Part 1 of a two-parter: Israelis Live Wasted and Desperate Lives and Should Leave
The fuss that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken manufactured over their Israel inspired ceasefire plan is pathetic. Claiming Hamas is “proposing changes that are not workable.” without specifying the proposed changes (are there changes?), is not informing anybody. Apparently, Blinken’s subservient role in this sleight of hand act is to make believe a truce is pursued, and then charge Hamas with deception for not agreeing with an impossible plan. His tone and posturing indicate more performance than honest diplomacy.
Israel, and not Hamas, controls the hostilities, and, for that reason, no plan will work. Israel will continue encroaching on the Palestinians, which will eventually provoke Hamas to respond. Biden’s plan is a trap, placing Hamas in a “no win” situation. The US president should propose a cease to all aggression against the Palestinians and oppression of the Palestinians. Without a complete halt to both, no truce is guaranteed.
With no truce plan operable, the future for the Palestinians is not hopeful. All proposals for self-governing ─ two states ─ or mutual governing — one-state, Federated states, bi-national state — are not acceptable to the single-minded, racist, supremacist, and apartheid Zionist regime. To prevent the genocide, one measure can be effective — Israeli Jews vote with their feet and leave Israel for other nations in much greater numbers than the Palestinians increase their tally in the stolen lands. With a great number of Jews gone, the Zionist government will have difficulties to govern for the benefit of Jews alone and have problems maintaining the territories for Jews alone. Hallelujah!
When Zionism reared its ugly head, Jews were no longer seeking liberation, they were enjoying liberation, finding acceptance and expression throughout Western Europe. Although not completely integrated in the societies where they lived and still facing some headwinds, almost all Jews rejected Zionism. After World War II, Jews became completely integrated in Western nations that gave them the highest standard of living, an advanced education, security, equal opportunity, and prominence in all activities. After meeting Godot and finding Nirvana, most Jews have become Zionists, either willing to leave the nations that gave them succulence or swear allegiance to a Zionist country. Is that sensible?
Conditioning
There is only one reason for Jews to ally themselves with a militarist, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and apartheid nation ─ conditioning. The principle elements of the conditioning, repeatedly drilled into every Jewish person, are that Jews are a nation, they have a shared ancient history that claims biblical lands, they are subjected to harassment by an anti-Semitic world, and they are only safe in their own nation. All of this is hysterical and none of this is historical
Getting Israelis to move away from a land they believe God gave them seems absurd. No, absurd is that anyone lives in the God forsaken land. I have only been to Israel on three occasions, once staying for three weeks in Jerusalem. Although observations are personal and go back 14 years, they still revealed the mindset of Israelis who inhabit a land that has been developed from subjugation of indigenous people. Growing up with the daily mischief, having a government that polishes the information and conditions its citizens, and not having any comparison, Yossi Israeli does not realize that he/she has been fed a distorted history, lives in nowheresville, and is going nowhere.
Jews are not a nation
The Jews that emerged from the Hebrews migrated to different nations, eventually spoke different languages, acquired different customs, formed different institutions, and no longer shared a common history. Unchained from the continual strife in a non-productive region, they spread throughout the world, loosely bound together by a common religion, shared myths, and shared values.
Two persons make a people, but a people don’t make a nation. A nation refers to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history. If it were otherwise, why has Israel given its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? The Mizrahi who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were Western; the Falasha were Ethiopians; and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of the ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics. Accompanying the destruction of each community was the destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. All these immigrants became a new Jew, an Israeli Jew, who had no proven aspects of the biblical Hebrews
Falsifying History
Israel has many interesting sites, mostly Crusader, Roman, Christian, Canaanite, and Arabic. Biblical sites, related to Hebrews and Jews, are few, insignificant, and dubiously presented.
- Masada is given a heroic representation as the place where Jewish rebels sustained a Roman onslaught and committed suicide. It is an interesting Roman fortress with two places built by Herod the Great where Roman forces decimated Jewish rebels. No rebels committed suicide.
- Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds, and ritual baths exist, but no Jewish monuments, buildings, or institutions from the Biblical era remain within the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem.
- None of the tombs — Abraham, Joseph, David, Rachel, and Absalom — are verified burial places of these biblical figures.
- The City of David is a defensive network dating back to the Middle Bronze Age. No relation to the mythical King David has been determined.
- The Western Wall is a supporting wall of the platform built during Herod’s time. It became a place of prayer for Jews in the late 15th century, after Mameluke authorities permitted Jews a safe area for worship and morphed into “the most revered site in Judaism” during modern times, only because there is no other.
- Neither King David’s Tower nor King David’s Citadel relate to David or his time.
- Neither the Pools of Solomon nor the Stables of Solomon relate to the time or life of King Solomon.
- None of the major museums in Jerusalem and throughout the world exhibit an ancient Hebrew civilization. Mention is made in history of Hebrew tribes and short periods of governing small areas of the Levant, but no ancient Jewish civilization that had lasting effect on history and whose people have a totally direct relation with all scattered contemporary Jews has been uncovered.
Delusion
Contemporary Jews have been deluded. Ancient Israel was home to ancient Jews. The area that is now Israel was not the ancient home of modern Jews. When ethnicities speak of an ancient home, they speak, such as from the voices of Native Americans, of caring for the land and hunting grounds, for attachment to a soil that nourished them, and with intimate knowledge of ancestors. They may look back at a recognized civilization that gave the world advances in technology, culture, warfare, administration, or other disciplines and left identifiable physical traces that excite mankind. Modern Jews have no attachment to a soil, no memories of an advanced civilization, no honest attraction to an ancient land, and do not have knowledge of ancestors. The Palestinians have 100 percent “skin in the game;” they cherish every olive tree their ancestors planted centuries ago, every orange tree that gives aroma to their surroundings, and all the ground eggplant for the baba ghanoush they eat.
Zionist irredentism is concerned with the folk; it does not express concern for the land. Keeping biblical names as a subterfuge, Israel turned the land under the biblical names into an extension of northern Europe. In “beloved” Judah and Samaria, imported pine trees dot the landscape, hundreds of year-old olive groves lay torched, dormitory towns replace the green hilltops, and super highways pave over the quaint roads. In Israel, forests hide dynamited picturesque villages. Jerusalem, with its train, mall, contrived City of David, proposed cable car, and falsified tourist attractions has become a theme park.
Tension and apartheid everywhere
What person wants to continue a criminal past with a stained present? The parents of the present generation of Israeli Jews did not make amends for the injustices done to the Palestinians and continued the oppression. The present generation repeats the sordid activities of their parents. The continuing lives of Israelis is characterized by continuing the oppression. is that a meaningful life?
Nazareth’s large Muslim population did not please Jews, and, in 1957, they left, claiming they did not want to live under a communist mayor. The government illegally appropriated land from Nazareth and founded Nazareth Illit, a settlement within the great settlement. Historian Geremy Forman, Military Rule, Political Manipulation, and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950s, Journal of Israeli History, (2006) 335-359, states, “the town would safeguard the Jewish character of the Galilee as a whole, and… demonstrate state sovereignty to the Arab population more than any other settlement operation.” Forman wrote that Nazareth Illit was meant to “overpower Nazareth numerically, economically, and politically.”
Akka (Acre) is a world heritage site, whose old city is entirely Arabic. Jewish and Arab populations only meet at a junction. When I visited, the Souk was destroyed, with mud and water as surface material. Houses on the ancient streets needed repair. Israel supplies scarce funds to rehabilitate the Arab heritage of one of the jewels of the Mediterranean and pours funds into its Crusader attractions and constructing housing for obedient Jews to continually encroach on the Palestinian population and coerce them into selling their properties. Tensions have erupted into conflicts several times and, in 2022, the mayor declared, “The State of Israel is on the brink of civil war between Jews and Arabs.” The Jerusalem Post reported, “A series of Arab riots left city icons smashed and burned. Lynches sent Jewish residents to hospitals.”
Haifa’s 2022 population of 290,306 has Israeli Arabs constituting 10% of its population. They live in communities separated from Jews. What happened to the previous large Arab population of about 65,000 in 1947? Contradictory explanations of the battle for Haifa and the exodus of its Arab inhabitants have been made. No contradiction in knowing who left and was never permitted back.
Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim, an economist and nationalist, who, for a while, supervised the defense of Haifa, provided an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa’s Arab residents.
Thousands of women, children and men hurried to the port district in a state of chaos and terror without precedent in the history of the Arab nation. They fled their houses to the coast, barefoot and naked, to wait for their turn to travel to Lebanon. They left their homeland, their houses, their possessions, their money, their welfare, and their trades, to surrender their dignity and their souls. According to The Economist, only 5,000–6,000 of the city’s 62,000 Arabs remained there by 2 October 1948.
Tel Aviv-Jaffa is another city where both Jewish and a diminishing Arab population exist and do not mix. Similar to Acre, Israel supplies scarce funds to maintain the ancient character and heritage of Arab Jaffa, another jewel of the Mediterranean, and pours funds into changing its character, diminishing remains of its Arab heritage, and constructing housing for Jews who obediently encroach on the Palestinian population and harass them into selling their properties.
Statistics from 1945 listed Jaffa having a population of 94,280, of whom 66,280 were Arabs and 28,000 were Jews. In 2021, Jaffa had 52,470 residents, about a third (17,000) of whom were Arabs. Abu Lyad, My Home, My Land a narrative of the Palestinian struggle describes the 1948 displacement of the Arab population.
May 13, 1948, is a day that will remain forever engraved in my memory. Less than twenty four hours before the proclamation of the Israeli state, my family fled Jaffa for refuge in Gaza. We had been under siege: the Zionist forces controlled all the roads leading south, and the only escape left open to us was the sea. It was under a hail of shells fired from Jewish artillery set up in neighboring settlements, especially Tel Aviv, that I clambered onto a makeshift boat with my parents, my four brothers and sisters and relatives.
Ashkelon, 20 kilometers north of the Gaza border, presents a picturesque setting along the Mediterranean coast. Sparkling white beaches matched by white-faced apartment buildings, green lawns and several wide boulevards depict a tranquil and content city. The modern city with the biblical name, is not peaceful. Rockets from Gaza have struck the city on several occasions. By arguments of war, the damage has not been extensive, but no damage can be ignored; there have been fatalities and wounded to the residents, who are Russian immigrants and descendants of those who seized Palestinian properties in the nearby villages.
Al-Majdal and its citizens suffered the fate of many Palestinian villages that hoped to escape the hostilities, but became engulfed in the 1948-1949 war in the Levant. With war raging in their midst, the citizens of Al-Majdal retreated 15 kilometers to a haven in Gaza. On November 4, 1948, Israeli forces captured the village. In August 1950, by a combination of inducements and threats, Al-Majdal’s 1000-2000 remaining inhabitants were expelled and trucked to Gaza. According to Eyal Kafkafi (1998), Segregation or integration of the Israeli Arabs – two concepts in Mapai, International Journal of Middle East Studie, 347-367, as reported in Wikipedia, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan promoted the expulsion, while Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, “wished to turn the town into a productive example of equal opportunity for the Arabs.” Despite a ruling by the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission that the Arabs transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, this never happened. In 2007, when I visited, I was told that only two Arab families remained in Ashkelon.
Journalist, Ramzy Baroud, reported his father’s memories in My Father was a Freedom Fighter.
My brothers and my comrades, we are all joined by a common sorrow and fate. We all fondly remember the rolling hills and valleys of our homeland, its villages, towns, its farms, and its humble yet dignified way of life. We long for the days of quiet and peaceful coexistence that Palestine offered, and we grieve the loss of life, the assault on our dignity, the destruction of our schools, mosques, homes in hundreds of villages that are now a fleeting memory. Our struggle has been an honorable and worthy cause, and it is by far more precious than trivial salaries and extraneous police uniforms the invader offers. I would rather starve, along with my family, a free man, than to live rich in slavery with badges of dishonor.
Gaza border towns Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and Nahal Oz have been sites for consistent rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. All three communities suffered extensive casualties from the October 7, 2023 attack. With nothing special to induce people to live in the area, why do Israelis choose a place where a “safe room” is necessary in the home, life can be deadly, and Gazans see Israelis living comfortably on the property stolen from them? Answer: These Israelis are the first line of defense against Hamas militants crossing the border and a place to disturb Gazans by having them see Israelis living comfortably on the property stolen from them.
Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was founded on October 1, 1955 and built on orchards stolen from the residents of the Palestinian village of Ma’in Abu Sitta. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, author of Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir, was 10 years old when, on May 14, 1948, he and his family living on their land in “Ma’in Abu Sitta,” were attacked by a Haganah force of 24 armored vehicles. “The force destroyed and burnt everything. The soldiers demolished the school that my father built in 1920; they stole the motor and equipment in the flour mill and well pump; they killed anyone in sight.”
Hebron is infamous for the massacre of a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement, opened fire with an assault rifle and murdered 29 Muslim worshippers. When the Israeli military attempted to evict settlers from Hebron’s cherished “old city,” the setters broke windows and ruined Palestinian shops in the now empty “Old Town” area. They also broke the walls and locks of the Palestinian homes, then stood watch to harass any Palestinian who returns, and still try to prevent Palestinian children from attending a school in the area. To enforce the settler presence, Israeli security checkpoints have been installed at all former entrances to the market.
The West Bank, as of January 2023, hosts 144 settlements, including 12 in East Jerusalem. In addition to the settlement, there are more than 100 outposts, which are unauthorized settlements. About 450,000 Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank and 220,000 reside in East Jerusalem. One third of the settlers “see their presence as a means of ensuring permanent Jewish control over the area, which they call by the biblical names ‘Judea and Samaria.’ These settlers believe that by living in the West Bank “they are serving God’s will and helping to bring about the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.” Two thirds of the settlers claim they live in the West Bank to increase their quality of life. This does not sound reasonable.
The settlements are relatively small towns that are isolated from one another and rely on cities in Israel for employment and many services. On average, 60% of the employed population in a settlement is employed in Israel and the number of settlers employed in local agriculture and industry in the West Bank is very low. Special benefits is the more likely reason. The Israel Policy Forum reports.
In 2014, the average per capita aid from the Israeli government to local authorities in the Judea and Samaria region was NIS 3,762, compared to NIS 2,282 within Israel. Local authorities east of the security barrier received NIS 5,950 per capita on average. In 2017, settlers received on average NIS 1,922 in grants and tax benefits, NIS 1,416 more than the national average.
The precarity of the settlement enterprise is obscured by the government largesse that keeps it afloat. Should Jerusalem choose to end this support, local governments and residents would find themselves in a dire financial position.
The settlers are not bettering their lives. They are in the West Bank so Israel can carve it up and prevent establishment of a viable Palestinian state, to worsen Palestinian lives, and prevent the Palestinians from having ontological security ─ a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in regard to the events in one’s life. The settlers are living an unsettled and cruel life.
The Specter of anti-Semitism
The major ingredient of the conditioning mix is to keep the Jewish people aware that anti-Semitism is in their breakfast food and anti-Semites are lurking everywhere, ready to pounce upon the Jewish populations and bring them another holocaust. Nonsense. I have never known any anti-Semitism in my life and have never seen it affect others
Sure, there are people who dislike Jews, just as people dislike, Sikhs, Orientals, Italians, Hispanics, rich people, poor people, Catholics, African-Americans, and even Eskimos, and, at times, exhibit virulent hatred of a particular ethnicity. Nothing unusual in a world of 7.5 billion people. Because Israel claims it is a Jewish state, which already arouses antipathy from humanity and many Jews align with an Israel that is accused of committing genocide, it is natural that a part of the world’s population will attack Jews. Should those enabling genocide be lightly treated? The pro-Israel faction reply to the challenge is not “we will stop the genocide.” They use the attacks to benefit their ugly work by labelling them anti-Semitic.
A “Nova survivor” ─ a new and calculated term, similar to Holocaust survivor, which will enter the lexicon for posterity and forever remind the world that only what happens to Jewish people matters ─ arrived in new York as a part of an exhibition commemorating the victims of the Nova festival during the October 7 attack. What point is there in exhibiting and commemorating tragedies that cannot be undone and why in America? What do Americans have to do with the attack? Protestors came and protested this disgusting use of the violated to violate the American conscience and stir it to aid and abet the genocide.
Eilat Tibi, the “Nova survivor” showed how conditioned Israelis seek to label a protest against Israel as anti-Semitic. She said:
The other thing that’s surprised me the most is the antisemitism. As a Jew who lives in Israel, I had never felt it before. Coming to the States made me realize that Jews in the diaspora live with it all the time — sometimes it’s more intense, other times less.
Ms. Tibi is in the United States for a few days and knows the American pulse. She has lived in Israel for a lifetime and doesn’t know that if you want to find hatred of Jews – go to Israel, where the secular Jews despise the Orthodox Jews, the European Ashkenazi Jews are contemptuous of the Arab Mizrahim Jews and all discriminate against the Ethiopian Falasha Jews. From UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger”. Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children. “The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN.
Conclusion
Israeli Jews can live most anywhere and have an enjoyable life. Instead, they choose to live in a racist, virulent nationalist, and militarist state that practices apartheid and engage in the genocide of the Palestinian people. They choose to be a party to the genocide, to suffer, generation after generation, the agonies and threats that go with being an aggressor, living a life of lies and desperation. Their nation without borders is a mirror image of the Nazi Germany state that also had sketchy borders. They do not see themselves in the mirror. If they saw themselves in the mirror, would they want to stay in a genocidal state?
Zionism, let our people go.
Part two will examine more of the conditioning process and propose a method to rescue Jews from the Zionist grip.