Zionism is not Talmudism

I link the Talmud as an interesting historical/religious document to my blog, because I've seen so many misrepresentations of it.

Though I'm pretty sure that (like nearly everyone) I had Jewish ancestors, I am not a Jew.  I do no believe in 'God.'  I believe monotheism and perhaps all theisms lead to disaster.

East Asian religions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism may be better.

But there is no need for any of them.  We each have the ability to construct a framing reality to our experiences, and it is both our freedom and our responsibility to do so.

Along with ethics, social practices, personal habits, and more, the stuff normally associated with religions.

It's a problem that essential social functions (notably gathering, friend finding, and mating) are NOT very well handled completely with secular alternatives, but effectively outsourced to religion, as if atheists should not have friends and families.

Anyway, I do not believe the Talmud is the source of modern genocidal Zionism.  Zionism was created by non-religious Jews, and religious Jews bitterly opposed it (even to their deaths during the Holocaust!).  Only by a process of elimination (don't forget that part, the Jews who were murdered were mostly anti-Zionist, and many Holocaust survivors still are), corruption, propaganda, and shock did Zionism become the view of the majority of Jews.

If anything, the religion of Judaism resisted it for at least 1747 years, from Bar Kochba to Modern Zionism, and many Jews always continued to reunounce Zionism as being the opposite of Judaism (at the present time, that number is rapidly increasing).  Some Jews, including at least one notable Holocaust survivor back in the day, called Zionism the same as Nazism, and many still do.  It is basically true, except that Nazism was a movement of authentic nationalism (exposing the evil that nationalism can be) whereas Zionism was a based on ethnic religious settler colonialism.  Notably in both cases it subordinated the darker people, in both cases the people with the larger proportion of middle eastern ancestry.  Zionism is antisemitic, similarly to Nazism.

Right up front the Talmud has the Three Oaths, which forbid the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine or anywhere else!  It is for God, and only God, to do that.  (The first part of that has always seemed to me to be sagacious wisdom.  The second part of that has always seemed to me to be a kind of sweetener thrown in to make the package easier to sell.  I think it was a sell out from the beginning.  Religions are always full of sweeteners like this, like taking over pagan holidays.)

It would have been better go go further, and say that God no longer wishes the Jewish People to be largely in Palestine at all, but all over the world wherever they can be, and fighting for all persecuted people including Jews if they are being persecuted.  Tikkun Olam, that's the Judaism I respect, the Judaism I might have joined when I was much younger.  All my respect went out the window when I heard about the Nakba from a Jewish Communist when I was 13.  It was then many years until I discovered the vast array of Jewish voices among many others condemning Zionism, and finally came to understand that 'Israel' was not the 'Jewish State' as I had been told since birth, but something more like its antithesis, a replacement of rule obeying thoughtfulness with ethnic sentimentalist fascism.

Even letting 'God' bring all the Jews to Israel in the distant future maintains the fiction that it would be a good idea, the stuff  of dreams and toasts.

(Note that even among Religious Jews, the Talmud is not the Word of God but only the views of ancient rabbis interpreting it.)

I'd say the moral collapse among Jewish Zionists is 99% because of Zionism and not Judaism.

Many of the best opponents of Zionists are anti-Zionist Jews.  They already have been fighting for persecuted people including people persecuted at the hands of other Jews.  Anti-Zionist Jews face among the worst discrimination in modern times, they are often bumped from Academic careers (such as Norm Finkelstein), government careers (such as Tony Greenstein, expelled from Labour on false charges of antisemitism), and sometimes even their own friends, families, and synagogues.

Many of these people have had better Talmudic education than most Zionists.

So I hardly lay any blame on the Talmud, though it does at least two bad things (all religions do lots of bad things...):

1) Because it promotes the idea that it's God's Will that Jews ultimately return to Palestine, it creates a nightmarish fantasy in disguise.

2) It does systematically try to say how Jews should treat other Jews different from non-Jews (which most all religions do).  I understand it promotes fairness to non-Jews and more-than-fairness to Jews.  That may be better than most.  But even establishing that there should be a difference is wrongheaded.*

Notably, however, the Torah does say those things also, just less systematically, and the Torah could also be interpreted in more universalistic terms because of its ambiguity (thus leading to Christianity, which emphasizes exactly that interpretation--often practiced in the breach--as do many Jews--including Tony Greenstein who has said that the lesson of the Torah is to Love your Neighbor as Yourself (which comes straight from Leviticus, and is repeated not invented by rabbi Jesus).

All religions are full of crap, the true judge is how people actually act in this world, and especially towards others, the poor and needy, even their 'enemies.'

And for at least 1747 years, between Bar Kochba and Zionism, Jews were doing pretty well, no worse than others as far as I can tell, and causing fewer wars than Christians or Muslims (the Muslim wars so often decried by Zionists were mostly in the very distant past, while Christian wars began with the Roman Empire and are still 'leading' the world).

(*Note that in all my many personal dealings with Jews, I felt they were always being more-than-fair with me, perhaps all the better since they had imbibed the details of what that meant, and not trying to be 'just fair' as some might interpret an ancient religion to mean.  Except perhaps in arguments...)

My own interpretation of the Torah (as a tiny part of where I gather the things I believe in, if not God per se) is exactly the one given by rabbi Jesus and Tony Greenstein.  I would express it unambiguously as universal love, just as Jesus took the boundary case and said "Love your enemies and do them good."  But also, the historical sweep of the Torah might best be summarized as: "States, you don't want to mess with States and, don't make waves with them, and be rid of them as soon as you can.  However good great and glorious they start, in human hands, they won't end well."  (That was why ultimately a divine Messiah was called for, but I don't believe in that part, I don't believe in personalized divinity, only the combined forces of everything adding together.  Every damned kook is going to claim to be the Messiah, or that his expired supposed predecessor was--that's a more profitable schtick btw.)  

I take that as cautionary advice.  As a Communist, I still believe in building a socialist state, but long for the day when even that is no longer necessary.  And recognize it won't be easy or magnificent.  There is no short cut to doing things honestly, fairly, and of course with love.  Otherwise you may not have socialism but fascism.

Updated debunking of the October 7 Rape Claims

The UN report debunks the October 7 rape claims made by Israel and western media ever since.

Here is the zei_squirrel (he's the best) thread.  And here (this is linked in the previous thread but you might overlook, and it's the best part of all)

Here's zei_squirrel on NYTimes separation from Anat Schwarz

 

The Final State of Palestine

Final state?  The defacto one state from the river to the sea.

Except, it must grant equal rights to all within, regardless of race or religion, or the "state" identity (Israeli or Palestinian) they previously held.

It must implement a full right of return for all displaced Palestinians to their original homes.

What about the Jews who have immigrated under Zionism?  Many, including Jewish Neturei Karta, say they should leave.  I agree that would be justice.  But justice is not always for us to achieve, if it requires driving yet another set of people out of their homes, many of whom may have simply been foolish.

IMO settlers not in previously unsettled areas do not have to move at all.  Settlers in previous Palestinian homes should give them up and accept resettlement elsewhere.  All Zionist settlers must accept the new expected Muslim majority state, so long as it implements equal rights for all regardless of religion, and non-discrimination, as the Hamas Charter of 2017 specifies.

Jews in Israel should stay, and fight for equal rights instead of supremacy.

Can diaspora Jews still emigrate to the renewed Palestine?  It's not mine to decide, but I'd say it's fine as long as they do not participate in terror against the new state, and Palestinian return is taken care of first.

Zionists call such ideas ridiculous.  Hamas will implement sharia law, they say.  That is not what Hamas says in their 2017 charter, and there are also many non-Hamas segments of Palestinian population who would also not call for that, Palestinian society is far more progressive, say, than Saudi Arabian.  And religious law and discrimination are exactly what needs to be resisted by Jews, as a new ethnic minority, and not the fundamental right of right of Palestinians to return to their homes that were seized in the violent creation and maintenance of the Zionist Entity.  One should resist what is wrong, and never what is right.

I am not calling for the immediate restoration of lands to their former condition, say orchards of olive trees.  Clearly compensation for lost properties...including community assets...would be justice.  But actual restoration of everything is impossible.  Also, Zionists should not smash and burn their actual contributions (though it would be fine if they smashed their apartheid structures including walls checkpoints) as that is the allowance made for not requiring everything to be completely restored to its former condition either.

Monotheism is fascism

 All monotheism inherently creates the false notion of a single "good" (God's will).

This false notion is not only harmful to greater understanding and reflection, it creates the basis for exclusionary religions, ideologies, and governments.

It is inherently proto-Fascist if not Fascist.  It leads to endless Holy Wars.  In that crucible, and luck, the "West" was born.  It had a glorious burst of world domination, now busting.  It will not be remembered kindly.

Traditional Asians, apt to freely combine ideas from multiple faiths, had the right idea on that.

It's no wonder that monotheism emanated from great empires, first "Persian" (Zoroaster) which led to a reformulation of Judaism into a monotheism, then Rome who captured the originally resistive "Christian" faith tailor made for empire by Herodian stooge Paul, then Islam from the burgeoning Arabian empire.

I believe that churches should be civic institutions open to all "faiths."

(So, actually, I do not believe in separation of church and state.  I believe in separation of religion from church and state.)

"Private" churches not open to all faiths should be taxed.

From a vast array of private untaxed churches, we predictably get endless sectarianism.

Which is useful for our post-Civilization rulers to remain unchallenged in their cash-and-grab international imperial racket.

But universal churches can hardly be imposed when most people are monotheists.

One more way the future does not look nice for humanity.

I speak meaningfully only to the post-Collapse generation therefore.  Don't do it this way.  Don't make our mistakes, which are diverse, but including this.

Zionism in a nutshell

Fascist settler colonialism based on blinders and historical myths, and sadly exceeding all previous Jewish and Hebrew fascist regimes in the scale of depravity.*

(*They had genocide--see the story of Amalek--and all that before.  But rather than so much apartheid they did forced conversions under the Hasmonians.  Jewish and Hebrew regimes made up a tiny fragment of the total history of Palestine/Canaan and their departures were not lamented by all.  Even Jews didn't all or so much care for the place, for the longest time.  But then a fascist sentimentalism based on myths with a dash of truth was empowered by UK then US imperialism.  Also enabled by Air Conditioning.)

Beheaded Babies Atrocity Propaganda

Twitter link

Tireless researcher zei_squirrel show the two journalists who originally disseminated the beheded babies atrocity propaganda did so, with many referencing their "findings" but few keeping up with later debunkings.

People I know still believe this and repeat it.

In fact, the truth, as reported in Haaretz, is that just one baby was killed on October 7, and it was not beheaded.

It was apparently killed in crossfire.

And I also don't understand the morality that sees the beheading of babies as greater abomination than carpet bombing their prison enclave into oblivion and starving them for months, resulting (as of this writing) in 12,300 child deaths known so far.

Was Mossad a/the key player in JFK assassination

The case for the key role of Mossad in JFK assassination is very well presented here.

This was apparently also the conclusion reached by Piper in a series of JFK Assassination theory books.  Piper is one of the most well known JFK conspiracy researchers.

I like the theory presented because it explains the role of Oswald and E Howard Hunt, which fits one of my long held ideas.  That Oswald was supposed to carry out a "fake" assassination (which would fail), Oswald would be shuttled out of the country, and it would be blamed on Cuba and the Soviet Union, giving reason for more aggressive action against both.

But unbeknownst to Oswald at first, a real assassination was being set up at the same time.  When the assassination actually happened, Oswald had figured he had been set up as the patsy.  (I suspect he may have figured it out earlier when something like this happened: his promised contacts at the Book Depository didn't show up.)  After the assassination he tried to make the connections which were supposed to get him out of the country, but instead he was framed for an earlier murder of a policeman and arrested.

Another lady who may have had a very close relationship with LBJ was Mary Meyer Pinchot, the wife of Cord Meyer.  (She may have been closer than another lady I recently mentioned in an earlier post.)