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“Everywhere we see true culture vanishing, and what is replacing it is barbaric” — Romano. Guardini, 1924
Voted into power by the Palestinian people of Gaza during 2006, and with extensive support in the West Bank (Samaria and Judea), but designated a terror group by Western nations, Hamas is a jihadist Islamist mob of fanatics determined to create a Sharia law-based Caliphate free of non-believers. Specific animosity is directed at followers of the monotheist faiths of Judaism and Christianity which compete with radical Islamist ideology over critical ideals of identity, land, religion, and divine promise.
The actualization of Hamas’ intended utopia depends upon fulfilment of an apocalyptic event which would lead to a grand finale at the end of time. This would be the period of redemption and blessing of all faithful devotees of Allah and his prophet, Mohammed. Together with certain passages in the Quran which mention violence against non-Muslims, jihadists embrace authoritative scriptures known as the Hadith. This collection of Islamic writings in Arabic, attributed to Mohammed, contain an overriding prescription pertinent to apocalyptic destiny:
The time will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees and the stones or the trees say, ‘O Muslim, O Servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’
The excerpt describes genocidal intent against which Israel and its people are forced to defend their right to exist. To justify this agenda, Islamism propounds a dichotomous ethical construction for humankind: a glorious destiny for Muslim faithful but with death and destruction for all non-believers. Religious convictions enable radical actors to ignore Western laws regarding ethical war behaviour. Yet, Israel as a democratic nation is bound by the just-war theory and is carefully monitored by Western powers, which compromises their ability to respond as necessary in a permanently hostile environment. In the world’s eyes, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Israel to hold the high moral ground due to unintended civilian casualties in Gaza however much the Israeli military machine, the IDF, complies with traditional rules of war and humanitarian concerns. To the contrary, Hamas eschews any limiting rules of war or considerations of human decency.
The Ideologies: There are three main intersecting ideologies at play: firstly, that of ‘soil’ — contrasting claims to the land occupied by the State of Israel; secondly, the question of ethnicity — the legitimacy of Abraham’s descendants through his son, Isaac, which effectually establishes Jewish identity as true heirs of divine promises made to Abraham; and, thirdly, the question of religion, resulting in a peaceful Judaism confronted by radical Islamist hate doctrine. Followers of each religion incompatibly claim to worship the one, true, God and redeemer. These factors can be referred to as radical ideologies of soil, blood, and religion, which polymorph to provide jihadists justification for liquidation of all infidels, all non-Muslims.
As with all radical ideologies, whether anti-colonialist, Marxist, Islamist, deconstructionists or race and gender construals, anarchists wish to overturn the existent political order, the culture, their society and, especially, to remove all religious influence from the public arena. To achieve this, they embrace violence or threat of violence, if required. They remain convinced of the moral righteousness of their cause. This is clear from woke hordes in Anglo-American societies acting through anarcho-socio actors like the Black Lives Matter movement, ANTIFA, cancel culture, climate change radicals, and sundry like-minded far-left revolutionaries.
The Land: The ideology of land is partly framed on the principle of decolonisation, applied through an artifice of a nuanced social justice agenda, displaying a typical Marxian dualism of the oppressed (Palestinians, represented by Hamas) against the oppressors (Jews, represented by the State of Israel). The ‘oppressive’ colonial Jewish nationals are relegated to the class of illegal settlers with no historic claim to the land. They are illegal occupants and can, therefore, be expelled from the region, even killed in the quest for justice. Yet, the Jewish nation has clear historic right to their land, Eretz Yisrael; in fact even to areas beyond their present borders. On the other hand, the so-called Palestinians (a convenient name adopted for political purposes) are factually interlopers in the area for they are not a nation as such but a collection of itinerant Arab nomads, of diverse origins, who occupied the disputed area before Zionists secured their ancestral homeland in 1948. The Jewish people’s claim to Eretz Yisrael is not based simply on Zionist ideology, nor an abstract concept of home or even on humanitarian grounds for it is more than that: their claim is founded on an immutable and unconditional Divine covenant (cf., Deuteronomy 30:5 ff; Ezekiel 16:3). Accordingly, the land is their birthright, their promised inheritance, their ancestral homeland. Until that fact is properly grasped, the outside world will struggle to comprehend the nation’s refusal to surrender any part of their land to Palestinian anarchists or anyone else.
From a sociological perspective, the land issue pertains to the concept of home, of fidelity to place, and ideal which James Matthew Wilson describes as “fidelity to God, family, and country.” This iteration of fidelity, he says, is “not merely one virtue among others, but a foundational and formative source of our character.” The late UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks emphasized the “concept of family and home is absolutely fundamental to Judaism.”
The home, Eretz Yisrael, the rightful place of the Jewish people, cements their sense of identity, of social order, security, harmony and emotional well-being. In November 2023, Leon Wiener Dow explained the transcendent calling of the Jewish nation to their promised land, a land granted to them for their exclusive use by the Creator. Dow wrote, “It is we who will define ourselves and our relationship to the land. We do not need to fit your binary categories of ownership.” In criticising the two-state idea, Dow perceived the international community’s difficulty comprehending the deep spiritual ties of the Jewish nation to their ancestral land for influential countries, like the US, desire to divide Israel into binary parts: some for the Jews and some for the Palestinians, all in the name of human rights, social justice, and fair play. At its core, these proposals are anti-Zionist (in practical effect, anti-Semitist) for they deny Jewish rights to all of their historic land and thereby continue centuries-long pogroms of the ‘people of the Book,’ forcing them to live amongst the very people desiring their extirpation, as history records.
There can be no possible accommodation between holders of these two conflicting narratives for each is dedicated to paradoxical claims of truth, faith, and justice. The one party is fervently nihilistic in their martyrdom ideal (“We love death as our enemies love life”); the other wanting only peace and a normal existence without constant lethal threats to their existence. Hamas control of Gaza is a case in point. Led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time, Israel, in seeking a peaceful existence, acquiesced to US and international pressure. They were politically forced to expel all Jewish inhabitants from Gaza, handing the territory to Palestinian control. This short-sighted political action created a security vacuum which gave Hamas, and like-minded jihadists, opportunity to prepare for liquidation of their Jewish neighbours.
Ethnicity: Concerning the ideology of ethnicity (“blood”), both parties originate from a common ancestor: the Biblical patriarch, Abraham, but through two different sons. The Jewish nation stems from Abraham’s legitimate son and heir, Isaac, through his son Jacob and the subsequent 12 tribes of Israel; while Arabs descend from Ishmael, an illegitimate son, whose ancient descendants invariable became mortal enemies of Israel. And, legitimacy is the crux of the matter for the Divine covenant with Abraham was to be fulfilled through Isaac, not Ishmael (cf., Genesis 26:1-5). It is the Jews’ exclusive claims to legitimacy that Islamist radicals cannot accept.
Religion: The question of religion, of faith, of identity of the living God, is the core issue between the Jewish people and jihadist Islamists, although the ideologies soil, blood, and religion are closely interlinked. The struggle is therefore one between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between the “sons of light and the sons of darkness,” to quote Israeli Minister of Defence, Gallant. Prime Minister Netanyahu similarly describes the war as a “battle of civilization against barbarism.” The battle over truth, life, and faith has origins in the Garden of Eden when the prince of darkness, the Archangel Lucifer in disguise, persuaded Adam and Eve to renounce their faith in, and fidelity to, the Creator God. This conflict has preoccupied humankind ever since.
Proportionality: The aforegoing provides a contextual background to each party’s worldview. The question now arises as what constitutes a proportionate response by Israel to the horror attack on its innocent residents of all ages, ethnicities, and faiths, from babies to grandparents, from Jews to Hindu Nepalese nationals. In this war, Israel committed itself to following Western ideals of a just war, coupled to humanitarian concerns and provisions of the International Criminal Court (Article 8, War Crimes). Without discussing these conditions in detail, suffice it to say that the fanatical jihadists of Hamas and allied zealots comply with none of them.
Hamas uses civilians as human shields, occupies hospitals, schools, and civilian facilities to conduct its terror activities, thereby significantly increasing the chances of collateral damage to innocents. Hamas’ strategy is devoid of humanitarian considerations, of civilized values, and rubrics of a just war. It is difficult to insist on Israel’s compliance with these ideals when the opposing party ignores all such concerns. The current hypocrisy is quite evident when remembering the World War II levelling of Dresden in retaliation for Germany’s indiscriminate bombing of British and European cities. So, too, the purposed destruction of Japan’s Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where most casualties were civilians. Were these acts proportionate or quid pro quo?
In the current desperate circumstances it is wise to remember that Hamas initiated the assaults upon innocents. Israel is not only defending itself, but acting with the long-term goal of preventing future attacks from Gaza, and to achieve peace in the region. This motivation is a seminal requirement of a just war construct. On October 7, Hamas purposefully singled out innocents for slaughter, whereas the IDF avoids civilian casualties as much as humanly possible. Not one civilian has been targeted by Israel, so all innocent civilian deaths and damage can directly be attributed to a combination of Hamas’ policies relating to their use of Palestinians as human shields; their occupation of civilian safe places like hospitals; their purposed shooting of civilians when they tried to move out of the war zone, as recommended by the IDF; their use of ambulances for transporting gunmen and weapons; and their denying hospitals the use of utilities like fuel under Hamas control. Hamas thrives on the rising number of civilian deaths, using this for propaganda purposes in claiming the moral high-ground. Their nihilist and apocalyptic ideology enables them to justify such actions. The international media levy accusations of disproportionate military actions, not against the perpetrators of the assault, Hamas, but against Israel’s military in defence of their land and people. This criticism can be understood as a form of anti-Zionism.
So, to what extend can Israel’s military action be considered proportionate? It surely cannot evoke the Biblical concept of ‘an eye for an eye,’ for in such case the IDF would be justified in killing some 1,200 Palestinian civilians out of hand. What is does imply is the use of appropriate force for self-defence and in executing a military strategy motivated by aims of eventual peace. Israel has articulated such intention, and takes unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties. Nonetheless, in the congested environment of Gaza, and with Hamas resolutely endangering Gaza citizens, collateral damage will inevitably occur.
The only conclusion to be reached in these circumstances is that Hamas, not Israel, is the party directly responsible for cases of disproportionate civilian casualties. Accordingly, at this time, the concept of proportionality can be considered somewhat redundant for it is applied only to Israel, not to Hamas. Taking into account the clear justice of Israel’s military action, the focus remains on humanitarian concerns of which Israel is particularly conscious.
Justice: The concept of justice emanates from a Jewish Biblical heritage, and which concept became an integral part of Western civilization’s values. Justice is the root criterion for determining proportionate or disproportionate actions in times of war but, in a Middle eastern context, is subject to whims of ideology and diametrically contrasting worldviews sans associated virtues of mercy and compassion. Here, a sharp divide between Western and eastern values is apparent: one side embraces a violent nihilistic apocalyptic ideology, with a situational ethical stance, in its execution of a vindictive form of justice; the other commits to grounded Judeo-Christian virtues such as justice traditionally understood, sanctity of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, security of tenure, justice, peace, and prosperity. The moral, ethical, and religious divide over justice cannot be bridged. It is thus unrealistic to expect permanent peace between Israel and Islamist jihadists, whether Hamas or others.
The Western Liberal Democratic Order: This war cannot be left to Israel alone for all countries embracing the Western democratic tradition are under threat of attack by Islamist radicals, whether in the US or in various countries of Europe for most contain large Islamist populations. The eventuality of internal conflict is only a matter of time. In 2022, for example, Malmö’s Imam, Basem Mahmoud, declared “Sweden is ours. It is ours whether they like it or not. In 10 to 15 years it will be ours.” The imam predicts a cultural and religious change with implementation of Sharia law, all of which would negate Sweden’s classic liberal democratic order with its inherent freedoms.
With significant Islamic populations in their midst, many Western leaders believe they are compelled to criticize Israel’s response. Aside from ethically compromised United Nation agencies and authoritarian nationalist states like NATO ally, Turkey, anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic remarks by Canada’s Trudeau and France’s Macron come to mind as do those by former US President Obama and Norway’s Labour Prime Minister Støre. Lacking moral courage, these prominent personages condemn the IDF response as disproportionate or worse. In the Anglo-American context, the demand for political correctness, together with fear of internal radical Islamist action, was seen in early November 2023 when UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman was summarily sacked after expressing the perceptive opinion that “Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.” Truth obviously has consequences. In 2009, Dr. Ron emphasised this fact when he concluded, “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”
In consequence, naïve calls for IDF restraint increase and empathy for Hamas and its Palestinian acolytes grows, while compassion and external support for Israel’s civilian victims becomes sidelined. This is acutely evident in the millions of dollars of humanitarian aid arriving daily for Gaza’s Palestinians, while nothing much arrives for the 250,000 Israeli innocents displaced and destitute due to the October 7th horror assault upon them.
The Final Solution: The existence of Jews in a sliver of their ancestral land in the Middle East acts like a magnet attracting radical state and non-state actors from many quarters, all seeking elimination of Israel’s residents. These jihadists exhibit a uniform anti-Semitic ideology of ressentiment, hatred, against representatives of the true God of Creation. That is why Christians, as members of the Judeo-Christian tradition, are also singled out for destruction. America, as world leader of the Judeo-Christian-founded order, is considered the ‘great Satan’ and Israel the ‘little Satan.’
The Nazi-era practice of a ‘final solution’ to the question of Jewish existence finds reiteration in an axis of evil headed by Iran, but actioned through proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi and the like, all of whom seek eradication of Jews from the earth. There is no ideological difference between the Nazi Final Solution program and the widely-applied popularist slogan in support of jihadists, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Both Nazi-era ideologues and Islamist zealots desire the same outcome: Judenfrei, a world free of Jews, as if they are a disposable entity without inherent value. Despite world leaders proclaiming that Jewish people would “Never Again” be subjugated to ethnic cleansing, the same leaders wish to compromise Israel’s attempts at a secure homeland by calling for a premature ceasefire or cessation in military action. They ignore Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad’s murderous revelation on October 24, 2023, when he said “We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again. The Al Aqsa Flood attack is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” He adds, “The existence of Israel is what causes all our pain, blood and tears.”
As history repeats itself, the stark lines between barbarism and civilization are made clear for all to see. To the disgust of the silent majority, those sometimes described as the ‘quiet right,’ international support for Hamas increases vociferously. The nation of Israel, ancestral home of the Jewish people and fount of Western civilization’s moral, ethical, legal, and humanitarian principles, again faces mortal threat from all quarters, as it has done for most of its existence.
Conclusion: In the result, the international community ‘fiddles while the Middle East burns,’ and imposes unrealistic constraints on Israel’s military strategy. It is incumbent, therefore, upon this modest, but pivotal, nation to demonstrate firm commitment to upholding the West’s foundational values and classic liberal democratic order. As Professor Leon R. Kass said in October 2023, “It is left to little Israel to make the first stand against radical evil and the new axis of nations dedicated to the demise of the West. With resolve, courage, and dedication, but, alas, with much more sacrifice, Israel will show the way.” Surely David Ben-Gurion was correct when he declared, “it doesn’t matter what the non-Jews say. It only matters what the Jews do” – a truism, arising from Rabbi Hillel the Elder’s earlier lament some two thousand years ago, “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Nils A Haug is a trial lawyer by profession. He is member of the International Bar Association, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, the National Association of Scholars, and faculty member of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is the intersection of Western culture with political theory, philosophy, theology, ethics and law. He holds various degrees including M.A. (cum laude) in Biblical Studies and Ph.D. in Theology (Apologetics). Dr. Haug is author of Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity(March 2023); and Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age(November 2023). His eschatological study, Towards the Eternal City, will be released in 2024. All books published by Academica Press, Washington – London.
I think proportionality holds: Hamas wants to eliminate Israel, therefore Israel is within rights to eliminate Hamas.
It is reasonable to kill the men who kidnapped and killed Jews on 7 October.
It is not reasonable to kill innocent Palestinians in pursuing this end.
>It is reasonable to kill the men who kidnapped and killed Jews on 7 October.
No, it isn’t. No war has or ever will be fought along this absurd and naive sense of folk justice. This isn’t a schoolyard fight. The IDF is at war with Hamas, an organisation with an explicitly antisemitic charter. Have you read the Hamas Charter?
Wars are fought to be won and in this instance, the victory of the IDF entails the complete destruction of Hamas. To preempt your likely response that “Hamas is an idea, it can’t be destroyed”, and/or “the IDF’s action will serve as a motivator for more terrorism”: no one cares if Hamas’ membership sits around smoking shisha and drinking tea telling each other how much they hate Jews. Hamas’ infrastructure that they have been building for 20 or so years, their munitions stockpiles, and their cannon fodder recruits are all being destroyed. When this war has finished, Hamas will indeed be only an idea. At best, they will have to start from nothing which will be exceptionally difficult after the IDF demilitarises Gaza.
The IDF gains nothing by the death of non-combatants; that will not aid their primary goal of extirpating Hamas. The IDF can win only by attacking Hamas’ leadership, rank and file, and infrastructure. All modern wars incur civilian deaths. This is more so in Gaza because Hamas deliberately operates within and around residential housing, schools, and hospitals.
The pipeline for recruiting disgruntled losers who want to reach the celestial brothel and claim their 72 large-breasted and hymen-resetting sex slaves is unaffected by the actions of the IDF. The driver for recruitment is their religion, Islam (this reward for the shaheed (martyrs) is described in the Sunni hadith) together with indoctrination starting as early as four years old.
Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtErUuBvcRc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcyg55vOviQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjaK1FP6nCM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRIogjQejrM
Were Israelis to evacuate Israel and leave it to the Arabs nothing will change. The earnest desire of the Iranian government and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houti) is the creation of a worldwide Caliphate. Their terrorist activity will continue with a different target.
>It is not reasonable to kill innocent Palestinians in pursuing this end.
It is not reasonable nor ethical to deliberately kill non-combatants. The IDF is not intentionally killing non-combatants. Your attempt at ethical reasoning is broken. The criminal law in all common law nation-states revolves around intent. For a crime to be committed, two elements need to be present: mens rea and actus reus, i.e. the commission of a proscribed action and the intention to perform the proscribed act. For what it’s worth, this definition of a crime is the same in international law and the ICC. Further, this conception of criminality is entirely consistent with a major branch of ethics, namely, deontological ethics. The centrality of intent in determining the legality and/or morality of an action is enshrined in law and has a long history in moral philosophy, arguably given its first rigorous presentation by Immanuel Kant in the 18th Century.
Hardly peaceful establishing provocative illegal settlements, building kilometres of walls and scores of restrictive checkpoints. The unrealistic goal of eliminating Hamas is ensuring perpetual conflict with a major Hamas and Hezbollah recruitment fount for the next 3 or 4 generations.
Great point Michael.
Why on earth Quadrant would publish such an obviously unbalanced article as this one is beyond me.
Quadrant is essentially a magazine that reflects a conservative point of view. What we are experiencing here, IMHO, is an identity with Israel as an embodiment of conservative values, particularly so because of Australia’s apparent terminal decline into wokeism and leftist class-war. There is also the concept that Israel is a toe-hold of Western-style democracy holding back the unspeakably evil forces that threaten to enslave the world, and therefore we should support them unequivocally. A further factor is an apparently long-standing, but unconscious dislike/fear of Arabs and Muslims as the “other”.
The concept of proportionality is irrelevant in a conflict because it means different things to different protagonists. They define proportionality in emotional terms and what the payoff is for them. These people don’t think rationally about the concept of proportionality and don’t apply mathematical logic to their thinking. For them, prortionality only has meaning as a political construct.
I would not insist on mathematical reasoning but the military action of the IDF over the last 3 weeks is surely massively disproportionate to the horrors visited on the Israeli civilians on 7 October.
1,500 Jews were killed or kidnapped on 7 October.
Since then, the IDF is reported to have killed over 10,000 Palestinians, and around half of them are children.
This is a massive overreaction.
Neither the IDF as such nor key Israeli institutions were threatened by the terrorist actions on 7 October.
As Chris Mitchell points out (The Australian, 20/11/23), even Palestinians living in Israel can see the moral issues clearly, unlike Greens Senators, Children for Palestine and a flock of other hypocrites.
Curiously, I couldn’t find any information about Nils A Haug; his nationality, religion, ethnicity, etc. Basically he is saying that God is on Israel’s side, according to the book that Jews wrote! But, if that is so, where is this God who loves His chosen people so much? Other peoples have other books that say other things; according to the Koran, Abraham only had one legitimate son, and his name was Ishmael, and the covenant with God was passed through him as the founder of the Arab people. So, there we are! He said, she said, blah, blah, same old story.
.
Haug’s passionate rave about Israel’s God given rights to the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, based on a blood relationship, reminds me of the “Blut und Boden” philosophy espoused by the National Socialists of the Third Reich. OK for some, apparently!
>Basically he is saying that God is on Israel’s side, according to the book that Jews wrote!
The legitimacy of the Jew’s claim to the land of modern Israel is not entirely dependent on scripture. Secular history, archeology, and population genetics all confirm that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews.
“Palestine” describes a geographical region. There is no such thing as a “Palestinian” ethnic group, language, or culture. Most of the people claiming to be “Palestinian” are Arab Muslims. Historically, the region was multicultural but it was largely composed of Jews. The mere presence of Arabs within Israel and Judea does not lessen the Jewishness of those lands.
Claiming that there is a group of people that are ethnically “Palestinian” is as absurd as the Vietnamese population of Springvale, Melbourne claiming that they are not in fact Vietnamese, nor are they Vietnamese-Australian but rather than they are “Springvalian” and that Springvale is their ancestral homeland. Even with the passage of 100 years, there is no sense that Springvale’s Vietnamese will become “Springvalean” and for this reason, have a right to secede from Australia.
>according to the Koran, Abraham only had one legitimate son, and his name was Ishmael, and the >covenant with God was passed through him as the founder of the Arab people.
No, that is false. In Islamic tradition, Isaac is a prophet and is venerated. His mother, Sarah, is described as righteous and the Sanctuary of Abraham–where Sarah is believed to be buried–is venerated by Muslims.
From the Quran, Surah 6:
(6:84) And We bestowed upon Abraham (offspring) Ishaq (Isaac) and Ya’qub (Jacob) and each of them did We guide to the right way as We had earlier guided Noah to the right way; and (of his descendants We guided) Da’ud (David) and Sulayman (Solomon), Ayyub (Job), Yusuf (Joseph), Musa (Moses) and Harun (Aaron). Thus do We reward those who do good.
(6:85) (And of his descendants We guided) Zakariya (Zachariah), Yahya (John), Isa (Jesus) and Ilyas (Elias): each one of them was of the righteous.
(6:86) (And of his descendants We guided) Isma’il (Ishmael), al-Yasa’ (Elisha), Yunus (Jonah), and Lut (Lot). And each one of them We favoured over all mankind.
(6:87) And likewise We elected for Our cause and guided on to a straight way some of their forefathers and their offspring and their brethren.
See https://islamicstudies.info/reference.php?sura=2&verse=136
See https://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=6&verse=83
In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is believed to be the progenitor of the Ishmaelites (Arab tribes according to Islam) and Isaac that of the Israelites. On some accounts, Ishmael was involved in the construction of the Kaaba. However, there is no Quranic basis for specifically all of the lands of modern-day Israel to be occupied by Arabs.
Muslims claim rightful ownership of Israel to the extent that they claim rightful ownership of the entire planet. The worldwide Caliphate would include modern Israel because it includes the entire world. This is why political Islam is often described as “Islamofascism”. Muslims yearn for a worldwide Medieval Islamic theocracy, and they are instructed to pursue this goal as a religious duty.
Neither Jews nor modern-day Christians seek to create such a global monstrosity and they are not instructed to attempt to create such a dystopia (nor even a utopia).
What is the connection between people today who identify as Jews, and the people known as Jews or Hebrews that lived in the area thousands of years ago? What evidence is there? That area has had numerous peoples living there, and had numerous rulers. Just listened to Noam Chomsky (Ukranian Jew), giving some credence to the idea that the Ashkenazi Jews came from Kazaria. That idea has been around for some time, and most recently was examined in detail by the Israeli academic, Shlomo Sand, in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. Certainly, it appears obvious that most Jews, from Ethiopia to Eastern Europe, are Jews as a result of conversion to that religious identity, and not as direct descendants of Abraham.
>What is the connection between people today who identify as Jews, and the people known as Jews or >Hebrews that lived in the area thousands of years ago?
Genetic.
>What evidence is there?
Many peer-reviewed, published, and replicated population genetic studies. Here are excerpts from a sample of them.
“This study touches upon an issue that was raised over a century ago by Maurice Fishberg, Joseph Jacobs, and others about whether the Jews constitute a race, a religious group, or something else.[29,30] In this study, Jewish populations from the major Jewish Diaspora groups—Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi—formed a distinctive population cluster by PCA analysis, albeit one that is closely related to European and Middle Eastern, non-Jewish populations. Within the study, each of the Jewish populations formed its own cluster as part of the larger Jewish cluster. Each group demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry and variable admixture with European populations. This was observed in the structure plots and in the Fst analysis by the proximity of all Jewish populations one to another, to non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations, and to non-Jewish Southern European (French, Northern Italian, and Sardinian) populations.”
Atzmon, Gil; Hao, Li; Pe’er, Itsik; Velez, Christopher; Pearlman, Alexander; Palamara, Pier Francesco et al. (2010): Abraham’s children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. In American journal of human genetics 86 (6), pp. 850–859. DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015.
“Bedouins, Jordanians, Palestinians and Saudi Arabians are located in close [genetic] proximity to each other, which is consistent with a common origin in the Arabian Peninsula…”
…
“The tight cluster comprising the Ashkenazi, Caucasus (Azerbaijani and Georgian),Middle Eastern (Iranian and Iraqi), north African (Moroccan) and Sephardi (Bulgarian and Turkish) Jewish communities, as well as
Samaritans, strongly overlaps Israeli Druze and is centrally located on the principal component analysis (PCA) plot when compared with Middle Eastern, European Mediterranean, Anatolian and Caucasus
non-Jewish populations (Fig. 1). This Jewish cluster consists of samples from most Jewish communities studied here, which together cover more than 90% of the current world Jewish population5; this is
consistent with an ancestral Levantine contribution to much of contemporary Jewry.”
…
“Our PCA, ADMIXTURE and ASD analyses, which are based on genome-wide data from a large sample of Jewish communities, their non-Jewish host populations, and novel samples from the Middle
East, are concordant in revealing a close relationship between most contemporary Jews and non-Jewish populations from the Levant. The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common
genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant. This inference underscores the significant
genetic continuity that exists among most Jewish communities and contemporary non-Jewish Levantine populations, despite their long-term residence in diverse regions remote from the Levant and isolation from one another.”
Behar, Doron M.; Yunusbayev, Bayazit; Metspalu, Mait; Metspalu, Ene; Rosset, Saharon; Parik, Jüri et al. (2010): The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. In Nature 466 (7303), pp. 238–242. DOI: 10.1038/nature09103.
“Taken as a whole, our results, along with those from previous studies, support the model of a Middle Eastern origin of the AJ population followed by subsequent admixture with host Europeans or populations more similar to Europeans. Our data further imply that modern Ashkenazi Jews are perhaps even more similar with Europeans than Middle Easterners. To quantify the level of admixture within the AJ genome given the model of a Middle Eastern origin and European admixture, we applied a likelihood method (34) to differentiate the relative ancestry of each locus across the genome. We used the combined Palestinian and Druze populations to represent the Middle Eastern ancestor and tested three different European groups as the European ancestral population (SI Materials and Methods). Using
these proxy ancestral populations, we calculated the amount of European admixture in the AJ population to be 35 to 55%.”
Bray, Steven M.; Mulle, Jennifer G.; Dodd, Anne F.; Pulver, Ann E.; Wooding, Stephen; Warren, Stephen T. (2010): Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (37), pp. 16222–16227. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004381107.
“Modelling of ancient histories for AJ [Ashkenazi Jews] and European populations using their joint allele frequency spectrum determines AJ to be an even admixture of European and likely Middle Eastern origins. We date the split between the two ancestral populations to E12–25 Kyr, suggesting a predominantly Near Eastern source for the repopulation of Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum.”
Carmi, Shai; Hui, Ken Y.; Kochav, Ethan; Liu, Xinmin; Xue, James; Grady, Fillan et al. (2014): Sequencing an Ashkenazi reference panel supports population-targeted personal genomics and illuminates Jewish and European origins. In Nature Communications 5 (1), p. 4835. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5835.
“In agreement with previous studies of European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, our study finds Ashkenazi populations genetically intermediate between southern Europe and the Middle East (Figs. 1c, 2), with heterozygosity slightly greater than in European populations and smaller than in Middle Eastern populations. Unlike most previous studies, our Ashkenazi samples were identified by location. However, we found little evidence of difference by location (Figs. 4e and 5a), suggesting that among the four main groups of Jewish populations, the Ashkenazi group is less genetically structured than the others.”
Kopelman, Naama M.; Stone, Lewi; Hernandez, Dena G.; Gefel, Dov; Singleton, Andrew B.; Heyer, Evelyne et al. (2020): High-resolution inference of genetic relationships among Jewish populations. In European journal of human genetics : EJHG 28 (6), pp. 804–814. DOI: 10.1038/s41431-019-0542-y.
>That area has had numerous peoples living there, and had numerous rulers.
So what?
>Just listened to Noam Chomsky (Ukranian Jew), giving some credence to the idea that the Ashkenazi >Jews came from Kazaria.
Noam Chomsky agreeing to an idea doesn’t ipso facto make that idea credible. Chomsky is a linguist, he has no expertise in population genetics and he has not presented any original study on the population genetics of Ashkenazi Jews.
There is not only no evidence that Ashkenazi Jews originated from Kazaria there is evidence that they don’t originate from Kazaria.
“The fact that some Khazars were described as fair-skinned by contemporaries, together with the possible adoption of Judaism by the state and by the ruling classes in the IX century, raised the hypothesis that conversions among the Khazars gave rise to Ashkenazi Jews (the ‘Khazarian hypothesis’). However, archaeological data do not support the adoption of Judaism by a large fraction of the Khaganate, as very few items with Judaic symbology have been found [4, 5]. It seems most likely that only some representatives, if any, of the ruling elite underwent the religious conversion, while the exact timing of the purported Judaism adoption also remains a debatable issue [6].”
…
“Here we explore the ethnic composition of the Khazars, and also specifically test the hypothesis of their relatedness to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews, by sequencing nine genomes from Khazar kurgans in southern Russia. Based on physical anthropological investigations, these burials belong to a range of ethnic types and provide a window into the genetic makeup of the society. We found that the Khazar elite drew from a variety of Central Asian tribes with a mostly Turkic genetic composition and with some Siberian and East Asian components, as well as notable Caucasian and Middle Eastern genetic contributions to at least some of their members. We found no significant trace of Ashkenazi genetic composition in either nuclear, mitochondrial or Y-chromosome data, strongly indicating that Khazars were generally not related to them. These findings support the view that the Khazars were a mixture of predominantly Turkic steppe tribes, who conquered westward territories in probably the same manner as Scythians, Huns, Pechenegs, and Mongols before and after them.”
Alexander S. Mikheyev; Lijun Qiu; Alexei Zarubin; Nikita Moshkov; Yuri Orlov; Duane R. Chartier et al. (2019): Diverse genetic origins of medieval steppe nomad conquerors. In bioRxiv. DOI: 10.1101/2019.12.15.876912.
“This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the
Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north, samples that have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing a
variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we found that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations and, among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews to
populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from
populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.”
Behar, Doron M.; Metspalu, Mait; Baran, Yael; Kopelman, Naama M.; Yunusbayev, Bayazit; Gladstein, Ariella et al. (2013): No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews. In Human Biology 85 (6), pp. 859–900. DOI: 10.3378/027.085.0604.
>That idea has been around for some time,
So what? So was the idea that the solar system is geocentric.
It has been repeatedly refuted with historical, linguistic, and genetic evidence.
>and most recently was examined in detail by the Israeli academic, Shlomo Sand, in his book “The >Invention of the Jewish People”.
Shlomo Sand is a historian and the majority of historians in his field disagree with him. Further, genetic data is more authoritative than the (tenuous) historical arguments that Sand has presented.
>Certainly, it appears obvious that most Jews, from Ethiopia to Eastern Europe, are Jews as a result of >conversion to that religious identity, and not as direct descendants of Abraham.
What you are claiming is neither “[c]ertain” nor “obvious” it is entirely unsubstantiated and an old antisemitic canard. The only Jewish groups that don’t genetically cluster with Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jews, are Ben Israel (Indian Jews) and Bet Israel (Ethiopian Jews). With respect to Ben Israel and Bet Israel, they are both genetically distinct and are not the same as their local host populations. Relatively little study has been undertaken on these unique populations but the little evidence that exists suggests that they are both the product of male Jewish immigration into these lands, inter-marriage with the local women, and around 1000 years of endogamy.
The options of any government in Israel are limited. If it doesn’t respond militarily to the 7 October atrocity then it could hardly be discharging a core duty to its citizens and would properly be dumped by them. If it does respond, but only ineffectually, then it will have emboldened an enemy determined for Israel’s destruction. If it responds effectively then, tragically, large civilian casualties seem to be unavoidable. The best to hope may be that the present action is completed in as little time as is needed to fulfill its objects. In that context, it is hard to see how “proportionality” has anything to do with it. It is the purpose of terror attacks to maintain a permanent state of hostility between historical enemies and it is extraordinarily difficult to break that cycle. In Ireland an effective police action directed against the terrorists coupled with a growing domestic prosperity seems to have achieved real results. Perhaps how Israel manages the post-bellum stage provides the opportunity to improve the prospects of a durable accommodation.
Your last sentence has wisdom but I would have to insert after the word”stage”; “and how ordinary Palestinians respond”.
We can never control how others respond.
I think that if the IDF had bombed the main Hamas sites in Gaza for a few days after 7 October and killed as many terrorists as they could and can find, re-establish the boundary around Gaza, and then stated an aim of having a Palestinian state within the next few years, the wind could be taken out of the sails of Hamas. If the IDF continues to bomb Gaza so relentlessly there is no prospect for peace, even within decades.
A Palestinian state. Really. Run by who? The PLO?
This is a propaganda piece with a total lack of balance.
I usually enjoy reading Quadrant articles and usually learn something from each article I read, but not so this time.
Every reasonable commentator on this disastrous conflict expresses regret and sadness for all innocent lives taken, whether they are Jewish or Palestinian lives, or others. This article carries no such statement.
There were about 1500 Jews were killed on 7 October, and so far the death toll of Palestinians is around 10000, which is massively disproportionate, and obviously so.
It is obvious that the IDF has hugely more valuable and deadly military force at its disposal than does all Palestinian groups put together, so in this sense it is a David and Goliath battle.
I suggest Quadrant readers look elsewhere for some sophistication and balance about this conflict – look to Jews like Norman Finkelstein, many of whose relatives perished in the Holocaust and who has been studying this conflict for 40 years, and to devout Jews like Rabbi Dovid Weiss, to Rabbi Mivasair, to Max Blumenthal, and for a considered non-Jewish view, listen to George Galloway.
The writer appeals to Westerners to support Israel and Zionism, but he would do well also to have mentioned how during the 1930s and 1940s Zionists freedom-fighters/terrorists murdered many English and Europeans who were in Palestine at the time as Zionists were working to bring European Jewry into Palestine and simultaneously to push the Palestinians out.
This land is the home of three great faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three should be flourishing there and can flourish there. They have flourished there in peace for long periods. The mad men on each side, the mad Palestinians who want to kill all Jews, and the mad Jews who want to kill all Palestinians, need to be pushed out of positions of power.
It’s only disproportionate based on numbers. What you forgot to mention is that as a terrorist organization Hamas has no rights and only one responsibility – to surrender immediately. You also forgot to mention that the people you named are radical Leftists and are not reliable. You also forgot to mention that the Land of Israel is not the home of Islam, and Muslims don’t want to live in peace with the Jews.
If an eye for an eye is justice, that is, one for one, how can taking 11,000 lives against 1,500 be justice, that is, about 10:1. These numbers are not everything but they are something.
Hamas was voted for in an election by the Palestinian people in Gaza, and this gives it both rights and responsibilities. But I cannot believe that the majority of those who voted for Hamas would accept the slaughter of any innocents at all, whether Israeli or otherwise.
The Rabbis who oppose Zionism and the state of Israel base their opposition on the Bible, not on any modern political ideology.
I believe that most Muslims do want to live in peace with Jews wherever they happen to live. A minority of both Jews and Muslims are hateful towards the other group, but I am convinced they are only minorities.
The number of 11,000 is fake, plain and simple. It is made up by a terrorist organization. Israel is waging war against that terrorist organization. Terrorist organizations have no rights regardless of whether they are elected or not.
The majority of Palestinians and Gazans absolutely support murder. They are the most antisemitic population ever to exist. Even now, the majority of Lebanese want to start a northern front! You are being naive.
I’m not interested in obscure anti-state theologies. Most Jews live in and support Israel.
There are no Muslim countries with a significant or thriving Jewish population. They don’t want to live in peace.
Any or all of the reports generated by both sides may be exaggerated, since the most important aspect of this invasion is the propaganda element. If Israel does not do well enough in the propaganda battle, especially in the USA, it will have severely damaged its own standing as well as that of Jews in the diaspora, regardless of successful pacification of the Gazans. As for them being the most anti-Jew ( being Semites themselves I doubt they’re anti-Semitic), this would hardly be surprising given the last seventy-five years and the restrictions and intermittent depradations to which they are subject.
They are antisemitic which is anti-Jew and that is unjustifiable. It is not surprising only because Jew-hatred is popular in the Arab and Islamic world.
Quite right, and thanks for the infusion of a little common-sense about the meaning of the term “anti-semitic”. The etymology of a word or term has no necessary bearing on its meaning. The term “anti-semitic” in common and indeed correct usage means “anti-jewish”, irrespective of its etymology or the meaning of the word “semitic”.
The line about those Arabs who hate jews not being anti-semitic because they are semites themselves is a silly and rather childish piece of linguistic nonsense, particularly favoured by jew-baiters trying to give respectability to their effusions.
>If an eye for an eye is justice, that is, one for one, how can taking 11,000 lives against 1,500 be justice, >that is, about 10:1.
Leviticus 24:19–21 is not about criminal punishment or war. There is no instance in the Talmud of it being interpreted as applicable to criminal justice (or how to conduct a war) and there is no historical record of it being applied that way. By this, I mean that if you poked out someone’s eye the Sanhedrin (and lesser Jewish courts) would not require it that your eye be poked out.
Leviticus 24:19–2 relates to tort law. If your flock of goats destroys your neighbour’s crop you owe that neighbour the value of that crop in gold, shekels, another crop, or whatever in compensation. That idea forms the basis of tort law in all common law nation-states.
>These numbers are not everything but they are something.
Those numbers are nothing. They have no relevance to any war including the Israel-Hamas war. Wars have always been fought with an objective that has nothing to do with counting corpses. The purpose of the Israel-Hamas war is to destroy Hamas: its leadership, membership, infrastructure, and inventory.
The IDF killing 1500 Gazans and then stopping is a ridiculous and absurd idea. War isn’t a matter of tit-for-tat like a schoolyard slap-fight. The purpose of the Israel-Hamas war is to work towards the safety and security of Israel by destroying a terrorist organisation that has its goal in its Charter the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews. Hamas explicitly declared themselves to be the enemy of Israel and the Jewish people and on October 7th they acted on that declaration. This is no different than the USA waging war on Japan until either the regime surrendered, collapsed or Japan was obliterated. The idea of the USA killing only as many Japanese as the Japanese managed to kill Americans at Pearl Harbor and calling it a day is ludicrous and ridiculously naive.
Certainly, the specific perpetrators of the October 7th atrocities must (and will) be executed in the name of retributive justice–just as they would be in any state that practices capital punishment for murder– but this goal makes sense only within the broader military goal. The central aim is to prevent Hamas from doing again what they did on October 7th.
Given what horrors Hamas committed on October 7th and the Islamic principle of “taqiyya” (and Muslims practice taqiyya regarding the very concept of taqiyya) there is no reason to believe the figure of 11,000.
>Hamas was voted for in an election by the Palestinian people in Gaza, and this gives it both rights and >responsibilities.
They won an election in 2006 and then they declared there would be no more elections. Hence, they are an illegitimate government. Hamas does as it pleases. It recognises no responsibilities and no one has conferred upon it any rights. States do not have “rights”, they have powers.
>But I cannot believe that the majority of those who voted for Hamas would accept the slaughter of any >innocents at all, whether Israeli or otherwise.
Your beliefs–untouched by reality–have no significance or value. You haven’t read the Hamas Charter (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp) nor do you understand the mentality of the typical Arab Muslim.
>The Rabbis who oppose Zionism and the state of Israel base their opposition on the Bible, not on any >modern political ideology.
“The Rabbis who oppose Zionism” are like the scientists who believe in young earth creationism (https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/). They both exist and they are negligible minorities.
Religious anti-Zionist Jews base their opinion on a particular reading of the Torah and Talmud, which is not shared by the majority.
>I believe that most Muslims do want to live in peace with Jews wherever they happen to live.
They generally don’t and the Muslims in the Middle East and Third World countries most definitely do not “want to live in peace with Jews”. The Sunnah is replete with Jew hatred and the righteousness of killing Jews.
>A minority of both Jews and Muslims are hateful towards the other group, but I am convinced they are >only minorities.
Rabbinic Judaism does not decree that hating Muslims and killing them is a noble religious duty. Secular Jews–often to their own detriment–tend towards the left and the “progressive”. There is no parallel to the organised and inculcated rabid antisemitism of Muslims to be found among Jews.
The hate and thirst for revenge that permeates this article makes me both sad and furious .
Israelis elected this toxic government that is ensuring that for every Hamas fighter that is killed that multiples will be created by the murderous ethnic cleansing of Hamas city .
They may disable Hamas but they are creating a new generation of radical Islamic fighters .
So the Palestinians that have lived there for hundreds of years have no birthright because of what is written in a book by Jews thousands of years ago.
The Hamas attack killed 1200 people most of whom were innocent non combatants in an attack of horrific barbarity that has been almost universally condemned around the world .
1500 Hamas fighters are reported to have died in that attack .The response of the IDF was obviously rapid and ferocious and it has been reported that many of the 1200 Israelis died in that deadly response by the IDF with their powerful weapons .
OF course those Israelis killed in the IDF response are attributed to the Hamas murderers even when the death bullet or shell was fired by an Israeli soldier .
So on average less than one Israeli was killed by each Hamas invader .
In Revenge Israel has killed more than 11000 Palestinians
With upward of 5000 of them being children and destroyed the homes of many many thousands .
The Hamas fighters are depicted as cowards but they all knew there was a high chance of dying in their attack .
In contrast the Israeli pilots are seen as brave national heroes but each one has murdered many dozens of Palestinian children with very little chance of losing their own lives in the process in what they are doing .
Who is a hero and who is a Devil depends on which of the tribes of this terrible conflict you are in .
I am in neither tribe and look at this war in despair .
The young fighters from both sides are brainwashed to do deeply evil deeds by old men under the spell of toxic writings by men thousands of years ago .
At best it looks like collective punishment of all Palestinians or ethnic cleaning if the Israelis continue to bomb Gaza city into ruins or outright genocide if sickness and starvation start to kill thousands if the blockade is not lifted to let in the requirements of life soon.
Those marching for a cease fire in the western world are depicted as stupid tools of Hamas but the majority just wants some justice for the Palestinians and the ceasing of the murder of children .
Each war that there has been between the Israelis and the Muslims has been the the same result a multiple times death count and an expansion of the borders of Israel.
I am ashamed that Australia did not vote for a cease fire in the United Nations .
Both major parties are staunch allies of Israel in spite of how Israel disregards international law with illegal settlements , I feel completely disenfranchised as I cannot vote for the Greens .
What Israel is doing is a war crime on a scale larger than what Hamas did .
Numbers don’t count unless you value one innocent life more than another and I don’t .
It almost makes one suspect that there is a vast global conspiracy at work but such things are impossible. What is Australia’s actual interest in Israel, apart from all of the politicians, senior journalists and bureaucrats who go there on Rambam fellowships, and our desire to stand with the USA. which as Tom Switzer’s friend John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have shown in The Israel Lobby (2007), is a dog being wagged by its tail.
Australia’s interest in Israel obviously includes moral support for the only democracy in the middle east worthy of the name, when it is under attack from a bunch of theocratic primitives, Hamas, who have a pathological loathing of jews that they consider scripturally based. Just as Australia’s interests in WW2 included (but were by no means limited to) moral and military support for Britain when it was under attack by forces led by a ridiculous crackpot who dreamed up a primitive, murderous, nonsensical and ultimately vulgar manifesto that had no foundation in German history or culture. The parallels are in some ways quite striking.
I’m delighted you now acknowledge that there is no vast Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
As I recall it was Britain which declared war on Germany, ostensibly to ‘defend’ Poland, although she neglected to declare war on the Soviet for the same reason two weeks later.
As I’m sure you know, Britain was not obliged to declare war on the USSR under its treaty obligation with Poland. Spare us, please, the revisionist tripe that you hint at, but, typically, don’t have the guts to articulate clearly, namely that the scheming international jew was behind it all, playing Britain like a violin, and was not going to declare war on his jewish-bolshevik-commissar mates.
Sindri: No less than Winston Churchill was aware of the disproportionate number of atheistic leftist Jews among the Bolsheviks, and he had an article published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920, pg. 5, with the title:
.
ZIONISM versus BOLSHEVISM.
A STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE.
By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.
.
That article can easily be found on the interweb. Churchill identifies the “International Jews” and “Terrorist Jews”, which he declares are “bad” as opposed to the “National Jews”, being of the Jewish faith, but loyal to the country of their citizenship. Churchill offers the idea of Zionism as an antidote to Bolshevism:
‘
“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Terrorist Jews.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek – all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”
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Discounting the Palestinians, whom Churchill said had no right to be living there, Zionism has been an overwhelming success!
Yes, I thought you or Horst Wessel would bring up Churchill’s article It’s a big and infantile leap to go from Churchill’s complaint in 1920 that there were Jews in some revolutionary movements – in countries where they were being persecuted, as he was careful to point out – to the fevered idea that Jews control the world. Get a grip.
Unfortunately, Horst Wessel is no longer with us!
.
Who are you saying is making a “big and infantile leap to go from Churchill’s complaint in 1920 that there were Jews in some revolutionary movements – in countries where they were being persecuted, as he was careful to point out – to the fevered idea that Jews control the world.”? Certainly not I. Clearly, Churchill set out in his article the very real threat of Bolshevism, and was proposing the alternative of Zionism to those Jews that might be attracted to Bolshevism. Of course the Palestinians were not consulted as to their opinion of the plan.
@Sindri
You seem remarkably well-informed about the supposed talking points of your opponents and yet the “arguments” you employ often boil down to invective and ridicule. Why is that?
Because (a) you’re an admirer of National Socialism and Hitler, which is neither morally or intellectually defensible, and (b) you’re trying to air your grubby views here, in a publication whose founding principles were intellectual rigour and an implacable hostility to totalitarianism of both the left and right.
@Sindri
Well, from you I am seeing the implacable hostility. The intellectual rigour? Not so much.
If you cite “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and blood libel I can complete my antisemitic cliché bingo card.
The pro-Israeli/Zionist argument often highlights that Israel is a democracy, but, how long will that last? There is a perfect opportunity for Netanyahu and his hard-line cohort to ramp up the populist patriotic rhetoric and evoke some “emergency powers”, so as to rule by decree. At least he could avoid any prosecutions for fraud or corruption. Jews have always been divided politically, as Josephus and the Biblical narrative exposes. Yesterday’s Zealots are today’s Zionists! You’d think the world would have learned a lesson about nationalism from WW2, but, apparently not!
One possible lesson from 1939-1945 might be that German nationalism forestalled Soviet Bolshevism’s conquest of Eastern Europe and prevented its total overrun of Central and Western Europe. Certainly this is what most German soldiers understood their mission to be.
David Isaac: I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis of the cause of WW2! Of course, we have grown up with the story as told by the victors of WW2, as if it were some kind of righteous war with God on their side. If that was the case then God was empowering Stalin! And the Ukraine is still hanging on to the chunk of Poland that Stalin annexed to the Soviet Union!
Yes, and recently I have been reading books by German Soldiers, and it is clear that millions of the military and civilians were acting out of patriotism, and, correctly as it turned out, they were fighting against the Soviet threat. Hitler knew the danger of Bolshevism, as it undermined the war effort in WW1, and actually took control of Bavaria, post-bellum. Churchill was an avid supporter of the “Whites” in the post-bellum civil war in the former Russian Empire, but his enmity towards Germans was so strong that he later embraced Stalin as an ally!