenian aspirations. To fight a spirit is far more difficult than fighting people, just because one may have to first fight its traces within oneself. If we want to fight Jerusalem, we may have to first confront Jerusalem within. We may have to stand in front of the mirror, look around us. We may have to trace for empathy in ourselves in case there is anything left.
[1] When And How The Jewish People Was Invented? Shlomo Sand, Resling 2008, pg 11
[2] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html
[3] When And How The Jewish People Was Invented? Shlomo Sand, Resling 2008, pg 31
[4] Ibid pg 31
[5] Ibid pg 42
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid pg 62
[8] Ibid
[10] When And How The Jewish People Was Invented? Shlomo Sand, Resling 2008, pg 117
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Ibid
Gilad Atzmon is a jazz musician, composer, producer and writer.
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"To stand by the Palestinians is to save the world," …. Taking the condition of the Palesitnians now and then to extrapolate this thought further into a wider context is a very frightening thing indeed and "the greater Israel" takes on a whole new context.
Gilad your writing always leaves me reeling in thought.
Great stuff! But excuse me for one quibble: that Judaism was once a converting religion (and I've read this elsewhere) contradicts the message of the bible that the revelation of the Old Testament God is for the tribe of the jews alone - the chosen people. Discuss!
Anyway, I'm not surprised that there is no literature on the expulsion from Judea; I've looked and never found anything. There is a huge gap in the literature between the end of the old Testament, with the jews living under the Seleucid or Ptolemaic successor of Alexander, and their appearance as a network of rich traders scattered throughout the Roman Empire. For instance. How did a poor, land-locked hill tribe metamorphose into rich international maritime traders? Excuse me for indulging in speculation, but I think there is a clue in the link between Judea and the Phoenician coast - Silber and Finkelstein give evidence for this in 'the Bible Unearthed' and it is hinted at in the biblical story about Jezebel and her father etc. Silber and Little claim that a principle reason-to-be, for the Judean state, was control of the trade route between the Red Sea and Phoenicia; it seems not unlikely, given the evidence of close links between the Judeans and Phoenicians, that there were Judean guilds within Tyre and Sidon, and even that Judeans got licence to set up within Phoenician overseas colonies and trading posts, so that they had both ends of the trade between Africa and India and Europe. I wonder too if, after the fall of Carthage, the Romans found the network of Carthaginian traders and colonies too useful to dispense with, and allowed them to convert, nominally at least, and pretend they were jews - this could help explain the large number of rich jewish traders and colonies in Roman times. Just a thought but, if not, where else did all these rich international jews come from.
What a fascinating piece of writing. Thanks as always, Gilad.
Excellent comments by the two previous posters as well.
Regards,
LT
"Is it just Israel? Is it really Zionism? Or shall we admit that it is something far greater than we are entitled even to contemplate within the intellectual boundaries we imposed upon ourselves? As things stand, we lack the intellectual courage to confront the Jewish national project and its many messengers around the world. However, since it is all a matter of consciousness-shift, things are going to change soon. In fact, this very text is there to prove that they are changing already."
As is this one:
Political Ponerology; A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes - Andrej Lobaczewski
No, it's not just Israel. 6% of any given human population sample are genetic psychopaths. That is, born bad. Most of them are 'successful' - they rise unnoticed to the top of the pile from where they can exert most power over most people. To this end, the 'Jewish Story' has been used just like every other story. It's a covenient Mask of Sanity for our times for this truly 'other race' - the race of Psychopaths. Born out of the observations of scientists living in totalitarian hell behind the Iron Curtain, Political Ponerology explains how ideologies are co-opted, the originally understood meanings inverted over time, and the inevitable chaos that results from organised Psychopaths assuming 100% control of the levers of society - Pathocracy.
http://www.redpillpress.co.uk/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2&zenid=qd6ba7tt6ngn3i3efc8dt0ahj6
Another cracking book exploring the origins of the Khazars and the genetics of psychopathology is
9/11: The Ultimate Truth - by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn.
http://www.redpillpress.co.uk/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=13
I find it curious that, through reason, compassion and reflexive self-consciousness, God gave his only chind, the entirety of lowly humanity, the entirety of His Universe. He holds back no secrets from us, nor any powers, when we take the trouble to learn how to ask.
On the other hand, there are some who claim that while God gave his only child, lowly humanity, the entirety of His Universe, he gave his Chosen tribe, a trivial patch of dirt. From here, to there, to there, and that's it.
For mankind, an unbounded universe … for his chosen, a bounded patch of dirt.
That sounds like a dis-inheritance to me.
BRAVO!!! A must read piece of criticism and dialectic for all. I hope it reaches hearts and minds far and wide.
Readers of Atzmon's article would also be interested in the summary of Shlomo Sand's book by Sand himself, "Israel deliberately forgets its history:
http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel
This answers some of the queries raised in the comments above.
"Leave aside the megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into enclaves of depravation and starvation, Israel has managed to pollute its main rivers and streams with nuclear and chemical waste."
When you first practice to poison the waters of others, you reap what you sow! Poetic justice makes for a religious epiphany.
Surprisingly enough, Sand who is no doubt a striking scholar, fails to mention that the Zionist hijacking of the Bible was in fact a desperate Jewish answer to German Early Romanticism…
The ideological origins of Zionism in German Romanticism–-shared with Nazism–-were also explored by the great cultural historian George Mosse. His insights into importance for nationalists of a cult of the "Fallen Soldier" and a “sacred mountain” such as Masada are still valid:
Louis-Ferdinand Celine mentioned that in the time of the Middle Ages in the moments between major wars, knights would charge a very high price for their readiness to die in the name of their kingdoms…
Jean-Luc Godard also quoted Celine in his recent movie, Notre musique:
Haaretz interviewer Ofri Ilani said about Sand that unlike other ‘new historians’ who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, “Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years….unlike the ‘new historians’ who ‘unveil’ a truth that is known to every Palestinian toddler i.e., the truth of being ethnically cleansed…Rather than collecting some sporadic historical fragments, Sand searches for the meaning of history. Rather than a ‘new historian’ who searches for a new fragment, he is a real historian motivated by a humanist task.
Neve Gordon has criticized scholarship of the "New Historians" that is neither grounded in nor tempered by a humanist outlook in this book review:
Gilad Atzmon, if you haven't read, "White Light, Dark Night" or "Murder in the Vatican" by Lucien Gregoire,you should. Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, did significant research in Egypt looking for records of the Jews in Egypt. You would think that even a population of slaves, who made significant contributions to the Egyptian Empire's monuments, had lived there for several hundred years would be mentioned somewhere in the archeological records. Well, he found none. No hieroglyphics, no records. Which reflects on the veracity of the first five books of the bible, which were written by Moses. Read the books, they are enlightening.
sand's point about khazars is historically inaccurate, as robert's comment touched on. also, take a look at edenics.org where the trace of language is very interesting. why are there no khazar words in ashqenaz language? you would expect some, since there is a ton of german, hebrew, and aramaic…even some slavic.
further, even the arabs admit that the jews of the 'middle east' are the same jews. jewish history might well be, ironically, one of the most documented histories on the planet. it's laughable that sand could not find any such sources…he would have had to purposely miss them. he must have tripped over them in any library he went to. the movement of jews throughout history is documented also in others' history, as they are cited as being even in china before marco polo.
so-called palestinians may be the arabs who are the least indigenous to the area, coming from algeria, arabia, lebanan, egypt, etc. (read avineri, 'the claim of dispossesion'). also, walid shoebat's family history.
finally, remember the arabs loving the movie 'the passion' all of a sudden, and the pope saying it is accurate? let's see, we heard latin, hebrew, and aramaic, but no arabic, and we see jews and romans, but no arabs. who does sand's think he is kidding?
arabs will love this, as it supports their colonization of israel, whether it make sense or not. anti-semites will love this, since, well, they hate jews.
The jews were thrown out of Israel because an elite group of the mixed multitude settled in Israel,
and began the dreaded bloodline. Bloodline is the root of all evil. It is the red dragon, it is
the crooked kingdom of Esau (Edom) it is the big Satan. The spirit of the sodomite rules
the earth. Sodomy (secret) of the blood, is how the ruling families of this earth keep the masses
enslaved. By way of the secret of the blood and laws of Eugenics, the very elite of Israel are
fooled into believing that they are a group of people. No NO NO they were ever always individuals
of the mixed multitudes. They were never a group of people connected by blood. They had
beaten Satan. They understood sodomy. They knew that they could never lay down roots.
(bloodlines). they knew that they were individuals and that the individual came from the
unconditional womb. Not a womb owned by a specific man, looking to reincarnate through it.
Cain raped Abel. He forced her in the way of the sodomite. Cain put the flesh (image) before
the spirit.
The spirit always reproduced as the random equation of natural selection. that gave the individual
credence over the group connected by blood. And so the jews were just wanderers. The revelation
is to be found in Exodus when the mixed multitudes receive the law. They are not all of one
blood. They represent every single nation on earth, because they are everybody from everywhere.
They are any men. They represent the consciousness of any man. And the law was created so
that any man would fight against the tyrrany of "specific man" men who incarnate and reincarnate
through specific bloodlines.
Those elites that rule Europe and now the US are sodomites, they rule the earth. They think they are
above the law. The stole land, and told the jews, hey you are a group of people, you are one blood,
you are all from the 'line' of David.
David was a poor sheepherder of the NEGEV!! He was not a king.
Monarchy represents the culmination of a group of people connected by blood. Monarchy is the height
and breadth of sodomy. All Monarchs practice the secret of the blood. They all continually reincarnate
through the same bloodline and return to rule. THIS is SATAN. THE ruling bloodline of the earth.
the poor stupid jews were afraid that the ruling bloodline would finally annihilate them. So they fell
for the temptation. They gave into the temptation of Satan, who wants to rule over the sons of
any man.
In exodus, the mixed multitude stands before god, and god gives them all the exact time and date when
any man from any walk of life would be equal, and tyranny would not touch him. 74 men, 70 elders,
Moses, AAron and his two sons, 70 plus 4, 74 see god. And they do consume, they eat and drink
before the image of god in exodus 24. Now understand 74 x 24 = 1776. It is why our forefathers
who tried to destroy the tyrrany of the Monarchs chose that date, July 4, 7 4 1776. Here is true
prophecy given to the mixed multitudes.
The jews were never a group of people connected by blood. They were just any man trying to destroy the tyrrany of the sodomite, the fallen angel, those who take on the flesh of one image over and over,
and learn to traverse the bardo state, or state of death, and set up symbols so that they can return
as kings over men. That is all Satan is, is knowing the secret of the blood.
Did not Esau ask his siter, Jacob, Ha Adameh, Ha Adameh, Hazah??? Let me eat of the
red potage? Let me know the secret of the blood.
And Esau set up a kingdom he would rule forever by the secret sod of the blood dom.
And jacob, received the inheritance. The patriarchal order is part and parcel to the great dragon.
It knows it has but a short time. And the ruling families of the earth, who have set up rituals so
that they can return to their own image, their own bloodline, know that their time is very short.
They can no longer make people believe in death. The limit of death is a lie, and they have
used that tyrrany but to no avail.
Do not fear those who kill the body but who can never take the soul. The true jew wanders, is just
any man, and the consciousness of any man shall prevail against the sodomite.
The patriarchal order will surely come to pass. It's last stand on the field of Megiddo, where men
rationalize and justify murder. Where men think they have the right to bring someone not of
their 'image' to the limit we call death. So Har meggido is the battlefiield, the mental plain
of everyman who believe in the limit of death. You can not rationalize it, you can not justify
it, because death is a lie, created by the spirit of Satan. And Lord Dumah is loosing his
grasp on the hold of death.
The ressurection of Abel is near. The end of the limit of death is near. Messiah is close by,
watching as these words are being written. Messiah makes whole in the great tikkun, Messiah
has watched Satan try and take over the earth and fool the very elite, the true chosen, which
is really any man from anywhere.
The sodomite believes that his blood comes from the divine. The sodomites of the elitist
class believe that they will reincarnate forever through the same bloodline. that is about
to be destroyed. The secret of the blood, and the ritual to reincarnate through the same bloodline
will be revealed. And all men will see how the elitiests have practiced sodomy to rule over
the masses with tyrrany. The law has to win out. Those sodomites have tried to subvert the
law, and now try to bring the jews to their side. They tempted, and pointed 'why not in 'that'
direction?
The true jews need to wake up. They need to stop the carnage, they have to remember what it
is they have come here to work for.
I am trying to figure out, what is the aim of this "research", or whats the benfit…………..
does this invested article "lights" someones intelectual interest, I read it twice and asked myself, ok facts, ideas, whats the aim here, I read the response "I hope it reaches hearts and minds far and wide." and wonder, is it some kind of what ……………..
would think of much more interesting issues to bring up, that would made more sense
Bob
Who care from where the Jews come from, as Israel exist and show it strength.
Who care from where the Palestinians come from, as Palestine should exist and get its strength.
trying to prove the Jews as imaginary nation (as any nation) is taking the trivial and suggesting it is the main issue.
we have a human tissue of 15,000,000 humans in the Palestine-Israel region, we have Palestinians who are occupied and Israelis who succeeded to create a state by manipulating Europe dominance of the 20th century.
Is it not a time to go beyond blame and find a human peaceful solution for this 15,000,000 people ? Is the cost for fighting your "truth" till we get back to pre-48 (or pre-1890) situation is
About the Jews, saying they are imaginary cannot hold with the historical remarks from the last 4,000 years.
going this way is just pushing from deepening the conflict which proved to cost more Palestinians lives where we can use the Israel power for the good of the Palestinians if we go with different way of recognizing Israel.
It is sad that these energies actually play against the Palestinians interest and not support the children of Palestine.
GREAT WORK FROM A GREAT INTELLECTUAL.
Mr. Gilad Atzmon is not just a famous musician, but he is a great intellectual and a writer.
I am not Jewish, so for me, when I heard stories of Moses and parting of the Red Sea and "Jews" such as my blond friend who I was supposed to believe had African ancestors (in Egypt) and 1 millions Jews living in the desert were clearly sounded like false myths.
I could never understand how blonds like him lived in Egypt, an African nation, and survived, when they would have been attacked, brutalized and forcibly impregnated with black genes in a few generations.
I now realized my blond "Jew" friend was a Khazar, not a semite.
All religions have myths, but the problem appears when people takes these myths and turn to violence and/or hurt other people, try to subjugate them, abuse them, such as call them names such as "goyim", shiksha etc.
A religion that espouses hate is a not a religion.
Brave man, Sand.
Excellent synopsis of the book, Gilad.
Thanks for this most informative article.
Most people feel comfort by believing in the divine,whichever form that may have. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell said almost a hundred years ago, all known religions are both harmfull and untrue.
Maybe this is the time for a strong reminder.
"Religion has caused more harm and misery to more humans in all of history than any other single idea" M.M.O'Hare
The authors of the U.s. constitution had it right with the very first thought in the bill of rights. "Congress (law makers) shall not respect an establishment of religion,,," such as tax free status, recognized favoritisms etc.
When one 'faith' has advantage over others, you get these types that will kill to maintain the status.
Same thing in israel as everywhere else. When will we be free of the moronic religions that claim/ preach peace with the end of a gun barrel (or pile of stones).
"If Sand is correct, and I myself am convinced by the strength of his argument, then Jews are not a race but rather a collective of very many people who are largely hijacked by a late phantasmic national movement. If Jews are not a race, do not form a racial continuum and have nothing to do with Semitism, then ‘anti-Semitism’ is, categorically, an empty signifier. It obviously refers to a signifier that doesn’t exist. In other words, our criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power can only be realised as a legitimate critique of ideology and practice."
Hostility to Jewish religious practice predates Jewish nationalism by at least 700 years. The Jews were expelled en masse from Norwich in 1290. Hostility to Jews prior to the Enlightenment must have been predicated, not on "antisemitism", a 19th Century invention, but on the dominance in Europe of Christian
religious belief, and its intolerance of Jewish religious practice. The above passage contains a non-sequitur. If (and I agree) the Jews are not a race, there is, therefore, no such thing as Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power. There are simply people who self-identify with Israel, the largest proportion of whom are US fundamentalist Christians, about 40 million out the 100 million US Christians. How would all those Jews get into Congress if the Christians were not voting for them?
A curate's egg, this article, I won't say more. I printed it off and read it three times before deciding not to make a detailed response. If it promotes Professor Sand's work, then good.
"When the new Congress debuts in January 2009, a record 45 Jews will take the oath of office: 32 in the House of Representatives and - regardless of the outcome in the still-contested Minnesota election - 13 Jews in the Senate."
To #20, "How would all those Jews get into Congress if the Christians were not voting for them?"
Ever hear of counting the ballots in private or paying the electronic machine maker to tamper with the output code?
I greatly admire Gilad Aztmon. He is to be commended for his intelligence and insight.
However, I would like to add that the geographic area which we now call Israel and the Occupied Territories has been subjected to a wave after wave of foreign invaders thoughout its existence; the Habiru, the Philistines, the European Crusaders, the Arabs, etc. According to all available sources the original inhabitants, Jebusites, Caananites, etc. never left but continued to live with the newcomers, be raped by them, marry them and produce children. Therefore, I would propose that the present day Palestinians are the descendants of all of these.
The current DNA studies can be manipulated according to the researchers bias by simply selecting subjects who look like they would fit a predetermined ethnicity. DNA studies can have any value only in a totally homogenous nation.
Comment 15 Neri Bar-On on September 10th, 2008 at 14:34
is a typical product of a barbaric jewnazi brain. No wonder why Israhell, the immoral illegal unlawful jewnazi state, populated by jewnazi thieves, robbers, vandalizers, torturers, murderers, genociders and consummate liars, is the cancer of the world…
This is a brilliant website I've come across by chance, so informative and interesting to read. I am an Atheist anyway, but I am on the side of the Palestinians for sure. The Jews are an arrogant, conceited, self opinionated race who think of no one but themselves. I worked amongst them on a daily basis for 15 years so know them very well. I don't hate them, just feel pity for them, they are indoctrinated from birth into the jewish way as all babies are anyway, but they will never ever compromise, this is not in their nature so a ceasefire will not happen in my humble opinion. I think that the UN will intercede soon and stop this bloodbath, someone has to it is horrific!!!!!!!!!!!
To Jamie #24, I too am an Atheist and I also am on the oppressed Palestinians 'side' with this newest wave of unnecessary slaughter. So far as I am aware, the entire excuse is over a few "rockets" that have killed one israeli "fired by hamas" (an israeli created org btw). So far in the "response" to a few "rockets" the israelis have killed 3 possibly a fourth israeli!!! They would have been ahead of the game staying at home catching "rockets".
Gilad, Shlomo Zand's work has had my attention for a while and I am hopeful of an English language copy soon. This article is a marvelous tribute to his book as well as an excellent coomentary in itself. Thankyou.
No surprise that Sand will get many stones thrown at him from Jews who defend their myth. Zionism is the enemy of all civilized and reasonable people. A very enlightening review.
Raised as a New York Jew I don't much care if Jews do or do not descend from the people who lived in Judea during the supposed times of the temples of Jerusalem. I could care less if I am descended from Khazars or from Judeans and their convert slave women.
Shlomo Sand has guts and he's to be congratulated. I don't know if there is or is not anything valid in all the writing about DNA and hapolytes I've seen because I do not have enough scientific background to intelligently weigh it, but what I do know is that I have no inherent "right" to any part of Palestine nor does anyone else whose ancestors lived away from there for at least 1,500 years or more, if not forever.
No doubt the Palestinians are more correctly identified with the Jeruslaemites of yore.
"When the truth comes into the light, the lies will hide in the dark"… Ponce
I came up with this for the so called Zionist wanabe Jews………..
Khazard- Zionists-Israelis have NOTHING to do with the Jews of the Bible….. and sometimes I wonder about the proper name for the Jews of the Bible.
I'm bitter. When I see someone who is a musician and also writes so well, it scorns away my own dreams of being a decent writer… May I say; "You nailed it."
Jamie #24,
You sound like an anti- semite. It's the wrong site for you.
“And there are, certainly, people among the Yahud and Nasara, those who believes in Allah and in that which has been revealed to you, and in that which has been revealed to them, humbling themselves before Allah. They don’t sell the Verses of Allah for a little price, for them is a reward with their Lord. Surely, Allah is Swift in account,” – Holy Qur’an 3:199
The Arabic words, ‘Yahud’ and ‘Nasara’ were translated into ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ by the first English translator of Holy Qur’an, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, the British convert, based on his religious and cultural background. His translation the words had no religious or historical basis. ‘Yahud’ in Islamic Arabic term means those people (Banu Israel), who follow the “Laws of Moses (Torah)” – which the great majority of Jews don’t. Instead they follow Talmud, a book written by Rabbis during the 2nd century CE. Similarly, ‘Nasara’ in Islamic Arabic terms those people (Nazarene) who follow the Scripture (Injil) revealed to prophet Isa (Jesus) – while all Christians follow the teachings of St. Paul and four Gospel writers, who never met Jesus (as).
Bible confirms my theory (Revelation 2:9 - “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a Synagogue of Satan.”…….
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/who-were-the-people-of-the-book/
To greg #31, to be called an "anti-semite" due to the anti-zionnazi views we may have, you must tell me how being an anti- kahzar, and/or anti- ashkennazi, and/or anti -bluffed christian moron, how does that specificly relate to being or holding what you call "anti-semite" views? Speaking against zionnazis does not make an anti-semite, when those we are speaking up in protest FOR their lives are semite Palestinians of the West bank and Gaza.
israel is built on a fraud, actually defrauding the jews own God at that, they must keep up the criminal tactics to keep the fraud alive.
See YouTube Slackerslayer's profile for more.
@MeatwadGetsIt -
Actually, I was ging to say something similar… Do I think I understand the infinite DNA composition of a Jewish New Yorker? And then equate that with an Israel-born Israeli? And then have some idea that I can divine and calculate the exact genetic merits of these people as compared to say, a Northen English person and so declare myself an anti-semite? Utter rubbish of course! But do I resist a culture that fosters the teaching to its children they they are superior and above the laws laid on everyone else? Yes! Because I stand AGAINST racist culture. So Gregg may call me a "culturalist" if he likes. I do discriminate against cultures on points where they are biased against humanity. Equally I'll call foul against the British Royalty Class. Does that make me an "Anglosaxonist"?
I think Gregg's slur is so weak, he himself doesn't believe it. He's just fishing for whatever is our argument so he can foster counter-argument. Well, you have it now Gregg. Go and scheme some more, you ridiculous person. Shame on you.
Here's the Zionist stance to free debate:
Israel Sends Soldiers to Try to Shut Down Literature Festival
The Israeli government sent in troops on May 23 to try to break up the opening of the second annual Palestine Festival of Literature in East Jerusalem.
Stephanie Saldana, an American writer living in Jerusalem, went to the Palestinian National Theater for what she thought was going to be the opening of the festival.
“We arrived and the place was swarming with the Israeli army, with trucks and huge guns,” she wrote in an e-mail to a friend. “I am still in shock. To ban literature? To ban reading? How is this possible?”
The Israeli minister of internal security ordered the busting of the literature festival, according to The Guardian newspaper…
http://www.progressive.org/wx052509.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/israeli-police-close-palestinian-theatre
RE: "In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a 'nation-race', they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion."
Fine, that is quite possible, but I hope that you are not holding that against Jewish identity per se. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a colourful mix from all around the world who gather to invoke a myth of commonality and to revive an ancient language together. And if Jews are not a "race" in the biological sense, but only in some psychological meaning, then this makes only Jewishness more interesting, more authentic.
The Palestinian people should have no quarrel with Jewish identity per se, and this kind of stuff is mainly interesting to the "colourful mix" themselves to discuss.
BTW I think that most modern Jews, certainly the ones that I know, are aware that there is no biology to Jewishness, but do not really care about that, and sorry, but THEY do NOT feel that Hitler has won by them insisting on their own Jewishness, quite the contrary.
As for those Jews who not only believe literally that Jews are a race descended from Biblical figures, but also use this as an excuse for hideous acts of genocide, well, they are mad, and I would never accept anything that they say anyway.
To MeatwadGetsIt #33
Antisemitism, also known as Judeophobia is a term used to describe prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their religious/cultural/ethnic background.
Please read Jamie's #24 statement again "The Jews are an arrogant, conceited, self opinionated race who think of no one but themselves", and further, in the same spirit.
to hidflect #34
It's amazing how you twisted my words, my name (I'm Greg , not Gregg).
BTW, I am an anti- Zionist, so you missed.
land robbers, just like birds of a feather, flock together. From this, i conclude that most american 'jews' and judaists flock together with most americans.
most americans- in fact 97%- have just voted for socalled zionism; a peculiar unit of land robbers.
in other words, 97 to 99% of latinos, blacks, and whites have voted for more land robbery and by murder.
and they may have voted for land robbery not ever having heard of AIPAC. So, why are 'jewish' land robbers so vocal ffor more land robbery when already 99% of blacks and latinos onside?
latins, blacks, whites, olives, browns hear obama not aipac. And vote for him!
thinking of him as a new 'savior'. But in truth, he may be badder than 99% of american 'jews'.
on this issue i agree with chomsky. Mind you, i am boycotting chomsky because he's for two state nonsolution; thus, to me, he's a zionist! i am for one state solution. And if 'jews' don't want to cope with islamic cult, they can leave.
rabid mullahs and rabid rabbis can stay and fight forever if they choose that!
To greg #38, how again does the ashkennnazi oppression and speaking up against it make me or Jamie an anti-semite? They are NOT semites.
Those jews that are faithful realize the current israel is a fraud and they speak up against it, are they too "anti-semites"? Or are they aka "self haters" for not flowing with the gangsters among them?
If I show any "hatred" for the zionnazi, it is well deserved by their actions, not mine. If my brother commits some heanous crime, I'm not sticking up for him, that's where the situation has gone, scum defending scum for some blood-related reasons rather than what is right.
As far as the rest of the jews go, their religious books fit the definition of racist materials, encouraging pedophilia, etc etc of all things most humans consider vile. Sorry but I am not an animal in human form sent to "serve the jew" because pigs are dirty. That 'jew' ideal can die in the breeze for the rest of history to mock as a strange cult that had some strange offspring as well (christians, muslums). As it says, no bad tree gives forth good fruit. Those two are the fruits of the jews tree.
Call me an "anti-semite" all you want, "judophobia"?? I'll laugh at it, and make fun of you. I'm no more intimidated by gangsters. It's like this, I am a human with justice for all as my goal. That is counter to the racist / religious nature of the zionnazi jew goal.
Do you really think the jew plans on stopping at Gaza? Their flag betrays the real goal, from the "Nile to the Euphrates" is what those blue lines stand for. Taken from a book written by a hebrew of course.
to MeatwadGetsIt #41
In January 2005, an international working definition of anti-Semitism was accepted for the first time since the term was coined in the late 19th century. This definition, approved in June 2005 at a conference in Cordoba, Spain, is the result of a joint effort on the part of two institutions - a center established in Vienna by the European Union to monitor racism and xenophobia, and a center set up in Warsaw by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to strengthen the institutions of democracy and human rights among its 55 member countries
And this is the essence of the international working definition of anti-Semitism: "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
I accept this definition of anti -semtizm. Based on this definiton and Jamie's statement "The Jews are an arrogant, conceited, self opinionated race who think of no one but themselves." I draw a conclusion, that Jamie sounds like an anti- semite. If you don't agree with this definition I can change it specially for you : Jamie sounds like a Jew hater.
That sounds all nice and dandy there Greg, do you have an accompanying list of the members of these institutions, because I've heard the entire country of Germany has gone bonkers with some law about a fake historic event and the zionnazis keeping that gangsters law alive.
So you point out a biased deffinition to fit ole Jamie, what about me partner, what do you have to say about what I've said, I'm not a Jamie to defend a Jamie.
I base my opinion not on historic hysterics, just what I've seen, what I've learned, and it is not a pretty picture of self ritchious and arrogant behavior toward others.
Have you seen the lies the IDF called a suicide bomber?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5BY_NxKJBU
All past claims of "suicidal bombers" inside israel are bunk until proven by a third party with a truth telling track record and no connections with those zionnazi killers. My momma brought me up right. When you find out your pal is a habitual liar, you don't believe anything they've ever said,,, right?!?
to MeatwadGetsIt :
MeatwadGetsIt ,
You asked me whether I have an accompanying list of the members of the institutions I mentioned.
No, I don't have the lists , I'm sorry…
These are the websites of the institutions :
http://www.osce.org/
http://europa.eu/index_en.htm
Please contact them, I hope they can help you.
In my comment #39 I mentioned that I am an anti- Zionist. I can add that I am an atheist, I don't give a damn what religious books say.
You wrote: Do you really think the jew plans on stopping at Gaza?
I think they are going to give back a lot, my wish they would give everything.
The video of the would be suicide bomber's killing is sad.
I think If you knew somebody who was planning to attack your children you would do the same- kill the bustard.
A terrorist, no matter an Arab or a Jew, should be killed - that's my opinion.
Greg, you honestly think the israelis are going to "give back" any land they have stolen*? You have never understood what those blue stripes mean on their flag have you.
*stolen: their god demands certain prophecies fulfilled before "the right of return" of the jew. You do know that much don't you.
MeatwadGetsIt,
The blue stripes…It's nonsense…
Please read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqr_Abu_Fakhr
Ask yourself a question: why haven't those bloody Jews taked the whole land before? and why do you think they will do it in the future and how?
Your words "their god demands certain prophecies fulfilled…"…… Oh my god……
God demands many things… including killing people for working on the Sabbath, killing followers of other religions, killing of nonbelievers…. Who cares what he demands?
Open your eyes, look at us, the Jews- the majority are normal people.
Some of my friends are religious Muslim, they know I'm a Jew. When we meet they embrace me and we touch cheek to cheek. My daughter's best friend is from Syria.
You see, we can live together, it's our gods who can't.
MeatwadGetsIt, I touch your cheek.
@greg - Well Greg, you have made the first mistake of simple research, you used wiki. LoL
So the book of Genisis means nothing in the eyes of the worshipping minions? Do the blue stripes represent 'from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates'? Or just the mediteranian (soon to die) to the dead sea? Or other dimensions like the wiki claims, red sea to the Euphrates, the 10 coin does show from red sea to the Euphrates river. So why would Greg write back with deception.
Listen up, hebrews wrote those myths you and yours are blindly taking as some factual history. If you took the time to actualy understand from what text they get the ideas, it all becomes clear. There is no unwritting of the talmud is there. They can't remove it from history can they. You have read the bigots material it is filled with right.
"if you plan on doing bad things, go to another town where nobody knows you and do bad there", good stuff to live by yeah?? I can go on,,, are you even aware of this bigots book nonsense?
@MeatwadGetsIt - I forgot about your question.
Yes, they are doing this incrementally, havn't you noticed.
They first made it seem as if their "prophecy" was fulfilled Greg, remember the six million dead in ww2 hoax. Well if my god said he expects six million killed as if burned in an oven, why would they be pushing "gas chambers", which were never used on humans, just the clothes infested with insects. Still, even counting other means of death, it falls far short of the god expected six million, the magic number that must be adheard to to keep the myth alive, "the real return" which is afterall a fraud on themselves and their own god.
Increments, that is how they have been taking things they covet all along. Who is really upset over Cuba? The organized criminals that thrived down there before Castro is who, and guess who they were.
Here's a bunch more quotes for you:
"It is permitted to take the body and the life of a Gentile." Sepher ikkarim III c 25
"It is the law to kill anyone who denies the Torah. The Christians belong to the denying ones of the Torah." Coschen hamischpat 425 Hagah 425. 5
"A heretic Gentile you may kill outright with your own hands." Talmud, Abodah Zara, 4b
"Every Jew, who spills the blood of the godless (non-Jews), is doing the same as making a sacrifice to God." and "A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal." Coschen hamischpat 405
"The souls of non-Jews come from impure sprits and are called pigs." Jalkut Rubeni gadol 12b Talmud: Bammidber raba c 21 & Jalkut 772
A Jewish man is obligated to say the following prayer every day: "Thank you God for not making me a gentile, a woman or a slave."
A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal." Coschen hamischpat 405 Kerithoth 6b under the sub-head, "Oil of Anointing"
Berakoth 58a in which Gentile women are designated animals ("she-b1tches").
Cheating the non jew of his hard earned work Sanhedrin 57a . A Jew need not pay a Gentile ("Cuthean") the wages owed him for work.
"The Jew is to say on Christmas Day: … cursed be all non-Jews, blessed be all Jews." (Orach Chaim, 660, 16).
"Theft, robbery and rape of a beautiful woman and similar deeds are forbidden to every non jew toward another non jew and also toward a Jew. But they are allowed to a Jew against a non jew." (Sanhedrin, 57 a; also Abodah Zara, 13b).
"A heretic non jew you may kill outright with your own hands." (Aboda Zara 4b).
“The difference between a Jew soul and the souls of non jews?all of them in all different levels?is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.” ? Rabbi Kook the Elder, revered father of the messianic tendency in non jewish fundamentalism
"Those who do not own the New Testament must all be killed. Whoever has power to kill them openly with the sword, if not let him use artifices until they are all done away with." (Choschen ha-Mischpat, 425,
"If a Jew has a suit with a non jew, you (Jew judge) will take the Jew's side as far as possible, and you will say to the non jew: Thus it is according to your law. If neither of these alternatives is possible, then you must cheat." (Bab Kama, 113a.
"It is allowed to cheat a non jew and take usury from him". (Baba Mezia, 61 a.)
"God has commanded us to take usury from the non jew and lend him only when he consents to repay with usury, in order that we do not create profit for him, even if there accrued no profit to us." (Sepher Mizwoth, 73
"A thing lost by a non jew may not only be kept by the man who found it, but it is even forbidden to give it back to him." (Choschen ha-Mischpat, 159, 1
"A Jew may rob a non jew, that is, he may cheat him over a bill if unlikely to be detected." (Choschen ha-Mischpat, 348, 1.)
"You (Jews) are human beings but the nations of the world are not human beings, but beasts." (Baba Mecia, 114, 6.)
"On the house of the non jew one looks as on a fold of cattle." (Tosefta, Erubin, viii.)
"The estates of the non jews are like wilderness, who first settles in them has a right to them. (Baba Batra, 54 b.)
"The property of the non jew is like a thing without a master." (Schulchan Aruch: Choschen ha-Mischpat, 156, 5.)
"Who took an oath in the presence of the non jew, the robbers, and the custom-house officer, is not responsible." (Tosefta Szebnot, 11.)
"A human form is only given to those who are not Jews in order that the Jews may not be waited upon by beasts." (Schene-tuchoth-habberith.
"If a Jew can deceive non jews by making them think he is a follower of their cult, it is permitted to do." (Yore de'ah, 157, 2.)
"One should and must make false oath, when the non jews ask if our books contain anything against them. Then we are bound to state on oath that there is nothing like that." (Szaalot-Utszabot. The Book of Jore d'a., 17.
"Every non jew who studies The new Testament, and every Jew who helps him in it, ought to die: (Sanhedrin, 59 a, Aboda Zara, 8-6, Szagiga, 13.)
"To communicate anything to a non jew about our religious relations would be equal to the killing of all the Jews…" (Book of Libbre David,
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