The Wandering Who?: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics

by Gilad Atzmon

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Gilad Atzmon: Desperate Dershowitz

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Quotes
The following verse, from Deuteronomy 6:10-12, is a part of an oration made by Moses to his people while on their way to the 'Promised Land':
    'Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you - a land with large, fine cities you did not build, houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant - and you eat your fill, be careful not to forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery.'
    The Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses in the above passage, is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. Yet there are many ways to deal with this negative image of the Almighty. At the literary level, one can argue that the given verses are no more than just three isolated lines in a lengthy text that is well-meaning and offers some fundamental universal thoughts. At the contextual level, it may be suggested that it wasn't actually God speaking to the Chosen People, but Moses himself, who failed to deliver the true divine message - in other words, Moses may have got it wrong, or even made it up. There are many other ways to save the Judaic God and Judaism from being the logos behind contemporary Israeli plunder, but it is not so easy to save the Israelis from being presented as robbers and pillagers.
    Moses, his contemporaries and their current followers were and are excited about the possibilities that awaited them in the Land of Milk and Honey. Israel, the Jewish State, has been following Moses' call. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948, and the constant and total abuse of the Palestinian people since then, makes Deuteronomy 6:10-12 look like a prophecy fulfilled. p.120

'The Catholic theologian Raymund Schwager found 600 passages of explicit violence in the Old Testament, along with 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent punishments and 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill. Violence is one of the most frequently mentioned activities in the Hebrew Bible.'

Moses, his contemporaries and their current followers were and are excited about the possibilities that awaited them in the Land of Milk and Honey. Israel, the Jewish State, has been following Moses' call. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948, and the constant and total abuse of the Palestinian people since then, makes Deuteronomy 6:10-12 look like a prophecy fulfilled.  For more than sixty years, the Biblical call for theft has been put into legal praxis. The Israeli looting of Palestinian cities, homes, fields and wells has found its way into Israel's legal system: by 1950-51, Israeli legislators had already approved the 'Absentee Property Law', a racially-orientated law preventing Palestinians from returning to their lands, cities and villages, and allowing the new Israelites to live in houses and cities they 'did not build'.
    The never-ending theft of Palestine in the name of the Jewish people is part of a spiritual, ideological, cultural and practical continuum between the Bible, Zionist ideology and the State of Israel (along with its overseas supporters). Israel and Zionism, both successful political systems, have instituted the plunder promised by the Hebrew God in the Judaic holy scriptures.

But this continuum goes further than just theft - in reviewing the following Biblical passages, recall the devastating images of Gazans being bombed in a UN shelter at the time of the IDF's Operation Cast Lead (Dec-Jan 2008-2009):
    'You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.' Leviticus, 26:7-8
    'When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ... you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.' Deuteronomy 7:1-2
    'Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them ... as the Lord your God has commanded you ...'---Deuteronomy 20:16

'A nation...is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbours.'--Karl Deutsch.  Sand.....comes to the conclusion that Jewish exile is also a myth, and that the present day Palestinians are far more likely to b the descendants of the ancient Semitic people in Judea/Canaan than the current, predominantly Khazarian-origin, Ashkenazi crowd (p.135).

Zionists rely on burned synagogues...if there were no burned synagogues around, Mossad would go as far as burning some itself (p.43).

'Zionism...is maintained by anti-Semitism.  This may explain why Zionists are so enthusiastic about the growing statistics of anti-Semitic incidents.  Similarly, gay marginal politics is fuelled by homophobia amnd feminism thrives on the male chauvinist (p.33).

the Israelis hate the Arabs, the Zionists hate the Goyim (in general), Jews against Zionism also hate the Goyim but they also hate Israel....But why do they hate so much?  the answer is simple.  Once Judaism is renounced, what remains of Jewish identity is pretty threadbare.  Once stripped of religious spirituality, all that is left of Jewish-ness is a template of negation fuelled by racial orientation and spiced up with some light cultural references such as matza balls and chicken soup (p.55).

it is not the idea of being unethical that torments Israelis and their supporters, but the idea of being 'caught out' as such (p.84).........'the more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they spread around themselves (p.85)