The Blue Octopus

 

 

I.

 

The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. [Exodus 15:14]

 

In October 2023, Israel invaded Gaza for the third time since the turn of century - the previous two invasions having taken place in 2008 and 2014 - and a year later, we see that the invasion is dragging on, its progress presenting a singular contrast to that of the invasions of 1956 and 1967. In the wars of 1956 and 1967, the Israeli army ejected the Egyptian from Gaza in a matter of days, but in the war that started in 2023, it is unable to eject Hamas, despite Israel's possessing one of the largest and most-well equipped armies in the Middle East and one of the most technologically advanced air forces in the world. I have heard rumours that most of the Israeli army casualties are caused by friendly fire and that Israeli infantry tactics have deteriorated to the level of the Russian. If the rumours are true, then the present war marks a sad descent, for traditionally the Israeli army, unlike the Russian, values the life of the individual soldier. But Israeli military performance in the present Gaza war is in keeping with Israeli military performance all throughout the 21st century, and in hindsight, Israel enjoyed its last victory more than forty years ago, in the opening stages of the Lebanon War of 1982. Granted, the 21st century Arab and Israeli wars caused the deaths of a great many Arab civilians, which was perhaps the Israeli aim - perhaps we should classify Gaza and Lebanon as punitive expeditions - but in all these operations, Israel failed to secure its objectives; the south of Lebanon remained in the hands of Hezbollah, Gaza in the hands of Hamas.

 

The Far Left has rejoiced because of this; Israeli setbacks and defeats represent a blow to 'imperialism'. In keeping with this 'anti-imperialist' struggle, the Far Left makes its outrage over the Gaza 'genocide' known at all times and in all places and it continually expresses its uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian cause. This bond was on display when I recently passed by a trade union building in one of Australia's largest country towns and saw on the rooftop a Palestinian flag flying alongside the Aboriginal and the Eureka. Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian Islamism appeals 'intersectionally', that is, it appeals to all the disparate groupings, tendencies, lifestyles, factions, associated with the Far Left; it appeals to negroes, homosexuals, and environmentalists. This is illustrated by a recent episode in which a prominent representative of the last group, Greta Thunberg, the 'Swedish doom goblin', underwent travails because of her affiliation with Palestinianism. That story began when Thunberg posted on social media a photograph of herself holding up a 'Stand with Gaza' placard. Examining the photo carefully, observers spotted a stuffed toy - a blue octopus - sitting atop an armchair, and concluded, by a leap of logic that is unfathomable, that Thunberg was using the octopus to send a coded anti-Semitic message.

 

We must view all this against the background of history. Ever since the Far Left turned against Israel - which was probably sometime in the early 1970s, when the Palestinian cause became Left-chic - Israel and Jewish organisations have levelled a charge of anti-Semitism against the Far Left. The Far Left is said to have taken up a new anti-Semitism; conservatives in their polemics are making the anti-Israel Far Left equivalent to the 'Nazis'. If left-wingers study the history of the Arab and Israeli conflict, they may be surprised to learn that the statement of equivalence that Far Left anti-Zionists = Nazis is nothing new; in fact, it is at least fifty years old.

 

All the same, the virulence and vehemence of the Far Left in 2024 against Israel, Zionism, and the Israel lobby has given some on the dissident Right pause, and some white nationalists have been forced by events to give voice to opinions on the new anti-Semitism; Kevin Alfred Strom of has written a good three-part analysis starting here. Those on the Far Right are debating whether those on the Far Left have come over to their side on the Jewish question. The matter is permeated by fog and confusion, because the idea of anti-Semitism itself is vague and undefined, and this has been the case since Moritz Steinschneider ('Maurice Stonecutter', 'Maurice Jeweller'), the 19th century Jewish political activist, invented the term, putting it forward with a view to muddying the waters. And as we can see from the Thunberg scandal, a great paranoia exists, and when we examine the dispute, we feel uncertainty: does the pro-Israel activist really believe that Thunberg is an anti-Semite, or does he not believe? Perhaps he is tricking us; perhaps he seeks to fool the more gullible among us into thinking that Thunberg is an anti-Semite, that, although it seems doubtful, Thunberg and her circle have been swotting up on anti-Semitism, reading Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf and Ford's commentary on the Protocols.

 

Naturally, those on the dissident Right contemplate the possibility of a left-wing anti-Semitism with excitement and satisfaction: their surrounded and encircled army has been waiting a long time for relief; now their hope is that the Far Left has gotten wise to the Jewish question and that it is assembling a rescue force that shall come to their aid. The hypothesis is a most pleasing one; but all the same, those on the Right must investigate the ideology of the anti-Israel Far Left dispassionately and rationally, even if they run the risk of putting some illusions, some hopes and daydreams, to rest. Articles such as Strom's attempt such an analysis. I here will be doing something similar, and the conclusions I arrive at will not be all that profound and original - the likes of Strom have said it all before - but what I will be doing that is new is looking at the same material from a different angle.

 

II.

 

The political circumstances of 2024 oblige us to formulate clear, precise definitions; I will here attempt to define what anti-Semitism is - that is, the real anti-Semitism and not the fake. Clear formulations matter; their lack pollutes contemporary political discourse, as shown by the careless bandying about of Steinschneider's conception.

 

Whenever accusations of anti-Semitism are made, these should be disarmed by the asking of a few questions that, although obvious, are rarely asked. The first of these is: who are the Semites? We know that the Akkadians, Phoenicians, and Arabs belong to the Semitic category as well as the Jews. And that leads us to the next question: what, precisely, is 'Semitism'? We can define Marxism, Freudianism, and Darwinism easily enough, but 'Semitism' is the great indefinable, and that entails that one cannot be 'anti' it: we must know what the 'ism' is before we can be 'anti' the 'ism'. We know what anti-communism is because we know communism is. We know what a communist is, but we do not know what a Semitist is. And so, we must ask: what is anti-'Semitism'? Furthermore, we must ask why it is that anti-Semitism, whatever it is, is the most wicked and obscene doctrine in the history of the world. I am willing to accept the conclusion, but I must have arguments, and so far, there seem to be none. Summing up, after a cursory examination, Steinschneider's conception comes loose from its moorings; it is filled with holes, as even Steinschneider's Wiki entry admits.

 

But a person who would make these sound objections would be logical and rational, and at the same time naive; that is, he would be someone who has had little to no experience of the Jewish people - at least none of the experience that the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks of the Bible had. The experience of these ancient peoples gave birth to a doctrine that I call the real anti-Semitism, real because it is empirical.

 

The real anti-Semitism consists of a number of propositions that are easy to understand, hard to accept - hard for most people, that is. In the list, the first of the propositions is: Jews possess political power. Second, they wield it over non-Jews; and third, they can use it for evil and not good; and fourth, they use it as Jews and not as 'Illuminati', 'Masons', 'capitalists', 'corporations', 'globalists', 'the Far Left', 'the Davos elite', not even as 'Zionists'.

 

To the American conservative, these are outrageous slanders, but we can draw these anti-Semitic 'canards' from the one book that the American conservative should regard as the most authoritative, and that is the Bible. One only need start with the story of Joseph in Genesis, which if you have read it - and chances are that you have not - tells of the exploitation and starvation of millions of Egyptians by Joseph and the enrichment of Joseph and his family. If anti-Semitism is whatever casts the Jews in a bad light, then the Old Testament is the most anti-Semitic book ever written. And for our purposes, it is important to recognise that the Bible tells the story of all Jews and not some Jews: it does not distinguish between 'Zionist' and 'anti-Zionist' Jews, 'Marxist' and 'capitalist' Jews, 'good' Jews and 'bad' Jews.

 

Joseph is a hero in the Bible, and the Bible allows us to see how Jews see themselves. We would assume, then, that the Bible paints a flattering portrait of the Jews. Or does it? The truth is that any reader would be shocked and appalled by what Simeon, Levi, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David, and other Old Testament heroes did to the non-Jews. And this brings us to another proposition of anti-Semitism. The Jewish festival of Passover celebrates evils wrought upon the Egyptians, Purim upon the Persians, and Hannukah upon the Greeks. Any non-Jewish scholar contemplating these would find them offensive, to put it mildly; but they rarely come up for criticism from our Jewish intellectuals, and this is the case no matter how 'left-wing' the Jewish intellectual may be. This is a central proposition of anti-Semitism. The Jews of the Old Testament understood that a hostility existed but could not explain that hostility. A blissful ignorance exists, and with it a presumption of an irrationality dwelling in the minds of the non-Jews who take exception to Jewish conduct. This carries over into the present, and we see a trace of it in one article lauding the anti-Israel protests at American universities. The Jewish communist Daniel Lazare records with pride that at one American encampment, the anti-Zionist Jewish activists 'On Monday evening, the first night of Passover... even held a Seder complete with matzo and prayer books'. Lazare had not read the Bible, otherwise he would have recognised that Passover is not worthy of celebration, for it commemorates the mass slaughter of thousands? tens of thousands? of the Egyptian 'firstborn'. Exodus 10:29: 'And there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead'. Explaining Passover, Dan Barker writes:

 

Every year during Passover, the Jews hold a festive feast where they celebrate the Tenth Plague. They eat unleavened bread, drink wine, sing, and commemorate the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent children. The word “Passover” is a translation of the Hebrew pesach, which most likely means “he passed over.” During the final plague of Egypt, while children were being murdered by the God of the Old Testament through no fault of their own, the children of the Israelites who smeared lamb’s blood on their doors were spared. They were passed over. Apparently, searching for that blood mark was the only way God’s Angel of Death could tell the difference between the bad innocent children and the good innocent children. Jews all over the world annually rejoice over that non-difference, happy that they are the good chosen people. [Dan Barker, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction (2016)]

 

All Jewish organisations, religious bodies, journals, agree that the Jews of Exodus and subsequent books are typically Jewish. And they put forward the notion that any criticism of this Jewishness is unfounded, irrational, and moreover, dangerous and immoral. And this leads to another important thesis, one that AIPAC, the Israel lobby, and American conservatives extend to anyone who criticises Israel: any aspersions cast on the Jewish people give evidence of a desire to hurt and even destroy the Jews wholesale. If you deplore the conduct of the Jews of Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, you are a Jew-hater who wants to exterminate all Jews; and the same affect manifests itself when you deplore the conduct of the Jews of Israel and the Israel lobby. Fancying themselves to be psychoanalysts, AIPAC, the ADL, and other Jewish organisations claim to understand you better than you understand yourself; they know the evil that lurks in your heart.

 

And now we come to another proposition of anti-Semitism, which is this: Jewish organisations and intellectuals can display an extraordinary belligerence, aggression, and paranoia that non-Jews can, whenever they deign to notice it, find obnoxious and offensive. Whatever did Australians of all people do to merit this tweet:

Amusingly, the mentality behind it reminds of this tweet, from the account of a renowned vatnik:

 

'You're locked in here with me', in the words of Rorschach, one of the anti-heroes of The Watchmen (2009). A pop psychologist would not characterise this as healthy.

 

Now it is a peculiarity of human nature that one group, if it is decent and thinks of itself as being decent, dislike being accused of wanting to oppress, enslave, murder another. Suppose a man is indifferent to the fate of Israel or even mildly critical of the Zionist project: does that make him bad? According to the Johnathan Greenblatts, it does; and furthermore, it makes him hateful, evil, murderous. Any intellectual, journalist, politician, entertainer, public figure who takes up a position even mildly critical of Israel is shocked and overwhelmed by the ferocity of the attacks of the Greenblatts. And his hackles rise; he takes umbrage at being called a bigot, an anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, and inevitably, a Nazi. After the assault, which 'discomfits' him - to use one of the favourite words of the Bible - he is often reduced to spluttering that he likes the Jewish people, that he has many Jewish friends, that he recognises the many accomplishments of the Jews in the arts and humanities; and in a last desperate defence, he takes refuge in the thesis (one that has by now become hackneyed) that not all Jews are Zionists. Such is human nature, though, over time he becomes accustomed to the unrelenting hostility and lack of fair play, and these exert influence upon his character. Again and again, our liberal and moderate anti-Zionist is told that he hates the Jews and everything Jewish and that he wants to murder Jews; and the turning point comes when, exhausted, he asks himself whether there is something to the accusations. This is human psychology. If I am indifferent to x or mildly critical of x, and x, perceiving this, tells me that I hate him and I secretly want to destroy him - the first time I may dismiss his accusations as the ravings a madman, the hundredth time, I may think there is something to them. Oddly, the Greenblatts and other witchfinders-general charged with rooting out anti-Semitism make use of the indoctrination by repetition technique of a cult. If you are told something over and over, you begin to believe it, no matter how absurd it is.

 

In Greenblatt's conduct we perceive a self-destructiveness. Representatives of the ADL and other organisations devoted to defending the honour of the Jewish people often bring up without prompting anti-Semitic 'tropes' that are known only to the anti-Semitic cognoscenti, and they shout these 'canards' and 'slanders' out loud and rub them in the faces of the public - a public that is by and large ignorant of real anti-Semitism. The classic example is the ADL's constant bringing up the 'blood libel', which is a Jewish term for something that anti-Semites call Jewish ritual murder. Here, I will not touch upon it, for it should be set aside for an advanced masterclass in anti-Semitism; here, I am writing only a beginner's guide. The question is, why are the Greenblatts, who are in the business of doing public relations for the Jewish people, bringing up such an unsavoury subject; and why are they presenting it to the 'normies', who know nothing of it and want to know nothing of it? It is as though I feel a compulsion to blurt out to complete strangers that I have been accused of terrible crimes and perversions; and at the same time, I noisily insist that there is nothing to these slurs, that they exist solely in the imaginations of accusers who are bad, wicked people who for no reason want to slander my good name and destroy me. The irony is, if an irony it be, that none of the strangers would never have heard the vile accusations had I not importunately injected them into the general discourse. And my repeating these slanders to an audience that is at first indifferent and after a time resistant produces an effect. At the start, my audience concludes, rightly enough, that I am somewhat unhinged; and by the end, it begins to ask itself if there is anything founded in these 'unfounded' accusations after all.

 

III.

 

Because of his unusual appearance, Greenblatt is compared in memes to Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922).

 

 

Interestingly, modern commentators spy in Nosferatu 'anti-Semitic undertones'.

 

A Nosferatu, a Dracula, any variant thereof, is a Persona - a word that the ancient Greeks used for a mask worn by an actor. In the Greek theatre, the mask brings forth a character from out of the actor's unconscious; and to use one of the terms of Jungian psychology, it presents us with an archetype. Many Personae from the Old Testament are being called forth and presented to this day, and as we shall see, that phenomenon constitutes one of the premises in a chief argument for anti-Semitism.

 

One of the first Jewish Personae that appears in the Bible is the Jewish pimp. Abraham pimps Sarah, Isaac pimps Rebekah, and Mordecai pimps Esther. Significantly, the three Jewish men engage in pandering with a view to political advantage: they wish to win the favour of non-Jewish rulers. This feeds into the anti-Semitic 'trope' that the present-day Abrahams, Isaacs, and Mordecais are encouraging venality and indulging our appetite for vice, whether that vice be pornography, gambling, drugs, alcohol (in the Prohibition days), the services of prostitutes... It is most important to note that they do this in order to assert dominance: like the panderers of Biblical times, the Jeffrey Epstein-style panderers of moden times exploit Gentile weakness so as to get one over the Gentiles.

 

A second Jewish Persona, and one that is most pertinent in 2024, is the Jewish war criminal, who first appears in Genesis, in the story of Shechem and Dinah. A two-man army, Simeon and Levi kill all the males in the city of the Hivites, lay waste to that city, steal all the livestock, and enslave all the women and children. Fearing the consequences, Jacob reproves his two sons: 'And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house' [Genesis 34:30]. The racial massacres - for which the Jewish intellectual and anti-Nazi activist Rafael Lemkin coined the term 'genocide' - commence in earnest in Numbers. The Midianites are nearly all wiped out after Moses orders the death of all the Midianite men and all the non-virgin women. Of the survivors, the Israelites take captive 16,000 virgin females, and interestingly, 32 of these females are set aside for a sacrifice to Yahweh - one of few instances of human sacrifice that are approved of in the Bible.

 

The third significant Jewish Persona is the cruel overlord and oppressor: see Joseph. The Joseph story leads us to what I call the Jewish political model. The Jewish hero of the Old Testament seeks power not by ascending to a throne - that would be too public - but by becoming a middleman. He insinuates himself into a court and bit by bit makes himself indispensable to a ruler who is usually vain, empty-headed, and easily swayed. Joseph and the Pharoah, Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, and Mordecai and Ahasuerus give examples. The first two Jewish heroes, Joseph and Daniel, win the Gentile rulers over by becoming interpreters of dreams and portents - that is, psychoanalysts - and all three heroes use their influence to amass wealth and power for themselves and for the Jewish people; and such are the persuasive powers of their Jewish advisors, Ahasuerus and Darius the Median obligingly order the execution of the enemies of Mordecai and Daniel. 

 

Among the other archetypes we find the Jewish heroine who is a Jewish patriot: we see the prostitutes Sarah, Rebekah, and Esther; two female assassins, Jael and Judith, who murder men who are enemies of the Jews; and the prophetess Deborah, a sort of Jewish queen, who being a 'stronk womyn' (strong woman) doubtless wins the admiration of feminist scholars.

 

Quite a few archetypes can be found in the Bible that have fallen into disuse, that is to say, we do not see Jews in the modern age taking up these Personae. For examples of discarded Personae, see Elijah and his disciple Elisha, who are evil wizards; these men are the Jedi of the Bible, but unlike the Jedi, they owe allegiance to the dark side of the Force - perhaps they are not Jedi, but Sith. And any discussion of magical powers in the Bible brings us to the one archetype that appears more than any other, and that is the religious maniac who makes a habit of animal and sometimes human sacrifice. These are the men who give burnt offerings to Yahweh, that is, holocausts, holocaust being a word that stems from the Greek word kauston, to burn. 'Burnt offering' appears nearly 250 times in the Old Testament and 'holocaust' over a dozen times in the deuterocanonical texts. (When someone accuses you of denying the Holocaust, the smart rejoinder is: 'Which one?'). Neither term appears in the New Testament, suggesting that Christianity is a religion that has parted ways from Judaism. The doctrine of the latter rests upon the ritual slaughter, butchery, and sacrifice of animals; Yahweh takes pleasure in it; the fiery sacrifice of these beasts is a 'sweet savor to the Lord'; Leviticus is one long cookbook and butcher's manual. But after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews stopped their sacrificing; and sometime before then, the Ark of the Covenant, a box that Yahweh lives in, was stolen by parties unknown. After these two cataclysms, Jews enter the modern era, one that is devoid of magic, Yahweh having left the Earth. Steve Wells observes that the destruction of the Second Temple 'caused a complete change in Judaism: from a temple-based religion, with lots of animal sacrifices, to a new form called Rabbinical Judaism, with no sacrifices'.

 

The lower-case 'h' holocaust relates to the upper-case 'H' Holocaust that we all we know; the two are connected. Those on the Left who are opposed to Zionism, Israel, the 'genocide in Gaza', are unable to avoid this relation, because any defender of Israel and Zionism will bring it up sooner or later. And it is here that any rationality, logic, argument, comes to a halt. We traverse from secularism to religiosity. And against faith, there is no argument. Simply put, the Jewish religious tradition is filled with nonsense, but such is the hold of that tradition on the contemporary Jewish mind, not even the most avowedly secular Jewish intellectual is willing to challenge any part, no matter how nonsensical.

 

Strom illustrates for us one instance of Jewish religious absurdity:

 

According to the Talmud, in the year 132 AD the Romans slaughtered the Jews in the town of Bethar. Bethar was a small town about ten miles southwest of Jerusalem, and it had an area of approximately five city blocks — one source gives its area as about 600 meters by 200 meters. Not only did the Romans kill every Jew in Bethar, but according to the named and “authoritative” rabbis writing in the Talmud, the number of Jews killed there was 800,000,000. Just in case such a number might seem a tad exaggerated, the Talmud makes it all clear by informing us that the blood of the holocausted Jews ran to the sea in a huge tidal wave that swept boulders in its path and was so deep that it reached the nostrils of the Romans’ horses. The crimson tide of Jewish blood, we are told, roared over 35 miles to the sea, where it stained the waters red four miles from the shore.

 

Not only did 800,000,000 Jews live in Bethar, but they lived in luxurious ease, and within those 600 by 200 meters were 64,000,000 Jewish schoolchildren who attended schools operated by the 400 synagogues. We are additionally informed that the evil Romans wrapped each of the schoolchildren in his scroll and burned all of them, and that the bodies of the Jews were then used to build a wall enclosing Hadrian’s vineyard, which was 18 miles square, and the Jewish blood that was salvaged from the tidal wave was used as fertilizer for seven years.

 

And that brings us to the Talmudic tall tale that wields the most power. This is the Holocaust, the 'h' being capitalised. According to the Talmud, the Gentiles will throw the Jews into giant ovens; six million Jews will be immolated; and Yahweh, recognising the sacrifice, will bring the murdered Jews back to life. After this, the Jews will reclaim the lost State of Israel.

 

As we know, this reclamation is what happened in 1948, when the prophecy was fulfilled. Or perhaps it was not; perhaps the prophecy was nonsense, religious nonsense, all along.

 

IV.

 

When considering all this, the theme that emerges is continuity. A bridge across time joins the Jews of Biblical times to the Jews of today, and it is faith and blood that links the two generations. Unusually for a religion, Judaism takes race and faith to be commensurate; the men of the Jewish faith who choose to marry women who are of a non-Jewish faith are betraying the Jewish race. In Numbers, the Fourth Book of Moses, Jewish men 'commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab' [Numbers 25:1]. Outraged by this, Yahweh sends a plague that kills tens of thousands of Jews. Fortunately, the plague comes to an end after a Bible hero, Phinehas, spies a Jewish man, Zimri, copulating with a 'Midianitish' woman, Cozbi, in a tent; he steals into the tent and with a spear skewers the pair; he 'thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly' [Numbers 25:8]. Greatly pleased by the double murder, Yahweh puts an end to the plague - but not before it has killed 24,000 Jews.

 

Racial purity matters to the Jews of the Bible because of continuity. In one form or another, the doctrines of afterlife and the immortality of the soul turn up in the teachings of all the world's religions, but Judaism is unique insofar as the only immortality and afterlife that it acknowledges lie in the continuance of the Jewish racial line. This is why, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the daughters of Lot ply him with alcohol and rape him - 'that we may preserve seed of our father' [Genesis 19:32]. As Guyenot writes in From Yahweh to Zion: Three Thousand Years of Exile (2018):

 

This fundamentally materialistic nature of ancient Hebraism has often been pointed out by historians of religion: the rewards promised by Yahweh to those who “fear” him are entirely material—to be “full of days,” to have numerous offspring and a great fortune. Man’s only survival is through generation, or blood descent, according to the Torah... In the story of Cain and Abel... It is not Abel’s soul that suffers, but rather his blood “crying out to God from the ground” (Genesis 4:10).

 

We must pause here. In the event that readers feel some revulsion to the above, I must warn them: they are feeling the onset of anti-Semitism. Does the atmosphere of the tawdry saga that is the Old Testament seem cloying, closed-off, stuffy, suffocating, incestuous? Does the morality of the Bible seem debased? Yes, and such a reaction is healthy and normal; but it is anti-Semitic.

 

V.

 

Guyent's ruminations on blood, progeny, lineage, and continuity prompt us to delve into the topic of the Jewish philosophy of life. Because the events of the Old Testament are often sordid and the actions of Yahweh are often merciless, cruel, and murderous, one would assume that Jews have a fierce mien and a grim view of life, but that assumption does not square with our knowledge of the Jews that we are acquainted with in everyday life and the world of popular culture.

 

Between ourselves, this is where many anti-Semitic polemics fall down. A recent article by Douglas Mercer posted at the National Alliance site, an article that primarily concerns the Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld, goes too far; it lacks nuance; simply put, it is so badly written and badly thought out, so much so that I will not be linking it here, for it gives anti-Semites a bad name. If you spoke like Mercer does to anyone old enough to remember Seinfeld, they would regard you as a freak - and rightfully so. A comic masterpiece, Seinfeld features good actors who possess superb comedic timing, and it made viewers laugh. To those of us who experienced it, it gave fleeting moments of pleasure; we have fond memories of it; and perhaps the more nostalgic of us revisit it; but Mercer, a puritan, tells us: stop enjoying it! But even the founder of the National Alliance, William Pierce, concedes that some Jewish TV and movie productions amuse him. In a 2001 broadcast, Countering the Poison, Pierce says:

 

All in the Family’s Archie Bunker was used to make White Americans with traditional ideas about race and sexuality seem ridiculous, to seem ignorant and small-minded. M*A*S*H, starring the leftist actor Alan Alda, was used to make Whites with traditional attitudes seem like vicious bigots, despised by all decent people. Tens of millions of White Americans watched these programs on black-and-white television screens week after week. I was one of those White Americans. The programs were genuinely funny, genuinely entertaining.

 

But alas, he sighs: 'And they were genuinely poisonous to the easily manipulated lemmings who made up the vast majority of the viewers'. He goes on to say that the creator of All in the Family, Norman Lear, was Jewish; as was the producer of the M*A*S*H TV show, Larry Gelbart; as was the director of the M*A*S*H movie, Robert Altman.

 

In all due deference to Pierce, when I first heard him in that broadcast - nearly a quarter of a century ago - identify Altman, one of the great New Hollywood directors, as a Jew, I experienced doubt: after all, Altman was known to be a Catholic director. And indeed, the Wiki entry (which is by no means authoritative) says that Altman was not Jewish. If Wiki is right and Pierce is wrong, it is of no great consequence, but I think that it is a symptom. Simply put, white nationalists always want to offload anything bad about white culture, the white Western world, what Spengler called the Faustian or Occidental Culture, onto the Jews; furthermore, they are unwilling to admit that many of the Jews working in the fields of popular culture and entertainment have given us works that are diverting and amusing. To the white nationalist, such a concession represents a betrayal of the worst kind. For he believes that one cannot relax - not even for a second. The ethic of the white nationalist is: take everything, even an old and trivial piece of entertainment such as Seinfeld, seriously - extremely seriously. The American white nationalist is as dour as a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and one can spy the spirit of Protestantism lurking behind him; for all his professed anti-Christianity, he is at bottom an Evangelical.

 

If you want the opposite of seriousness, look to the Jewish philosophy of life as expounded in Ecclesiastes. There we find plenty of the materialism that Guyenot speaks of, and a pronounced opposition to the heroic spirit that we see in the myths of the Greeks and the Babylonians.

 

To understand the anti-heroism of Ecclesiastes, take note of how the Old Testament parodies certain of the Greek and Roman heroic myths. The story of Samson parodies the story of Hercules, and it does this because it is intending to degrade; it wants to make fun of the demigod myths and drag them into the mud. 

At the same time, the Jewish tradition wants to recast these Classical myths; it wants to build a Jewish version. The result is that in the person of Samson, the Bible creates a Jewish Hercules. Samson is the son of a mortal woman and an angel (or perhaps Yahweh himself) in the same way that Hercules is the son of Alcmena, who is a mortal woman, and Zeus. From the telling of the Samson story, we can deduce that the Jewish tradition despised the Classical but at the same time acknowledged its power.

 

When examining Ecclesiastes, let us look first to the hedonistic and happy-go-lucky philosophy. This book of the Bible delivers welcome relief from all the gloom, violence, and seriousness, that goes before:

 

"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour." 2:24

 

"There is no good ... but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life." 3:12

 

"Every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour." 3:13

 

"There is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works." 3:22

 

"A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry." 8:15

 

"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart." 9:7

 

"Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes." 11:9

 

"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." 12:12

 

Then there is the anti-heroism:

 

"For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast." 3:19

 

"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion." 9:4

 

"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." 9:5

 Finally, there is the nihilism and pessimism:

 

"All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." 3:20

 

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." 9:10

 

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." 9:11

 

Seinfeld won for itself the reputation as being the 'show about nothing'. A good many critics attributed Seinfeld's nihilism, hedonism, and anti-heroism to the influence of the spirit of the nineties, a decade which was, according to these critics, postmodern. And indeed, Jerry Seinfeld's world view slots into the postmodernist's quite nicely. But we can see how it is that the philosophy of Seinfeld and Ecclesiastes converge.

 

V.

 

I think I have presented a fairly comprehensive summing up of the principles of anti-Semitism, and over other accounts it possesses the advantage of being rooted in the Jewish past; it does not waste time on recent Jewish history - the history of the Rothschilds, the Balfour Declaration, Theodor Herzl, Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, Bibi Netanyahu, and the rest. In order to understand the principles of real anti-Semitism, one needs to forgo the contemporary and stick to tradition.

 

Something that struck me when exploring that tradition is the importance of the insight that there are three characters on the stage: the Jews, the non-Jews, and Yahweh. The last of these is the worst killer and oppressor of the Jews, and throughout the books of the major and minor prophets, Yahweh does nothing but threaten to rape, starve, enslave, and kill the Jewish people. Now and then he throws the Jews a bone and promises them dominion over the non-Jews; but most of his utterances, including the very last words of the Old Testament, consist of threats towards the Jews. And if we are to believe the tales of the earlier books, the body count of Jews killed by Yahweh - and often for small infractions - reaches into the hundreds of thousands. Ridiculously, the Catholic Church regards the books of the minor prophets as holy, and it devotes sacred days to their study. That being by the by, the important question is: why is it that Jews worship a god that is so destructive and abusive? What do they get out of it?

 

An economist would say that the Jews of the ancient world performed a cost-benefit analysis when throwing their lot in with Yahweh, which is true enough, and we know that to these Jews, the benefits of a fealty to a murderous, capricious, and grim god outweighed the costs. But to repeat, such a statement is anti-Semitic.

 

And so now that we have some understanding of what I call the real anti-Semitism is, we must ask the question, does the ideology of the radical, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel Left betray its impress? Has the radical Left become anti-Semitic? Has it become - to use a word that is now over-used, worn-out, and nearly devoid of meaning - 'Nazi'?

 

VI.

 

In order to answer that, we must scrutinise contemporary leftist discourse and keep a look-out for the special words and phrases that may indicate anti-Semitism. Such is the task of the Greenblatts, who perform it every day: it is their purpose in life.

 

Certain words were acceptable yesterday and unacceptable today. Some sixty to seventy years ago, Blacks in America were called 'coloreds', 'negroes', and 'blacks'; over time, those terms became verboten and were replaced by 'Black' (with a capital b) and 'African American', the last being a misnomer because most American negroes have never set foot in Africa.

 

Some words become reserved for use by one group and not another, and the word 'Black' may wind up in that category. When Trump referred to 'Black jobs' in the 2024 debate with Biden, sectors of the Left professed outrage: because Trump is a white man, it was implied, he had no right to use the word. But African Americans can use it all they want. The same holds true for the ultimate reserved word, which is of course the 'n' word. Negro musical performers, especially rap artists, can use it all they want, but if a non-negro uses it, well, he condemns himself to cancellation.

 

We see the same twisting and turning when it comes to the words 'Jew' and 'Jews'. If you are not Jewish and you refer to Jews with the definite article - 'The Jews' - you run the risk of sounding anti-Semitic. Likewise, the indefinite article arouses suspicion and hostility from the Greenblatts, especially when you apply it to an individual: 'The economist Milton Friedman is a Jew'. The verb 'jew' betokens anti-Semitism as well: see its use in the 1995 Michael Jackson single They Don't Care About Us: it means to deceive, exploit, swindle, rob.

 

But in the main, Jews themselves are allowed to freely use words that are forbidden to non-Jews. A Jewish writer may exclaim, 'I am a proud Jew'; he may declare that 'rising anti-Semitism on American college campuses is making the Jews nervous'; he is permitted to throw 'Jew' and 'Jews' about liberally. But you are not allowed, and you shall treat 'Jew' and 'Jews' in the same manner that you would treat words that refer to African Americans: these are the words that are to be handled most carefully, and better yet, not at all. It is far safer to use the adjective 'Jewish' ('These are the Jewish people', 'This is the Jewish-American community') instead of the nouns 'Jew' and 'Jews'. But you must take care to deploy 'Jewish' positively, never negatively; otherwise, you will stray into anti-Semitic territory. Years ago, when discussing the world of contemporary finance with a friend of mine - who was a prominent leader on the Far Right - I explained to him the practice of short-selling, and he shook his head disapprovingly and opined that short-selling sounded 'very Jewish'.

 

I predict that the words 'Zionism' and 'Zionist' will go the way of 'colored' and 'negro'. In the Bible, Zion denotes three things: a hill near Jerusalem, Jerusalem itself, and a mystical land. Zionism, the political and national movement that we all know, draws upon these Biblical connotations. A hundred years ago, the word attracted little in the way of controversy and comment, but in recent years, it has become a curse-word, especially to those on the Far Left, so much so that the ears of the Greenblatts prick up when they hear it; to the Greenblatts, the man who uses the word 'Zionist' as a pejorative term - and perhaps he contracts it sneeringly to 'Zio' - is announcing to the world that he is an anti-Semite.

 

We know that in 2024, the Far Left likes using the words 'Zionist' and 'Zio', which to the Greenblatts implies that the Far Left is on the way to real anti-Semitism. How, then, does Greenblatt fight it? The only means of refuting anti-Semitism is denial. You deny the proposition that Jews possess great wealth and power, that they can use their resources to bring about evil and not good, that they can be - as we see in the example of Greenblatt - paranoid, belligerent, aggressive, and a little unhinged. Denying is what American conservatives and Jewish organisations do around the clock. But a limit is reached, and after a point even the Far Left, which traditionally pays scant attention to Jewish matters, starts to show signs of scepticism; it cannot buy into the notion that the Jews are a poor, victimised, oppressed people who are bullied at every turn by the Gentiles in a most savage and cruel manner. They cannot accept Greenblatt's contention that the Jews possess no political power. And so, cracks begin to appear.

 

It is true that the Far Left fails to perceive the link between the Jews of yesterday and the Jews of today: if prominent thinkers of a left-wing persuasion deigned to read the Bible, they would see that Netanyahu's starvation of the Gazans mirrors Joseph's starvation of the Egyptians. But then, few on the Left or the Right bother to read the Bible and study Jewish history; and even the most devout Christians are unaware of what dwells in the Bible's pages.

 

VII.

 

Leftism consists of a number of beliefs, propositions. We can conceive of these as being part of a solar system, the center of which is socialism, Marxism, communism, Bolshevism. The typical leftist mind is filled to the brim with Marxism; it is crammed, and it has no room for any of the 'isms' - and that includes anti-Semitism - that compete with Marxism. All the same, the left-winger must deal with allies who subscribe to non-Marxist beliefs. Among the non-Marxists are those who dedicate their energies to the advancement of Islam and their race. And that brings us to Ilhan Omar, an East African immigrant and a Muslim who was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2019. In that same year, Omar caused a controversy with this tweet, which was deemed anti-Semitic:

 

 

Oddly, Omar is considered to be left-wing, that is, someone to be grouped in the same category as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom are self-professed socialists. And it is here that the notorious phenomenon of left-wing anti-Semitism comes into play. In contemporary America, a sort of no-man's land exists between the sphere of the classical socialist, the Marxist, the Bolshevik, and the sphere of the Muslim, the African American, the immigrant; and in that fertile soil the real anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism of the sort that can be detected in Omar's tweet, sprouts. Omar showed signs of becoming aware of the propositions that are easy to understand, difficult to accept: that Jews possess power, that Jews possess money, that Jews use both to get their own way, that they do this as Jews and not as members of the 'Davos elite' and 'the capitalist class' and 'the fascist Left' - these are the propositions that the anti-Semite finds unremarkable and the American conservative abominable.

 

The political implications are profound, and we need to digest them; one could write a lengthy analysis of what they entail for the Right, the Center, and the Left. But a meditation on the spiritual aspects as opposed to the political would profit us more.

 

In the section on Ecclesiastes, I touched upon the Jewish attitude towards the Roman and Hellenic heroes, and how Judaism sought to appropriate Classical myth and turn it into something Jewish. Judaism wanted a Hercules or Gilgamesh, and it gave us Samson. But how was the Classical and Babylonian hero to be converted into a Jewish? The answer is: by means of a holocaust.

 

After the mysterious angel reveals that he has impregnated the previously barren wife of Manoah, Manoah begs him to stay for dinner, for he has killed a goat for the occasion. The angel agrees, but demands that Manoah sacrifice the goat to Yahweh so as to mark the unborn Samson and consecrate his person to Yahweh. Manoah complies: 'So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD' [Judges 13:19]. Now, think of that image - the sacrifice of a goat on an altar - and what it reminds you of; does it not evoke a Satanic horror movie? After this quasi-Satanic sacrifice, the Bible continues with infernal imagery. The angel departs, shooting off to the skies, leaving an exhaust column of flame in his wake; he is like a rocket ship - or a cartoon devil. 'For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar' [Judges 13:20]. The symbol of the flame, fire, heat, is to Judaism what the symbol of the moon is to Islam. Because of centuries of Christian indoctrination, we in the West associate the Old Testament fire imagery with hell, devils, Satan; but we must keep in mind that the Old Testament differs from the New in its conception of Satan, hell, devils, demons. Old Testament stories such as the story of Samson challenge our Christian assumptions. For centuries, we in the West have believed that hell is 'down there', under the earth, under our feet; but the fiery angel - who refuses to divulge his name - after taking his leave flies off up there and not down there. Perhaps Hell or what the ancient Norse called Muspelheim is up there, in 'heaven', and not down there, deep in the bowels of the earth.

 

In the B-grade British horror movie Long Time Dead (2002), a marauding Arabic fire demon (a 'djinn') kills a series of British students and nightclubbers, setting them alight with his touch; Yahweh murders Uzzah and then Moses' nephews Nadab and Abihu using the same method. The last two men died because they performed a holocaust ritual in the incorrect way, much like a neophyte practitioner of black magic who, when attempting to summon demons, commits the mistake of stepping outside the pentagram. After the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, Yahweh warns their father Aaron that Jews should take extra care when entering Yahweh's tent. Curiously enough, apologists for Judaism will tell us that the deaths by immolation of Uzzah, Nadab, and Abihu were good. If we are to make sense of this notion of ‘the good’, we must perform what Nietzsche calls a transvaluation of values and understand that the Jewish tradition sees such spectral fire-beings as not evil and demonic but splendid and divine.

 

But those of us who stand outside the Jewish tradition take a different view, and we want to keep Yahweh as far away from us as possible, for he belongs in a horror movie of the seventies Satanic genre - movies such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976).

 

Both movies are Christian, and perhaps the makers of them were looking at their subject the wrong way. Our perspective is limited by centuries of Christian indoctrination and training; like us, the ancient Egyptians found themselves constrained by their own religious presuppositions when it came to the Jewish question. For the life of them, they could not understand the Jewish religion, and they sought to comprehend Jewish religious doctrine by seeing in it parallels with their own - they believed that Yahweh was Set, the Egyptian god of darkness and evil, in disguise. And Set in Egyptian theology is the closest deity to the devil in Christian theology. Mulling over cross-religious comparisons, I see parallels between Yahweh and the fire-giant Surtr of Norse myth; Surtr is a blacksmith, and a recent academic treatise argues convincingly that Yahweh is the Canaanite god of smelting.

 

Were the Egyptians right about Judaism? Certainly, we can see that today's Christians have gotten Judaism wrong, and it is the opposing elements, the contradictions, within it that make Christian Zionism a jumble. The authors of the Talmud loathed Christianity, and that should make Christians treat Israel and Zionism with caution; but Christian Zionists treat the State of Israel as a means to an end. Steve Wells speaks of the American Evangelist attempts at building the Third Temple:

 

The Jews returned to Israel in 1948 and took control of the territory that contains the site of the temple in 1967. So a third temple could be rebuilt and animal sacrifices could resume. What's the hold up?

 

The hold up is the red cow.[2] A red cow that meets the requirements of Numbers 19 must be found and sacrificed to make the holy water that can purify priests from all the dead bodies that they have come into contact with during their lives.

 

Once a red cow is found, killed, and burned, its ashes can be used to purify priests, the temple can be rebuilt, and God will smell the sweet savor of burning animal flesh once again.

 

And according to Maimonides, when the third temple is rebuilt the Messiah will come.

 

Of course, Christians believe the Messiah came and went a long time ago. But many also believe that when a red heifer is found and the temple is rebuilt, he'll come again. And then all hell will break loose and the end of the world will come.

 

Recently five red heifers have been sent from Texas to Jerusalem, hoping that one of them will meet the rabbi's standards.

 

To the person who has seen one too many seventies horror movies, these Evangelicals are playing with fire. What would happen if the Dome of the Rock was levelled and the Third Temple was built in its place? Conceivably, Yahweh could come back; although perhaps we need to recover Yahweh's box, the Ark of the Covenant, for that to happen, the mere suggestion alone should frighten. The rebuilding of the Temple could make up the premise of a seventies-style horror movie: by their actions, Orthodox Jewish zealots and foolish Evangelicals unleash Yahweh once again upon the world; in the movie’s trailer, a voiceover announces in a sepulchral tone: 'An ancient evil returns'.

 

But in order to bring back Yahweh, perhaps we do not need to restore the Temple, or find the Ark of Covenant, or build a portal that will allow him into cross from his dimension into ours, because to judge by the chaos, misery, and death in Gaza and Lebanon, Yahweh is already here.

 

Fire Tricks: on Israel, the Palestinians, the Bible, 'Nazis', and American Conservatism, Part I

 

I.  America Gone Mad? 

After the rampage of Hamas on the border of Gaza and Israel on October 7, the American conservative press has become unreadable. When studying it, we see something strange going on: all conservatives, whether they be neocon  paleocon, are mounting furious attacks on the opponents of Israel inside America; they are using the word 'Nazi' a million times a minute and in the most inappropriate contexts; and in doing so they are following the example of an Antifa - or Vladimir Putin. 

In this discourse, Muslims in America, anti-Zionist left-wing students in America, are castigated as 'Nazis'. The conservatives direct hatred and scorn towards anyone who shows the slightest sign of indifference towards Israel and Jewry's well-being; anyone who fails to show compliance and obedience is denounced as a compromiser and a traitor. The conservatives are attempting to steer America towards naming an Inner Enemy - a term that Yockey introduces in Imperium. He writes (in 1947) that the declaring of a group in America to be the Inner Enemy has occurred only three times in American history: the first during the Revolutionary War against the British, when it was the loyalists to Britain who were named as the Inner Enemy; the second during the American Civil War, when it was the Confederates; and the third during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reign, when it was the German-Americans and the American sympathisers with Germany. In 2023, it seems that the American conservatives are going for the fourth: the anti-Zionists, the so-called 'Anti-Semites', 'Nazis', and 'Jew Haters' are to be named the new Inner Enemy. 

One has to ask how all this came about. The man in the street, the typical American, will ask why it is that of all the victims of Islamic terrorism, the Israeli Jews killed on October 7 are the most important. In response, the American conservative will of course denounce this man as a shirker and perhaps even accuse him of harbouring a latent 'Nazism,' however Nazism be defined, for in American discourse and Russian, Nazism is infinitely elastic. 

This Probably Isn't Having the Effect You Think You're Having

Farther down in this post, I cover a missile attack on the Ukrainian village of Hroza, where literally a third of the population was killed. The missile strike targeted a funeral. This is how Russia's UN Ambassador, the troglodyte Vasily Nebenzya, defended the incident.

How nice is that, huh? Russia's rep. to the UN said the recent missile strike upon the eastern Ukrainian village of Hroza took place as there was a funeral of a "high-ranking Ukrainian nationalist," at which "a lot of his fellow neo-Nazis" were present. 52 people were killed, including a 6-year-old boy. The townsfolk were having a memorial feast at a local dining hall (that's what we do after funerals in east Ukraine) for Andriy Kozyr, a killed soldier who was originally from the town.

Watching the horrific assault against Israeli civilians in Southern Israel and the hijinks of Russian troops, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that the only real difference between the Russian government and Hamas is that Hamas doesn't drink as much vodka.

If the American conservative wants to go further, he will invoke patriotism: many of the people who were 'trapped' in Israel after October 7 and needed to be evacuated were 'American', or so we are told. But the conservative here is playing with fire. If we are to look at the footage of the 'Americans' in Israel and the Jews who attended the pro-Israel rallies in for instance Sydney and Melbourne, we are struck by the physiological differences between them and us, namely: the curled (and what Hitler called) cruel nostrils; the drooping ear lobes; the thick sensual lips; the deeply inset eyes; the downward-sloping outer corners of the eyes; and above all, the strange elongated and indented skull shape, which looks as though, in the words of one American white nationalist, the skull had been squeezed in the middle by a giant vise. The 'Americans' in Israel are no more of the American nationality than I am, and the blond and blue-eyed, left-wing and anti-Zionist American college student who is being excoriated in the American conservative press looks more American than the 'American' who had to be 'evacuated' from Israel after October 7. 

One must trust one's instincts. Twenty five years ago, I read an article by a writer at a white nationalist website who counseled his readers: 'Don't listen to Jews, look at them': wise advice. In a more recent article, one that appeared in the Renegade Tribune years ago and written on the Ultra-Orthodox Jews of New Jersey, someone in the comments section said that the Jews in the pictures and videos 'looked off', that is, off-kilter. Another commentator agreed, and humorously suggested that Jews were not human after all; perhaps they were descendants of a race that had visited Earth long ago from a distant planet (I think he was only half-joking). Memories of the old white nationalist screeds came back to me all at once in the week after October 7 when the media bombarded us with images of Israeli Jews, American Jews, Australian Jews; I could not help but find the strangeness of the Jewish physiognomy confronting; it was as though the splitting off between the white racial type and the Jewish was being rubbed in my face. Added to the racial difference was the symbolic: the aggressive waving of the Israeli flag, the proud display of the Star of David, sent the message, 'See! We are different! We are not like you!'. 

As a rule, Muslims and Jews are stuck in their own pasts, and their histories are always repeating themselves, and contemplating the history made me recall my past researches. In the 2000s, I made a study of Judaism in order to understand the Jews and in the 2010s, Islam in order to understand the Muslims. The diatribes after October 7 against the Palestinians, Hamas, and Islam had me look back nostalgically on my reading - in the 2010s - the work of the great anti-Islamic scholar Dr Bill Warner, who streamlined the Islamic doctrines and made them comprehensible to the Westerner. 

After you acquaint yourself with the classic Muslim texts, which, when properly viewed, possess a marvelous beauty and simplicity, you agree with Warner that the Muslim follows a 1400 year old program. Now, a great deal of uncertainty exists at the time of writing as to what exactly happened on October 7; but we can guess that the Palestinians murdered, chopped off heads, kidnapped, and humiliated, defiled, and violated; and if they had done so, they were following the tradition of the founder of Islam as laid down in the Koran, the Hadiths, and the Siri. Was Hamas consciously re-enacting the beheading, rape, kidnapping, and enslavement of the Jews of the Banu Qurayzah tribe - an event that took place after Muhammad's victory in the Battle of the Trench in 627 AD? It would seem so. 

We learn from an account of the massacre that 'Muhammad as was custom received his pick of the loot including his pick of the females, a beautiful Jewish woman named Rayhana whose husband was decapitated, and the rest went to all the rest of the Muslims, with a Muslim on horse receiving 3 times the spoils of a foot soldier'. Amusingly enough, the Muslims perpetrators justified the crime by quoting a verse from Deuteronomy, a typically bloodthirsty passage in the Old Testament in which Yahweh directs Joshua:

Deuteronomy 20:12-14

 But if the city makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.

Thus, the Muslims argued, the Jews of the Banu Quarayza were being judged by their own law. One could assemble a hundred quotations from the Bible like the above, in which the 'Lord your God' urges the utmost violence towards his enemies, and in reading these, one not for the first time asks if Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is not the God of Christianity but the Devil. Parallels can be drawn between Yahweh and Allah also: if one substitutes 'Allah' for 'Lord your God' in the passage, it reads like something out of the Koran. 

Both Muslims and Jews are 'Peoples of the Book', and books make investigating easy. All the same, we should not lose sight of race. Islam merely formalises Arab practices, and Judaism, Jewish. As Dietrich Eckart opines in Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin (1924): 

"A few hours spent browsing in the Talmud," I proceeded, "is quite sufficient to remove any doubt about the Jews. It is understandable that they have only the most inordinate praise for the book. When they peep into it their own peculiar nature peers back out at them. And that, of course, is the greatest source of joy for them. Thus, in essence, every Jew is a Talmudist, even if he has never looked at the Talmud. It makes no difference when it was written; in fact, it needn't have been written at all. The first Jew comprised all its essential ingredients. The Jewish leaders fully understand that, but they only say it metaphorically".

Nearly a hundred years ago, the Germans cruelly and ruthlessly emphasised the differences in physiognomy between Jews and Germans, Jews and Europeans. But what interests today is the politics, not the biology. After all, in 2023 all the countries of the West are filled with a great many strange-looking people who in their appearance deviate from that of the white population. But in Jewry we have one alien group that possesses disproportionate power especially in the Anglosphere (as we have seen in the past weeks), and given that, to paraphrase Yockey, all politics is an activity related to power, Jewry in the Anglosphere is political. Naturally, the Jews themselves do not see it that way; like the Muslims, they believe that they are powerless, not powerful; that they are politically weak; and that they are being victimised by non-Jewish oppressors who are cruel, ruthless, bigoted, and intolerant. But this idea - that the Jews are weak and downtrodden, poor and helpless - itself becomes a point of contention between Jews and non-Jews. 

Twenty years ago, I viewed this 'great game' between Jew and non-Jew as the most interesting - and important - political contest in the world; nowadays, I have moved on; I have detached myself from the wars in the Middle East, the rabid pro-Zionist and pro-Jewish rantings of Western politicians and journalists whenever one of these wars breaks out, the accompanying anti-Jewish protests and riots by Muslims in the West; and I have all but given up hope that the Americans like their European forebears would eventually 'get wise' to the Jewish question. But October 7 stimulated me enough to sit down and think on these matters once again, and I pulled Eckart's chestnut down from the bookshelf for the first time in twenty years. The renewal of interest led me to undertake an intellectual exercise: could one come up with an anti-Judaism that was as clean and precise, simple and comprehensible, as Dr Bill Warner's anti-Islamism? The pursuit of such an end should be considered worthwhile because, as those with experience in the movement know, waking the 'normie' up to the Jewish question is one of the toughest assignments there is; waking the 'normie' up to Muslim question is comparatively easy. 

Once we follow the course sketched out above, we will acknowledge two truths, one is that one cannot separate Jewish politics in the Middle East from Jewish history, and other is that one cannot separate Jewish history from Jewish religion; that is why traditional left-wing arguments against Israel and Zionism do not work; the arguments are always couched in in terms of secular concepts. When examining the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the history of Zionism in the West, one must delve deep into the religious and the mystical. But Westerners show a marked reluctance to do so for the reason that the contents of the Old Testament and the Talmud repel the Western mind. Being modern, our first impulse is to dismiss the accounts of miracles, extraordinary catastrophes, supernatural phenomena, in the Old Testament as balderdash. But Julius Evola did not see the Old Testament in that way; he took the stories in it seriously. In his Revolt against the Modern World (1934), he recounts how the story of Noah and his ark belongs to a class of legends and myths that speak of a catastrophic flood that overtook the world and nearly destroyed all life. Living in the antediluvian age were a race of superior beings whom are called Nephilim ('Giants') in the Bible, Titans in Greek myth; in the narrative, this race became degenerate, and its hubris and evil habits led to its destruction; its counterpart in Mesopotamian myth is the dark and monstrous goddess Tiamat, who is slain by the younger and more 'solar' god Marduk. On the evidence of these myths, Evola chose to believe that once such a race of Titans or Nephilim existed; far better to posit that the authors of the Old Testament were telling the truth, or at least the truth as they saw it, than to dismiss it all as a hoax. The bestselling author Immanuel Velikovsky takes the same approach, and in Worlds in Collision (1950) he comes up with a naturalistic explanation of some of the strange phenomena in the Old Testament, particularly in Exodus - the parting of the Red Sea for Moses, the falling of manna from the sky, the turning of the Nile to blood.

In our pursuit of truth, however, sooner or later we must abandon naturalism and cross from the material to the spiritual, and by spiritual I do not mean theology. In the Old and New Testaments we find plenty of what we today would call paranormal phenomena; both Jesus and Elisha possessed supernatural powers; both performed the miracles of feeding the multitude, raising the dead, and healing leprosy. According to the Old Testament, Elisha went further and performed more miracles than Jesus, miracles that include parting the Jordan River, flooding a dry land, removing poison from food, purifying water, making iron float, and reading minds. Elisha sounds like a cross between Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and the Israeli conjurer Uri Geller. 

Supernatural beings accompanied the paranormal phenomena. The Koran was dictated to the illiterate Muhammad by a shadowy armoured man who claimed to be the angel Gabriel, or Jibreel as the Arabs call him. Almost at all times by Muhammad's side, Gabriel serves as Muhammad's friend, mentor, counselor, religious instructor, and military advisor. The last of these hints to us that Gabriel was not the angel that Muhammad took him to be, even though Gabriel sometimes appeared to Muhammad in the form of an angel with 'Six hundred wings'. Assuming that Gabriel was real and not the product of Muhammad's fevered imagination, those who are familiar with schlock paranormal and occult literature (as I am) recognise Gabriel as being a discarnate non-human intelligence, that is, an entity without a material body and with the mind of a human. He cannot be classified as human; he is not even the spirit of a deceased human, that is, he is not a soul that wanders the Earth after the death of the physical body. The Arabs in Muhammad's time believed in Jinns (known in the West as genies) and accused Muhammad, when he first began preaching, of being possessed by one. Jinns would go on to play a significant role in Islamic theology, and belief in them remains widespread across the Arab world even today. The question is, did Gabriel belong, like the Jinns, to the category of discarnate intelligences? And after reading the Old Testament, we must ask: did Yahweh? 

It is quite jarring to move from a discussion of such speculative and nebulous matters to a discussion of the Israeli ground offensive into Gaza; but I hope that by the end of this essay that I will have persuaded the reader that the two spheres, the mystical and political, are related when it comes to the Middle East. 

II.  Left versus Right

American conservatives want you to take the 2023 war between Israel and the Palestinians extremely seriously, and the second Russo-Ukrainian War, the one that started in 2022, not so much. 

The contrast is significant and telling, and it indicates a major factional difference in the American conservative movement. On the one hand, we have the neoconservatives, or 'neocons' as they are perjoratively known, of whom one conservative thinker made the famous quip that a neoconservative is an American conservative who believes that the capital of America is not Washington DC but Tel Aviv. But we can, after our experiences of American conservatives in the 2020s, turn the definition around: a paleoconservative is an American conservative who believes that the capital of America is not Washington DC but Moscow. 

At first sight, the two factions seem incompatible, but the aftermath of the Hamas rampage shows that this is not so; the paleocons and neocons are now united in their fury against Hamas and their desire to avenge Israel's honour. To see how this happened, let us look to the recent past. 

Under the growing influence of the Tucker Carlsons, who are Russian agents in America operating deep behind enemy lines like so many Spetznaz commandos, the mainstream American conservative is being forced to hedge, to qualify, to set conditions for American aid to Ukraine in Ukraine's war against Russia, an equivocating that the conservative would never allow for Israel. The reason for favouring Israel over Ukraine is that the American conservative is a man possessed when it comes to 'Nazism'. Nearly eight decades after the end of the last world war, he abominates the wartime Germans, the 'Nazis', and the 'anti-Semites' as the most vile and despicable creatures who have ever walked the earth; after the October 7 rampage, the journalist John Nolte of Breitbart raved that the Palestinians, Hamas, Gaza, must be treated the same as 'Hitler, the Nazis, Berlin'; and just think, you believed only the week before Nolte published his inflammatory article that he was your friend because he opposed woke-ism and Social Justice Warrior-ism in Hollywood. Nolte is hardly an outlier. The disturbing side of American - and North American - conservatism became apparent after the exposure of Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian WWII veteran, after his feting in the Canadian parliament. Every single American single conservative news organ joined in the denunciations of Hunka and the Canadians who hosted him: the Gateway Pundit, Twitchy, Just the News, Breitbart, RedState, the Blaze, the Western Journal, the Federalist, the Powerline Blog, the Daily Wire, the Right Scoop... They repeated WWII-era American talking points and Russian. Having said that, not all of these sites can be categorised as pro-Russian. Perhaps only the Gateway Pundit - which condones the 2022 invasion, celebrates Russian military victories and Ukrainian defeats, and serves up the daily slop of Kremlin lies no matter how absurd the lies may be - qualifies as a Kremlin platform of the same rank as Russia Today (RT).

What is interesting from our perspective is that the Pundit, Twitchy, and the other reliably pro-Russian outlets now stand firmly in the Israeli camp and are baying for vengeance. 

The American conservative is obsessed by WWII - the American view of WWII, that is. Let us note one item in the American conservative news that appeared in the days before October 7 and one that the conservative news outlet The Blaze found highly praiseworthy: the director Steven Spielberg and the actor Tom Hanks are making a new TV series celebrating the exploits of the American Eighth Air Force, which, if you know your WWII history, killed many Germans and many other Europeans; the exact number of dead is unknown but it must reach a million. What is to be done with American conservatives?

Now, we can understand why it is that the American conservative is so fired up over the wrongs, real or imagined, visited upon the Israelis: it gives him the chance to land a blow on the American Left. For nearly three years, the American Right looked on helplessly while America was transformed into a banana republic. Like a president of a third world country, the president of America, ousted in a coup, is being put on trial - by the junta that ousted him - for vague 'crimes'; simultaneously, the junta is persecuting his followers and anyone unlucky enough to be adjacent to him at the time of the coup. The Biden junta holds all the cards: it owns the police, the secret police (that is, the FBI), the courts, the press; and even though it is unpopular, as juntas often are, and would in normal circumstances lose an election in a landslide, it is possible that in 2024 Biden could go on to lose Ohio, Iowa, Florida, most of the counties, and most of the bellweather counties as he did in 2020 - and yet 'win' 're-election', and this time with a 100 million votes. And again, the courts, the FBI, the police, the 'respectable' conservatives will connive; nothing will be done; those who protest, or even speak up, will receive the J6 treatment. To the American conservative, then, the prognosis looks grim. But one chink in the armour of the Democratic Party has been exposed after October 7, and that is this: the Democratic Party, and the American Left, are insufficiently beholden to Israel - and by extension to the 'Lord your God'. 

In 2023, the divide between the liberal Left and the radical Left has all but disappeared, and this melting away of separating walls began even before the advent of Trump; but the fusion of extreme and center Left may not hold for long. The American Left has come under furious assault since the October 7 rampage, not only from the mainstream American Right but from certain prominent personalities and institutions in American popular culture, and most importantly from the Israel lobby, which maintains a vice-like grip on the Democratic Party. Now, in the 2020s, the old-fashioned centrist Democrat, who was elected in the years when the Democratic Party was still a relatively mainstream part of American life, has long ceased being left of center; old fogeys such as Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, Feinstein, became radicals or were forced to be pretend to be radicals. Obama, who got his start in Far Left circles and was known in his youth to subscribe to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli views, was in large part responsible for transforming the likes of Biden; so was the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon in the early 2010s; so was Black Lives Matter in 2020. In reality, the Bidens and Pelosis are opportunists who have used their positions to enrich themselves and their families, and they believe in nothing; but under enormous pressure since October 7, they have been forced to reaffirm their Zionist bona fides. The old 'centrist' Democrat has returned, and now a battle between the Far Left and the Center Left will commence, a battle that will be fascinating to behold; an irresistible force shall meet an immovable object. 

I say immovable because the Left refuses to budge; the American Far Left have chosen their hill to die on, and that hill is Palestine. An interesting question, and one that has been asked many times in the past two decades, is why the Far Left in America - and elsewhere in the Anglosphere - has taken up cudgels against Israel and Zionism. In our attempt to answer it, we can examine the history of Leftism and Israel, which in brief summary is this. In 1948, the Soviet Union armed Israel in its war against the Palestinians and other Arabs, but after Israel's victory, the Soviet Union cut off military and diplomatic aid, and by the sixties, it chose to arm Israel's opponents; and then, after the Syrian, Jordanian, and Egyptian defeats in the 1967 war, secular Palestinian nationalism emerged and moved to the forefront; it then quickly became fashionable on the Left. Flashing forward to the early nineties, the collapse of the USSR threw the American Left into confusion, but by the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Second Intifada, it had recovered some of its old fire. But the renewed fervour led to the Left's accepting Islam and abandoning time-honoured principles. The American Left in the seventies understood that the Palestinian nationalists were not communist but only affiliates of the communists; likewise it understood that the Arab socialist regimes were not communist but only beneficiaries of the communists; the Left in those years was prepared to make concessions for the sake of expediency to 'bourgeois' Arab nationalism in an instance of what Lenin called 'thinking dialectically'. But by the 1990s, which was the 'End of History', the appeal of communism had vanished and with it the appeal of secular Arab nationalism. By the 2010s, the most powerful political actors in the Middle East were the Mullahs in Iran; Hezbollah (armed and equipped by Iran) in Lebanon; ISIS in Iraq and Syria; and Hamas in Gaza. 'Arab socialism' in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, had become a stale old joke, and the old links between it and the Far Left were sundered. But by this point, the Far Left had dropped the pretense that it opposed Israel out of a desire for socialism. It wanted only to destroy. Simply put, by the 2010s, Leftism had run out of targets to shoot and it needed new ones. To the Left's delight, the Great Replacement had become an inevitability, and white people had been cowed into accepting it and accepting it without demur. Where, then, was the challenge? Leftism thrives on conflict, discord, aggression, and the violent overcoming of its opponents; it requires enemies. Who, then, was to be the new enemy of the Left and an enemy with a measure of political power? The answer is, the Zionist Jew, the 'European' 'colonialist' who maintains an 'Apartheid' regime in occupied Palestine, Apartheid being the name of the political and racial order maintained by the white South Africans, who, in Leftist myth, were as nearly as vile as the National Socialist Germans. In 21st century Leftist narrative, the Israeli Jew substitutes for the white man; admittedly, he is a poor substitute, but the Left has little else. 

As one poster at Counter-Currents puts it: 

 October 10, 2023 at 6:44 am

Palestinians have an antiwhite line of rhetoric. It goes like this. Israel is an “apartheid” state. As a racist, colonialist entity it is illegitimate, and so Palestinians have every right to rise up and strike it down in any way.

This rhetoric justifies Palestinian terrorism by placing it in an antiwhite frame. Non-Whites are on the right side of history and can do anything to Whites. Whites, or relatively White people like Jews, can be annihilated morally.

I don’t agree that Jews are White or nearly White, but that is irrelevant to the logic of the Palestinian struggle seen as part of a morally justified antiwhite movement. This is how antiwhite Palestinians see themselves and want to be seen by their fellow antiwhites, and this is a large part of how their fellow antiwhites see them and why their fellow antiwhites support them. Simply put, genocidal terrorism is appropriate against Whites or groups seen as “too White.”

We pro-Whites shouldn’t support this.

III. Holocausts great and small

Leftist attempts to dislodge Zionism usually fail and for one reason: they show a distinct reluctance to take the bull by the horns and tackle the thorny question of the lore, history, myth, and tradition in the old Jewish religious texts, and in particular, the holocausts. The Old Testament is filled with animal sacrifices and burnt offerings to Yahweh, who seems most partial to the slaughtering and burning of cattle, sheep, goats, and birds; he subsists on a diet of them; and these are known as the holocausts.  

All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered; some cultures, like the ancient and modern Greeks, eat most of the edible parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering. Others burnt the whole animal offering, called a holocaust. Usually, the best animal or best share of the animal is the one presented for offering.

No doubt some scholar has counted the number of dead animals in the Bible killed as sacrifices. Considered by itself, Yahweh's appetite alone for animals killed in this fashion ought to disturb us; as the Syrian author Maan Khamis has observed, 'Blood and sacrifices are the cornerstones of satanic and pagan cults'. But sometimes in the Bible the dead on offer are human beings. And according to prophecies made in the Talmud, we will someday be seeing the biggest burnt offering of all, and the sacrificed creatures will be humans, millions of them. 

In the Talmud, written some fifteen hundred years ago, the story runs like this: the Gentiles will murder six million Jews by immolating them in giant ovens; but the murdered Jews will come back to life, and Yahweh, acknowledging their sacrifice - the word Holocaust means burnt offering to God and comes from the Greek verb kauston, to burn - will return to them the lost State of Israel. Now, when confronted with this apocalyptic and eschatological mummering, you can either conclude that the Talmud predicted the events of the 20th century with uncanny accuracy or that it is pure religious hokum that anyone can see through. If one takes the latter view, one can look to the tales of Elie Wiesel as forming a similar species of fabulism: the way Wiesel tells it, the Germans tried to kill him four times, once by throwing him into a giant fire pit in Auschwitz, an immolation from which he emerged unscathed in what was a miracle, a Jewish miracle, and one that echoes the miracle of the six million surviving Jews in the Talmudic prophecy; but then, Wiesel was a religious student and would have known his Talmudic lore.

IV. The First Zionist

On one side of the Zionist coin we find stamped the holocaust doctrine and the prediction of the biggest burnt offering of all, the Holocaust with a capital H; on the other, actual historical events that occurred some 2500 years ago. Jewish immigrants, highly charged with Jewish nationalism and messianism, return to the Holy Land after a long period of time residing in a great and powerful empire nearby, and they do not like what they see: the locals show insufficient zeal for the Jewish national and religious cause, and worse, they have in large part ceased being Jewish. Changes need to be made, then, and fast, if these new arrivals are to be accommodated. In that spirit, all of the country in which they have made their new home in is renamed 'Israel'. Jews fencing themselves off from non-Jews (in order to preserve Jewish racial purity) and ethnic cleansing soon follow. It all sounds like what happened in Palestine in the years 1947 and 1948, but it took place long before then; the story comes to us from the time of the Old Testament. In the Book of Ezra, we are presented with an image of the obnoxious, arrogant, entitled, exclusionist, and 'European' Jewish settler of Palestine, the villain who looms large in leftist anti-Zionist myth. Khamis writes: 

 The “Holy Race” is a term coined by the Hebrews. In Ezra 9:2, we read, 

“They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them.” 

Let us examine the history behind this verse in order to understand its racist implications. When the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, he made it a tributary state. Shortly after, Judah’s King revolted against Babylon and allied with Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt. When the Babylonians defeated Egyptians at the battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and eventually destroyed most of it. He had enough of the Hebrew troublemakers, so he scattered them throughout his empire. This period is called Babylonian captivity. It was, however, a peaceful period in the holy land. 

 

The remaining Hebrews and the locals lived in peace and mingled with each other. After the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE,exiled Jews were encouraged to go back to Jerusalem. Some Jews gradually moved back to Judah and started rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. Local leaders welcomed them and offered to take part in building the temple. The local leaders told the returning Hebrews, “We all seek God. Let us build a temple together?” Ezra 4:2, “Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do”. But, the returning Jewish leaders replied “He is our God; not yours. We alone will build our Lord a temple.” This utterance is coming from the samefolks whom the Bible insists on calling “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” 

But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel. 

The evil of “us against others” reared its ugly head again thanks to these returning troublemakers...

 The locals saw the writing on the walls when the Hebrew extremists returned and began their divisive actions. The local leaders tried to work with them and failed. So they sent a letter to King Artaxerxes describing the situation, Ezra 4:12, 

Be it known unto the king, that the Jews which came up from thee to us are come unto Jerusalem, building the rebellious and the bad city, and have set up the walls thereof, and joined the foundations. 

As can be seen, it is not others who isolated the Jews; it is the Jews who isolated themselves from everyone else. The returning Hebrews could not wait to separate themselves from the locals after the completion of the temple. 

The supposed holy book tells us, “The Israelites have married the people living around them and mixed with the other people.” Ezra proceeded to force the Hebrew men, including priests and Levites, who were married to gentile women, to leave their wives and abandon their children. They were told, these mixed marriages were polluting the holy race of God. “have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them... Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.” Ezra even published a list containing the names of all the men that were married to unholy wives starting in Ezra 10:18. [Maan Khamis, Chosen by Satan (2017)]

Anyone familiar with the history of Israel and Palestine in the 20th century can see the parallels. The book of Nehemiah takes up the thread of this story of Zionist-'colonialist' conquest that leads to ethnic cleansing. Like the Palestinians who entreated the British in the time of the Mandate, the non-Jewish inhabitants of Judah entreated the authorities and begged for protection from the Jews, but as the above shows, their efforts were to no avail.  

After the arrival of Ezra, Nehemiah also came to Jerusalem and started repairing the walls around it. When the locals enquired, they were told to get lost, Nehemiah 2:20, “but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem.” The local governor, Sanballat, was worried that the Israelites were getting ready to revolt and start trouble again. So he sent Nehemiah a letter expressing his concerns, Nehemiah 6:6,

Wherein was written, It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel: for which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king, according to these words.

Despite the oppositions, the wall was eventually built. As expected, as soon as the wall was built the Israelites separated themselves from all others and even abandoned their gentile wives and children again, Nehemiah 10:28,

And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons.

They immediately populated Jerusalem with Hebrews from the surrounding cities and kicked out the Gentiles. I guess, the locals were right. They knew exactly what these racist were up to. 

Interestingly, after kicking out the Gentiles, the Hebrews turned on each other. The wealthy Jews were enslaving and exploiting the poor Jews as stated in Nehemiah 5:5, 

Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already.

The Lord even encouraged the Israelites to sell their children. He also set the prices of these children. Leviticus 27:6, “And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.” 

Any cooperation between the Hebrews and the Gentiles was immediately condemned by Hebrew leaders. As an example, after Nehemiah left to visit the king of Persia, The Hebrew high priest [Eliashib] tried to work with the gentiles. He allied with Tobiah the Ammonite and allowed him to use a great chamber in the temple, Nehemiah 13:7, 

And I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. 

Nehemiah upon his return, however, was very angry and kicked Tobiah out of the temple. He also, insisted on firing all the gentile employees and replaced them with Hebrews, Nehemiah 13:30, “Thus cleansed I them from all strangers,and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business;” In summary, this supposed man of God was telling the Gentiles, you are dirty swine; you do not belong to our temples or our Lord. Despite that, we are supposed to think of these folks as holy men chosen by God. 

Khamis concludes: 

I firmly believe, after WWII, Europeans were content to send the few Hebrew troublemakers to Palestine. They secretly thought, “We will send them as far away from us as possible. They love drama and war, and they will find it in Palestine. They will fit well with the Muslims who also love drama and war.” If two families in your town always cause trouble for everyone. Wouldn’t everyone be happy if they are fighting each other and fully occupied. As soon as you stop them, they will turn on you. The world loves the idea of having the extremist Jews and the extremist Muslims busy with each other. That is why the world is not anxious for peace. Israel is a magnet for Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, and the rest of the world is happy to send them there. We can see thesame strategy played with the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS). Despite their evil, ISIS is the best thing ever to happen to the west. It is a magnet for all the Muslim extremists in the world. Instead of chasing them all over the world, the United States knows exactly where they are and can monitor, capture, or kill them; all in one place.

IV. Fire and Sacrifice

As Khamis notes, 'Blood and sacrifices' are associated with 'satanic and pagan cults'. That did not hold true at the time that the Old Testament was written, and does not hold true even today; in 2023, all the world's religions - with the notable exceptions of Christianity and Buddhism - sacrifice animals. 

By and large, 'satanic cults' did not appear in the West until the 1960s, the time of the occult revival and the first appearance of American 'Satanism' under the auspices of the charlatan Anton La Vey; and at that precise point the Satanist who sacrifices animals at midnight on an altar or or a crypt or a grassy knoll makes his debut in popular culture and sensationalist news media. 

Having said all that, Yahweh in the pages of the Old Testament behaves much like the Satan or Devil as conceived by Westerners. In the abstract for a compilation of academic writings, Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (2010) Michael Bergmann (ed.), Michael J. Murray (ed.), Michael C. Rea (ed.) we find: 

Numerous critics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have argued that God, especially in the Hebrew Bible, is often portrayed as morally vicious. For example, historical narratives in these texts apparently describe God as ordering or commending genocide, slavery, and rape among other moral atrocities...

Like the Devil in any Satanic horror movie, Yahweh will turn on his followers at a moment's notice, and in such moments he will expunge all of a follower's history of service and obeisance from his memory. A capricious god, he will become angry with the Israelites for no reason at all and proceed to exact a terrible revenge. To take one example: after David does his duty and takes a census at Yahweh's behest, Yahweh decides to punish the Israelites and makes David choose between three years of famine, three of years of Israelites fleeing from their enemies, and three years of plague. David opts for the last of these, and a plague sent by Yahweh goes on to kill 70,000 Israelites before Yahweh relents. 

At other times, Yahweh will butcher the Israelites when they old standards slip; in this way he behaves like the Satan in the X-Files episode Die Hand Die Verletzt ('The Hand that Wounds') (1995), a macabre story that parodies the Satanic horror movie genre of the seventies. 

Surprisingly, this version of Satan, the one that we all know, nowhere appears in the Old Testament; it as though the Hebrews had no concept of a god of evil. 

There is no trace in the Torah of a cosmic struggle between two principles, as in the myth of Osiris or in Persian Zoroastrianism. The fundamental tension is not between good and evil, but between Yahweh and the other gods. The snake (Nachash) tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden disappears forever from the Bible after that: it has no ontological consistency. The “devil” (diabolos in Greek) will make his appearance in the Gospels, and “Lucifer” later still, based on a tendentious exegesis of Isaiah 14:12 in the Latin translation (Vulgate). As for “the satan,” it appears to be borrowed from a Sumerian legal word meaning the “accuser,” and it never occurs as a proper name in the Pentateuch (Torah). “Satan” is the prosecution lawyer in Zechariah 3:1 and in the book of Job.51 In the Old Testament, when he personifies a destructive principle, Satan is hard to distinguish from Yahweh himself. Thus, in 2 Samuel 24, Yahweh incites David to abuse his power, while in the same episode recounted by 1 Chronicles 21, the role is given to Satan. One reads in the latter narrative that “Satan took his stand against Israel” (21:1), that “God […] punished Israel” (21:7),that “the angel of Yahweh wreaks havoc throughout the territory of Israel” (21:12) and that “Yahweh unleashed an epidemic on Israel” (21:14). Ultimately, it is always God who strikes not only the enemies of Israel, but also Israel itself when it proves unworthy of him. It is he who triggers wars, epidemics, and plagues of every imaginable sort; he uses alternately Israel to destroy the nations (as a “mace,” Jeremiah 51:20), and the nations to destroy Israel. Yahweh is the source of both good and evil. (It follows logically, according to some kabbalistic schools, that one can serve him through evil as well as through good.) [Laurent Guyénot, From Yahweh to Zion: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land... Clash of Civilizations (2018)

All of this contradicts the standard Christian doctrine. In the Old Testament, Satan is the name of the office held by a judging angel who performs a similar function to the Assessors of Maat, 42 deities who, in the religion of ancient Egypt, judge the souls of the dead in the afterlife, the main difference here being that the Satans judge the living, not the dead. 

Other conceptions of the Evil One that we hold are not to be found in the Old Testament. Christianity's Lucifer, the 'fallen angel' cast out of Heaven for his pride and hubris, is no such thing in Jewish lore; Lucifer is merely the name of the star Venus, which appears in the morning and disappears ('falls') in the evening. The prophet Isaiah exalts in the political downfall of an unnamed Babylonian king whom is compared to 'Morning star, son of the Dawn!'. As for the snake in the Garden of Eden, it cannot be considered to be a forerunner of the Devil; the author of Genesis performed an unusual 'transvaluation of values' here and turned the snake, in the ancient world a honourable animal, into a dishonourable one: 

The serpent, associated throughout the Near East with the chthonian divinities but also with revealed or intuitive knowledge (the gnosis of the Greeks), is likewise the object of an inversion: when it offers to the first humans the means of acquiring knowledge and to “be like gods” (Genesis 3:5), it borrows the language of initiatory mysteries; but the Bible presents the serpent as a liar. [Ibid]

Christianity invented the Devil and that Western Christianity took the idea and ran with it, making the Devil, or Satan, into the figure that we know today. In the Middle Ages, Western Europeans, who believed in witchcraft, black magic, supernatural powers, and strange creatures of the night, were obsessed by the Devil and visions of the torments of Hell; and it is at this point in the development of European culture that the imagery of the Old Testament begins to merge with that of the Satanic. Fire, flame, and smoke - all are symbols of Yahweh, who adores his burnt offerings, his holocausts. Here are a few examples from Khamis: 

Further in Genesis 15, we encounter a full satanic ritual between Abraham and the Lord. Whereby, this Lord asked Abraham to get a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abraham started the ritual by cutting these animals into halves and laid each piece one against another. The Bible tells us that Abraham eventually fell asleep and a “horror of great darkness fell upon him.” Later on, a “smoking furnace, and a burning lamp” passed between the animals’ carcasses. What is godly about this ritual? It is satanic to the highest degree. [Khamis, Ibid]

This image, of a 'smoking furnace and a burning lamp' trundling between animal carcasses, could be put to good use in a Hammer horror movie. 

In Exodus 2, God heard the cries of the Israelites out of Egypt and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob... This time God showed up to Moses in a burning bush and asked him to take off his shoes. Why burning bush? Why fire? Isn’t fire a portrayal of Hell? [Ibid]

Yahweh kills with fire. He incinerates two of Moses' nephews Nadab and Abihu for carrying out a sacrifice in the wrong way; the altar for sacrifices is before the Ark of the Covenant, a box in which Yahweh is said to reside. By all accounts, whatever was in that box was radioactive: 

Even touching this Ark was deadly. In II Samuel 6, the Ark was being transported to Jerusalem on a cart. The oxen stumbled tipping the Ark. A man named Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark to stabilize it. The Lord’s anger burned against him and killed him, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it.

 

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God. [Ibid]

Was Yahweh a fire demon then? 

Numbers 11:1, the Israelites were burned by fire for complaining about the hardship to which Moses was subjecting them.

And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. [Ibid]

The fire motif extends to Yahweh's servants the angels, as we learn from the story of Samson: 

Samson, son of Manoah

He was also born miraculously. His mother was barren and was able to conceive only by the aid of a Lord’s angel, Judges 13:5,

For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

This angel performed fire tricks for Samson’s parents in order to convince them, Judges 13:20, “For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.” The angel of the Lord ascended in the flames of the burned offering. Again, why flames and fire? [Ibid]

Finally, consider the appearance of Yahweh before David; Yahweh's mien matches that of a Balrog from Tolkein's Lord of the Rings: 

In Psalm 18, the Lord swiftly came to David aid and delivered him from his enemies. David’s description of this Lord is either the product of vivid imagination or a description of Satan. This Lord was angry. He had flames leaping from his mouth and setting fire to the earth. He was blowing smoke from his nostrils. He came down enshrouded with darkness. He angrily destroyed all David’s enemies, Psalm 18:8, “There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet.” [Ibid]

V. The Bible and the Paranormal

To continue with the theme of fire, death by fire, and sacrifice by fire. Yahweh forbids Moses from throwing any of Moses'children into Molech's flames, implying that only he, Yahweh, deserves fiery sacrifices; and after Moses' death, the Israelites continue to sacrifice their children and in particular their first-born sons. As well as other scholars, Guyénot argues that Molech and Yahweh are one and the same: Molech ('King') = Yahweh ('Lord'). 

After a time, Yahweh modifies the law that every first-born son and 'Every first born of flock or herd' (Exodus 34:19-20) must be sacrificed to him. The Hebrews became civilised, and it goes without saying that today's Israelis, unlike the Israelites depicted in the Old Testament, do not throw their firstborn into the fire; nor do they make animal sacrifices to a box that is placed on an altar behind a veil in a tent (the 'tabernacle'). Jews have become comparatively more refined, progressive, evolved, and that is not entirely due to Western influence. Jews, like most people in the 21st century, no longer believe by and large in the doctrines of Judaism as expounded in the Old Testament, which make outrageous claims that offend reason. 

Let us list the objectionable items here.  

1) Psychic phenomena and paranormal powers. See Elisha in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New. 

2) Extraordinary phenomena. Related to 2), we see miraculous phenomena on display that is in keeping with the 'anomalous', 'unexplained' phenomena chronicled by Charles Fort. Velikovsky attempts to find a rational explanation for the extraordinary happenings in Egypt in the time of Moses. 

3) Extraordinary events, e.g., catastrophes, that occurred before the time of any known civilisation. See the Flood, and also the age of the 'giants' or Nephilim. These accounts, to the Traditionalists such as Evola, allow us to peer into part of mankind's distant past that has been obscured by the passage of time. 

4) Questionable Middle Eastern history. Much has been written by historians disputing the Bible's accounts of wars, slaughters, and other events; did the slaughter of 75,000 Persians by the Jews as recounted in the Book of Esther really happen? 

Unable to annul a formal royal decree, the King instead adds to it, permitting the Jews to join together and destroy any and all of those seeking to kill them (8:1–14).[12][13] On 13 Adar, Haman's ten sons and 500 other men are killed in Shushan (9:1–12). Upon hearing of this Esther requests it be repeated the next day, whereupon 300 more men are killed (9:13–15). Over 75,000 people are killed by the Jews, who are careful to take no plunder (9:16–17). Mordecai and Esther send letters throughout the provinces instituting an annual commemoration of the Jewish people's redemption, in a holiday called Purim (lots) (9:20–28). Ahasuerus remains very powerful and continues his reign, with Mordecai assuming a prominent position in his court (10:1–3).

5) Theological accounts of what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. The prophecies of the 'Holocaust' belong in this category, and as does the Jewish creation myth - the Garden of Eden, the creation of Adam and then Eve, the eating of the forbidden fruit, the Fall. Guyénot should be commended for observing that the story of the casting out of Adam and Eve from Eden turns an ancient religious metaphor on its head: Man in the course of his spiritual journey ascends to a paradisical state once he reaches the journey's end and he does not descend from the state at the journey's beginning. The last stage in what Joseph Campbell called the 'hero's journey' is attained by the getting of wisdom, sophia; the Old Testament goes against the grain because the getting of wisdom brings about Adam and Eve's downfall and regression.

6) Reflections on the nature of the divine and God. I think by now we have established that the Jewish God does not equal the Christian God and nor does he equal the Supreme Principle, the God of Plato and Aristotle - the God that Hegel called the Absolute. People who approach the Old Testament and the Koran for the first time imagine that these books are set in a monotheistic universe, but this is not true: the world of the first Jews and Muslims is teeming with gods, and Yahweh is jealous of them all.

Deuteronomy 5:9: 

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

Nahum 1:2: 

God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

Yahweh seeks to destroy his rival gods by destroying their worshipers, for gods are sustained, it seems, through belief and sacrifice. Later on in the piece, the authors of the Old Testament attempt some back-stitching; they want to incorporate monotheism and make Yahweh more of an all-embracing God on a plane with Yahweh's chief competitor Baal, who does more represent the one supreme principle (in some traditions Yahweh and Baal are sons of the father of the gods El, which means 'God' and from which the Muslims derive 'Allah').

Something that becomes clear, after we lay out the six 'outrageous claims' in this manner, is that the two theological claims - 5) and 6) - arouse the least controversy, perhaps because these are the most philosophical and hence the most resistant to proof or disproof; can one travel backwards in a time machine and witness the creation of the universe in seven days or for that matter the springing to life of Adam after he has had air blown into his nostrils by Yahweh? The theologian can fall back into an agnostic position and refuse to pass judgment on either the truth or the untruth of Eden and the Fall; but a discussion of Elisha's miracles, Moses' parting of the Red Sea, makes him uncomfortable, because he must give a firm yes or no to the question of whether for instance Elisha's bones brought dead men back to life: 

II Kings 13:21

And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

If he says no, he admits by default that he has become rational, modern, secular, almost a materialist and an atheist. What if he says yes? 

When we are confronted with the Old Testament and its progeny Zionism, we can devise a stance that puts the weighty theological questions considered by 5) and 6) to one side: the man who holds to it tables any discussion of these. In addition, that man can view 1), 2), and 3) in a lackadaisical fashion, and he can counsel others to keep an open mind to the paranormal and the supernatural; 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. As for 4), he may feel averse to studying the history of the Middle East in the time of the Bible in any detail. Willfully ignorant, he accepts the history taught to him by his Sunday school teacher, and he is not inclined to explore the question whether or not Mordecai, Esther, Haman, ever existed. 

When the freethinker described above looks at the Old Testament, the first thing he will notice is that Yahweh ceases to play a part in the daily lives of the Jews after the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the two books that make up the last chapters of the epic. In the period spanned in the Old Testament, Jews converse and interact with Yahweh as if he were a next-door neighbour; he is a god who walks among men, and indeed, he is so physical and earthly that he dislocates Jacob's hip in a wrestling match. But after Ezra and Nehemiah, the prominent Jews who are Yahweh's interpreters no longer receive first-hand directives from Yahweh; it as though he has pulled a disappearing act. The same occurred to the Muslims immediately after the death of Muhammad; Allah no longer conveyed his wishes through the angel Jibreel to any of Muhammad's successors no matter how worthy. And the miracles cease as well; holy men no longer possess the same awesome supernatural powers. The surcease mirrors what happened in the West after the occult revival of the sixties and seventies tailed off. By the time of the advent of the smartphone, all the paranormal figures that we were preoccupied with in the seventies - the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, and Bigfoot - were no longer to be seen, and neither were the spectacular and spooky phenomena that attend poltergeist hauntings, spiritualist seances, and demonic possessions. The spirits grew camera shy. A cynic would say, well, what do you expect; Moses and Jesus were charlatans who fooled the masses with conjuring tricks; the masses who believed them were deluded; and so were the masses who later believed in UFOs and poltergeists. Once the smartphone, the Internet, and social media became available, those who told stories of ghosts, monsters, and the supernatural were forced to submit their claims for verification, and they did not, because, the sceptic argues, their claims were unfounded. This is Enlightenment man, rationalist man, speaking, and I disagree with him; I contend that magic was real at some point in the past and so were the spirits, but both disappeared perhaps because we were unworthy. 

It is a tragedy when the gods leave the Earth. Without a doubt, the Jews who lived after Ezra and Nehemiah longed frantically for Yahweh to return; they understood that Yahweh was cruel and capricious - after all, he had killed tens of thousands of his most faithful followers - but they believed it was better to have one god in their corner than none at all.