Talmudic Does Not Equal Socratic

On the Leftreasonous rag The Guardian’s online forum, Comment Is Free (which I usually call, “Grauniad Ciff”, as anyone who’s seen my linkfests on LGF knows), Seth Freedman brought another of his anti-Israel articles dressed as “concern for Israel’s future”, No Peace, no prosperity, from September 18, 2007 (subtitle: “All the money spent on war, walls and West Bank expansion is taking its toll on the sectors of Israeli society that badly need state assistance.” The fact of Israel having to spend on defense even within its 1949 Armistice Line borders is conveniently ignored). Once again, the more interesting stuff goes in the comments. Here’s the first, from “TheKingOfDoubt”:

/YAWN/ One more "gig" for Freedman to draw silly moral equivalences between Palestinian terrorists (whom he calls "militias") and Israeli settlers (whom he calls radicals).

Freedman, one of the reasons I would never convert to Judaism is that there are people like you within this prestigious religion, making a mockery of your own heritage, and slandering their own people under the excuse of a phony "objectivity". It's a bitter "gesheft," to be sure.

Shame.

It never ceases to amaze me how non-Jewish pro-Israel commenters tend to be much bolder, and furthermore, much more Jewish in their stance than a lot of Jews. On the later thread Life behind the wire, by Chris Doyle, another piece hammering home the “Israel = Apartheid South Africa” libel, a commenter named “RowdyDragon”, who says of himself that he is “neither a Jew nor an Evangelical”, posted three comments advocating mass expulsion of the Muslims from Israel! (The second comment was deleted—the “free” in “Comment Is Free” obviously refers to price, not to freedom—but as always when I catch them in time, I save them for posterity.)

But back to Freedman’s thread. A commenter named, “figliomedio” answered “TheKingOfDoubt” thus:

[…]

Another reason that you would never convert to Judaism is that you do not appear to know that when two burglars drop down a chimney it is inconceivable that one will be clean and the other covered in soot.

Argument, debate, turning and turning it and turning it again goes to the very essence of Judaism. People like you who would merely stifle debate do not have the necessary qualifications. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

[…]

This point needs addressing, because one of the charges of “Progressives” (in reality, cultural-Marxified religionists) everywhere is that “the true spirit of the religion” is about absolutely open debate, and moreover, is about asking questions for the sake of asking questions.

With all due respect to the Socratic method, which has its uses and might be beneficial in certain situations, it’s not the traditional Jewish way. The Talmudic method asks questions, sure, but that’s just about what it has in common with the Greek philosophical tradition. And if anyone says the Talmud is based on asking questions for the sake of asking questions, he couldn’t be more wrong.

Let me open with the Mishnah, Brachot 2:1:

From when do you say the Sh’ma in the evenings? From the hour that the priests enter to eat in their offering.

“Until the end of the first watch [of the night]”, [those are] the words of Rabbi Eliezer. And [the other] sages say: “Until midnight”. Rabban Gamliel says: “Until the column of dawn rises”.

A story [goes] that his sons came from the house of feasting, and said to him: “We did not call the calling of Sh’ma”. He said to them: “If the column of dawn has not risen, you must call”.

And not just this did they say, but also, in all places where the sages said, “Until dawn”, their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. Incense the fats and the body parts—their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. And all that which is eaten in one day, their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. If so, why did the sages say, “Until midnight”? So as to distance a person from transgression.

This mishnah begins with a question, but there are many things here that go against the “Progressive”, or the Socratic, tradition.

First, far from the Socratic-Progressive tradition of putting everything up for grabs, we can see here an assumption, taken for granted, that a Jew must say the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4) in the evenings. Were that debate along the Progressive lines, there would be the question, “Who says the Sh’ma must be said in the evenings at all?” In fact, the Progressive way of “questioning everything” (everything except for the newly-hatched orthodoxy of Progressivism, that is) would lead to such questions as whether there is any divinity in the Torah, or whether God exists at all, until one is far gone in the depths of estrangement from everything that has defined Judaism for over 3,000 years. No, in the Talmudic method there are some truths that are given and are not to be questioned. Progressives may not like it, but that’s the way traditional religion, as opposed to the New Age deviations, goes.

Second, the questions are not for the sake of asking them—they are for the sake of coming to a conclusive answer. The whole of traditional Jewish discourse is purpose-driven, something that flows from the above fact of buying into the divine assumptions: Talmudic debate is for the purpose of finding the halachah, the religious decree which every believing Jew must follow. The Torah was given in order to be performed; in the Talmud, our rabbis elucidate the details as to how. And though the rabbis may go on wild tangents, the debates often looking like today’s jumps from hyperlink to hyperlink, in the end they come back to the goal: “Halachah k’Rabbi ploni”, meaning, “The religious decree is as Rabbi so-and-so said”, and then the debate is closed.

The aversion to questions for the sake of questions is most illustrated by the Aramaic phrases, “Mai nafkah minah?” (“What goes out from that?”) and “nafkuta hilchatit” (“Halachic consequence”): whenever a question is asked that does not seem to have any consequence to the final verdict, to the religious decree that will be the final outcome of the debate, our sages ask what difference that question makes. The sage who raised the original question is then called to justify it, showing how his question makes a difference as to the final decree. If he does not succeed in doing so, the question is discarded—the Talmud is deeper than the sea in extent, but it has no time to waste on mere philosophy. The purpose stands above all: How to do the Creator’s will.

The New Age, meaning the Primitivist and Cultural-Marxist mindset applied to religion, is about remaking all religions in its obligation-free, faith-free, fluffy and above all heretical image. To be sure, the basic questions that the New Agers ask (mostly concerning the attributes of God) have their place. But not in the Talmud and its tradition, which is beholden to the view that those questions are already behind us, and now the only real question is how to serve God according to His will. And by the way, like all “rebellions against the Establishment™” that have only spawned new orthodoxies, often far worse than the ones they rebelled against, the New Agers are pretty much set on their dogmas: it’s settled for them that, for example, prayer is a means of focusing oneself and does not effect any change in objective reality, or that reward and punishment are systems flowing on a natural, “You reap what you sow” basis rather than meted by God. They display little skepticism for those dogmas.

Beside my encountering of this issue on a forum of the anti-Israel Guardian, this point is important for the defense of Zionism on two counts: because part of the same Progressive tradition is the denial of Jewish nationalism, i.e. of Zionism; and because the Progressive mindset of putting everything up for grabs is the engine that powers the debilitating movement of Post-Zionism, which in the name of “slaughtering sacred cows” has made it fashionable to view the whole Zionist project in doubt, and thus serves as ammunition for those who call for the dissolution of Israel as Jewish state (God forbid). Without that excessive doubt which leads to questioning one’s core assumptions—to sawing the very branch on which one is sitting—and then turning its “skepticism” into the orthodoxy which one must accept or else suffer opprobrium, the preposterous idea that the Jews of Israel are settler-colonialists, rather than a nation returning to its homeland, could never have taken root as such is the situation now. And on the international stage, excessive doubt is the root cause of the pathetic dhimmitude we see all over the non-Muslim world today. Such are the fruits of self-doubt to the point of nihilism.

There are some materials that have to be handled with care, and there are some questions that, if asked at all, must not be asked in a cavalier manner. Doubts and questions are necessary for pruning branches that have not grown the right way; it is when doubts and questions are applied to the roots, to one’s core assumptions, that great caution must be taken, for the results could be disastrous. Many isolated tribes have been blighted by an epidemic of suicide ever since they were first exposed to the changed world outside them. That is because the exposure challenged all the assumptions that they had held until then. Confidence in one’s way, in one’s purpose, is the key to survival. The Muslims have that, and that is why they are able to inflict damages on non-Muslim states way out of proportion to their military capabilities. It is only when we regain our confidence that we will be able to fight back.

Sukkot: Celebrating Life

This piece, standard fare from the “Palestinians”, about the arrest of a Hamas suspect hiding in Shchem in a weapons cache under a pregnant woman’s bed, brings out the basic contrast between us and our enemies.

Or to put it more graphically:

Islamic child abuse contrasted with Jewish education to love of life. Click image to view full size.

Chag Sukkot Sameach to all the nation of Israel and to those who stand with us!

Wikipedia: Golding Digitized

From time to time a new scandal arises, such as the Siegenthaler affair and now the launch of a tool for listing anonymous Wikipedia edits by organizations, raising to the fore the problematic nature of an “encyclopedia anyone can edit”. This post, however, is not an addition to the already saturated opinion-market of essays telling the world how Wikipedia sucks; Wikipedia is here used only as an illustration, an exemplar of a general problem. In the world of computing, Wikipedia is just a vivid and expanded demonstration of the truth that “permit all” is usually followed by “delete all” (or, as Unix buffs say: chmod 777 usually comes before rm -r -f). In the world of culture and human anthropology, which I have an inordinate interest in, Wikipedia is an illustration of the tabula rasa (blank slate) fallacy.

Wikipedia is just another in a slew of anarchist ideas—the idea of “a smoothly-functioning anarchy” (the words of Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Project), the idea of “a self-policing system”, the idea of “a consensus-driven community”, the idea of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and you get the drift. It doesn’t matter if Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is an anarchist or not; the idea can be traced to that pedigree, even if Wales developed it independently. Whether intentionally or not, Wikipedia has its place in the long list of enterprises in which the creator or founder really plays God, making an experiment whose pillar is creation from scratch—the aforementioned tabula rasa. A very interesting fact, for the Bible describes how God Himself, because of the free will and the passions He has given humans, voices His total rejection of the concept of tabula rasa.

Successful art is usually deemed as such because it stands the test of time. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is relatively recent (1954), but its ideas are timeless, and its core idea (as far as I gather) is that Biblical idea that tabula rasa utopianism is a grave error. A bunch of little kids is stranded on an island paradise: they have a goal (returning to civilization), they have their needs provided (the fruits of the trees on that island), and they have minimal sources of friction (no girls to fight over, for example). It is really a clean slate, and by rights it ought to function smoothly. Yet little time passes before they partake of the same afflictions of all other societies: factionalism (the Merrydew schism), murder and—finally—the burning of the trees, the source of their sustenance. The beast is indeed within those kids, no matter how favorable the external conditions have been from the start.

Wikipedia’s lack of professionalism is the hot topic, the popular point of discussion; under the radar, however, slips the issue of what Wikipedia was conceived to be as opposed to what it has become. Bureaucrats, administrators, piles upon piles of rules, vital actions bogged down by procedure, pages put under protection or semi-protection—a complex, elaborate, monstrous, labyrinthine system that belies the entire initial concept. Yes, you don’t need to tell me: those changes were necessitated by the circumstances. No argument here. But this is proof of the fallacious nature of tabula rasa utopianism. This is the same, exact same idea as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and in its (conscious or unconscious) source, the Bible, the Word of HaShem.

How many times have we seen that happen? “Such if we do, heaven will be created on earth”, only to prove dismal at best, forcing the founders to take a turn diametrically opposed to their original vision. The “smoothly-functioning anarchy” envisioned by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond is most popularly demonstrated by the Linux kernel, but the Linux kernel is free of the schisms and bureaucratic creep that have plagued other open-source projects because it is under the rule of a dictator (Linus Torvalds), even if that dictator is semi-jokingly called a benevolent one. The Marxist experiment, spawning one of the cruelest dictatorships in history (Stalin’s, long may he roast in hell, amen) and 100,000,000 deaths in its wake, was another attempt to solve humanity’s problem by creating from scratch, as if human beings were program source code to be cleaned by doing a complete rewrite.

Or religious reforms. Many an attempt at religious reform aims to clean up the religion from what are considered sinful accretions, such as commercialism, ritualism, legalism and getting entwined with the state, only to become a religion in its own right, moreover usually succumbing to the same accretions that the reformer-founders aimed to dispose of. For example, the Jewish reformer who is described to have railed against the commercialism near the Temple, turning the stalls, spawned a religion in which, a few centuries afterward, many of the men of cloth engaged in their own forms of crass commercialism (such as the sale of relics). Similarly, Protestantism had the goal of “ridding the religion of all the priestcraft, of the priests and popes telling people how to read the Bible”, but ministers and reverends fill the niche quite nicely. The Muslims pride themselves of belonging to a religion without priests, to contrast with the “Jewish and Christian corruptions”; true, Islam has no priests, but, once again, it has a class that fills that hole well. Buddhism may have started as a rebellion against the excesses and empty piety of the Hindu Brahmins; Buddhist functionaries can compete with the best (worst) of those. Sikhism was meant to purify religion of empty ritual, focusing instead on “God’s True Name”; there is no shortage of ritual that has accumulated there over time. And finally, scientific rationalism aimed to purge humanity of all the “primitive superstitions born of unreason”, all the religions, all beliefs in the supernatural; secular religions quickly took to fill the void, and, on the way, drenched the world in blood in the course of the 20th century.

All this consistent track record, of the failure of tabula rasa experiments, could have been avoided, had mankind listened to what God has to say on the matter. The Bible lists these occurrences from start to finish, and even if some parts of it are not taken literally, the lesson is a stupefying one. Adam and Eve; the post-Flood generation that built the Tower of Babel; and then the periodical fall into transgression by the one nation that HaShem had consecrated for His purposes, the Israelites. A clean slate, followed by a fall into weak human lapses. Golding set out the idea in another form, but it’s God’s lesson unto us anyway you put it.

These falls into transgression from an initial pure state—are they oversights on God’s part, as the unbelievers say? Perish the thought. It is not but our Creator drumming the truths of our nature—and He knows best, for He is the manufacturer—into our thick skulls. God says (Genesis 6:5):

And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And he also says (Genesis 8:21):

For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. (&c)

Now the Jewish view differs from the Christian one, in that the latter says humans are incapable of standing up to their evil inclination while the former says they are (based on HaShem’s words to Cain, in Genesis 4:7: “[…] But thou mayest rule over it”). But the view that humans are inclined toward evil is shared by the two religions, because the Bible (in the above two passages, for example) is absolutely clear about this. God’s word brings the rational explanation to the phenomenon that every eye—every eye not letting the predetermined opposite doctrine get in its way, that is—can see. Every eye can observe the scrapping of tots with each other at kindergarten: the selfishness, the vindictiveness, the cruelty. And all of this, unlearned. Did the parents teach them to be that way? No, most chances are that the parents, when they see it, react in shock and try to do something to counter it. Untaught to be evil. Unimparted propensity for bad behavior. Goodness has to be taught to the child, and fought for throughout all his life; badness comes naturally.

Do you now realize the secret behind the tabula rasa fallacy? God tells us: there is no such thing. There is no clean slate. There is no escape, not even an island paradise setting as in Golding’s book! Those kids had the benefit of an external clean slate, yes, but internally they started with the same fully-occupied slate as every human being—the basic fact of human nature, the inclination of human beings toward wrongdoing. Judaism says it can be overcome, through effort—but Judaism rejects the idea that good and thoughtful planning by human beings can guarantee the neutralization of that basic evil. It’s not ours to create humans anew; God has the first, last and only say in that matter.

So many times, before I got religion, I looked at passages in the Torah and said, “This is open to abuse!” I was reading it with the critical eye of a hippified anarchist, regarding it as a book authored by humans for furthering their tyranny over the masses. “This is for giving an unlimited supply of food to the priests! How convenient”, I said. “This passage means the rabbis have unlimited power over the common man”, I said. But now I see, that even if the spirit of those thoughts still has a grain of truth in it—there is free will for everyone to abuse his power, after all—I know that such attempts at correction as humans (particularly leftists like I was then) have undertaken have never led to the desired effect, to the utopia hoped for.

The fact is there is no human guarantee in anything. From the 18th century, scientific rationalists envisioned a world in which science and reason provided the solution to most (if not all) of humanity’s problems. Quite apart from the world wars caused by non-religious ideologies, the fact is technological advances have brought a mixture of blessings and curses, which add up to the same situation as humanity has always been. Courses on “success in business”, rationally-sounding though they are tailored to be, are a mass of superstitious nonsense that would make any Middle Ager proud. Just as you can take all the steps detailed in a book by Bill Gates or Donald Trump telling you how they got rich, but to no avail, there is no reason why scientific rationalism should improve the human condition. And the various medical suggestions given for evading the mortal diseases of our time (HaShem guard us and save us) can only improve statistical probability, which is no help if genetics or some other unexpected thing gets in the way (example: a young, healthy sportsman dying of a heart attack in the middle of a game, HaShem guard us).

Therefore there is no good word except HaShem’s mitzvah from last week’s Torah portion (Deuteronomy 18:13):

Thou shalt be whole-hearted with the LORD thy God.

Tamim: whole-hearted, complete, childlike in trust. Working with what He created, not trying to get around it through sophisticated attempts at improvement. Recognizing that His creation, because of the very fact of being His creation, is not a blank slate. Not attempting to play God by creating a micro-world or micro-humanity, but building on what He created. Asher bara E-lohim la’asot (Genesis 2:3): literally “Which God created to do”, and our sages of blessed memory say of it: He created it for humans to build on it. Not for humans to dispute it and try their own hand at creation. If you have any doubts about the error of that, just look at the track record.

Shabbat Shalom!

Desert, but no Manna

It is one of the countless examples of the hypocrisy of Cultural Marxism, that it can lump Judaism, Christianity and Islam together in “primitive backwardness, Abrahamic morality and divinely-ordered atrocity”, but then turn an admiring eye to the one religion that has not been tempered by any form of Enlightenment, the one religion whose adherents are overwhelmingly in the mindset of an age which in the Western world is now deemed to be all but a historical curiosity. I find no more interesting an endeavor than unraveling the system that makes such seeming doublethink possible.

I have seen the phrase, “Desert Monotheism” used in the conflation of Biblical and Koranic religion. The Cultural Marxists say it refers to the origins of both: the giving of Torah at the foot of the mountain in the middle of the Sinai Desert, and, l’havdil (“to distinguish”), the alleged revelation of the Koran to Mohammed in a cave in the middle of the Arabian Desert. To frame both religious traditions as desert monotheisms because of a single event is already something to be suspected of superficiality; in truth, the Marxists do not believe in it themselves, but use it as their tu quoque (“You too”) club, whenever someone points the violence of Islam from the Koran. If they believed in it, they wouldn’t accord Islam a special status. Is it a cynical ploy? Is it born of fear, fear of the one religion whose followers are not reluctant to wreak revenge for any perceived slight to their feelings? Or is there something real, inner and spiritual about this exception-making? My attempted answer cannot cover all of them, and I am sure there are a few of them who parrot words without inner conviction, but my experience with the modern Left tells me there must be some inward convergence, otherwise there would not be such zeal and fervor in the Left/Islam alliance as we see today. And I believe the phrase, “Desert Monotheism” is where it begins and ends.

As with many foundations underlying the Left/Islam alliance, the “Desert Monotheism” grouping of Biblical and Koranic traditions is a lie. The role and perception of the desert in the Biblical tradition is far different from that in the Koran. If cultural truth were allowed to have a say in naming names, then only Islam would be called a desert monotheism. Only Islam was born in the desert, is culturally bound to it and brings it along to every place it comes. Judaism was not born in the desert, despite the location of its founding event, and is not culturally tied to it. Christianity, having the Greco-Roman world as its background, is even less so. In the Biblical tradition, the desert occupies a place in the sidelines and is a tool in HaShem’s hands; in the Koranic tradition, the desert is the whole setting, the stage on which the entire drama takes place, and without which the religion cannot be fully understood.

The founding narrative of the Jewish nation is based on three points in a line:

• Egypt: the gilded cage to be escaped.
• The Sinai Desert: the necessary route to take in order to reach the goal.
• The Land of Israel: the goal, the hard-won but spiritually unique destination.

Egypt, the rich land, whose generosity is guaranteed by the regular flooding of the Nile, is a gilded cage, both spiritually and (later, and also symbolized by that) physically. Because of the confidence in the Nile, the Egyptians’ eyes had no need of being raised upward in beseeching of the divine, with the result that they created their deities in such images that even the Greeks and the Romans, masters of creating the divine in human image, were shocked. Our sages of blessed memory tell us how defiled Egypt was, how filthy with dark spiritual practices, like sorcery, divination, necromancy and sexual immorality. After generations of living on the fat of the land, the time came for the Israelites to pay up, with the currency of physical slavery—real, but also a symbol for the high price paid by those who are lost in their estrangement from HaShem, slavery of the worst kind.

The reality behind the most famous tourism site in the world is necromancy.

To an outside observer, the Land of Israel would not look as rich as Egypt; in our day, the joke about Moses meaning to bring the Israelites to Canada, but saying, “Canaan” instead because of his stutter, comes to mind. But they err that compare Egypt and the Land of Israel through physical eyes alone. The Land of Israel has the vast, incomparable bounty and advantage over Egypt—over any other land in the world—in that it is under the direct rule of HaShem. It can produce ample physical bounty—a land flowing with milk and honey—but it does so in direct proportion to the spiritual rectitude of its inhabitants. The Torah warns us of this so many times: walk with HaShem and you will prosper in the Land of Israel; disobey (God guard us), and the Land of Israel will spew you out. The bounty of the Land of Israel cannot be measured, because it is a spiritual one.

The focus of Jewish hopes for generations, and why they desire no other land than the Land of Israel.

Between Egypt and the Land of Israel is the Sinai Desert. No other way to get from Egypt to the Land of Israel by land. The desert is an ambivalent place, a place full of doubt: physical hardship that, on the one hand, prepares one for an existence of trusting in HaShem, but, on the other, is the opposite of both Egypt and the Land of Israel as regards permanence. Nowhere is this more illustrated than by the Tabernacle, which was dismantled and rebuilt each day, while the Temple in Jerusalem was a permanent building.

We received the Torah there, but it was not the destination.

The Biblical story of the Israelites’ passing through the desert cannot be told without reference to the manna, the bread given from above. Our forefathers did not desire to adopt Bedouin ways; when they sensed the hardship of desert life, all the more so after Egypt, they cried out to HaShem. He answered them, and sustained them all the years with food from above. It was another symbol of the impermanence of the desert: since one cannot live on miracles forever, it is clear that the manna was only a temporary measure, until the arrival at the Land of Israel. The desert was where we received the Torah, but the Torah given at Sinai contains such mitzvot as the Sabbatical Year (one in seven years of ceasing to work the fields), which cannot apply to the desert. And the desert was also a punishment: for believing the lies that the Ten Spies uttered about the Land of Israel, the entire generation was condemned to roam the desert until dying out. All in all, the desert was a necessary evil, the place of Israel’s birth-pangs. The Biblical narrative is conclusive: it is not HaShem’s requirement for mankind to be desert-dwellers in order to be spiritually fulfilled. The desert was preparation for a life of trusting in Him, but the life itself, a life of completeness through carrying all His 613 mitzvot, was to take place in inhabited land, in the Land of Israel.

Islam sprang out from a totally different setting.

Islam emerged in the Arabian Desert, in the area of two oases surrounded by uninhabited desert. The desert was not merely a transition between Mecca and Medina; those two cities were enveloped by it, and served as a life-belt from it. The contrast was not between a rich but defiled land and a rich and sacred land, with a desert separating them, but between desert and non-desert: between the sanctuary and life hanging upon a thread. The Arabian desert-dwellers would come to those fertile points to set their livestock to graze—another important point. Whereas Egypt was marked by lethargy, born of the consistent flooding of the Nile, Arab Bedouin existence was marked by a life dependent on taking what one had not toiled for.

Bedouin existence was, spiritually, a little better than that of Egypt, in that the circumstances forced the desert nomads to raise their eyes upward; but they did not raise their eyes in expectation of manna, they raised them for a reprieve from the fate of next day or month or year. For the Israelites, desert life was a transition, and continuous roaming of the desert was a punishment; for the Bedouins, desert life was their main existence, punctuated only by forays into fertile fields worked by others. The Bible is centered on the arrival at the Promised Land; but for the Arab Bedouin, in contrast, there is no Promised Land, there is only an oasis for refueling, a race to reach there before dying of thirst.

The tenuous existence in the desert shaped the whole worldview of the Bedouins, and consequently of the religion of Islam.

The Koran advertises itself repeatedly as a “clear guidance”. The term for that, huda, according to Malise Ruthven’s Islam and the World, means “desert guide, the tribesman on whose navigation skills the tribe depends in order to reach the oasis”. The word “shariah” itself means, “the way to water”. Islam views mankind’s entire existence as a roaming in the desert, with Allah being the only reliable guide to the oasis. Desert life being such a stark struggle between life and death, it is no wonder that Islam’s afterlife paradise is described in the most lurid of physical terms. Jewish commentators on Islam have long faulted the religion for promising its adherents a reward that can be had in this life. It is only natural for adherents of a Biblical worldview to look down upon that, just as it is natural for a religion born in the harsh world of the desert to promise rewards of this kind. The Biblical worldview promises the follower that God will take care of his physical needs if he does His will, leaving him with the leisure and desire to seek out God Himself, His spiritual splendor; in contrast, the Koranic worldview, desert born, has the physical promises running over, splashing out from the cup of this life onto the afterlife. “A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity”, said Winston Churchill on Islam, more than a century ago.

The desert nomad sustains himself by punctuated forays into fertile lands; he sets his livestock upon fields tilled by others. This modus vivendi has been carried over to Islam and its adherents to this day: appropriation of the accomplishments of others, both physical and cultural, has been the hallmark of the Islamic colonialists from the 7th century to our times, each appropriation often followed by a fraudulent claim to original ownership. The golden cow-udder standing on top of the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem is the most prominent example of this, along with the usurpation of the Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel by means of the Fakestinian Nation narrative.

And it is an object of admiration for many Cultural Marxists worldwide.

Oh, the desert! Pristine land, unsullied by the hands of capitalism, industrialism, commercialism and other forms of man-made modifications of the original state! Oh, the Bedouins! Free as the air, authentic, sprung from the soil, untouched by the artificial mannerisms of townspeople! Oh, all that we had but have lost! All the things we once were (according to the Primitivist narrative, conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Father of All Hippies) and would wish to have once again! Can we have them? Can we turn the clock back? Maybe, maybe not, but if not, at least we can support the Bedouins in their moves against that hated Western, Bible-based civilization, use them as proxy avengers of our wrath.

Those Cultural Marxists understand what eludes many scholars: the primitivist affinity between Marxism and Islam. Marxism longs for return to a mythical world “Before Capitalism”; the Bedouin nomad looks like an authentic remnant of that long-lost paradisical age; therefore the alliance between the Marxist primitivists and the active representatives of Bedouin life, the Muslims, is a natural and spiritual one.

It is also natural because Marxism is built upon legalizing theft. Communist regimes had their upper class and their vast stratum of poor, downtrodden people, just as—usually far worse than—did the hated capitalist countries of the world, but the upper class justified it as “taking from the rich in order to give to the poor”, and with the mindset, both internalized and externally voiced, that the wealth never belonged to the original owners in the first place (“Property is theft”). As today both Venezuela and Zimbabwe, once rich countries reduced to financial ruin under their Marxist dictators, show, the micromanaged economies espoused by the Far Left are total failures at production; therefore, the only recourse for those countries, or for their rulers, is to live off the work of others. Marxist robber, meet the Bedouin setting his livestock to graze on another’s field—or the Bedouin’s representative on the modern geopolitical stage, the Muslim.

This World War is between those who wish to desertify the whole world and those who believe in the Promised Land, in eating the fruit of one’s labors (Psalms 128:2); between those who believe mankind’s pristine existence is a canonized goal, and those who believe the world was meant to be worked, those who believe the Garden of Eden is not the initial state but the result of mankind’s toil (Genesis 2:15); and between those who are trapped in viewing prosperity as either a brief respite from the harsh day-to-day reality (an oasis in the desert) or a fantastic, patently unrealistic cornucopia (a lustful carnal paradise), and those who set their eyes onto bountiful, yet moderate and spiritually conducive, prosperity.

This war begins with the idea of how the world should be, and there it also ends.

Not a Suicide Pact

Imagine—it isn’t hard to do—an entire school that suffers from lack of discipline. Throughout all the classes, from the kids in the lowest to the young adults in the highest, each day is marked by disruptions, insults to the teachers, brawls, eggs and refuse thrown all about, you get the idea. The manager has tried everything (within the bounds of PC rules, of course—otherwise the school would never have gotten into such a state in the first place), but to no avail.

Suddenly, one day, the manager has an idea—a Compact Fluorescent Lamp flashes inside his head. The idea: to pick just one of the many classes, work on it to make it well-behaved, and set it as the example that the students in all the other classes should follow. That shouldn’t be hard, thinks the manager to himself, because working with one class alone brings things to a manageable number. He pats himself on the back for brilliance.

Along the way, there is a pedagogical conference, and that manager, in a friendly talk with one of his colleagues, tells her about the plan. The colleague becomes wide-eyed, and says: “My friend, I commend you for attempting to find out a way to bring order back to the school, but have you not thought this over?” The former asks what she means by that, and she replies: “The best case could be that your model class will simply be ignored by all the others. The more common case will be that the others will take advantage of your model students’ good behavior, which they will call softness, with the result that those students will be the punching-bags of the whole school”.

“You’re right”, he replies. “You’re just right. In my rush to think up a plan, and in my euphoria at having come up with one, I just didn’t think things over. Now that I come to think of it, my plan strikes me as woefully naïve”.

“Woefully naïve”. I think most people would agree. And yet, a lot of people, without even being aware of it, ascribe the same to God, concerning the Jewish people. Some people go further, cynically using it against the Jewish people.

Yes, the Torah is plain about the evil inclination of the human heart, from Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, to the Deluge Generation, to the Generation of the Tower of Babel, and so forth. Yes, the Torah says, plainly, that HaShem has chosen the Jewish people to be a nation apart. But touching the last point—for what purpose? If the purpose was that there be one nation setting a good example to follow, then God is in the same position as that school manager in my fictional story—naïve, a fool, perish those thoughts. Yet this is what so many people, even Jews, believe about Jewish chosenness.

There are instructions to good and moral behavior in the Torah—in fact, the Torah is the only legitimate source for such instructions, for all other sources are but the opinions of men like you and me. And if other nations see us when we are good to each other and decide to copy that behavior, then well and good, and may HaShem reward all the righteous of humanity. But that is not the purpose. Being an exemplar for good behavior is not the purpose. The purpose is stated, among other places, in Exodus 19:6:

And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

There is no question that morality, that good behavior, are required for that purpose. God let the Second Temple be destroyed because, while we were fully observant of the sacrifices there, our behavior toward each other was abysmal. Later, 40,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of the generation, died in a plague because they did not behave respectfully to each other (Yevamot 62 p. 2). But both the rational mitzvot (“Thou shalt not murder” and the like) and the auditory ones (separation between milk and meat and the like; called, “auditory” because, unlike the rational ones, we would not know God wants them performed if He hadn’t revealed so to us) are for the one and only purpose of holiness—to be a holy people fit for crowning God as King when He comes to descend to a dwelling in the lower parts (that is: this world, this physical world).

The error of those who do not know this is compound: not just in the very idea that the purpose of the Jewish nation is to make an example of good behavior for all other nations to follow, but also in the details of that example. Indeed, were people, especially Progressives, to take a closer look at God’s commands to the Jewish nation in the Torah, they would shun and abhor the idea that the nation of Israel should be an example for all other nations. Look at the following mitzvah, from the coming weekly parashah, in Deuteronomy 20:16–18:

[16]  Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, [17] but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; [18] that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods, and so ye sin against the LORD your God.

This is a command to do genocide—there is no point in whitewashing it, and the orthodox rabbinical commentaries interpret it so as well. (Note: I do not advocate genocide of the Muslims; per the Rambam, they are not idol-worshipers, so the mitzvah cannot apply to them; mass expulsion, however, is applicable.) If the Jewish nation is to serve as an example for all other nations by its deeds, then the world is in deep trouble. It is only when viewed from the true purpose of the Jewish nation, holiness, that this mitzvah makes sense: the Land of Israel must be made holy, and that is to be achieved through the one-time act of purging it of all idolatry. It is obvious to me that this explanation still won’t assuage the horror of the Progressives, those advocates of cultural pluralism (even if said pluralism is expressed in not so savory ways), but it should suffice for showing that the concept of, “Jews exhibit good behavior, nations imitate them, voilà! The world becomes a utopia” is a total misconception.

The particular mitzvah I chose also illustrates how selective a lot of people are in their view of Jewish morality. This distorted view is captured best by a quote by the true skeptic Eric Hoffer (HaShem bless his rest), from May 1968:

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

Given that the Christians themselves are required to turn the other cheek only as individuals, while Christian states have the mandate of going to war for defense, I would say Jews are not expected to be Christians; they are expected to be good Hindus and Buddhists, they are expected to be the only real observers of the practice of ahimsa.

I am not being fair to the Hindus or Buddhists with that remark: one has only to look at, for example, the writings of the Hindutva movement to see that the Hindus are having second thoughts about the Gandhian doctrine of, “ahimsa at any cost”. In their cause, they marshal particular Hindu scriptures that mention warriors, fighting kings, a heroic ethic and a mentality of uncompromising self-defense. They realize all too well that blind devotion to ahimsa, in the face of such a merciless and unscrupulous enemy as Islam, is suicide. And the Buddhists too are thinking, in the view of what is going on in Southern Thailand, that it might not be such a great sin to help Muslims reach the next station on the Wheel of Reincarnation. Even in the religion or philosophy where pacifism and non-violence are most entrenched, the Islamic threat puts the adherent before a clear, sharp and stark dilemma: resist or be subjugated. Reminiscent of a quote from Dune: “After all, one’s own profits come first. The Great Convention be damned! You can’t let someone pauperise you!” Welcome to the real world, a world of survivalist choices. Or, to use another quote from the same book: “Arrakis is real. The Harkonnens are real”.

So if Christians can lay off turning the other cheek in case of a threat, and even Hindus and Buddhists can overcome the hurdle of the doctrine of ahimsa when the situation demands it, then why are we Jews still stuck in the idea that we should walk as sheep to slaughter? We, whose religion is the religion of Joshua and of the Hashmoneans? We, whose Torah and its orthodox interpretations declare without reservation, “Rise up early to kill him who rises up to kill you”?

I know why. Rabbi Meir Kahane (HaShem avenge his blood) explained it so clearly in his article Regretting the Exile: 2,000 years of living stateless and defenseless in exile have imprinted onto us the exilic mentality of accepting pogroms as a matter of fact. You will not find laws pertaining to a Torah-based state, army and rules of warfare in the authoritative codex of Jewish law from the 17th century, the Shulchan Aruch; for that, you will have to go four centuries earlier, to the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. That is because those laws have been irrelevant to Jews up to this age, therefore not subject to the halachic development (responsa etc.) that went into the writing of the Shulchan Aruch. The Rambam expanded on those laws out of the belief that they would come again into use one day. This, this Zionism, is a basic Jewish belief, but by the time Secular Zionism emerged in the late 19th century, most of the Jews had come to regard the return to Zion as a far-flung future, wrought totally by a divine, miraculous hand. Hence, by the 19th century, Judaism was pictured in the eyes of many as a culture, a repository of gastronomic peculiarities, a plethora of Yiddish jokes, and, not least, the misconception that the Jew’s purpose in the world was to be a guter mentsh, a good human being, in fact to be the best mentsh in the world, even if that entailed turning the other cheek and adhering to ahimsa.

But that isn’t what Judaism is about. People gloss it over, in accordance to the Politically Correct fashion of our day, but Judaism talks of a righteous God, of His wrath as well as mercy, and of His appointment of His people to be His priests, not just to be the nicest mentshen in the world. In order to fulfill their role as a nation of priests, the Jews have to—sounds so obvious to say that, but apparently it isn’t—survive. In the Diaspora, where we couldn’t do much to defend ourselves, we had to do it diplomatically; but now that we have our state and army, and furthermore when we see how our diplomatic efforts are progressing (with every Kassam rocket on Sderot an indication), we need to transition to a new, but very old, mode of survival.

No milquetoast is our God, nor has He given us the duty of being milquetoasts ourselves. The psalms of King David sing equally of moral behavior and merciless crushing of Israel’s enemies. Judaism is about being God’s nation of priests. It is not a suicide pact. And if you can’t do without the idea that the Jews play an exemplary role for the world by their behavior, then here’s a thought: maybe, just maybe, when we finally get our act together and repulse the Islamic invader through warfare as expounded by the Torah, then the rest of the world will find it good, follow our example and remove this threat everywhere. How about that as a vision for making the world a better place?

Between Golus and Joluth

I explained (in my post from last Passover, Out of the Galut) how the Jewish concept of galut comprised the state of spiritual exile from HaShem, a state which may be accompanied by the physical state of being in the golah, i.e. outside the Land of Israel. Golus is the Ashkenazi way of pronouncing it, while joluth is the Yemenite way. But whichever way one pronounces it, the reality behind it is the same, whether the Jew lives in Poland or in Yemen—or even in the Land of Israel, for that matter. The denial of the sameness of this reality everywhere is one of the staples of the anti-Zionists today.

The argument, in concise form: “Throughout history, Muslims have treated Jews far better than Christians did; the present enmity between Jews and Muslims started with Zionism, and is wholly a reaction for stealing the Palestinians’ lands”. A powerful argument, killing two birds with one stone: it both urges Jews to make a negotiated peace with the Muslims in the Land of Israel, and exhorts them to turn their backs on their Christian Zionist supporters. Appealing to historical experience, those who make the argument say the Jews are much better off trusting in a peace treaty with the Muslims, who are (they say) free or nearly free of any anti-Semitic history, while the historically Jew-hating Christians are not a good horse at all to bet on.

An appeal to history is normally a good move; but in order for it to be sound, first the historical facts need to be straight, and then the comparison has to be on target. The latter is the problem with the Leftists’ comparison of today’s conflict (the War Against Islam) with 1972 (the Vietnam era). The former is the problem with the argument here: the difference between golus and joluth that the anti-Zionists are presenting is not true to reality.

The view of Jewish history between Orient and Occident is slanted from the outset: many have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Muslim Spain, but few have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Christian Poland; conversely, many know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Poland by the Cossack invasion of 1648–9, but few know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Spain by the Almohad invasion of the 12th century, from which one of the most famous refugees was Maimonides, in 1148. Sheer ignorance enables the painting of a false picture in which an Occidental Jewry in constant misery is contrasted with an Oriental Jewry in constant comfort.

When the Almohads, fanatical (today one would call them, “radical”) Muslim invaders from Morocco, persecuted Maimonides’ family, they fled to Egypt, where they found a better life. Now the Almohad kings and Saladin of Egypt were both Muslims; it can be pointed out rightly, then, that the experience of Jews in Muslim lands was not uniform. But the same is true of the experience of Jews in Christian lands as well! Jews dispersed throughout Europe for the same reason that Maimonides got from Spain from Egypt: fleeing the land of a Jew-hating ruler for the land of a tolerant one. Thus it was that Jews from Western Europe, during years of persecution and pogroms, from the end of the 11th century to the 15th, moved to Eastern Europe, to Poland, to the invitation of the kings Boleslav III and Boleslav V, who granted them edicts of tolerance in exchange for developing the economy of their kingdom. Jewish autonomy in Christian Poland, epitomized by the Council of Four Lands, was the counterpart of the famed Jewish autonomy in Muslim Spain. All that was while the Jews of Western Europe were being hounded out of the states (England in 1290; France in 1306 and 1394; Christian Spain in 1492). Examples of Jew-hatred and tolerance can be found for the Occidental Diaspora just as for the Oriental one; the dichotomous view of a tranquil Jewry in Islamic states versus a troubled one in Christian states has nothing to stand on.

Indeed, most of the well-known ways and methods of persecution of Jews in Christian countries can be found historically in Islamic countries as well. Dress-codes for Jews in Christian lands, such as pointed hats and the yellow star, are famous; less remembered is that the Jews of Islamic lands, by virtue of the dhimmi laws (which applied to Christians there as well), were subject to similar rules. Unless a tolerant or pragmatic Muslim ruler defended the Jews by personal decree, Islamic law left Jews under a constant protection racket, which, even when adhered to (that is, the poll-tax paid), did not provide any guarantee of protection. (An aside: those who laud the status of dhimmitude as “protected” should know that, in our day, we usually refer to such a status with the word, “apartheid”.) They did not stand a chance in court against a Muslim, because their pleas would not be taken over those of the Muslims; therefore, the danger of false accusation hung over them like the Sword of Damocles. If a synagogue fell into disrepair or was destroyed, they could not rebuild it except with a special dispensation from the ruler. The ghetto, walling off Jews from the Christians in Europe, had its counterpart in the malah in the Islamic world; in both diasporas, its purpose was the physical protection of the Jews from pogroms by the non-Jewish population.

The word, “pogrom” itself is a symbol of the bias: it is a Russian word, therefore cementing the idea that pogroms on Jews were a feature of the Christian world only, from which the Jews of the Islamic world were free. Nothing could be further from the truth: there were pogroms on Jews by Muslims long before the first inkling of the “Palestinian” question, and as in Christian Europe, many were state-sanctioned. In both the 12th and 17th century, fanatical kings of Yemen ordered pogroms, expulsions and obstruction of Jewish religious life in order to force the Jews of Yemen to convert to Islam. In the latter case, king Ahmed Ibn Hassan Al-Mahdi commanded the destruction of all the synagogues in Yemen, and expelled all the Jews of Yemen to the lowlands of Mawza for two years, where many of them died.

Another episode of European Jewry is that of the anusim, crypto-Jews, Jews who observed the Jewish religion in secret for fear of persecution. In Christian Spain until 1492, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity and renounce all Jewish practices under the threat of the Inquisition, so they either had to leave to a more tolerant country, whether Christian or Islamic, or to attempt to keep their Jewish observance secret. This too is well-known, in contrast to the similar episode of the anusim of the Jews of Persia, Shi’a Muslim Persia, from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Jews of Meshed accepted conversion to Islam under duress and continued observing Judaism in secret. Around the same time, the Jews of Tabriz chose a different route, much as did some Jews in Christian Spain: they refused to convert. This was followed by the massacre of the entire Jewry of Tabriz. Here is an answer to those who cite lack of precedence when they argue Muslims would never do a repeat of the Holocaust.

In summary, the state of Jewish exile is the same whether pronounced golus or joluth; whether in Poland or in Yemen; whether within a Christian population or within a Muslim one. Jews of the Diaspora, everywhere, have had an existence between the ups of tolerance and moderation and the downs of persecution and fanaticism. The fickle existence that led Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory to desire to get out of it all by going back to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was by no means strange to Jews of Islamic countries. Therefore, the anti-Zionist charge that Zionism is at its heart a “European, Ashkenazi, white colonial settler movement” is nothing but a libel, an outright falsehood concocted for the purpose of recasting Jewish nationalism in the mold of post-colonial discourse, for denying the Jews’ right to have sovereignty over their land and inhabit it without restriction.

In the light of all this, this historical parity between Jewish Diaspora existence everywhere, the concessionist arguments need to be repudiated. The yardstick of friendship toward us should be, instead: the belief in our right to the Land of Israel, meaning also Gaza, Judea and Samaria and not just the territories within the 1949 Armistice Line. He who believes so is our friend; he who makes a distinction between the 1949 and 1967 territories, saying the former is legal while the latter is illegal, is most probably just naïve; and he who believes that all of Israel, including the 1949 territories, is illegitimate, that the “Palestinian Right of Return” is a prerequisite to peace, that Zionism is a colonial enterprise and that Israel as a Jewish state is as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa—that is our enemy and should be treated as such. For Zionist Jews, that, and not historical misconceptions such as an idyllic Jewish–Muslim relationship until the advent of Zionism, should be the measure of friend and foe.

Why Bring Religion Into It?

Of the objections to my lines of argumentation, the greatest concerns my use of the religious argument for the Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. People say any argument from religion is a show-stopper in a world that is (they say) largely secular. They say religion arrests any possibility of debate, because there is no arguing with G-d. They insist the only way to secure peace is through pragmatic dialogue, something that requires separation of religion and politics.

I admit I was at first reluctant myself. Though my blog has focused on ideology and ideological arguments from the start, it took me some time until I got comfortable with making the religious Jewish claim to the Land of Israel. The road from the initial reluctance to the present comfort has provided me with the answers to those who say there is no room for religious claims here. In points, these are they:

1. Religion is already in this conflict, and at the heart of it, whether people like it or not.
2. The enemies of Israel, even the non-religious ones, have no problem using religious language against Israel.
3. Religion is no more undebatable than the bloody secular ideologies from the 18th century onward.
4. Separation of religion and politics is a situation that does not exist in pure form in the real world.
5. Zionism, down to its very name, does not make sense apart from religion.
6. Religion is a higher authority that is needed for countering the corruption of law in our age.

And more at length, one by one:

Religion is already in this conflict, and at the heart of it, whether people like it or not. It is the attempts to force reality to the straitjacket of one’s wishes that has been the undoing of the entire non-Muslim world, and in this there is no difference between left-wing and right-wing leadership. Leftist appeasement, driven by historical materialism, is worse in quantity, but not in quality, than President Bush’s belief that democratization (“Iraq the Model”) could magically convert Muslims into friends of those infidels living in Dar Al-Harb. Bush’s insistence on “not making this a religious war” is cut from the same cloth as the American Democrats’ cut-and-run motions and the Kossacks’ calls for “a more evenhanded approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict” (translation: sacrificing Israel to the Muslim wolves, G-d forbid), for both are rooted in that Westphalian dread of religious war.

The reality is different from the wishes—the reality is that the Muslim world has undergone little in the process of secularization, so the argument that “the world is largely secular” fails to acknowledge a sizable chunk of the population of the globe. As the various riots (Rushdie I, Danish Cartoons, Pope Quotes, Rushdie II) showed, the masses of Muslims are easily manipulated by the Friday mosque prayer speeches, however much this may seem surreal or outdated to those in the West who think all people are the same everywhere. The suicide terrorists show that people are capable, even in this day and age, of believing in the afterlife promises given them. Those who argue against the mere idea of this being a religious conflict are, in effect, saying it is inconceivable for people to believe in what religion says, in what the scriptures promise and in the overall seriosity of religion in human beings’ lives. Here is, again, the fallacy of assuming one’s way of thinking is everyone’s way of thinking. Joe Secular Public in the United Kingdom believes in the pursuit of personal happiness on this earth, but his neighbor Youssuf may well be a believer in a collective goal, in a grandiose vision of empire in this world (the Caliphate) and eternal pleasure beyond it, pleasure for which he could fearlessly blow himself up in the midst of non-Muslim Britons (G-d forbid).

I return to my neck of the woods with the second answer: the enemies of Israel, even the non-religious ones, have no problem using religious language against Israel. I might summarize, in advance, that the call for Jews to avoid making the religious claim for the Land of Israel is a call for participation in an asymmetric war of minds, just as we are ever called to participate in asymmetric warfare on the battlefield of flesh and blood. Our enemies, and here I am talking not just about the Muslims (who can be expected of such behavior—see above) but also about the Leftists (who claim to stand for secularism and “realism”), have no trouble using religious language when holding Israel to a different standard than all other nations criticizing Israel’s policies: they speak of Israel’s “original sin” of driving the “Palestinians” away from the land in 1947–9, for which, they hold, Israel should pay through the nose, preferably by shedding off its Jewish character as satisfactory atonement; they say Israel should make all the peace initiatives and concessions because it’s the “light unto the nations”; they have no trouble using the Biblical story of David and Goliath, turned on its head, against Israel; and they have no qualms about recruiting “Jewish ethics” in the service of demanding that Israel turn the other cheek, even quoting the most fanatical and unprogressive of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects for that purpose.

Religion is the opium of the masses. Except when it advances the Progressive cause. Exchange from Daily Kos, from June 22, 2007.

Like the now worn-out, “Criticism of Israel isn’t anti-Semitism!”, which is there for disarming us while they freely heap their vilest abuse on Israel and Zionism, the Leftists’ brushing off of our religious claims as “insane, irrational fanaticism” while they indulge in a way of thinking having roots in the Middle Ages is unacceptable, as it is an invitation to an unfair fight. Not even the Taliban would kill an illegitimate baby (they would kill the mother, without doubt, but not the baby), but the Leftists top the Taliban in calling for, or at the very least voicing sympathy with the idea of, the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state (G-d forbid) because of its “illegitimate birth” by virtue of the partial expulsion of the “Palestinians” in 1947–9.

One cannot be more Catholic than the Pope, and we cannot be expected to avoid religious arguments when our ostensibly secular adversaries do not do so.

Now for the issue of debatability, the contention that religious is a show-stopper as far as intellectual debate goes. I hold that religion is no more undebatable than the bloody secular ideologies from the 18th century onward. Those ideologies have made wild, unverifiable, irresponsible claims from their inception, usually with disastrous results—the same charges that are leveled against religious ideologies. To those who argue that all debates between the various religionists, or between theists and atheists, have invariably reached an impasse sooner or later, I say: I agree, but the same is true for the secular ideologies of the last few centuries! Or has the debate between Capitalism and Communism—to name just one example—been sealed with a conclusive verdict? Not as far as I know. There are still Communists nowadays, after nearly a century of colossal failure and more than 100,000,000 dead by its hand. There are still even Nazis in our day! Those ideologies are no more amenable to a conclusive verdict than are religions, and in that, both contrast with science, meaning the hard sciences, that which is capable of sealing the case for heliocentrism over geocentrism, or of banishing theories such as phlogiston and the humors to the dustbin of historical curiosity.

Ideas such as Nazism’s “Thousand Year Reich”, Communism’s “New Man” and “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, Primitivism’s “Return to Pre-Industrial Eden” and Humanism’s “Basic Good of Humanity” are no more rational, arguable, debatable, verifiable and refutable than ideas spawned by religion; if they can be stood in the arena of intellectual debate, then so can religion, and if religion cannot, then neither can those secular ideologies. Those ideologies can be made palatable and convincing to many people by coating them with sophisticated language, making them sound like the best thing since sliced bread, but then so can any religious ideology, at the hands of an Angelic Doctor or a capable apologist like William Lane Craig. Post-1648 Europe arose from the shock of the Thirty Year War (between Catholics and Protestants), realizing the capacity for bloodshed, only to subsequently fall for equally unverifiable ideologies born of the Enlightenment, with results more catastrophic than before.

There is no escape. People either stand for something or fall for everything. A conclusive verdict is usually available in the hard sciences, but alas, these have no bearing on how humans relate to each other. Human relations are necessarily outside the bounds of conclusivity, therefore fraught with the risk of faith. Replacing religious faith with faith in a secular ideology will do no good.

Building on this, I can easily make the argument that separation of religion and politics is a situation that does not exist in pure form in the real world. Unless religion (or secular ideology, as I said) is a totally personal affair, involving no more than one person, an element of politics will always enter the fray. Even, say, a Christian pastor who conscientiously avoids talking about world or state politics must engage in political activity, however local, in that he is called to maintain the harmony between the members of his flock. The involvement of religion in the real world requires attention to resources both human and material, thus leading to the multitude of situations which humans are used to in politics.

On a less mundane level, the line between religious and political ideology is more often than not a blurry one, not only on the side of religion (religion going into politics, which is what secularists routinely decry), but also on the opposite side (politics going into religion, which secularists are usually oblivious to). As I said before, Islam is a deeply political religion while Marxism is a deeply religious political theory. Environmentalism (as distinct from caring for the environment) and Radical Feminism (as distinct from standing up for women’s rights, also known as first-wave feminism) are so-called secular ideologies which in fact have a profoundly religious core, complete with theories of origins, explanations of what went wrong and how to fix it, and a vision of the Last Days. And in another great irony, the Religious Left is the most politicized, because, by having shorn religion of all its otherworldly tenets (i.e. the supernatural), adherents of the Religious Left have nothing to concern themselves with except politics (“Social Gospel”, “Tikkun Olam” et cetera).

In summary, separation between religion and politics is a Platonic ideal, a construct to which humans can draw near but never reach. Again, as in the previous point, relinquishing religion for secular ideologies such as Communism or Humanism provides no refuge, for they suffer from the same problem in the opposite direction—tainted by elements of religion, elements which the secularists themselves denounce as “intellectual show-stoppers”.

I return to the Jewish question. Though Zionism began as a nationalistic movement along the lines of all the rest of them of the 19th century, advanced at first mainly by secular Jews who were of the opinion religion was on the way out, it was inseparable from religion even in its first days. The fact is, Zionism, down to its very name, does not make sense apart from religion. For although both Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory came to see the need of Zionism out of the hopeless existence of Jews in Europe then, the insistence on the Land of Israel as the Jewish homeland cannot be separated from over three millennia of religious Jewish promises, claims and wistful prayers. Had the goal been nothing but the ameliorating of the Jews’ everyday situation, any empty land could have sufficed; but when Herzl suggested Uganda, not as permanent abode but as temporary shelter for the Jews, he was greeted by the sight of members of the Zionist Congress walking out of the room.

All the nationalistic movements of the time made pragmatic sense. Not so Zionism: to try to inhabit such a desolate land as the Land of Israel in the 19th century, as so aptly described by Mark Twain, instead of, say, allocating the resources to the more hopeful project of setting up colonies in Argentina, was truly insane, from the pragmatic point of view. But though the Secular Zionists left the religious Jewish way of life, they knew what anyone with Jewish upbringing knew: that for a Jew there is no land that he can call home except for the Land of Israel. Not Germany, not Uganda, not Birobidjan, not Argentina—the Land of Israel and none other. As for secular Jews being insistent on such a religious point, it may seem surprising, yet just 40 years ago the world could see secular Jewish soldiers crying upon retaking the Western Wall.

British TreasonMedia rag The Guardian recently had an article by Khaled Diab, “The other right of return, in which he proposed “balancing” the “Palestinian Right of Return” by granting Jews expelled 60 years ago from Arab countries the right to return to those countries. This is not a new argument: I first encountered it on Daily Kos, and subsequently addressed it. The argument is somewhat respectful to us Jews, in that it states that we can be called an indigenous people of some place rather than rootless cosmopolitans who are destined to wander; yet it ignores the basic Zionism of the Jewish religion entirely. A religious Jew living in Marrakesh or Frankfurt could trace his ancestry of 1,000 years of living on those same spots, but he could never consider himself an indigenous inhabitant of that area because of that. The current argument for indigenous rights, enthusiastically espoused by the Leftists, is counter to the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel, for it takes account of the mere length of inhabitation while ignoring what the Torah says. Thus it is possible for clueless Muslims and Leftists to demand Jews evacuate parts of the Land of Israel “because they are stealing it from its indigenous people”, and to offer a “Right of Return” to the Diaspora as compensation, “because that had been the Jews’ home for centuries”.

It is necessary to bring the religious claim for Zionism, because the secular arguments are easily turned against us. The “indigenous peoples” argument is being used against us now, just as it could easily have been used against us back at the first time when we took the Land of Israel, in the days of Joshua (peace be upon him). Except for the Three Patriarchs, there had been no Jewish history on the Land of Israel when our forefathers crossed the Jordan. Those seven nations, the Canaanites, Girgashites and the rest, were by all accounts the indigenous peoples of the land. G-d said: take the land, driving away all those indigenous peoples with their “rich cultural heritage” of sacrificing their children to Baal and Moloch, and divide it among yourselves after that. Now when the modern movement of Zionism started in the late 19th century, such was not the case—again, Mark Twain’s descriptions are the most damning toward those who speak of “a teeming Palestinian nation, whose peaceful existence was disrupted by the coming of the Zionist invaders”—yet there is no difference in the force of the religious claim: although neither Jews nor non-Jews could be considered the indigenous peoples of the Land of Israel today, for there has been no national continuity on it ever since its dwindling in Byzantine times, the land belongs to the Jews by virtue of G-d’s promise.

For the Israelites in Joshua’s time, the belief in G-d’s promise was what enabled them to surmount the obstacle of there already being nations on the land. For the Zionists of the late 19th century onward, the imprint of Jewish education, of which G-d’s promise are an inseparable part, was what enabled them to surmount the obstacle of the depressing desolation of the land. In both cases, the insistence of the Jewish nation on this land and none other can only make sense in the framework of the religious claim. All other types of claim would not lead to the Land of Israel, but to places like Uganda or the centuries-old towns of the Diaspora. Therefore, the call to leave religion out of Zionism, out of the movement for the return of Jews to the Land of Zion (Jerusalem), is the most irrational and unacceptable that could ever be made.

I mentioned how international law was being paraded by the enemies of Israel against us. But international law, in its current form, is a problem not just for Zionist Jews—it is the scourge of the entire non-Muslim world. In this area, religion gains more relevance than ever, for religion is a higher authority that is needed for countering the corruption of law in our age. It is through their adherence to their own religious law rather than to international law that the Muslims are able to chip away at non-Muslim states and societies everywhere, and it is only through jettisoning of the present-day corrupt international law in favor of some other system, some higher authority, that any non-Muslim state and society could have hope of repulsing this threat.

International law, or Politically Correct law, or Moonbat Law, or whatever name you wish to give to this so-called system of law that is really nothing more than the codification of the breakdown of law in our age, is dragging us along into a state of perpetual asymmetric warfare with the Muslims. When people think of asymmetric warfare, they often—especially if they are Progressives—raise the romantic picture of a band of threadbare, scantily-armed guerrillas standing stubbornly against a massive army featuring the latest in heavy weaponry. It is clear which is the underdog that should be rooted for. But surface appearances apart, it is the other side, our side, especially our civilian front, our women and children, who are at a disadvantage, and are the underdog that should be rooted for.

The Islamic enemy is subject to the Law of Jihad, not to the Geneva Rules of Engagement or any derivative of them; they can do whatever they wish, including hide behind their own women and children, or better (worse), send their women and children as combatants. Modern-day international law regarding warfare is based on the assumption of a distinction between civilians and combatants. Though guerrilla warfare has always blurred this line to some degree or other, the rules of engagement are still workable. But the Islamic jihadists are engaging in an altogether new kind of warfare, one in which the line between civilians and combatants is not just blurred, but erased. This has had the effect of bringing powerful Western armies to their knees, without need—many a potentially successful operation against the Taliban was called off for fear of hitting civilians.

Steven Plaut (HaShem bless him) brings the account of how the Allied forces brought down the Nazi insurgency in the aftermath of World War II. It is amazing to read that article, especially considering that the Allies had the constraint of keeping the German population in place (we of today have no such constraint—we are not obliged to keep the Muslims in any of our countries). On the other hand, they did not have to contend with international resolutions and condemnations, for the UN was just hatching. Now, with the whole corrupt system in place, terrorists can strike with no inhibitions (I am reminded of General Alcazar’s line to Tintin in Tintin and the Picaros: “See? None of your fancy scruples here.”), whereas, should a non-Muslim state, especially a Western state, be so careless as to make the beginning of a right move, condemnations of “the heavy-handed attempt to maintain colonial rule against the indigenous people” would come swiftly.

International law is the staple of Leftist motions against Western self-defense, whether it be against illegal immigrants smuggling through the border or against Islamic imperialists turning more and more tracts of land into Dar Al-Islam. The International Court of Hague is invoked by them like a deity against anyone who proposes a no-nonsense, realistic solution, such as mass expulsion of the irredentists, as was done to the Sudeten Germans (again an example from right after World War II—the veterans of that war had no time for games). One would think of those institutions as paper tigers, and yet world leaders really fear them, and really abstain from sane actions because of that fear. Their authority is sacrosanct, and he who scoffs at them is labeled, “warmonger”, “neo-colonialist”, “racist” and worse. All while the Islamic imperialists scoff at them with impunity.

I do not know about other nations, but we Jews must abandon our suicidal adherence to international law, specifically Rules of Engagement based on it, both because our situation is critical—physically threatened, and not just culturally as are most other non-Muslim states—and because the Torah offers a complete, comprehensive and adequate basis for warfare against such an enemy as we are confronted with. In one of those fickle turns of history, modern warfare is severely hampered by the existence of combatants who wage war according to 7th-century precepts, therefore the only way for us to win is to fight with the precepts of the Torah, which does not suffer from the snobbish belief that, just because one part of humanity has left the old ways of warfare, all of humanity has done the same.

To conclude the post: the other side is the one that has “brought religion into it”, or, to be more accurate, never left religion in the first place; the erroneous thought that the whole world has been secularized and pragmatized is behind the softening of the whole non-Muslim world today, both politically and militarily. Only a recognition of the nature of this war, followed by the abandonment of Rules of Engagement that foster asymmetric warfare to the enemy’s advantage, can bring the end of this long and drawn-out conflict. HaShem be in our help.

Racist Inheritance vs. Written Inheritance

No, I have not retreated to living under a rock for the past weeks. I’ve been reading LGF, Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch and the rest on the one hand, and Daily Kos, CounterPunch and Common Dreams on the other, just as before; but whereas previously the reading of the enemy’s writings would provoke some anger in me and then a lengthy refutation, nowadays I find they provoke only rage. The Daily Kos diaries, the CounterPunch screeds, all make my blood boil, boil at the injustice of obsessively criticizing the one state that is not deserving of such criticisms, and when I try to write something (as I did twice the last period), I am consumed by rage, and the result is a cursefest which is a far cry from the intellectually argued posts thus far.

I decided to wait until some opportunity knocked, until there emerged a new (or more accurately “relatively unexplored”) argument to address or to make. Such a one has finally come now. The rage is still there, and I don’t think I’ll be able to completely exclude it from the post, but the new material is a good starting point for a post that less reflects the fury I feel.

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The Dune series of science fiction books by Frank Herbert has again provided me with food for thought. It is not the particular events but the mere concept of the series that has fascinated me from the start, and filled me with great admiration from the writer. I like to contrast Dune with its contemporary 2001: A Space Odissey, by Arthur Clarke (novel) and Stanley Kubrick (film version, with which most are familiar). To my mind, 2001 strikes me as a cheap, common exercise in extrapolation much like Back To The Future II, while the setting of Dune is derived from the sane, rational view that human nature isn’t, barring miraculous intervention, likely to change, not soon, and not in 10,000 years either.

I wish to engage in literary analysis and comparison first.

2001 tries to depict life, politics and technology in that year, and flunks on all three counts: it assumes off-world colonization; it assumes the existence of the Soviet Union; and it assumes the success of Artificial Intelligence. In all three fields, the error is that of extrapolation, born of the belief in inevitable progress.

“One small step for me, and a giant leap for mankind”, said Neil Armstrong when he set foot on the moon. But was it really a giant leap for mankind? I think not. That event in 1969 may be a memorable one for those who lived to experience it, but it soon enough entered the domain of trivia. “1st century CE: Roman Emperor Caligula makes his horse a senator”, “11th century: King Canute stands before the tide in an attempt to end the flattery of his courtiers”, “1969: Neil Armstrong is the first human to set foot on the moon”. Nice to know, but in the real world, nothing changed: humans are still humans, despite all the vain (not to mention bloody) endeavors of the Progressives to engineer them into something new. The drive toward space exploration today is at an all-time low, there being much more pressing concerns here on earth, and no Soviet Union to spur the United States of America into a Space Race.

The Soviet Union. Before 1991, we were all sure it had a long, long time to stay. Sure, in the 1980’s we could see the Eastern Bloc collapse state after state, but the assumption still was that this was only a respite on the part of the USSR to gain momentum, and then the repeats of 1956 Hungary and 1968 Czechoslovakia would follow. The demise of Soviet Russia was a shock to all in 1991 (although, it is often said today that Russia under Putin is the successor of what was before, just not Communist in name).

Clarke and Kubrick assumed the existence of the Soviet Union in 2001 and were wrong. As a perfect match to that failed prediction, they failed to foresee 2001 as the year in which the opening shot for the continuation of the 1,400 year long war between Islam and the non-Muslim world would be fired. A year in which man is supposed to have already colonized the moon, and you suggest it would be remembered as the year in which religious believers would fly passenger planes into office buildings?! How medieval of you! But that’s what happened in fact, and the fallacy of historical scorn (or, in the words of C S Lewis, “chronological snobbery”) is the pitfall where 2001 fell while Dune masterfully circled around it.

Lastly, the error of extrapolation is to be found in technology: the famed HAL, the computer programmed to have human-like intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is a dream dating from the early days of computing, from the 1950’s, when computers were still vacuum-tubed monsters filling whole rooms. It has inspired a load of movies on the theme of the slave that rebels against his master and ousts him, such as The Matrix and Terminator series, to name a few. The best and brightest minds devoted themselves to the pursuit of AI, of making computers exhibit human-like intelligence. Even dedicated programming languages (such as LISP) were invented for that purpose.

Until John Searle’s seminal article of 1980, the assumption had always been the inadequacy of hardware; AI is not succeeding, said its proponents, because our sights are still much too high for the hardware we have in possession. They trusted, then, in Moore’s law (processor power doubling every 18 months, with slight modifications to the rule for other types of hardware) to provide them with the hardware needed to surmount the challenges of AI. As we can see, we now have, on each of our desktops, hardware that makes the original Cray I comparable to the Apple II, and the hardware in possession of research faculties is staggering in computing power. Yet we are no closer to the realization of AI than we were in the 1960’s. How can that be?

Searle’s article, the Chinese Room article, suggests rethinking the problem: it is not hardware but a systemic limitation that prevents HAL from becoming a reality. He framed it as a parable: a man in a room, with the most explicit and detailed instructions for translating Chinese into English; he receives Chinese text from one opening, translates it according to the rules, and then hands out the translation from the other opening. As far as the result seems, the customers of Chinese–English translations think he knows Chinese, English and the art of translation perfectly; in reality, the man does nothing but follow rules, and he knowns no more Chinese than a donkey can evaluate the cholesterol quotient of fruit soup. Computers execute instructions, and nothing more; even the most elaborate “neural networks” have no intelligence, no self-awareness, none of that which separates man from machine, no matter how much the hardware is improved. One could be satisfied with inserting a few coins into a vending machine and getting the desired drink, but if said vending machine neglects to give him the change (at best), then he could not do what he would do with a human vendor—discuss the matter.

Deep insights though 2001: A Space Odissey may contain (personally, I think it’s the most boring movie I ever saw), its predictions were consistent flops, of the type of the early technological “visionaries” who predicted that, in the year 2000, computers would no longer weigh hundreds of tonnes and occupy twenty rooms, but instead would weigh just one tonne and occupy just two rooms. Extrapolation is the visionary’s prime pitfall, and 2001 is one of the best examples of that. In contrast, Dune is amazing in its sanity—in its carefulness not to extrapolate, in its assumption that human nature is not easily changed, if at all, and in its view of history as tilts of the pendulum.

The late Frank Herbert assumed space colonization (but that’s OK when you project 10,000 years forward), yet his view of humanity is something “retrograde”: the Imperium is nothing but the medieval Holy Roman Empire updated to a Space Age setting, with feudal lords owning planets as fiefs, a Spacing Guild monopolizing space travel (Venice and Genoa), an all-valuable spice growing on one planet only (comparable to the nutmeg and cloves of Indonesia), troubadours, pervasive religion, and so many more of that which springs to mind when we think about the Middle Ages, the Age of Feudalism, the Age of Faith.

The “Progressives”, from the 18th century freethinkers to the Dawkinses and Harrises of this day, have constantly predicted the demise of religion. Herbert gives their view some room in his series, as “the agnostic Guild members”, who view all religion as a plot to keep the public docile (the Royal Lie Theory of religion, itself an example of unwarranted extrapolation; for it is one thing to point out clergymen fleecing their flock, which no one would deny, but quite another to assume religion was invented for that very purpose), but he places them in the framework of a universe that is mostly religious. Not for Herbert was this “Progressive” idea that religion would die out; he was far too perceptive of human nature to assume that the advances of science and technology could be humanity’s promised Messiah. His view, I hold, is the most rational: I see nothing reasonable in the thought that stone-cold, dry-fact science and technology could address timeless human concerns. Far from disrespecting science and technology, I think this view is the most respectful, for it does not (as does the “Progressive” view) make an idol out of them.

And now, finally, after this literary excursus, I come to the point, to what is more directly related to this blog: the narrator’s religious worldview in Dune.

The various religious worldviews in Dune, including the agnostic (“Royal Lie”) one, are all narrated. But there is, of course, the storyline itself, not attributed to the mind of a character, but belonging to the narrator, at least in that particular story. What religious worldview encloses all the others in the Dune series?

It may be tempting to answer, “None”. Seeing the admirable impartiality of Frank Herbert, his descriptiveness in telling us of the multitude of religious beliefs and unbeliefs throughout the Dune series, it would be tempting to regard him as having been totally detached, empty of thoughts of his own, absolutely neutral. But such a thing is an impossibility.

We are alive and we have minds of our own, therefore we have opinions of our own, however much we try to deny it. I do not believe in such a thing as being “unbiased”; there is always some bias (and therefore my complaint with the Leftstream Media isn’t that they’re biased, but that they have the wrong bias). Far too many times have I seen an “analysis of the Bible from the unbiased, detached, scientific point of view” that is actually biased toward explaining away all the supernatural events in any way possible. To call such an “unbiased opinion” is fraud! Be honest and say your analysis is from an anti-supernaturalist, atheistic point of view, for that is the truth; analyzing the Bible from the atheistic point of view is no more unbiased than doing so from the Islamic point of view. I give Frank Herbert full credit for objectivity in depicting all the religious worldviews of Dune; for neutrality, however, nothing, because it is an impossibility. He definitely did write the narrative of Dune from a religious worldview in its own right. What was that view, in my opinion?

The short version: I think Dune is written from the worldview of paganism. The longer version: I deduce this not from occasional expressions like “gods below”, which are narrated expressions (i.e. uttered by the characters), and anyhow are beset by monotheistic expressions (you can find “Allahu Akbar” in Children of Dune). I deduce this from the narrator’s overarching emphasis on genetic memory.

In truth, I tell you I have found next to nothing that is purely spiritual in the narrative of Dune. That which we can call spiritual experiences, such as visions and prophecies, are strongly anchored to the matter-based, blood-based narrative, a narrative that puts genetic memory at the center. Though the author contrasts between the common, ignorant people, who know nothing beyond the timebound dream following “birth-shock”, and the special, enlightened few who can recall the memories of their ancestors from within their blood, tracing their past to ancestry in Terra 10,000 years back, the difference is not a qualitative one. The former just aren’t “developed” enough; if they were, their “spiritual experiences” would still be derived from the material basis of genetics. That is paganism.

People think paganism is about polytheism, idolatry, nature worship and material sacrifices. That is true, but those are surface manifestations, while there are other, less-known, characteristics lying below the seen and familiar layers. The belief in genetic memory is one of the most pervasive of these: pagan peoples from all over the world have held that a storehouse of memories, from the present to the beginning of the nation, is available in one’s blood. Much of pagan ritual and mysticism is devoted to finding ways to extract those secrets from one’s blood: vision quests, blood-letting, dream catching and necromancy.

I have often wondered about the Torah’s prohibition of talking with the spirits of the dead (King Saul’s last sin). In most cases the explanation has been, “It was a pagan-like practice”. But the animal sacrifices of the Temple could also be said to resemble (repeat: resemble; far be it from me to compare G-d’s holy ordinances to pagan filth) the practices of the idolators, therefore that explanation can at best be a partial one. I think the prohibition of necromancy is not (merely) out of guarding G-d’s people from imitating the ways of the pagans, but is one of the most potent laws given unto them in order to break any spirit of paganism in them. All methods of gaining spiritual knowledge by tapping into the genetic storehouse are a direct affront to G-d’s concept of memory and inheritance.

It is written, “Moses has bequeathed us Law, an inheritance to the community of Jacob”. Gone, gone away is the pagan idea of maintaining the heritage of the nation by shamanically consulting the deceased ancestors; to Israel, the guarantor of the future is the copying of the text and passing it to the children. The importance of writing has been given its highest boost under Judaism—wherever there is the danger of forgetting, things must be written down. Thus, the Oral Law, given to Moses at Sinai as the key to the correct interpretation of the Written Law, was passed down from person to person until the decline of education in Judea under the Romans prompted its writing down (as the Mishnah). Nikkud (points indicating the vowel-sounds) and cantillation marks were added to guard against reading errors (though the Torah Scrolls do not have them, for they are but reading aids). The development of Jewish Law, from the Talmud to the modern-day responsa, has been codified in its entirety. With few exceptions (mostly concerning the services at the Temple; HaShem will fill those gaps when He builds the Temple again, speedily in our days, amen), there are no missing pieces in Jewish religion. Thus, it is not an excuse for a Jew to say, “I wasn’t brought up on the religion, so I can’t practice it”—zil g’mor, said Rabbi Hillel, “Go and study”, for it is all written down, waiting for you as an inheritance.

In contrast, the pagans seldom wrote down their religions, and then only in fragments, certainly not enough for their recovery. Why should they have written their religions down, when they believed that, even if something were lost, it could be regained through connecting to the blood-based library of the Volk? Yet it is not so—it is not factually so. Irish-Americans have had little success in gleaning the religion of their ancestors through necromantic methods, instead having to rely mainly on the writings of that indisputably biased enemy of the Celts, Julius Caesar. Those of Teutonic heritage are more fortunate: they have the Eddas and Sagas to read, recorded by Christian Norseman Snorri Sturlusson in the 13th century. But aside from the fact that even those corpuses are not sufficient in order to restore the religion dumped by Harald Bluetooth, have you noticed that this preservation is by a mode that is not pagan but Biblical? Whatever happened to the usefulness of tapping into the secrets within the coiled coil, Teutonic, Celtic or otherwise? What’s with this… this Biblical reliance on the written word to secure memory? G-d always wins.

Paganism has always been racist to the core. That is evident, because the exclusion of person X from the secrets of nation Y on the grounds of ancestry cannot be called anything other than racism. The mere concept of blood-based or genetic memory is racist without any possibility of dispute. It is therefore the height of irony to see those “anti-racist” Leftists (oh, another example of Leftist hypocrisy! So what else is new?) express such an admiration for paganism, for “pre-Biblical religion”, many of them even being members in the movement to revive those religions (again: in the Sturlusson way rather than in the Witch of En-Dor’s way). They wholeheartedly buy into the racist narrative of Dune that people have not just a material (lands, water etc.) heritage but also a spiritual one by virtue of their blood.

And those same “anti-racists” embrace the Khazaria Hypothesis. I have never ceased to wonder at that: why is it that, the more a person veers to anti-Zionism, the greater his likelihood to give credence to the Khazaria Hypothesis? What does this hypothesis serve? After all, more than 50% of the Jews of Israel are admitted, even by the Muslim enemy, to be of “original Semitic stock”, meaning that more than half of Israeli Jews have a racially legitimate claim on the Land of Israel. But apart from that, as you can see from the previous emphasized phrase, the Khazaria Hypothesis is a racist argument, racist to the core, with no redeeming feature, with no way to excuse it.

I leave the refutation of the Khazaria Hypothesis to others, more competent than me at that field. But I wish to engage in a thought-experiment, assuming that the Khazaria Hypothesis is true. Let us say that the majority of Zionist settlers from 1880 to 1950 were descendants of Khazars. That was 70 years of settling on an almost desolate land and setting up a state against all odds. So many points at which the whole endeavor could have died out: from the catastrophe of malaria in the late 19th and early 20th century, to the attack of five Arab armies in 1948. So many points at which G-d could have pulled the plug on those Khazars’ grandiose project. Yet He did not.

Again assuming the truth of the Khazaria Hypothesis, the meaning of this is that, contrary to those hell-deserving hypocrites who condemn Jewish nationalism (Zionism) as racism, HaShem decided to accept the descendants of the Khazars as an integral part of His Chosen People. This is an anti-racist as you could possibly get! The Khazaria Hypothesis, then, if true, swings back to bite the anti-Zionist racists in their gluteus maximus. As Steven Plaut (HaShem bless him) said: the whole argument falls on the fact that Judaism is not based on race, blood, genetics and any such thing. Contrary, I add, to the paganism that many of those anarcho-primitivists on the Left so idolize.

Now the “Palestinians” have emerged as a nation from scratch, and the fiction has been maintained in order to usurp the Jews’ claim to the Land of Israel, a claim that is not based on the Holocaust, nor on having made the desert bloom, nor even on its being the land of our ancestors (for, as I said, that’s a pagan sort of justification), but on G-d’s decree, in His Torah. The “Palestinians” have no real way to stake that claim, for they lack any essential difference between their brothers in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria. If they take the Arab narrative, then they can trace themselves to 638 CE, after which their land was designated as only a part of the Province of Syria. If they try to claim themselves the descendants of pre-Israelite inhabitants, supposedly predating Joshua (that great destroyer of pagan idolatry, the man who wrote the Aleinu sealing every Jewish prayer), then they slide into paganism, with all the racism that it entails.

The “Palestinians”, when marshaling their claims to a secular (read: Western Leftist) audience, cite ancestral continuity as the linchpin of their claim to the land. They wind that time machine in ever-growing circles: the idea that each “Palestinian” child is a living embodiment of his grandfather expelled from the land 60 years ago, such that this is the only case in the world of the status of “refugee” transmitted across generations, is just the appetizer. The list of ancestral “Palestinian” grievances has only widened, diving deeper into history: they are the Arabs wronged by Western colonialism from Napoleon’s time; they are the common folk of Roman and Byzantine times demanding national recognition after all these years (how convenient for them to have remembered it just when the Jews had arrived); and finally, they are the Canaanites and other people of the seven “First Nations” that Joshua drove away more than 3,000 years ago. What a feat of historical revisionism and ancestral grievance-mongering we have here!

And for that purpose, everything is kosher. Their embrace of the Khazaria Hypothesis is one of the blatant examples, but their narrative that “Zionism is a European, White Settler Colonialist enterprise” is the overarching one. Comparisons to Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa naturally follow, but they all stem from that racist root, however much that root may masquerade as “anti-racism”: the idea that Whitey has no right to live in either the Orient or the New World. The mirror image of Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”. Racism cannot be anything other than white, they hold, and colonialism cannot be call such when perpetrated by Muslims in Europe or Mexican illegals on the US border. It could be called “reverse racism”, but that would be part of the problem, because it assumes white anti-black (or anti-brown) racism is the norm; no, it’s racism, just racism, even if it’s the brown or black anti-white kind.

The United Nations has spared no efforts in declaring the rights of indigenous peoples, their rights to both material resources and spiritual ones (language, culture, religion). This is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but this is now, more often than not, used as a club by the “reverse”-racist grievance-mongers. Indigenism may at this stage be nothing but an excuse for “reparations” from the “rich white states”, but it has the potential to be the platform for a vengeful return of the dark world of blood-based preferences, all couched in the Orwellian language of “diversity” and “multiculturalism”, of course.

The future of mankind is in G-d’s Law, His Word that will go forth from Zion—from Jerusalem. The alternative, that of human-authored revenge for past genetic wrongs, cried out from the human-built structures in both New York (the UN building) and Mecca (the Kaaba), can spell nothing but a bloodbath that will make the last Volk War (a.k.a. World War II) look like a prick of the pin in comparison.

“And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed”, said G-d to Abraham (Genesis 12:3): neither a One World melting-pot, nor a ranking of the nations of the world into higher classes and lower classes. Written inheritance, the one and only antidote to racism.