Xymphora on Psychopathic Religion, Yahweh style

[Mr. Premise]

From http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-are-jews-so-jew-y.html

Why are the Jews so Jew-y?
Norwegian novelist Jostein Gaarder breaks the ultimate taboo in an anti-Israel rant by tying the irrationality of Israeli violence to Judaism (the link is to an unofficial translation, which starts as follows):

"There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

We call child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!"

There has been a huge reaction to this little essay, and the author has decided to say no more on the subject. There are a number of things that are strikingly unusual about Israel and the Jewish people:

- Israeli attitudes to its neighbors and a large part of its own population are completely racist, and this racism allows for the most vile attacks against human beings with the almost total support of the Israeli population and its supporters outside Israel;

- Israeli attitudes and the attitudes of world-wide Jewry towards Israel are predicated on the basis of an alleged fear of being wiped off the map - 'pushed into the sea' - but we know that Israel has never been under any real existential threat (back to its earliest days, Israel always outgunned all its potential opponents), and has never been more militarily powerful than it is now;

- the hypersensitivity of the Jewish people towards the security of Israel is supposed to derive from what the Nazis did, yet the complete set of ideas and attitudes about the Jewish state, Zionism, predate National Socialism by fifty years;

- The Jewish people are typically the most humanist and tolerant people in the world, except when it comes to Israel, when the only fair comparison of their worldview is to National Socialism (Dershowitz is now saying that international law protections for civilians do not apply to the entire civilian population of Lebanon - !!! - and he is just elucidating the common North American Jewish perception);

- the international Jewish population, particularly in North America, identifies with Israel and its illegal and immoral actions to an extent that is both incomprehensible and unsettling.

When Benny Morris decided to examine the truth behind Palestinian stories about the Nakba, he was surprised to find that the worst of the Palestinian allegations about what the Israelis had done were absolutely true. You would normally expect that his reaction would have been remorse, coupled with a desire to do right by the Palestinians. Instead, he has argued that what Israel has done is so vile that it can never possibly be forgiven, meaning that the Palestinians can never stop trying to obtain revenge, meaning that the only solution is to put an end to any possible method for the Palestinians to get such revenge. In other words, the solution to finding out that you are a moral monster is to try to become more of a moral monster.

I've always wondered whether this is a cultural problem. The Jewish god isn't big on the concept of forgiveness, or for that matter on anything else that can be thought of as sane. As described in the Hebrew Bible, He is a psychopath. The reforming religions of Christianity and Islam have a much more humane deity, one for which the concept of forgiveness is important. Is it possible that Morris can't understand the Palestinians in any terms other than revenge because he doesn't understand that they are capable of the un-Jewish idea of forgiveness?

My own personal genetic background is from a group that historically has been one of the most oppressed in the world. Growing up, I was always aware of my background, but never for one minute had any particular interest in the plight of 'my people', any more at least than I had an interest in the plight of the Cambodians, or the South Africans, or the Palestinians. Making politics out of my genetics is completely incomprehensible to me. Why is it that a Jewish person I might meet on the street, possessed of a collection of the most liberal ideas of any person in the world, is fully prepared to treat much of the internal population of Israel, and all of its neighbors' populations, as worse than vermin? How is it that he can regale me with stories of how oppressed and mistreated 'his people' are, and simultaneously boast of the complete superiority of 'his people', as evidenced by the fact that they fill leadership roles in academia, law, medicine, business, and politics? Just imagine how well they'd do if they weren't so oppressed! Is it possible that this perverse combination of a persecution complex and a superiority complex, all based on the idea of a 'Jewish race', is behind the peculiar attitude of world Jewry towards Israel and the violent racism of the Jewish state? Does the evil in Israel and its supporters come out of a culturally transmitted series of ideas that come out of Judaism itself? That's the kind of big crackpot theory I normally don't put much truck in, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the actions of Israel and its Jewish apologists without some cultural/religious root causes.

 

[a.saccus]

The racist and genocidal acts of Israel -- going back, at the very least, to the Irgun during World War II -- are, unfortunately, common knowledge only to a small but growing circle. As one of the comments to Gaader's original article, "God's Chosen People," noted, it's not religion per se which is the problem, but what some people do to religion:

http://sirocco.blogsome.com/2006/08/05/israel-a-dire-prophecy/

Last night on Bill Moyer's show "Faith and Reason," he interviewed Pema Chodron, a New Jersey native who grew up to be a Buddhist nun. They got to talking about religious fundamentalists. Moyers asked her, rather incredulously, if there was such a thing as a Buddhist fundamentalist.

"Oh, yes," she said. It's the fundamentalists of various religions who are going to be the ones to do us in, and by "us" I mean humanity.
[...]
I [Gal] hasten to add that there are political fundamentalists-sometimes the two are one in the same-who are pretty dangerous characters as well.

We know these people to be psychopaths, and that they strive to create a pathocracy.

But it doesn't help an already inflamed situation any to sneer and rage as Gaarder does:

http://sirocco.blogsome.com/2006/08/05/israel-a-dire-prophecy/

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

[...]

We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

However much I agree that Israel is racist, to actually change the situation requires something besides venting. Minds need to be opened up, not encouraged to slam shut.
The prevention of an Apocalypse in the Middle East may very well depend on whether or not we are able to achieve a more widespread and informed public discussion of what is really going on there -- in spite of the current control of the media by the PTB. To expand the circle of knowledge. This in turn, hinges on the possibility of saying anything at all critical about Israel without being shouted down as an "Anti-Semite" -- almost before the discussion begins. Figuring out just exactly how to do this may well be one of the greatest achievements of the 21st Century.

In my opinion, a much more constructive approach must begin with a thorough analysis of the problem. Michael Neumann -- in a review of "A Threat From Within: Jewish Opposition to Zionism" by Yakov M. Rabkin -- gives one version of such an analysis:

http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann06052006.html

[...] His [Rabkin's]attack departs from what may seem an unpromising bit of theology. God -- he reports the orthodox account -- did not give the land of Israel to any race or 'people' in our sense of these words. He gave it to those who obeyed him, who lived by the Torah and His commandments, and only so long as they did so. In this sense alone did He give it to the Jews. And God was no mere stickler for what we may think of as the trivialities of ritual. 'His' people had sinned deeply, and for their sins they were in exile. To undo this exile was to compound the sin. No greater defiance of God and corruption of Jewish religion was conceivable. The Jews would return to Israel if and when they returned to God's ways, not before. Those who came back under the power of the gun -- no matter how religious -- were no Jews at all, but apostates and enemies of God. And this is why Zionism, which preaches redemption without repentance, and which trusts in armies and nation-states rather than God, is the enemy and destroyer of Judaism, of the Jews. Israelis have been known to revel in their pride, even their arrogance. Orthodox Jews preach humility and see strength, not in tanks or missiles, but in the very demanding, very difficult business of accepting suffering and God's will.

Thus, at the very beginning, a way must be found to reach those Jews who won't make a cry of "Anti-Semite" whenever we try to discuss the crimes of Israel. Are there any such people? There are, and what they have to say is interesting. The following is from an article by Yakov M. Rabkin (not his book reviewed above, which I haven't yet read) found here:

http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Documents/CX5259-ThreatfromWithin.htm

But what, on the other hand, could be more normal than to associate Jews with the State of Israel? Are not the Jews of the Diaspora often seen as aliens, outsiders or perhaps even Israeli citizens taking a long holiday far from "home"? Such insinuations have always been dear to anti-Semites, for whom a world Jewish conspiracy is an incontrovertible fact. But the linkage of Jews with the State of Israel is also a theme popular with the Zionists, who, ever since the creation of their political movement more than a century ago, have claimed to be the vanguard of the entire Jewish people. Some of them even assert that any threat to the survival of the State of Israel is a threat to the survival of Jews throughout the world. For them, Israel has become not only the guarantor but also the standard-bearer of Judaism.

Reality, in the event, is far more complex.

The scene is downtown Montreal; the occasion, a massive demonstration in commemoration of Israeli Independence Day. On one side of the square, a compact group of Haredim in frock-coats and wide-brimmed black hats brandish placards that proclaim: "Stop Zionism's Bloody Adventure!", "The Zionist Dream has Become a Nightmare", "Zionism is the Opposite of Judaism". The leaflets they distribute read:

Worse than the toll of suffering, exploitation, death [of the Jews], and desecration of the Torah, has been the inner rot that Zionism has injected into the Jewish soul. It has dug deep into the essence of being a Jew. It has offered a secular formulation of Jewish identity, as a replacement for the unanimous belief of our people in Torah from Heaven. It has caused Jews to view golus [exile] as a result of military weakness. Thus, it has destroyed the Torah view of exile as a punishment for sin. It has wreaked havoc among Jews both in Israel and America, by casting us in the role of Goliath-like oppressors. It has made cruelty and corruption the norm for its followers.

It seems to me that one way to reduce the din of "Anti-Semite" is to get Jews to understand that being a Jew doesn't mean they have to be Zionists or supporters of an imperialistic Israel. This will not be an easy task.

Yet one needn't embrace the theology to find in it a revelation. Judaism and Jewishness, it seems, need not be an exercise in unending self-congratulation and competitive victimhood. It need not be a racial creed either; the 'chosen people' are not chosen in virtue of birth or blood or kinship. In fact they are not really 'chosen' at all--God is not their spouse or sugardaddy but their ex: the divorce was the fault of the Jews themselves, and remarriage is a possibility but it will take some very serious, very costly effort. There is a message here even for those Jews who no longer worship any God.

 

[Alana]

I believe this pathocratic hold on a whole nation, is not only found in regards to the Jewish religion/culture, but to all ethnic groups, each case painted with its own particular hue that would much the temperament of the people's nation. At one point or another in History, almost ALL ethnic groups became their time's predators.

Take the greeks for example. They have shown that when they have political/army power, they can transform into blood lusting vampires. Always in the name of a good cause.

Despite the fact that greeks are not very religious in nature or behavior, nor are they religiously educated, they will use greek orthodox religion as a weapon against any other new idea presented to them or any other ethnic group that they are not very fond of. And mind you, they don't call this racism, even the most critical ones would call it ethnocentrism and write papers on why they think that as greeks are right in thinking that they are intellectually above other groups (and refer to socrates, plato, the parthenon!), yet the rest of them, given the "right" education could catch up. The only person that agrees with me that Alexander the great was as great as Hitler was in his "mission" to spread the greek culture to the "uneducated savages" of the East (and an army is the best educator!!!!) , is my brother. If i dare say this in a social setting, i'd be called a traitor the least.

So the greeks will defend their religion with the same fervor they would defend their country and family. THE greek motto goes "religion, country, family", those three as being the most important, the most vital in a person's life to defend and stand for. And in that order: first comes religion, then country, and last family. What a lovely way to keep a whole nation in a prison of "righteous musts"! What a cunning (poneros) idea to get the people of a whole nation to do as the pathocrats want, so that the pathocrats can sit in their offices and watch the people fulfill their agentas.

And as Graig says, it is not easy for people to realize that they are not their imperialist state, they are not the fanatic regigious fundamentalists. They are alseep, and deep down they know they can't do, so they look for the powerful and the srtong (as they see them) to take them under their wings and protect them.

Just some greek thoughts... :)

 

[Ryan]

And mind you, they don't call this racism, even the most critical ones would call it ethnocentrism and write papers on why they think that as greeks are right in thinking that they are intellectually above other groups (and refer to socrates, plato, the parthenon!), yet the rest of them, given the "right" education could catch up. The only person that agrees with me that Alexander the great was as great as Hitler was in his "mission" to spread the greek culture to the "uneducated savages" of the East (and an army is the best educator!!!!) , is my brother. If i dare say this in a social setting, i'd be called a traitor the least.

Very interesting observations Irini. Thanks for sharing them.

Here in Australia, this ethnocentricism lacks any real historical or cultural foundation due to the relatively short life of Australia as a nation (approx 208 years), and manifests as a glorification of the "Australian way of life", characterised by common Aussie-isms such as "The Lucky Country", which one tends to hear repeated ad nausem by politicians ect. Other phrases like "little Aussie battler" have been (and are still) used frequently by the media to promote an image of Australians as "struggling consistently against incredible odds", blending a mythos of heroism with Australian life. Other common memes are "laid back" (relaxed), "fair dinkum" (sincere), ect ect. What few defining historical moments Australia has had are seized upon with gusto by proponents of this ethnocentricism.

It's kind of like we have created this narcissistic projection that the Australian people are so much "realer" and "nicer" than people anywhere else, thus helping us sleep all the more soundly with regard to the question of evil attitudes and deeds (especially as done by our politicians). This is not really any different from what you have mentioned above regarding Greek culture, and is no doubt a group delusion (call it "patriotism" or "national identity") that takes place in every country around the world. Only the justifications and rationalisations for the delusion differ.

All people struggle, suffer and "live and move and have their being" in much the same way when you get past the individual circumstances. I wonder perhaps if conscience provide the chief means for people to be able to see this?

 

[Ruth]

All people struggle, suffer and "live and move and have their being" in much the same way when you get past the individual circumstances. I wonder perhaps if conscience provide the chief means for people to be able to see this?

I would say "no", because those people without conscience are in the minority and not the majority, and as we know, the majority tend to 'see' absolutely nothing...

Most people have a conscience, some even have the emotional (as well as the intellectual) capacity to empathise. Both sets of people need to be fooled by those without conciences into thinking things that are completely irrational (ie. xenophobia).

I would say that intelligence plays quite an important part in a person's ability to 'see through things' and it would play an even more important part of a 'souled' persons ability, as they (imo - at the moment) have a far greater propensity to question the status quo.

This is the reason I get so annoyed with the media. If they reported anything like situations that encouraged people to think and question reality, then, reality (as it is) would be almost completely 'discernable' to absolutely everyone. The situation as it exists, tends to favour pathocrats and most of these pathocrats may not be pathocrats if they got a 'blast' of reality for a change.

 

[Ryan]

All people struggle, suffer and "live and move and have their being" in much the same way when you get past the individual circumstances. I wonder perhaps if conscience provide the chief means for people to be able to see this?

I would say "no", because those people without conscience are in the minority and not the majority, and as we know, the majority tend to 'see' absolutely nothing...

When I say "people", I am excluding psychopathic types. They do not have a conscience, nor the capability to obtain one.