The Politically Incorrect Issue of Israel

The one issue in which it is too politically incorrect to challenge the status quo, the myths, the assumptions or the majority opinion, is on the state of Israel. We cannot challenge America’s “special relationship” with Israel, which is based more on statism and collectivism than on Judaism or securing a “safe haven for Jews.” If one challenges or questions, one is considered “anti-Semitic” or “anti-Jewish.” Well, I happen to be Jewish, and I do not like it when people of my religion are used by politicians for the sake of getting votes to win elections, for the sake of Christian Zionists’ realizing Biblical stories or for the needs of European-Anglo politicians to enlarge their powers.

Historically, many of the early Jewish Zionists, such as Theodor Herzl, were not particularly religious but were concerned with finding a territory for Jewish settlement. Herzl preferred the land of Palestine but was willing to settle for other territories. Herzl and his followers were not as concerned with needing to realize Biblical scriptures as they were with finding a “safe” territory for Jews, so, for them, the new territory for Jews did not have to be Palestine.

However, it was the more extremist Jewish Zionists who, as Murray Rothbard noted, would settle for Palestine and only Palestine as the new Jewish territory, particularly those among the Zionist Congress, later known as the World Zionist Organization. For the extremists, it had to be Palestine and only Palestine, and for reasons solely based on Biblical Scripture and no other reason — certainly not based on practicality. After all, how could a tiny territory in the Middle East, right in the middle of lands inhabited by millions and millions of Muslims and Arabs, possibly be a “safe haven for Jews”? (Of course, it is not politically correct for someone to point that out.)

But it wasn’t as much the extremist Jewish Zionists and their insistence on Palestine and only Palestine to be the “safe haven for Jews” that led to the creation of the current state of Israel in 1947-48. In my view — and this is key — it was the Christian Zionists and their wanting to realize Biblical scriptures, and, even more important, the secular political imperialists of the British empire and the U.S. government and other governments who used the Jews and the Jewish Zionists, and took advantage of the Jews’ despair and suffering from the 19th Century pogroms to the Nazi atrocities, and for the sake of creating a new Western, European political structure in the heart of the Middle East, and for the sake of political power and control, and for oil.

It is that kind of imperialist, political manipulating of vulnerable segments of the world’s population that I believe was the main agenda that launched the creation of the current state of Israel. That can be compared to how politicians here in the U.S. take advantage of people in other kinds of vulnerable situations, such as the unemployed, the poor and lower economic class, the elderly and retired persons, and use their vulnerability to get their votes. The use of compulsory territorial government and political power over people and their homes and property by the unscrupulous has been around throughout history.

The current state of Israel was not founded on principles of voluntary association and contract or voluntary property and title transfer — it was founded based on manipulation and deceit, land grabs (past and present) by the politically powerful, and displacement of indigenous Arabs. It was a conquest, and it didn’t even result in a “safe haven for Jews,” because Jews in Israel are not safe — they are vulnerable.

Another additional aspect of this situation, that today is as heated as it was in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 2000, that I would like to address is Glenn Beck’s recent emphasis on Israel and his belief that the U.S. must continue to protect Israel (as though Israel, with all its military strength including nuclear weapons, can’t protect itself!), and his paranoia of this so-called Islamic “caliphate” that Beck believes we need to be paranoid about along with him. I’ve heard Beck’s radio show this week enough to understand his view, although I didn’t write anything down, so if I’m wrong, then please correct me.

It seems that Beck is concerned that the Islamic extremists are on a crusade to Islamicize the rest of the world, including the U.S., to implement Sharia Law in the U.S., and Beck actually seems concerned that people could actually have the power to do that here in the U.S. I think that, if individuals or groups of people attempted to forcibly push Islamic Sharia Law onto us, don’t you think there are enough people in Congress or state legislatures to oppose such attempts? And, just as the American people are beginning to wake up and rise in opposition to the overreach and intrusions of the statist Obama regime, I think that there are plenty of people who recognize their own First Amendment rights and other basic civil liberties that, if Islamic extremists tried to force their ways into the lives and properties of Americans, there is still the 2nd Amendment.

I think the ones who have been on the crusade is Glenn Beck, with his religious zealotry, at least on his radio show. We need to watch out for these crusaders, who constantly speak of their alleged “Christian values,” and their loyalty to Israel which seems more for Biblical reasons than for the cause of protecting Jews. (The U.S. would have been a safer haven for Jews had there not been statist immigration controls and quotas preventing Jews from coming here.)

The religiously fanatical George W. Bush crusade to “democratize” Iraq and Afghanistan was a crusade of loony-toons statists, collectivists and internationalists (like Beck) who do not believe in principles of liberty, individualism, property rights, voluntary association and voluntary contracts. The Bush crusade to democratize Iraq turned Iraq into a pro-Iranian Sharia Law theocracy. Thanks, Dubya. But when Beck is concerned about the Islamic “caliphate,” and he feels the need to set up meetings in Israel with Benjamin Nutty-Yahoo and others of that violent ilk, and needs to have a “Restoring Courage” event in Israel? I’d like to know how much courage it took the Israeli military to destroy the Gaza Strip’s civilian infrastructure of water and sewage treatment facilities, and then impose a blockade to deliberately prevent the Gazan population from rebuilding that infrastructure, thus forcing them to use (and continuing to this day after over two years!) untreated water. That’s in addition to the other Israeli government water-related abuses harming Palestinians. Of course, it is politically incorrect to point these things out.

UPDATE: Following the above from May 20, I wrote this on the blog on May 27:

Like all politicians, Nutty-Yahoo likes to insert as many lies in his speeches as possible. But doesn’t Helen Geller know how the Arabs in Israel are treated as 2nd-class citizens, and by laws that deliberately discriminate against them? With paranoid Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the Palestinians have no freedom of travel — they are literally locked in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli government. Oh, well. I’m sure that our honorable “Christian” Sarah will look the other way, too.

I can’t believe the ignorance on so many talk shows I hear, too, with callers saying things like, “Palestinians are terrorists,” based on all the propaganda that’s shoveled out of the Israeli government to the Israeli media that is used by the American media. But regarding Israel and with all the anti-Arab propaganda, as a Jew I am disgusted by all this.

William Grigg had this post on the Bible-thumping Israel-Firsters on the radio, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Cut off foreign aid to all the other countries — except Israel. We need to steal wealth from American workers and producers and redistribute it to Israel. That’s “conservative.”

As I wrote here and elsewhere, the main reason that people, especially Christian Zionists, have been so blindly supportive of Israel (and really, the Israeli government can do no wrong!), is to do with the actualizing of Biblical scriptures. That is why, for the whole first half of the 20th Century the Zionists would consider Palestine and only Palestine as the “safe haven” for Jews worldwide. This Biblical irrationality that has caused the Jews of Israel to be in an entirely unsafe territory (and it can only be unsafe, as I have noted) — that Biblical stuff is first and foremost the important factor in all this.

The conservative collectivists such as Beck and Palin who follow the Bible closely seem to really believe in this idea of “the Jews as God’s chosen people,” but to me, in a way that is patronizing to Jewish people, as though to be using Jews to play some role that satisfies the Christian Zionists’ need to play out their Biblical stories. I don’t like being used. And I don’t like collectivists who put a whole group of people into one bunch based on their religious or cultural background.

And also, I find it extraordinary that so many people really believe the stories and assertions of the Bible, and that “God wrote the Bible,” or that men wrote the Bible on God’s behalf. “It’s the word of God.” Well, someone believes that the Bible is THE word of God because the Bible itself says so, and because their parents told them that while they were growing up. And, if the Bible or God says that “the Jews are the chosen people” (as a collective), then does that mean that bad Jews are also “chosen”? Was Bernie Madoff “chosen”? David Berkowitz?

I know, I’m going to be accused of being an “anti-Semite” for writing these honest points and questions. Those who are narrow-minded and who react emotionally to these points without an open mind will accuse me of those things. Let them.

Jason Lewis a few days ago also made some points to some callers, in their discussion on Israel, callers who were constantly bringing up the Bible and scriptures. Lewis noted how so many people have been critical of Islam and of those Islamists who cite the words of the Quran, and that the same can be said about those who constantly cite the words of the Bible. The point is, many people cite their own set of religious documents as though they are or should be the law of the land, and that public policy should be based on those religious documents.

However, if you want to believe in the Bible, that’s your own business. If you want to believe that the Bible is the “word of God,” or that the Quran is the word of God or Allah, that’s your business. It is just as immoral to impose Islamic Sharia Law on others (in violation of their liberty and property) in the name of the Quran as it is immoral to use the armed power of States and militaries to displace the indigenous Arabs of Palestine in the name of the Bible.

The collectivism and statism of political Zionism has used Western governments’ artificial officialdom and compulsory police power to force a “safe haven” for a collective of people based on their religious or cultural background, in a particular territory based solely on Biblical scriptures, at the expense of displacing and oppressing another collective of people — the indigenous Palestinians — which is contrary to the idea of the right of a territory’s indigenous people to self-determination.

Collectivism invites tyrannies of groups over individuals, and makes individuals the property of the collective. This is especially destructive when such actions are carried out by States and their armed power and officialdom that compulsory governments are never morally justified in having in the first place.