“By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down…” (Psalm 137)
“And we ate a nice meal with our neighbors. And even though we were homesick, we were still able to appreciate that we were alive and had nice friends, these generous Babylonians who helped us out, and we shared a meal with them and their families by the waters. And this is how we invented the Holiday of Thanksgiving…” (Psalm 137 as it should have ended)
Dear Readers:
Today is, of course, Thanksgiving Day, an important holiday in the United States. I think the American people love this holiday most of all, but there is always this underlying feeling of unease about its origins. Its origins lying, of course, in the genocide of Native Americans, by those seeking to possess their land.
That word “genocide” immediately turns our thoughts to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Which the world watches, in real time, with horror and a sense of powerlessness. The United Nations was allegedly created to prevent this sort of thing, and instead became the toothless enabler of war and genocide.
One consequence: Zionism now stands completely exposed as the apartheid, fascist, genocidal ideology that it always was. The mask has been ripped off. There are even some Christians who are starting to question the origins of their own religion. Given that Christianity was born in the cradle of the Old Testament. Christians are raised to regard the Old Testament “heroes” such as Moses, Joshua, Samson, David, etc., as their own heroes. Hollywood epics were made celebrating these dubious personalities (most of them starring Charlton Heston!)
And yet all of these so-called “heroes” were clearly genocidal maniacs. Now people are starting to connect the ruthlessness and vengeful attitude of the Old Testament heroes to the ruthlessness and vengeful attitude of the Israeli Zionists. The Zionist leaders have condemned themselves with their own utterances. For example, vowing to wipe out the Palestinians, just as the Prophet Samuel wiped out the Amalekites.
I have written before how I rejected religion in my youth, after reading the Bible. It seems like the People of the Book were not capable of just telling a nice story, “and they all lived happily ever after…” no, it always has to end in violence and genocide. Because that is what their God wishes and commands them to do. The only exception I can think of is the “Story of Ruth”, which is about the beautiful friendship between a young woman and her mother-in-law. Every other story always gets spoiled in the end. For example, take the story of Esther. It starts off nicely enough, and it could be a beautiful love story between Esther and the King of Persia. Adding in elements of court intrigue and the averting of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish community in Persia. It could have ended with a nice happy ending, Haman hanged of course, and everybody reconciled. But no…. This being the Old Testament, the story cannot end without a literal bloodbath: The Jewish diaspora goes on a wild pogrom-spree and murders 75,000 Persians in the course of a single night. And all with the Persian King’s blessing! Please note, I doubt if such a thing actually happened in history, but that’s not important. It’s the thought that counts. This is what Jewish children are taught is the right thing to do, and a proper and fitting ending to the story, as they celebrate Purim every year.
One more example (of hundreds) of the genocidal mentality, as portrayed in the Old Testament. Take Psalm 137, for example: It starts as a beautiful lament and yearning for home, and you’re kind of humming along (American musician Don McLean even wrote a song based on this passage called “Waters of Babylon”), and ends with babies having their brains dashed out on rocks:
- By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
- We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
- For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
- How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?
- If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
- If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
- Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
- O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
- Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Now, if the Hebrew bard had only left out those final two verses, all would be well. But no… They just had to kill the babies, didn’t they? Reading this, one shudders especially when thinking about what happened just last week in that Gaza Hospital. Where little Palestinian babies were literally tossed out of incubators. Nothing ever changes, does it?
The Spoiler At The End
Let’s call this the Psalm 137 phenomenon: Where you are just kind of cruising along, babbling various things, they sound nice at first, and then you just say one thing too many and condemn yourself with your own words. That’s what a lot of the Old Testament actually is. How many war criminals throughout history actually wrote down all their misdeeds in a single book, for handy reference?
In the world of criminal law, this is called “Expressing intent”. And just this past week I learned something about international law and the definition of genocide. Just like with First-Degree Murder, in order for genocide to be genocide, there has to be intent. Which is why most genociders conceal their intent, or even deny that they did what they did. But not the Zionists, oh no, they are right out there with it. And to illustrate this, I will end my post with this rather good podcast by, of all people, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs is Jewish, by the way. But like many modern-minded Jews who don’t live Old Testament lives, he just can’t stomach what is happening and what is being done in his name. Listen to him explain the legal ins and outs of Genocide and what constitutes Intent:
Awful Avalanche 
There are actually two religions in the Old Testament – not just different, but incompatible. There is the priestly religion, which is a supremacist tribal cult. It led eventually to Talmudic Judaism. And there is the prophetic religion, which takes the priestly doctrine of the Israelites as a ‘chosen people’ and universalises it. This led eventually to Christianity.
Those two religions will be at enmity with each other until the end of time. The Bible demonstrates both, so that we can choose between them.
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But weren’t some of those Old Testament prophets raving lunatics? And also highly treacherous. Jeremiah comes to mind.
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I think I’m right in saying that Jeremiah was the only major prophet who belonged to Judah (the southern kingdom) rather than Israel (the northern kingdom). It’s hardly surprising if being surrounded by fanatical supremacists disturbed the balance of his mind – after all, they were trying to kill him.
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I think he was mentally ill. All he could ever up come with was, “We’re all doomed! We’re all gonna die!” That’s why they call it a Jeremiad. Also, if I am not mistaken, some Torah scholars regard him as a traitor, because he collaborated with the Babylonians. Or something like that.
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There’s another important point to this, which is that the arrival of the Christ, the awaited Messiah, represented something actually new–a full and final break from the Talmudic interpretation of Old Testament law. The Christ, by assertion, came to fulfill the Law, which was properly summed up to: “Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Presumably quite a lot, therefore!) “Neighbor” being further defined through the illustration of the Samaritan, who, within historical context, can be understood as directly analogous to Palestinians of today.
So… what about “Amalekites?” The pattern of history is that a given people group continues in whatever way they think best until their behavior versus their “neighbors” becomes so odious AND unrepentant that God tires of them and permits/orders a punishment. Interestingly you can see this illustrated in the converse within the story of Jonah, who in addition to semi-hilariously being swallowed by a whale (poor thing), was a prophet told to go to Assyria and preach to the people of that great (and very large) city that their doom was ordained. He didn’t WANT to go, because he understood the character of God and that IF the people repented (turned away from) doing what was evil from God’s perspective, He would NOT destroy them; and Jonah wanted Assyria destroyed because they were oppressors of Israel. To wrap up the story: Assyria listened to the warning, their doom was delayed a few generations, and Jonah was super-disappointed and rebuked by God for his hard heart.
How does this connect to present Israel? Well, as the Greeks observed, those whom the God(s) wishes to destroy, he first drives mad. There is a lot of madness loosed in Israel, and a closer reading of their own eschatology would quickly show everything around the final arrival of their political Messiah is super, super-bad for the ruling elites and their people, who do NOT like the results (they “mourn”).
The days of Amalekiting your enemies are long past, as even back in the bad old days those orders had a shelf-life. (The other peoples of the land were not driven out because the Hebrews didn’t want to listen and thus they became a punishment for Israel.) Because modern Israel doesn’t much want to love their neighbor, they’re in for a rough, rough go of it.
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The current leaders of Israel (and much of the Israeli population, it seems) are clearly adherent to a violent death cult. I read somewhere that it is impossible to truly de-program people from a cult, once the virus has taken over their minds. The only remedy is to offer them a different version of the same cult. In other words, you cannot convince them that atheism is the way to go, and that they need to turn to the way of the European Secular Enlightenment. Instead, you have to engage them on their own turf.
For example, people could be really slammed with various passages and interpretations from the Torah (like the above regarding Jonah, for example), until something finally cracked inside them, and they recognized that they had been looking at things from the wrong angle.
I think what I am trying to say is that the world needs a cadre of Talmud and Torah scholars (which wouldn’t be me, I don’t even know the difference between the Talmud and the Torah!) to sit down with these people and really get into the weeds with them, debating them and showing them where they are wrong. I’m not talking about Nutty-Yahoo, obviously, that man needs nothing except a hanging rope around his neck.
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Frankly, the only religion that would be appropriate today is the worship of Huitzilopochtli. Beating hearts ripped out with obsidian knives and all. We live in the tune of violence as the only religion.
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I used to believe that religion was the major source of violence in the world. But I don’t believe that any more. Even if the world was made up of atheists, we would still be killing each other. For land, water, resources, etc. We would just be more honest about it, which I regard as a plus.
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The zios were always atheists. The Judacisation of zionism is a very recent thing.
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That’s interesting. But it appears to be a powerful ideological combination, which motivates at least a portion of the population to adopt a genocidal intent.
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Mercenary politicians have always been happy to wrap themselves in whatever cause will get them the support to hold onto power and money a bit longer. Bibi is just one of the most transparent of the current crop, seeing as how he literally goes to jail for the rest of his life the moment he stops being PM.
Nothing serves to concentrate a man’s attention more than the prospect of an immanent hanging….
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random thoughts:
1. the pro-israel crowd were some of the biggest proponents of both iraq “wars”. the first one was set off with a propaganda blitz that included false claims of – wait for it – babies tossed out of incubators! coincidence and not at ALL a case of someone “saying the quiet part out loud” i’m sure.
2. gilad atzmon has a great rundown of the “book of esther” and its connection to current hasbara and influence purchasing by “israel”.
https://gilad.online/writings/2018/3/2/purim-special-from-esther-to-aipac
3. christian bale was always one of my favorite actors but what really impressed me was his take on playing moses in “exodus: gods and kings”.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/27/christian-bale-moses-was-barbaric-and-schizophrenic
ridley scott seems to have had a similar take and he already showed his ability to parse history in “kingdom of heaven” (which supposedly got standing ovations in the “muslim world” for its respectful portrayal of saladin). “exodus” features YHWH/g-d/etc as the classic burning bush but also as a young boy who speaks to moses and – via the contrast of his youthful look with the insane things he says – comes off as more than a bit f_cking psycho.
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This is a good analysis of the Esther story. It sort of reads like a Jewish Cinderella, where the initial underdog triumphs by hooking up with a person of power. Rather fitting for the AIPAC narrative!
There are different versions of the Cinderella story. In some versions, upon ascending to power, Cinderella wreaks bloody revenge upon her step-sisters and has them tortured and executed in the tower. In others, she is reconciled with her family, and nobody gets hurt. The latter version was preferred for his libretto by the ever-gentle Rossini when he wrote his opera, La Cenerentola. In this version, all the girl ever wanted was to be acknowledged by her father and accepted as a full member of the family.
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Really though without American leaders and their plans none of that would be happening. On social media there has been a lot of discussion in the last year about the political theory of a war between the two rival elite factions of the American establishment isince the 1960s known as “The Yankee and Cowboy War,” and its current version and relationship with the Trump movement. Ex-member of the Trump admin, Mike Benz, has been leading the conversation on X with his many documented expositions on the “censorship industry” as part of that war. So far I haven’t seen a full explanation on how the war between the elites started and how it then morphed into a Uniparty war on Trump and his movement, and how the conservative “cowboy” Texas elites from the 60s-70s ended their secret war against the liberal “yankee” New York eastern elites, and then merged step by step from the 1980s-90s into the Uniparty of today.
The following tells the details on the history of the Cowboy and Yankee War between the two main factions of American elites in the 1960s-70s, how it then changed and merged to become the Uniparty, and where we are today with their war against the neo-Cowboy Trump movement. See: “The Uniparty and Cowboy War” at https://medium.com/p/1689568759ae
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Thanks, this is very interesting. Feuds between the ruling cliques end up trashing the whole of society and taking down innocent people in their wake. Sort of like the War of the Roses.
This is really interesting about Texas. I had an inkling a couple of years ago, that Texas was going through some kind of sea change. In many ways it’s not really a southern state any more. Or, more accurately, that whole North-South thing in the U.S. is melting away. Replaced by a new configuration emerging, probably even more dangerous. Of course, a lot of this change can be attributed to the virus of TDS (=Trump Derangement Syndrome) !
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You may enjoy this piece about the convoluted thinking the Israelis have in order to justify shooting Palestinians.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/11/michael-hudson-were-the-prophets-anti-semitic-debunking-netanyahus-distorted-biblical-justifications-for-genocide.html
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Thanks, this is a really interesting piece, I just skimmed it for now, but later, when I have more time, I will go back and read it in full.
My first impression is an old joke that I heard somewhere, “Everybody can quote whatever they want from the Bible, to prove whatever they please.”
That’s because there is so much material in there, and much of it self-contradictory. On one page you read, “Love thy neighbor”, then you turn the page and it’s “Kill thy neighbor!”
If you are Marxist, then you can find plenty of passages to show how God favors the poor and demands the rescinding of debt, etc. If you are a conservative slave-owner, you can find a passage validating your owning of slaves, etc.
The author quotes that whole “Kill the Amalekites” thing and then argues that Samuel was not a valid prophet and had no right to issue those particular decrees: “These were not the Lord’s own words, and Samuel was no Moses.”
And yet, I bet I could find a passage in there somewhere, oh yes, here it is, from the Book of Numbers, where Moses orders his soldiers to rape the virgins and kill all the non-virgin women:
Killing of captive children and non-virgin women (14–18)
Moses was angry that the soldiers had left all women alive, saying: “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to Yahweh in the Peor incident, so a plague struck Yahweh’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”[13][9]
If this isn’t an intent to genocide, I don’t know what is!
Still, I get your point, I am sure there are plenty of Biblical scholars and Torah scholars out there who could give Nutty-Yahoo a run for his money. Heck, I am sure they could find quotes proving that he is Satan himself. Which he probably is!
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Ah, the ultra-violence of religionocide! The deathknell is in the details. To wit: the symbol of the Christian faith being an execution device — that crucifixion hangin’ tree! It’s like Black Lives Matter adopting a Klanoose for its logo. Not to pick on the Xtians alone. Yalensis does a good job on the Jews here. The Muslims are no better when it comes to having a harshingod. Allah comes across as a wrath-filled dementity, and the Prophet Mohammed (pox be upon him) killed people with his own hands in the early Islamic power struggles over the two holy cities, IIRC. I could cast aspersions on Hinduism and Buddhism too, in the way they’re practiced — caste system, anyone? — but I don’t want to drift too far away from my anecdote.
When my daughter was young, I took her to a church in Florida for a while. I thought religulosity (h/t Bill Maher) was ludicrous by that time in my life. But Christianity IS an element of American culture, so every child should have some experience of it. It’s like NFL football. You might not give a rat’s arse about who won last weekend, but you should know why all those guys are hollering at the TV set in the sports bar.
My first Xwife had kicked me out of her house by then, but I had weekend visitation rights with our daughter (which I was constantly battling for in court.) I was raised Methodist, which is a pretty slack sect, not all hell and damnation like some other demoninations (sic) I could name. There was a low-key Methodist congregation in the Florida town where I used to work as a newspaper reporter (before I got sacked and blacklisted from the profession for being a troublemaking muckraker. Bukker the troublemucker!) so I took her to Sunday school there on my weekends. That way, she’d know who this Jeebus fellow was that people rave about. My ex, who was born Jewish, had renounced that faith and taken to following an Indian guru. (Before she was kicked out of the cult for announcing that she was “god-realised” and therefore spiritually equivalent to the swami, but that’s another twisted tale.) I didn’t take our one and only offspring to church JUST because it pissed off the X, but it was a plus, heh-heh. She bitched about it in court filings (along with many other things) but judges won’t deny visitation over religious disputes. Especially in backwoods Florida! My churchifying ended when the X moved clear across the state to live with her mother in Miami Beach. After making a 150-mile (each way) trip to pick up my daughter every other weekend, I wasn’t going to waste my limited amount of visitation time on church crapola.
Anyway, getting to the point of my pontificating, when my daughter was in with the prayer rug rats, I had some time to kill. Adult services didn’t start until after Sunday school, but I wasn’t going to stick around for that crap. I mostly had the chapel to myself, so I made a habit of picking up a Holey Bibble and opening it to a random page. I’d read until the first violent episode I came across. Usually I didn’t even have to flip a page before that happened. Then I could put it down.
The Old Festerment was no challenge — it’s stuffed with slaughter. Usually with doG doling out the death its own-self. What a sicko spirit it was! The New Testicles were tricksier. I sometimes had to make allowances for mere mentions of who would be cast into Hell if they didn’t display enough allegiance to The Big J. “OK. that’s some mean shit right there, even if Jesus didn’t run anyone through with a sword himself.” The bit where he rolled into Jerusalem and advised all of his followers to go out and steal a horse so they could ride in style, that was almost as good as murder.
My lesson from all this was that the Bobble is depraved and degenerate. Rarely more than a page passed without something horrible happening. People who consider themselves religious truly believe they are loving and righteous. Yet at the same time, they base their beliefs on books that are heavy on atrocity. Again, not just the Abrahamic religions — all of ‘em place an emphasis on punishment. (It’s just that in Buddhism and Hinduism, you bring the bad karma on yourself, you wretch, but it’s not the avatar or the universe whacking you like some vengeful fiend.) The beat-downs are what revs the motors of the god-bothering maniacs. It appeals to our screeching teeth-bared monkeybrains. So every “person of faith” is constantly in a state of double-think: “I am a peaceful, loving person, and my Good Book would love to see you die in hellfire.”
This seems like an appropriate occasion to drop a link to my favourite gospel song titled “Jesus Loves Me But He Can’t Stand You” by a satirical Texas bluegrass band called the Austin Lounge Lizards. (apologies if I’ve posted this to you before. It’s one of my favourite songs because it’s so wickedly funny, and I leave links to it at a lot of places.)
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Bukko, I thought I knew my Bible (especially the New Testicles) like the back of my hand, but somehow I missed that part where Jesus became a horse thief! Or, as the Romans would say, a “fur equorum”.
Well, I made sure to catch up on everything again, because I pride myself on being the best theologian in the room…
For example, you should read that “Lost Book of Mariam Magdalena”, in which she recounts their ripping adventures together. Jesus and Mariam were like the Bonnie and Clyde of their time. Sometimes they would rob funds from the Temple, which is what really ticked off the Pharisees.
Or even better, Jesus could be compared to the Billy the Kid of his era, running off other peoples horses and donkeys, with King Herod playing the role of Pat Garrett, the law and order man.
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P.S. – this is an old joke, forgive me if you have heard it before:
Q: The Bible doesn’t explicitly say, but how do we deduce that Joseph and Mary were experiencing some problems in their marriage?
A: Because it writes that Mary was riding Joseph’s ass all the way to Bethlehem!
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When talking about ancient things like the Old Testament (as opposed to how it’s being used by Netanyahu et al. today), I don’t really think the concept of “genocide” is helpful. Actions that are objectively the same can be quite different in their significance and in what they tell you about the person doing them depending on the broader context. The point is that the ancient Israelites were not at all unusually violent in the context of the ancient Near East. The only difference between the Israelites on one side and, say, the Egyptians and Assyrians on the other, is that the Israelites, to the imperfect extent that they followed their law, were less greedy for slaves (when Egyptians and Assyrians left defeated enemies alive, it wasn’t out of the kindness of their hearts).
Of course, a modern person looking at this is likely to just say, “OK, well then the Egyptians and Assyrians were genocidal too,” which is fair enough. But where the distinction does have significance is that it means you can’t make psychological deductions about the Israelite leaders. Moses, Joshua, David, etc. weren’t “schizophrenic” or “sociopathic” or whatever. They were just people living in and shaped by the assumptions of the ANE 2500 to 3000 years ago. I noticed someone else mentioned Christian Bale’s take on Moses, and I have to admit I find it fairly shallow and naive. Taking someone from a completely foreign culture from thousands of years ago, then trying to psychoanalyze them as you would if your next-door neighbour did exactly the same things today is more than a little silly.
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Ryan, I suppose it’s true that all the major empires of that era engaged in total war against other peoples. It was normal to just slay everybody or take slaves. The Assyrians were famous for being very cruel, and boasting about it in their steles. Or later, the Greeks and Trojans going at it, and Greeks totally genociding on Troy. Or Romans genociding on Carthage. The Israelites/Hebrews weren’t really any different. The only difference is that modern children are raised to regard those Biblical people as saintly heroes. You don’t see people going around and writing children’s books glorifying Gilgamesh, for example, with pious drawings.
Also, I do have to say that Nutty-Yahoo started this whole thing by comparing the Palestinians to the Amalekites.
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