Thursday, July 31, 2014

Israel over and over

Jewish Orthodox Rabbis, as well as many others, were opposed to Zionism.  They saw it as secular nationalism overtaking their historic theology.  According to Jewish theology, it was no accident that the Romans drove the Jews out of Israel in the first century CE.  It was God's will.  And it was God who must decide when they return, not men.  Orthodox Rabbis made dire predictions of what would happen if Israel were reconstituted prematurely by Jews acting without God's will.  They said nationalism would overtake religion, other nations would be angered, and a new anti-Semitism would arise.  Very prescient, and I think I like these guys.

Strangely, this is the 3rd time Israel has been established, and the first two times led to its disestablishment by a large empire.  What might happen this time?

The second time it was established, it was established on behest of one empire, with bags of money from Cyrus, then 600 years later, was disestablished by another empire, the Roman empire, which found Israel not to be an obedient vassal state, and tending to generate chaos.  100 years earlier, the Jews had invited the Romans in, because the Jews had been having internal chaos.

Secular observers don't have good stories for the first establishment of Israel.  Here we have as practically our only history the Torah, with very little independent corroboration.  The Torah was written down in the style of religious myth 500 years after the purported events happened.  So we can't really accept the stories about Moses, King David, and Solomon, as established facts at face value, rather only as religious myths--which might have some connection to the facts.

According to the Torah, Moses organized slaves who revolted from Egypt and escaped to set up their own state in Canaan.  There is no independent evidence of any of this.  But one very peculiar thing is that these "slaves" had weapons and knew how to use them.

My interpretation is that these "slaves" were not exactly slaves, and they did not exactly conquer Canaan, there is no evidence for the Battle of Jericho or that kind of thing either.  Instead, the Jews may have been mercenaries for the Egyptian empire, situated in Canaan to protect the Egyptian frontier from Assyria.  Mercenaries aren't generally slaves, but may be under contract.  Perhaps they didn't like their contract, and got out of it to become independent operators, do their own trade and security for cash.  And this was the first Israel.

One way or another, the first time Israel was "established," it at least had an imperial connection even according to the Torah story, though in the Torah version the imperial connection was looser than in my guess.

So initially, there was a mercenary culture.  The women didn't like where things were going with that.  So they sought out holy men in the area and got them involved to make the culture more civilized.  So when the rules were written, they were written so that it was the children of the women who were the chosen.  That's the mark that this religion was established for the women, in order to civilize the men.

So we see today, the descendants of the mercenaries and the holy men, which to me aptly describes the polarities we see among Jews from right to left.  The mercenaries are men and women like the Prime Ministers of Israel…a cadre of state terrorists, some with considerable previous terrorist achievements.  The holy men are like the unending battalions of Jewish peace organizers and leftist writers.  The Jews produced Jesus, who had many ideas that still resonate with leftists today.

Israel exists now because it was convenient to Imperial planners in Europe and the USA to have a battleship in the oil rich middle east manned by local operators who would rather die than see pan arab democracy--which the Empire doesn't want either because it would loosen their grip.

We know that twice when Israel was established (now and after the first exile) it was with imperial cash for imperial ends.  And perhaps this is actually the third time Israel has been established for imperial ends with imperial cash.  Which strengthens the suggestion that the outcome may be similar as well.

The orthodox rabbis were right, time had just not come for an Israel yet.  Israel needs to be established by God, not by empires.  Empires come and go.  And being an imperial mercenary is not a good thing to live for, even if the pay is pretty good.   Israel gives the worst of Jews the upper hand.












  

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