From the Yeast of the Pharisees (Come the Lies & Crimes of Zionism)

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Greg Maybury
pox americana

Preamble: As is often the case, one can’t escape the sense of déjà vu that attends conversations about Israel. Such debate is inevitably accompanied by musings on its kinship with its midwife and chief benefactor the U.S. The events in the Middle East this year alone bring this into sharp relief, with most of America’s political and media classes in that familiar rush for the exits to avoid admonition of Tel Aviv’s actions. Though especially evident since 9/11—an event from which Israel has benefitted far more than any nation and from which it continues to do so—this unholy, toxic ‘alliance’ is the decades-in-the-making basis for everything we’ve recently witnessed, with links to pretty much everything we’re experiencing in the here and now. Whilst such links remain, so do the existential dangers for America and the rest of the world. 

In this first installment in a series of stand-alone articles, drawing upon the work of both Jewish and non-Jewish writers, activists, researchers and historians past and present, Greg Maybury presents a critical, wide-ranging analysis of various facets of the mythos and the reality of Israel, its history, its origins, along with an in-depth probe into Zionism and its origins. This is the still reigning political ideology which drove the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 and which has dictated its national interests since that epochal turning point. It is moreover, one whose tenets are arguably the most portentous, consequential, enduring, yet least understood—by Jews and non-Jews alike—of any of the major political currents in the ‘river of our history’. Time for another visit to the Wailing Wall, albeit one of a different kind!

‘The world of the national imaginary has always taken, for us, the form of a long recital. Legends, great deeds, and the particular myths of tribes, religious communities, and kingdoms were transformed into a long, continuous narrative of imaginary peoples who had supposedly existed since the dawn of time. Misty and fragmentary images served as fictional foundations for a mythological temporal continuum, flowing since the birth of the nation’. — Shlomo Sand, How I stopped being a Jew, 2014.

‘Be careful...watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees...’ — Jesus Christ, giving his disciples a ‘heads up’. Mark 8:15

— In a World of the National Imaginary (Lie the Myths of Tribes and Kingdoms)

In steeling oneself for another excursion into ‘farbotn teritorye’—proffering critical analyses of “the Middle East’s only democracy”—one has to read far and wide, with deep dives into the Memory Hole de rigueur. In the nethermost regions of that fabled repository of lies, sins and crimes of our collective historical narrative, one soon becomes aware that in the area marked “Israel”, it’s standing room only. The dearth of space has though more to do with the amount of information stored there than with the number of folks looking for it at any given time!

Nonetheless, though their reputations may not have ‘stood the test of time’ as a consequence of doing so, many intrepid researchers (Jewish and non-Jewish) have still undertaken that “deep dive”, and we’ll showcase some of these folks during our narrative.

In no particular order of priority, one such individual was Douglas Reed.

For many years the chief European political correspondent for the London Times up until around 1938, Reed then embarked on a career as an independent journalist, author and what we might now call a revisionist historian. In his case, in more ways than one, we might say he went ‘off the reservation’.

In musing on The Controversy of Zion, Reed’s masterful account of the history of the Jews and Judaism from antiquity to the modern era, it’s difficult to think of many books that might so transform one’s thinking about our common history in the West. And at the same time, bring so many recent and current events and developments into sharper context and perspective.

Along with providing us a deep deliberation on the forces which have shaped it, and which, over forty years after its publication, continue to shape it today, Reed’s narrative presents us a wholly new, unsettling—indeed shocking—exposition of the current state of our world and how we reached this point in human affairs.

To the extent my own knowledge and understanding permits, I can’t think of many historical or political observers who so comprehensively, authoritatively, and eloquently bore witness to his times. This realisation becomes all the more profound now with the passage of time. Written between the years 1949-1956 (for reasons which may already be clear to some, it remained unpublished until 1978, about two years after the his death), Reed’s opus chronicling what he calls the “Grand Design”, delivers a prescient, insightful—though by its very subject matter, contentious—account of the current global order and its principal architects, and their unerring ingenuity, their resilience and determination, and expansive influence and reach.

The author depicts unsparingly the machinations and motives of the people who were crucial in bringing said “design” to fruition, and the means by which these aims and ambitions as originally devised were to be achieved. (As we’ll see in a follow up article, attainment of some of these objectives is still a work in progress, an observation that with the application of basic hindsight—and an appropriate presence of mind—may already be clear to the more diligent students of history.)

The following short extract perhaps sets out Reed’s ‘stall’ best; as per the above preamble, it further provides us a near perfect entree for what is to follow, later on in this, and in follow-up pieces.

‘[T]he use of the name "Israel" by the Zionist state created in Palestine [in 1948]...is in the nature of a forgery. Some strong reason must have dictated the use of the name of a people who were not Jews and would have none of the creed which has become Judaism. One tenable theory suggests itself. The Zionist state was set up with the connivance of the great nations of the West, which is also the area of Christendom. The calculation may have been that these peoples would be comforted in their consciences if they could be led to believe...they were fulfilling Biblical prophecy and God's promise to "Israel", at whatever cost in the "destruction" of innocent peoples…

If that was the motive for the misuse of the name "Israel", the expedient may for the time being have been successful; the multitude was ever easily "persuaded". However, truth will out in the long run...If the Zionist state of 1948 could lay claim to any name whatever taken from far antiquity, this could only be "Judah".’

Of all the frauds and forgeries perpetrated in the lead up to—and beyond—Israel’s creation, this is perhaps our first port of call in reaching a deeper understanding of the Zionist Project and its attendant pathologies. Although we’ll explore Reed’s proposition more in future installments, suffice to say the implications of the above alone are astounding.

Further, it is the connexion—or symbiotic relationship—to which Reed draws our attention between the “left”, (ostensibly represented by Communism, Bolshevism or Marxism et. al.), and the Jewish, Zionist, and/or ‘Israelite’ elite castes, along with their Gentile collaborators (all comprising the much-derided billionaire classes, “Great Resetters”, and globalist one-worlders), that mark out his book as unique and at this point in our history, very much au courant.

For those folks in particular who’re still mired in the nominally disparate, yet decidedly tedious, dogmas, mantras and slogans that characterise the left v right political discourse, such statements may not be obvious or for that matter easily explained; they are though as wide and as deep and as real as they are insidious and subversive. The overarching debate over Israel—indeed a key premise upon which this essay is based—is a reflection of my conviction here. When it comes to Israel especially, ‘left and right’ is irrelevant and immaterial.

Moreover, there’s a supreme logic to it all, as those “diligent students” will discover when they imbibe the main thrust of Reed’s ‘book of revelations’. For if his understanding of the history of human affairs is correct, then his exposition of the “Grand Design” is a book which unveils a grand deception therein, on a scale that might leave the Devil himself green with envy if he were not its begetter! For those who don’t believe in the man, then said “deception” may be seen of more temporal origin.

The Unseen Architects (Behind the Grand Design)

After positing that all nations, ‘...are founded on acts of violence, which are then forgotten...’, the French historian and philosopher Ernest Renan further surmised that ‘forgetfulness, and historical error, are essential in [their creation]’.

With the possible exception of its benefactor, patron, and minder, by Renan’s reckoning, few countries would ‘pass muster’ more decisively than Israel. Its very creation was built on terror and violence of the highest order, and its longevity has been sustained by same. That it still does is evident for all but the most myopic of history’s students and partisan of contemporary political pundits.

Yet we might go further and say that with Israel, there’s been more calculation than “error”, though it certainly has made more than its share of the latter. At all events, whether via calculation, miscalculation and/or “errors”, they’ve been much more costly for others than for Israel, perhaps something we might readily surmise the Israelis themselves—and their ‘tribal brethren’ in the broader diaspora—have been both mindful of, and thankful for!

Though doubtless, so many folks aren’t. “Mindful” that is. This includes especially the citizens of America, where the cost to them of the sponsorship of this tiny nation in blood, treasure, geopolitical goodwill, its own national interest, and in moral capital has been immeasurable, perhaps simply incomprehensible for many. The United States in short—and the West generally, including my own country Australia—has picked up the tab for Israel’s bad behaviour! The return for all on the ‘investment’ is at best, dubious; at its worst, ruinous! The well-documented débâcles of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria alone are clear evidence of this. The law of diminishing returns has always been applicable in the US-Israeli relationship. Now ever more so.

And though the aforesaid Renan goes on to say that ‘revealing unwanted truths’ can ‘endanger nationhood’, to the extent that there are such risks involved, then in Israel’s case this may not be such a bad thing. As with individuals thinking rationally before acting, in principle at least there’s nothing like a bit of existential danger—real, not fanciful—to elicit from nations more prudent behaviour in order to avoid any blowback from their great power plays. That’s the theory at least.

In practice of course, for Israel that may be another matter altogether. As former Colin Powell aide-de-camp Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson recently observed, after positing that Israel may not exist within 20 years, because it is ‘delegitimising itself as an apartheid state’, he went further: ‘Israel is a “strategic liability of the first order” for the United States and is ‘the most likely state in the world to take the United States to Armageddon.’ It is safe to say Wilkerson had the aforementioned “débâcles” front of mind when he proffered this analysis.

Now aside from the fact that Israel and its many American friends likely took a dim view of the Colonel’s remarks, the mention of [the] “United States”, “Israel”, and “Armageddon”, in a single mouthful should give us pause for some serious reflection of the existential kind. One only has to bring to mind the infamous Samson Option, as revealed to the world by Seymour Hersh, in a book of the same name.

Others still might take issue only with Wilkerson’s use of the present tense, i.e. “delegitimising”. And even if one is ‘optimistic’ about Israel’s demise short of the advent of the Apocalypse, as its history has brought home to us all, it is quite capable of doing a lot of damage in the interim. In the case of Israel then, the more people know about the ideology which underpins its raison d'être, its origins as a nation, its trajectory since then, and its geopolitical ambition going forward, the better off we all will be. Forewarned is forearmed as the saying goes!

Again I stress, by necessity this should include Israel’s own citizens and their brethren in the diaspora; far too many have chosen to imbibe the reigning political narrative—its mythos—over a starker, less romanticised, more authentic reality. One that is in sync with and simpatico towards the rest of humanity. That is, one in lieu of, and an antidote to, the “national imaginary” so defined by Shlomo Sand in the epigraph. Remaining ignorant of, or sanguine about, the implications of continuing to embrace the “mythos” is no longer an option. For Jews and non-Jews alike. Wilkerson’s observations above should be enough to enlighten us on that score. But he’s not alone, as the rest of this series will try to attest to.

And so it is we proceed with a deeper exploration of some of the above considerations, and maybe take a few steps further beyond. At this point, it is perhaps best to begin by asking exactly what is a Jew? Or more precisely, what does it mean to be one? ‘Defining’ a Muslim or Christian is to be sure, the less daunting task. Answering the former question however is akin to playing ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. To the best of this writer’s knowledge, no-one has ever accurately defined what being Jewish is. For this writer (an unapologetic Gentile), being Jewish has always been at its core about being ‘of a religion’, i.e. Judaism. Though they might forever remain incomplete, my own research undertakings and efforts at arriving at a clearer insight herein haven’t disabused me of this long-held view.

Be that as it may, Adam Weisberger (in discussing the work of Moses Hess), for his part noted that ‘in modernity the Jews again slip through the grasp of Gentile attempts to comprehend them. Are the Jews a race, a nation, or a religion?…modern Gentiles and Jews asked.’ The answer he said, ‘depended upon the interest of who was asking.’ It’s as if being a Jew can mean precisely what anyone—that is, those proclaiming ‘Jewishness’—wants it to mean! If this sounds like a refrain plucked out of Alice in Wonderland, then that’s probably not coincidental! Weisberger is far from being the only one to ponder this Carrollesque conundrum.

— An Exclusive Club of the Elect (Who the Real Jews Are)

In a 2014 newspaper article Shlomo Sand, the dissident Israeli historian, anti-Zionist, and by his own account erstwhile Jew, expressed unambiguous sentiments regarding his purported ethnic identity and why he made the decision to ‘divorce’ himself from the brethren. For the iconoclastic author (another of the tribe’s self-loathing myth-busters), having become he says, ‘painfully aware that I have undergone an adherence to Israel, been assimilated by law into a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters’, and having ‘appeared in the world as one of the exclusive club of the elect...’, it was time, Sand averred, to withdraw from that “club”.

Yet even in the process of resigning his “Jewish” status, here Sand stopped short of defining what a Jew is. Are they defined by ethnicity, or are they some arcane tribal entity the character or essence of which we Gentiles are never likely to grasp, if indeed we’re actually meant to? Are modern day Jews in fact Semitic peoples, with authentic blood or genealogical ties to at least one of the 12 tribes of Israel, themselves the leading drivers of the epic Biblical narrative? Well, yes and no. Some are apparently, some are not! And if not, then what do we make of the whole notion of “anti-Semitism”, and of the epithet, “[you’re an] anti-Semite”?

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of those who proclaim “Jewish” blood, genes or familial heritage today are not—repeat not—of Semitic origin! Here again, grand implications abound given the frequent use of the “anti-Semite” epithet alone, perhaps the most powerful offensive and defensive weapon those purporting to be Jews and/or acting in “real” Jews interests have had at their disposal in constructing their Grand Design. Yet it holds the dubious distinction of being one of the greatest anomalies attendant to the mythos, one that is rarely mentioned, must less challenged, except perhaps by fools and angels. And when it comes to the number and variety of anomalies which attend modern Israel’s “mythos”, that is a big call by any measure.

So embedded is this fabled construct in our collective consciousness even now, and so effective and enduring has been the “forgery”, it’s difficult for folks to embrace any new reality that might contradict it, but the implications of the contradiction. Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, which has been well documented, albeit not well known, for decades.

In future instalments, we’ll explore further just who the real Jews are. Suffice to say though there was and remains a ‘thirteenth tribe’, as anyone familiar with the work of another disenchanted Zionist Arthur Koestler will be aware. His eponymously titled book lifts the veil on this myth. Others of course, including the aforesaid Sand have done same. But to no avail it would seem: The myth still stands; unlike say the Temple of Jerusalem, it remains seemingly indestructible.

For his part, ‘fixing Jewishness’, noted Phillip Weiss, ‘is a futile exercise’; it is perhaps these and other questions—and the dearth of clear answers—which brought him to such a conclusion. Said Sand: ‘I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew…’, clearly aware that in doing so he was not going to endear himself to ‘the tribe’, yet at the same time knocking into a cocked hat the notion of ‘once a Jew, always a Jew’. He became conscious moreover,

‘...of living in one of the most racist societies in the western world. Racism is present to some degree everywhere, but in Israel it exists deep within the spirit of the laws. It is taught in schools and colleges, spread in the media, and above all and most dreadful, in Israel the racists do not know what they are doing and, because of this, feel in no way obliged to apologize.’

The terms Sand uses, “fictitious ethnos of persecutors”, “national imaginary”, and “the exclusive club of the elect” are telling ones to be sure, giving us an easy segue into the main themes we shall explore throughout. The subtext of his musings also undermine other recurring shibboleths and mantras embedded in the mythos of the Jewish state.

Not least of these is Israel’s much heralded repute as “the Middle East’s only democracy”, and the more or less equally disingenuous, indeed asinine proposition that it is the perennially vulnerable ‘underdog’; Israel, the hapless victim constantly battling hostile forces—almost all of which are driven by an inexplicable psychoneurotic anti-Semitism—intent on wiping it off the face of the planet! Or some familiar ‘riff’ on the well-worn, tired and tiresome theme.

As a contradiction in terms, whilst also being at odds with both reality and the fundamental tenets of democracy, the sentiments expressed by Sand were designed to call these well-worn canards and shibboleths into question. Which is to say, other than the country which midwifed its birth (whose commonalities we shall explore deeper in future ‘episodes’), we might pick any modern nation and it would be difficult to identify one with more fabled ‘baggage’ than Israel. That is without considering its often subliminally presumed, scripturally ordained, albeit not often successfully challenged origins.

Said “baggage” attends everything from its 1948 terrorist inspired foundation in Palestine, to most of the key events and developments that have become embedded in its history since that time, to the ongoing maintenance of its image and reputation (embodied in the “fictitious ethnos”, the “national imaginary” as it were), and from there its place and standing within the geopolitical firmament.

This set of beliefs and assumptions so many folks—Jewish and non-Jewish—embrace unreservedly, is a varied and variable assortment of fabrications, lies, falsehoods, paradoxes, half-truths, misconceptions, hyperbole, shibboleths,half-baked truisms, double-speak, contradictions, anomalies, delusions, fantasies, and fictional inventions, the overarching mythos of which might best be described as a veritable ‘kaleidoscope of kidology’. A shell-game played out behind a smokescreen inside a hall of mirrors as it were. It is fuelled and shaped by everything from:

1. highly sophisticated perception management techniques and the shaping of public opinion toward desired ends (propaganda);

2. crude censorship, coupled with the denial of freedom of expression and control of the free flow of information with threats of punishment for non-compliance;

3. confected umbrage and inflated indignation at any criticism and ruthless vilification of those who venture to proffer it;

4. untrammelled distortion of the historical record and monopolisation of the public and political discourse; and,

5. the all purpose, one-size fits all weapon of offence & defence—the ‘you’re an anti-Semite’ epithet/label, used with monotonous frequency to stifle criticism.

To all this Israel brings a ‘born-to-the-manor’ sense of pride and proprietary hubris (Samuel Untermeyer once described Jews as the aristocrats of the world), a ‘haughty spirit’ if one likes—a sublime righteousness—not incompatible with the Old Testament tales of their ‘revered’ forbears the Pharisees, an unadulterated chutzpah, sanctimony, impudence, ingratitude, and a ‘higher sense of purpose’ that brooks few moral constraints or entertains even less ethical boundaries or egalitarian, humanist precepts. Above all, it seems an inescapable conclusion to draw, that in its most extreme manifestation, Jewishness is characterised by a disdain for The Other.

In the words of Ilan Pappe—like Sand another Jewish ‘cognitive dissident’—Israel is ‘a sinister, destructive war machine’, fuelled by an ‘ideology of chauvinism and exclusion’ that is the basis ‘first and foremost for defining the contemporary Jewish identity.’ The end result of such policies ‘formulated out of such an ideology’ notes Pappe, ‘is an ever-growing [Israeli] appetite for control, land and ethnic purity.’

Perhaps one of the most telling observations that Pappe makes, and one which evidences the absurdity and dis-ingenuity of the Zionist position is this: the number of secular Jews who do not even believe in God, but believe He (he?) nonetheless ‘promised them Palestine’! With much of its overarching narrative engineered and sustained by Israel’s agents, ‘hasbara’ hacks, and assorted Zionist zealots in the U.S. past and present—in essence the very definition of a ‘fifth column’—it is suffused in varying degrees by ill-informed analysis, bespoke presumptions, impressionistic thinking, innumerable logical fallacies, and unquestioning preconceptions.

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— Another Highly Successful act of Hypnosis

This “mythos” of Israel is further sustained by emotional blackmail, psychological projection, cultural subversion, and a singularly impressive, all-embracing web of political manipulation, corruption, influence peddling, coercion, espionage, and extortion that reaches the highest levels of our governments and the various institutions which form the fabric of the Western body politic. If one likes, demonstrating a preternatural predisposition for biting the hand that feeds one!

The one factor common to the “desired ends” mentioned earlier, and the first in the ‘queue’ for Israel, is the measure of how this will serve Israel’s interests. The interests of its chief patron are, if included in the calculus at all, more often than not secondary, and perfunctorily considered.

Behind the apparently impermeable veil of this “mythos” is an appalling, disturbing, well-documented history of torture, ethnic cleansing, material expropriation, land dispossession, racism, genocide, assassination, bloodshed, chauvinism, extremism, terrorism, colonial-style exploitation and tyranny, ethnocentrism, and an overweening disdain for international law, core democratic principles and basic human rights. Pretty much everything our ruling classes, political lackeys, and their media hacks and flacks would have us believe about Islam and Muslims.

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Now at this point most people are probably thinking that very little of the foregoing sounds anything like the Israel of their own imagination. And therein we might say, lies the problem. How was this achieved? Because by any measure, it was no mean feat.

For something of a ‘take’ on just how impressive it was, we might paraphrase the great British playwright Harold Pinter. Though he was pointedly referring in his 2006 Nobel Prize acceptance speech to Israel’s chief enabler and protector the U.S. (the proud owner of its own exceptional, not unimpressive mythos to be sure), Israel has also pulled off a ‘brilliant…highly successful act of hypnosis’ in the creation of its own.

This “act” is ongoing, and enduring. Whilst we might argue the U.S. mythos is unravelling somewhat and has been for sometime, Israel and the global Zionist forces which relentlessly drive its growth and influence, continues to pursue its goals of power projection, and does so without fear and with sustained, if not increasing, favour amongst the community of nations. This is despite the many missteps and tragedies—the “lies, sins and crimes”—which have accompanied its ascendancy.

In his seminal 1984 book, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (1948-1967), author Stephen Green recounted his initial experience when he began researching the official records for the project, much of which he had sourced under the FOIA Act, and which had never before seen the ‘light of day’. ‘The reality’ said Green, ‘was so different from the myth as to be unrecognisable.’ Insofar as he was concerned, the idea that the victory of the Jews in the battle for Palestine (in 1948-49; aka the Nakba) was a miracle victory against overwhelming odds ‘is arrant nonsense…unsupported by the documentary evidence.’

Green’s first impressions set the thematic tone for the rest of his book of course, one followed up about five years later by Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East, covering the period from 1968-1987. Clearly the author had spent considerable time in the Memory Hole, evidenced by the astute analysis, depth of his insights, and comprehensive references.

After reading both tomes, one does not need to adjust their rear-view mirror to appreciate that little has changed in the interim either in the manner of Israel’s conduct or in the determination they bring to controlling the public perception of it. All of which is to say, almost five decades later, as already noted Green’s insights still resonate, with the accepted “underdog” narrative prevailing to this day, unassailable despite all onslaughts.

It could be said at the time Green wrote these books that the “narrative” was never in danger of losing its grip on the collective imagination of people in the West in particular; though a few observers seem to think there are signs that some ‘natives are becoming restless’ as it were, it is far from certain that Israel is preparing to cry “Uncle” anytime soon.

(The recent decision by the U.S. Congress to green-light $1bn extra funding for Israel’s “Iron Dome”--over and above all the money it already receives--confirms unequivocally that support for Israel is alive and well, despite some rumours to the contrary. According to Alison Weir, another $3bn is being ‘printed’!)

By way of explaining the genesis of the project, in his introduction, Green cites a ‘nagging, nettling awareness’ on his part which was prompted by what he saw as the ‘appalling ignorance’ of U.S. politicians regarding the country’s relationship with Israel. After ‘exploiting widespread humanitarian sympathy’ with the surviving European Jews, the Zionist leadership in Israel he says, ‘pursued its objectives without regard for the consequences.’ To underscore the downside from all of this, the author adds:

‘The Arab reaction is bitter and potentially violent, endangering not only the Jews in Palestine but also the strategic interests of the Western powers in the [region], since the Arabs now identify the United States and the United Kingdom with Zionism.’

Israel’s establishment, instigated by the Zionist movement and its hardline adherents with the imprimatur of firstly Great Britain, and later the United States, was eventually facilitated over several decades in the wake of the outcomes of two catastrophic world wars and a calamitous global economic depression.

— Children of the Corrupted Covenant

According to Miko Peled’s interpretation of the Torah (the Jewish Bible, or Pentateuch), the notion that the Jews ‘own’ the land of Palestine is a complete misreading of the scriptures.

In a recent article, the Jewish-American anti-Zionist activist and Palestinian rights campaigner states emphatically that the Holy Land ‘belongs to the Almighty who graces it with holiness’. The Jewish people were given license to reside there and ‘enjoy its grace [only]’ he says, ‘as long as they conducted themselves with righteousness and observed the laws prescribed in the Torah’. When the Jewish people strayed from the path of the Torah, Peled notes,

‘they incurred the wrath of the Almighty and were expelled from the Holy Land, prohibited from returning until such time as the coming of the Messiah and the return of King David to the throne.’

Peled—the son Gen. Mattei Peled, of one of Israel’s many ‘founding fathers’ who himself later became a strong advocate of the Palestinian cause and a sharp critic of Israel—reminds us that Zionism is ‘a secular, racist ideology’, with the founders of the movement caring ‘little for the Bible or for Judaism’. For its part Israel—‘the monstrous creation of that movement’—is ‘an apartheid regime that is committing horrendous crimes’.

Peled, far from being the only one who has questioned the Biblically derived justification for the creation of Israel, has even gone as far as saying that Israel ‘doesn’t have a right to exist’, thereby challenging one of the unassailable, sacrosanct pillars of the mythos. Doubtless, this for many might be a bridge too far! More than simply a “self-hating Jew”, Peled is presumably held by many in low regard as a heretic as it were, of the highest order!

Further, Israel’s earnest, unremitting claims that it speaks for, and conducts itself in the name and in the interests of, the Jewish people (again however they might be so defined) is well known to those of us with a more balanced view of the Middle East’s ‘only democracy’. Insofar as Peled in concerned, Israel[i] and Zionist claims to Palestine ‘have nothing to do with Judaism; in fact, the claim that the legitimacy for Zionism can be found in the Bible is completely false.’

To underscore this, in a blog piece from 2017, Benjamin L. Corey noted that the common evangelical Christian assertion that we must “support Israel no matter what”, has ‘zero basis’ in the Scriptures. For Corey—a theologian, cultural anthropologist, and avowed Christian—this received wisdom is the ‘opposite of what the Bible says’, a view echoing Peled’s, and from which he avers, an “increasing number of evangelicals” are distancing themselves.

Corey spells out unambiguously four key points in response to the “you’re not a true Christian if you don’t stand with Israel” notion, which he regards as ‘nonsense’. Now space precludes a fuller overview of his rationale, but it’s well worth highlighting them herein, and then perhaps exploring one of these observations in order to serve the broad purpose of our analysis. Which to reiterate is bringing into sharper relief the differences between myth and reality.

• 1. The entire “stand with Israel” theology is based on only one verse;

• 2. The Bible teaches that the true descendants of Abraham are spiritual, not ethnic;
• 3. Not even the prophets in the Bible blindly stood with Israel–including Jesus; and

• 4. The Bible doesn’t command we blindly support people who commit evil acts.

Even with my own limited knowledge of the Good Book (perhaps now somewhat passed its ‘use-by-date’), I did not feel the need to ‘fact-check’ Corey’s assertions; I recall this from my own Christian upbringing. Let’s take the first of the above, that of the “stand with Israel” theology ‘based on one verse’, said verse being Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” According to Corey, such was God’s promise to Abraham—neither biblical Israel nor modern Israel existed when this was written. ‘This promise [was made] to Abraham ’, says Corey, ‘as part of God’s covenant with him.’

This being the case then, we might fairly suggest that the descendants of Abraham—if we can view today’s Jews as such—are children of a corrupted covenant! To be sure, there’s no shortage of Jewish thinkers and observers both secular and religious, past and present, who either did, or would, think much the same way. Corey’s summation is unequivocal:

‘What the world calls Israel is NOT what the Bible calls Israel. The world is referring to a nation state that was created just a generation ago—the Bible is talking about the people of Abraham, which are a spiritual people who have accepted their king: Jesus. It’s not a people group one is born into, but a people group you join by pledging your allegiance to Jesus. So is standing with Israel a biblical concept? No…the stronger biblical case would be standing in opposition to Israel’s ungodly behavior.’

Measured against the odds, we can safely say few campaigns by any group in history have been so suffused with presumption, hubris, and grandiose, uncompromising ambition. On its face—even in hindsight—it seems incomprehensible anyone would conceive of such a gambit much less dedicate themselves so ruthlessly and relentlessly to achieving it. With it seems very little doubt as to whether they would actually pull it off. It was only a matter of time. Perhaps it is only the architects of the Tower of Babel who began their quest with as much presumption and ambition!

As we will see in follow-up pieces, from the outset of the push to establish a Jewish state in this region, such incomprehension—itself subsequently transcended then attended increasingly by fierce resistance to the very notion—applied to many Jewish people, prominent and not so. To these folks such a concept was anathema, heresy even. For non-Jewish folks who opposed this ‘unholy grail’ crusade, it was simply a very, very bad idea. For both categories of people, there can be little doubt their worst fears have been realised.

Since that time, as current events evidence, Israel and its Zionist overlords have demonstrated a ruthless intransigence in seeking dominion over the land it usurped and the subjugation of its indigenous owners and inhabitants, along with an ill-disguised contempt for international law and world opinion. That this ruthlessness and determination has surpassed by some measure that which characterised the multi-faceted efforts in its creation is difficult to refute.

For many, the Zionist game-plan was then meant to be over with the creation of Israel! What so many people didn’t get then—and still don’t get now—is that was simply a dress rehearsal—perhaps only the first act or curtain raiser—for something far bigger, more ambitious, far more insidious and earth shattering. And though Douglas Reed was not the only one who defined the state of play as such (we’ll look at others in future instalments), few perhaps did it as thoroughly and as presciently, and with as much portent, as he did.

Greg Maybury, October 1, 2021.