Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm asks in the New York Times: “Did Israel Just Stop Trying to Be a Democracy”?
I generally do not comment much on Israel. My reasons are deep, tenebrous, far inside the vigorous flames of the circles of hell at the center of my philosophical system, sustaining the whole thing, just as the sun-like molten iron heart of Earth supports the heavenly biosphere… Just as the Dark Side supports the Enlightenment, as the Yin and Yang define each other…
But, as the New York Times itself decides to show some guts, so must I… I will not be outdone by commoners! (A very extended version of my published comment is below; it was approved by just 2 people, whereas comments in the Israel Uber Alles style, were approved by more than 100… Serious Jews are into introspection…)
Satrapies (subordinated plutocracies) were small in the West immense in the east. In any case, the Achaemenid (“Persian”) empire was extremely multiethnic… And extremely advanced: news came from all over the empire to Persepolis in one week with an efficient road network, and a pony express… (The real extent of the empire was even greater than that, going all the way to Ethiopia, and Oman was part of it…)
Dr, Boehm writes:”Last week, Israel’s government pushed through Parliament a new law calling Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” That statement may sound like a truism — and in some respects it is one — but the implications of it officially being made are monumental.
In 1948, the Declaration of Independence, the text that marks the founding of Israel, created a Jewish state that would ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Since then, the question of how Israel could be both Jewish and democratic has been the object of fierce controversy.
The effort to guarantee equal rights for non-Jews has at times seemed like trying to square a circle. Last week, Israel gave up on even trying.
… implicit nod to Palestinian self-determination was driven by an overriding concern for Jewish interests, not Arab rights. In May 1948, there were about 600,000 Jews and some 1.2 million Arabs living within Palestine’s borders. With Jews in the minority, the Jewishness of a democratic Israel could only be ensured if Palestinians had a chance at self-determination. In other words, Israel’s foundational twin pledge (to be both Jewish and democratic) was hypocritical…
The system’s original contradictions are now being laid bare. Of the more than 8.2 million people living in Israel’s recognized borders today, roughly 73 percent are Jewish and 22 percent are Arab. But of the 11.8 million people who live in Israel and the West Bank, roughly 56 percent are Jewish and 40 percent are Arab. And as the prospect of a viable two-state solution has receded, so has Israel’s promise that it would provide full equality to non-Jews.
In keeping with this evolution, last week’s nation-state law says that, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
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This picture symbolizes the problem. The two mosques visible (gold Dome of the Rock, etc.) were built on TOP of the Jewish Temple. OK, it may be better than latrines. But when we read that Muhammad, after his death, flew to Jerusalem on a winged horse… a heady mix of Judaism and Hellenism (remember Pegasus?)… one finds itself confronted to a fable for little children having turned lethal, for real… The Star of David is nearly two millennia older than Islam….
The theory that ethnicity commands citizenship was made most famous by the Nazis. However tribalism above anything else is one of the oldest, most primitive, and deleterious, not to say savage, lethal and criminal, ideologies. All great empires triumphed, because they rejected it, wholesale. This is what made them great. For example, the Achaemenid empire, which extended from Greece to India and Ethiopia to Central Asia, was extremely multiethnic. The Greco-Roman empire was extremely multiethnic (and so is its descendant empire, “The West”). China and India were multiethnic.
Multiethnicity is not the end all, be all: it doesn’t prevent intellectual fascism, nor, of course, the political type of fascism, as the Persians obdurately demonstrated in the last three millennia…. However, it is conducive to it…
A multiethnic empire is forced to admit that there are higher principles than origins and appearances.
Those higher principles are well-known: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
These principles are secular, they don’t depend upon the common superstition that the tribe at hand was chosen by “god” to be tops! Or the elected people”, or even the definition of “man” (as happened in many tribes).
The “Elected People” theory backfired spectacularly in the confrontation between the Jews and their mental offspring. First in the Fourth Century, Roman emperor Theodosius I legislated that the Christians were the Elected People, and “heretics” (“those who made a choice”) were to be burned. Finally the “Elected People” theory, reinforced by the Christo-Darwinist mindset led to apply the “selection of the fittest” to Judaism: the Nazis insisted that they were the “Elected People”, elected by their own will, not a “god” scared of shrimps and hogs who insisted on sexual mutilations…
The irony, then, is that the Jewish god is of an inferior sort, scared of hogs and shrimps. Hence the Jewish god favors superstition heavily: doesn’t it favor its “elected people”? Actually it’s no favor to believe in all the stupidities in the Bible: it makes those who believe in them incredibly dumb. One may argue that they are made dumb on details. No. They are made dumb on the principle that dumbness has to be the ultimate ruler.
Thus, paradoxically, the Jewish god, who defines Israel, is its worse enemy. How did that occur? The vicious tribal fascism and exterminationism found in the Bible was a great help in the dog eat dog world which followed the simultaneous collapse of all the civilizations of the Middle Earth around 1117 BCE and, or, from the “conspiracy of the Sea People” (Pharaoh dixit)… Although versions of desiccated Egypt survived, and Greece would revive, mightier than ever, within three centuries.
The vicious exterminationism found in the Bible provided a justification for the methods Israel had to use, simply to exist. Before the Muslims crow:’We told you so!’, let me point out the original, literal version of Islam has exactly the same problem… And just as with Israel, that was the key to its early success. It’s no coincidence, but causation: in the grander scheme of thing, Islam is just a variant of Judaism, endowed with a similar ultra-violence (the Qur’an quotes approvingly Lot in the Bible on how to treat homosexuals:”with a rain of stones”; the Bible is the constant context of all of Islam, the “Messenger of god” Muhammad’s fundamental theme being that Jews and Christians didn’t abide correctly by the unvarnished Bible).
All this ultra-violence and ultra-discrimination? All the way to the ovens.
***
So why am I (nevertheless) pro-Israel? (But one should push my patience too far…) It’s not just a question of the enemy of my enemy being my friend. (Moreover, it’s not clear who is friend, who is enemy!) It’s not just a question of historical justice: Judaism is more than twice older than Islam. When the Islamists established mosques on top of THE temple of the Jews, they were symbolically put their feet on Israel’s face.
The Roman emperor Hadrian had kicked the Jews out of Jerusalem after the second Judaic War (135 CE). However, the decision, applauded by the fanatical Saint Augustine after 400 CE, didn’t have to be definitive: Roman emperor Julian had ordered the reconstruction of the Great Temple in 362 CE. Julian in the surviving Fragment of a Letter to a (Pagan) Priest: “I myself…intended to restore it [the Jerusalem Temple], in honor of the god whose name has been associated with it.” (Works, vol. 2., pp. 297–339.) Sixth-century historian Lydus quotes him, “I raise with the utmost zeal the Temple of the Highest God.”
Some may scoff:’Who cares about a Roman emperor?’ Well, our present regimes are descendants from Rome… As our law is, in its fundamental nature, Roman (extended to women and children). Moreover, morality (the mores) is entangled with law: what we consider legal is moral, and reciprocally.
In the best of possible world, the Middle East would free itself from the Biblical god: Arabic speaking peoples would harness the know-how of the Hebrew speaking people… But the complexity arises when one realizes that (some, many) Israelis, or, at least, Israeli companies, are so smart, precisely because their lives depend upon their smarts. The Dark Side, violence requires, enables and invigorates, higher mental functions. Such is the darkest of the dark.
Abominable are the flowers of infamy, yet beautifully mighty!
***
Conclusion? Tribalists are worse than fascists, or racists: they are followers of principles which reduce mental diversity, thus intelligence. Hence, in the end, tribalists are those whom much higher principles, which they are busy denying, subjugate. Israel may thrive right now by going solo in the world of decency and common sense. But solo is solo, and that’s dangerous, as all dead solo climbers, my friends, can testify.
Patrice Ayme
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Note: The NYT decided the following comment was to be lauded (and it was approved by 100 times more readers than mine!). I reproduce it as it is, complete with its atrocious orthography (the New York Times has to live according to its picks:
pirranha299
PhiladelphiaJuly 26
Times Pick
Why is Israel, a country the relative size of a postage stamp, the Worlds one and only Jewish state always singled out for opprobrium no matter what it does. The Arabs have 28 plus countries. Is it too much to ask that they can have a law that makes it official that its a Jewish State? Can’t Jews have one little state of their own?
Israel is a Democracy..This law does not change that. It has a vibrant press, minority represention in its democratically elected legislature, and an independent judicial system that acts as check on the executive and legislative branches. As is typical, If Israel is not perfect the anti-Semites and Anti-zionists will take one element they disagree with and conglate it to portray all of Israel as “a Nazi state” and demonize it as a threat to World peace. Of course they say nothing when the true dictatorships demonize Israel, point out Israel’s flaws as existential threats to “their Palestinian brothers” while ignoring their own brethrens terrorism, racism, and militirism.
Israel as the only Jewish State will always be outvoted by the far more numerous Arab and Muslim States. The author cites ” Israel’s right wing government” in a pejorative sense. If it can be categorized that way it’s because the People democratically voted it in. If it fails it can be voted out. Thats democracy.
***
The answer to this sort of logic is that we have seen it before, with Sparta. There was only one Spartan state. Sparta enslaved another city-state: Messene, to its west, a unique case in Greece. It didn’t finish well for Sparta… Although Sparta was an independent state for more than a millenium (longer than Israel), it ultimately disappeared. Athens didn’t: in the middle Middle Ages, Paris was considered to be the “imperial translation” of Athens: many of the best principles of Athens were taken over by Paris, a rebirth of Athens. Sparta though was dead, and stayed dead… Except if Israel takes itself as the new Sparta? Well, Sparta didn’t have the equivalent of Orthodox Jews: they would have been put to death immediately…
Tags: democracy, Intellectual fascism, Israel, Tribalism
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
July 28, 2018 at 8:06 pm |
Ah the post I wanted to read! Lost of good points. I don’ t know if I grasped it. So what you and Boehm recommend?
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July 28, 2018 at 8:24 pm |
What do you think of orthodox Jews? Do you think getting rid of them will help?
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August 1, 2018 at 9:27 am |
They should be sent to military service, first… I am total against superstitious fanatics, and such creatures are why Auschwitz was created: they were the straw which burned the house of Judea down. Always has, always will…
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July 28, 2018 at 8:39 pm |
Patrice,
This is somewhat off topic, but it’s a post Massimo deleted. While it’s not about religion, or politics and in fact the article referenced was economics versus humanities, I thought it might go into the basic paradigms on which our world has evolved;
“A further observation on reductionism, intellectual, economic, political, etc. When our minds distill out useful patterns and concepts from all the information cascading onto our brain, we naturally, reductionistically, assume it is all about the end product, as that is what is saved and everything else is discarded. The signal from the noise, the statue from the stone. Yet when our bodies take in lots of food, obviously it is not about the end product, but the energy generated. Similarly what our minds are doing, on a very basic level, is networking all that information in ways that allow us to deal with and navigate it. Consider that it is when we think of it as all about the end product, is when we have serious “meaning of life” questions, obsessing over that nugget of “truth” we have supposedly extracted. Then we get into feedback issues, as that “truth” goes from being useful tools to navigate the larger reality, to a God that dictates the reality, from math to money. Then we end up pulled to the extremes, that can only reflect our beliefs, from safe spaces to hate groups, not help us actually navigate the reality as it is.
Consider the assumption that space is fundamentally three dimensional. Isn’t this spatial dimensionality really based on the xyz coordinate system, which is really designed to map the area relative to its 0,0,0 point, at the center? What if you have different coordinate systems overlapping, with different frames, centered around different center points, maybe even different planes and vectors, say if these initial reference points are on a globe, not a flat plane. Such as different countries and areas of influence, say the US, Russia and China? It is becoming obvious that when this occurs, these tools have created feedback loops that make them dominate the landscape, not help us navigate it. Yes, we do need to distill information in order to function, as with the question of death, but that still has to be kept in perspective and not totally dominate our thinking.”
The world is spiraling into a vortex and isn’t likely to stop, but I think a conversation about how the processes work is more interesting than trying to make sense of all the crazies who think they have the voice of god speaking into their ear.
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August 1, 2018 at 9:25 am |
Sorry Brodix, I have been pretty unresponsive because of grave health pbs with mom… I will try to catch up… Between us, Massimo is absolutely not an example of humility, temperance, and… stoicism… He all too often doesn’t seem to know what is basic decent civilized behavior… However, he engages on his own, often all too fascist ways, many interesting subjects.
The fascination of Massimo and al. with Seneca, one of the worst thinkers ever, is itself fascinating. Seneca hated Claudius, because Seneca was an extreme racist… against Spaniards, Gauls, Germans… Claudius was born in Lugdunum (Lyon) and considered Gauls human, to Seneca, hence presumably Massimo’s mockery…. (The racism of seneca is EXTREMELY well-known…)
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August 1, 2018 at 10:17 am |
Patrice,
What!!! You’re accusing Massimo of being human?
The fact is that he is more tolerant than most. At least from my experience.
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August 5, 2018 at 6:45 am |
Massimo has the arrogance of censoring some serious comments from serious commenters seriously following his site… I disapprove of censorship 100%. When Jihadists, years ago, commented on this site, I answered them so well, they stopped. So did Putinists…. Same thing on Twitter (where things are more iffy because answers can be secretly blocked… Something Twitter shouldn’t allow). Recently I had a blitz from anti-hydrogen PAID propagandists. When you make obvious to their readship they are paid, they stop.
Massimo’s arrogance in censorship made him lose some excellent readers/commenters…
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August 5, 2018 at 12:56 pm
Patrice,
It will be interesting to see how well the transition to patreon works for him.
I’m afraid I’ve become inured to the blockheadedness/pigionholing/herd instinct of my fellow humans. My emotional commitment to the building hysteria can’t accept the total bs driving so much of it, so I’m just keeping my fingers out of the machinery and seeing where it leads.
You are often a breath of fresh air, though your focus on particular improprieties does sometimes miss what I see as a larger dynamic, working itself out.
For instance, my problem with the essential premise of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. More the soul of the newborn, than the wisdom of the old, but since religion is more about social order and passing it through the generations, it is based more on cultural structure than understanding sentience.
Consequently the various monotheistic religions have dealt with the fallacy is different ways. Being the first formalized, surviving brand/version, Judaism is largely tribal, as the spirit of the community was likely the original source of the theistic premise in the first place, subsequently applied to various ideals and forms, then pantheized. Christianity is filtered through the Greeks and consequently instilled with a regenerative cyclical basis, as with the Trinity. Father, Son, Holy Ghost as expressions of the Greek Year Gods, i.e., past, present, future. Islam, as the most recent, tries to actually make monotheism work as it is conceived, that a singular, supreme deity and consequently suffers the consequences, with a rigid, patriarchal, culture based absolutism.
So attacking them on their flaws is attacking the effects, not the source of these misconceptions.
Of course, the fact that the spiritual absolute is the essence of sentience bubbling up through all of life does motivate the extremes of our behaviors, from the most egocentric, as each of us is the center of our view of the universe, to the most passionate and selfless, when we empathetically sense that sense of awareness bubbling up through all those around us. Trying to come to terms with it leads to endless feedback and growing complexity, as well try to deal with a situation where the past informs the present, as the present consumes the past and we are all trying to fit into a reality that is both moving at the speed of light and cycling though patterns that are galactic in scale.
Meanwhile I’m going for my next cup of coffee. Cheers;-)
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August 6, 2018 at 7:22 am |
Dear Brodix, I collected your comments and will try to respond on it. I put your comments and my response as a comment in my blog, where i published the upgraded version of my comment to Patrice, published here.
You wrote among others
When our minds distill out useful patterns and concepts from all the information cascading onto our brain, we naturally, reductionistically, assume it is all about the end product, as that is what is saved and everything else is discarded.
….our minds……networking all that information in ways that allow us to deal with and navigate it.
…..is really designed to map the area relative to its 0,0,0 point, at the center?
The world is spiraling into a vortex and isn’t likely to stop,
….religion is more about social order and passing it through the generations, it is based more on cultural structure than understanding sentience.
Islam, as the most recent, tries to actually make monotheism work as it is conceived, that a singular, supreme deity and consequently suffers the consequences, with a rigid, patriarchal, culture based absolutism.
So attacking them on their flaws is attacking the effects, not the source of these misconceptions.
…..us is the center of our view of the universe,
…..endless feedback and growing complexity, as well try to deal with a situation where the past informs the present, as the present consumes the past and we are all trying to fit into a reality
My response to Brodix
I have for long time thoughts of harassment about the foundation and the most fundamental discovery of Judaism, the Monotheism. My harassment went even so far as to think, that Monotheism discovered or rather exposed to the world by the Jews was the major crime, the Jews committed to the humanity. It was the opening of pandora box, the act of being seduced to take bite in the fruit of wisdom, the most important step the humans took in their trial to achieve awareness, knowledge. The everyday life of ancient people, perceived as reality of many gods, had to be translated to a more simple version of reality, the One God. The Monotheism was the first experiment of human mind, to create simplicity out of complexity. And it was a Jewish invention.
The everyday human life is full of complexities, and it is hard if not impossible to make sense of it. This is how the ancient Jews and a bit latter the Greeks three and half thousand years ago, encountered their concept of reality. Both these cultures tried to cope with the confusion out of many by unifying and simplifying. Pythagoras used mathematics as the tool to explain simply the complex phenomena, Abraham the Jew found the one God, and they both put it as the root and the central trunk of the reality.
“שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל ה’ אֱלֹהֵינוּ ה’ אֶחָד”
In my free translation “Listen Israel, Your Lord, one only God”. This is the first sentence of the most important pray, Jews mumble every day for at least 3000 years, and if you read them in original Hebrew, these six words still have in them mystical power for me. Monotheism become a blessing and the curse of humanity.
But philosophically the idea of the unifying one, the absolute reductionism is the idea that helped us to try to make sense of the daily reality. Without this reductionism we couldn’t understand the complex reality, the fairy tales metaphorically tried to explain in ancient mythologies, be it Epic of Gilgamesh, Greek mythology, Bible, Quran, etc. The problem is not the ancient texts and their content, but the sacredness related to them. Sacred means out of human approach and touch. But here comes the basic problem, if sacred is untouchable, how can it be comprehended by human understanding, if not through interpretation? And when interpreted, who is the authority to interpret, from whose authority, and finally, are the intentions of interpreter pure?
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August 6, 2018 at 8:57 am |
Jews, Xtians and Mohammedans claim, self-servingly, that they invented “monotheism”… But that claim doesn’t resist examination. First they have secondary deities: Satan and Jinns in Islam, for example, to explain away the fact God is not Satan (which it is). Second, other religions also had a primary, overall god. From Aztecs to Hinduism.
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August 6, 2018 at 10:30 am |
To my opinion it’s not important who invented monotheism, what’s sure, the Jews are generally connected to the idea. But most importantly: Monotheism on one hand is a reductive thought system, that is one of the foundations of scientific method, on the other hand it gave historically to some most cruel and disastrous interpretators the power, to use the monotheism to create monopoly on human thought and political power.
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August 6, 2018 at 10:42 am |
Eugen,
Thank you for responding. The problem isn’t so much reductionism, as our minds do it every moment. Signal from the noise. The problem is not understanding it in context. It is to help us navigate the enormous amount of information, not to dismiss everything else entirely.
An example I like to use of the reductio ad absurdum of seeking the ideal is that efficiency is to do more with less, so the ideal of efficiency would be to do everything with nothing.
The reality is that nature is a cycle. Just like galaxies and all the systems within them are energy radiating out, as mass/structure/order coalesces in. As I said about human societies, as organic social energies pushing out, while civil and cultural forms coalesce out of it. Our minds process information, while our digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems process the energy to drive it. So we think the the end product is what it is all about, but the end product of our digestive system is waste. It’s the energy being radiated that is important. Similarly it isn’t so much the end product of our thinking that is important, but how well it ties together and organizes all the other information we distilled it from. That’s why so much of what we think are rationalizations, more than rational. It ties together the bigger picture, even if in a muddled fashion.
On a political level, it doesn’t work to confront the effects of these systems. That would be like trying to cool a stove by putting your hand on it. So the only way to really do it is to get down into the wiring, the processes, ideas, assumptions generating this effect and disentangle them, to cut the wiring.
The eastern assumption of a dualistic reality is more natural than our western, ideals based view. It is just that when we can dismiss our entire context and environment, that we can conquer and trash it. So for most people, the ideal is safety and security, which means more money. So we are trying extract all value out of everything to put in banks, for our future. Obviously destroying it in the process.
Which is to say that while religion is the cultural manifestation of people’s beliefs, attacking it directly is like putting your hand on the stove. We need to get back into those essential assumptions that give rise to these cultural systems.
Hopefully somewhat coherent, off to work….
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July 29, 2018 at 4:25 am |
Patrice, once again you demonstrate your incredible ability to review these sorts of global affairs. But for me it’s just too much. I can’t fathom out even what Britain or the USA are up to! At least I read your post!
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August 1, 2018 at 8:54 am |
Thanks Paul! The US and the UK don’t know what they are u to… Trump is having effect on various countries, including even China, including in official circles… Where some are now grumbling against Xi’s confrontational machinations…
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July 29, 2018 at 1:15 pm |
Israel is the prove, that humans, what ever culture, faith, nation they come from, when acting as one politically organised society, eventually they behave and act very similarly. Jews while in diaspora, even if segregated for centuries in ghettos, or following the enlightenment integrated in the surounding societies, according to their cultural ethical code were the most pacifist, cosmopolitan non locally oriented people, even if they sustained their tribal identity, inspite of living in diaspora dispersed in all corners of the world. With the opening of the surounding societies in nineteenth century, and gradual secularization of European societies, many Jews also went through secularization, at least in the more developed parts of Europe, namely, England, France, Germany and Austro-Hungary, and tried to integrate into the surounding societies. Many of them abonded their religion and were officially baptized, (viz, Mendelson, Marx, Henrich Heine, Mahler, etc. who were officially Christians, still considered Jews.)
While before the beginning of nineteen century the European society for centuries was divided clearly to peasants subjected to their landlords, urban population belonging to their proffesional guild, and the leading political, military and spiritual elits. With the industrial revolution, and urbanisation this social identity, old loyalties, and social belonging was disrupted, and new political ideological faith apeared in form of nationalistic or socialistic politically active parties, that recruited most of the new urban population. Add to it, the secularization of the European societies, and all those new emigrants to the growing cities, originated form peasantry and agricultural comunities, who out of confusion losing their identity. All these brought them to radicalisation of their identity, to what is called later left or right political identity.
While the religious Jews, continue living their segregated life, believing, it doesn’t concern them, the secular Jews, understanding that there is no place for them among the right wing nationalist activists, turned to the more cosmopolitan, more universal ideology of the left. This us why you can find so many Jews names among the left spectrum of the political scenary, and so few in the right spectrum.
The Zionist movement, representing ideology of emerging Jewish national identy, claiming right for self determination in the ancient Jewish land, where the Jewish cultural, religious and national identity came to existance. This political movement was politically reflection of the secular part of the Jewish society, and in its essence was a socialistic secular movement, with Jewish national emphasize. Still small chunk of the Zionist movement was nationalistic, with more tolerance to the religion than the totally secular socialistic Zionist left. Both parts of the Zionist political spectrum made their agenda the need to normalize the Jewish nation, or as metaphorically they put it, turn around the inverted pyramid, meaning to make the Jewish nation more normal as any other nation, (meaning European nation), more peasantry manual working and less spiritual, religious, intelectual based.
The lefty socialistic Zionist movement following WWII and the Holocaust, exploited the window of opportunity, out of confusion in the world political scenary, where the winning world leading nations still couldn’t comprehend the level of evil that the most advanced European nation made to the Jews, and established the state of Israel. This historical success kept the left in power for 30 years, but then demographic changes, increased the more religiously and more traditional propensity part of the society.
Since 1977, most of the time the government of Israel is based on representatives of national conservative parties, that created a more natural coalition with the religious parties, without them never could be established a majority in the parlament, not even in times of lefty governments.
Since then, the left that consists 10% of political parties, representing the Arab population, and about 35% secular, liberal or socialistic parties, try to create a majority block, or at least situation, where there is no possibility of right-religious coalition. Since the religious parties represent about 15-20% of the political representation, the right wing coalition can’t exist without them. The left, on the other side tries to create coalition based on Jewish majority, while the arab parties are supportive out of the government.
But what kind of ideology the religious parties represent? Mostly ideology of segregation and inner reflection, that was so typical for the religious Jews, while living in diaspora in ghettos. But then the Jews were power less, and this became faithful for them, when the murderous Nazis came to power in Germany.
The lesson was learned and Israel became a millitarily very powerful nation. To add to it the reality of continuous wars with the neighbouring arab states and the Palestinians, who even after 70 years of continuous wars provoced by them, and eventually lost, don’t come with term with the reality, that in this small piece of land, came to existance a non Muslim state, that in spite off all the trials of delegitimization, boycotts, hate speeches, threats, collaboration with the western naive intelectual left, etc., Israel continued to thrive, culturally, economically, and socially, while the Muslim-Arab world rulled by military or religious despotism fall into disintegration and loss of cleare identity and aim.
Since the Jewish nation, successfully accomplished the task of normalization of the Jewish nation, turned around the inverted pyramid. Meaning, not anymore pacifists or cosmopolitan, but rather nationalistic introverted nation. To add to it the religious traditional element of segregation tendencies, and you have here a absolutely normal nation, that under continuous threats of war and annihilation, act more and more aggressively and with less and less restrain towards the neighbouring states and people who continue with their policy of trial of delegitimization and annihilation of the non Muslim, Jewish state.
Out of all this reality came the new legislation changing the character of Israel, from multicultural universal country of all its citizens, to a Jewish state. Even if it has no real practical meaning, still this is an important issue, that no Israeli can be indifferent to it.
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July 29, 2018 at 8:19 pm |
Dear Eugen: I will have to study your comment, which I expected and hoped for, very carefully. No time to do this now, but I will.
One thing, though: the first Judean War (~70 CE), the one Josephus fought, exhibited some of the worst behaviors we associated later to the worst, mass-murdering Xtians and Muslim fanatics. I am alluding to the siege of Jerusalem by Titus and the events which led to it.
Another thing (answering GMax in passing), Orthodox Jews are toxic (some will say they don’t kill others… but that’s not even true: if anything, they got plenty of jews killed…) I am getting these 2 statements out of the way, precisely because they are not often proffered… But they should.
Basically there is cultural Judaism (very good) and then there is god fanaticism (very bad). The tragedy is that Hitler killed the European Jews who were highly secular, a superior race, so to speak… (As Nietzsche said, and I agree…) The danger right now is that the latter sort is getting ever more important in Israel as Kibbutz culture fades away…
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July 29, 2018 at 9:06 pm |
Small comment, the war of year 70. It was provoced by religious Messianic fanatics, Sicarii, who at first murdered Jews, who opposed them. Among others they murdered Hanan, the head of Sanhedrin, who tried to negotiate with Rom. To understand the Sicarii mentality needs the same intelectual effort as to understand ISIS. It is a very strange and hardly comprehensible phenomenon for a modern rational mind as we are. But i can try. If the essence of your understanding is faith in an abstract omnipotent creature, who never apeared yet, but the religious fanatics believes 100%, that it is present and eventually will appear and will do what he promised to do, or according to the fanatic’s interpretation He promised to do in the book written by those, inspired by Him, then any calculations of balance of power, utility, cost effectiveness is irrelevant. Much more relevant is to try to find hint in the sacred holly text that supports their thesis and theories, than to give rational and evidence-based explanation to the events.
This us why suicide bombers, or provocateurs from Gaza are ready to die, but also a Jewish religious fanatic, by the way an American Jewish doctor of medicine, can enter to a praying shrine full of Muslims, and murder dozens of them, before they kill him with their bare hands.
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July 30, 2018 at 9:34 am |
Well, dear Eugen, you say it’s like ISIS… I agree. BUT it’s actually the Jewish fanatics which are the template for not just ISIS, but the Islam of the 600s and 700s…(there were at least two fanatical Jewish sects… and fighting Roma, other normal Jews, like Josephus, and also among each other…) So understanding those Jews is very up to date: we are thus able to understand today’s fanatics… All of them, not just the Muslim or North Korean types… Hindu and Buddhist fanatics too… Even anti-Trump zealots (zealot: another Jewish sect…)
BTW, the Jews could have gone the way of the Celts… Presented with Roman domination, the Celts admitted their socioeconomic model stunk. Thus they cooperated (as many Jews did with Roma, roughly at the same time) Those who didn’t cooperate fled towards the Danube or Great Britain, ireland… The result was that, by the time of the first Judean war, Gaul was well on its way to become the number one economic power… Which it would soon achieve…
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July 30, 2018 at 11:23 am
Yes, but how many Celts you know today. Probably non. And for sure no druids, to understand what their culture was about. On the other hand probably you know some rabbis, and if not rabbis you know some Jews, who know a lot about Jewish culture, faith and tradition.
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August 5, 2018 at 9:00 pm
The Celtic culture was not just integrated in the Greco-Roman whole. Some, even a LOT, of what we call Greco-Roman, is actually Celt. Around the 3C BCE, the Celts (Gauls) were fighting in central… Greece (they suffered, finally, a defeat, but…)
As far as I can see the Jewish stuff is close to madness, much of it would be best eradicated, for the sake of the Jews (with all due respect). Nobody dares to say this, so sex mutilations, and dangerously mad self-aggrandizing talk go on, etc.
The Druids were best eradicated, and they were: thus the greatness of Celtic civilization. Self-eradication of a mad, oligarchic superstition, as if nothing happened
Much of Jewish “culture” is just some East European madness with people dressed in black with strange hats, in a parody of the self-glorifying banker… Eastern Europe was long stewing with tribal particularism and attending wars: consider the rather typical case of Bosnia…
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August 6, 2018 at 12:06 am
Patrice,
I read somewhere that Zeus represented northern tribes and Hera the southern tribes.
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August 6, 2018 at 8:51 am
The present president of France claims he is mentally self-servicing “jupiterian” and that the French have never recovered from not having a king, both completely insane and unreal statements: the Franks reluctantly elected kings, and Clovis imposed on them ROMAN military rule, as ROMAN IMPERATOR… Ever since there was an uneasy relationship. Switzerland, Savoy, Piedmont, Dauphine, the “County” (actually larger than Switzerland) of Toulouse, Bretagne, Normandy, Navarre, etc. were semi, or fully independent “French” states…
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August 6, 2018 at 12:26 am |
Eugen,
There is a fundamental dichotomy of organic social energies pushing out and networking, with civil and cultural forms developing, coalescing and giving structure to society. The interplay and feedback between them creates complex societies.
When either side dominates, this complexity is either crushed, by too much structure and order, or washed away by anarchistic chaos. Though anarchy only goes so far, as human beings, not to mention their social structures, are highly evolved forms. Our minds gravitate to order.
The problem seems to be that we don’t recognize the foundational nature of this, in our western search for ideal forms, Gods, political models, etc. This belief in a singular ideal enables the more extreme members of the group to keep insisting on an ever greater purity of belief. Idealism+ absolutism=extremism.
As for how fundamental this dichotomy is, consider galaxies amount to a convection cycle of energy radiating out, as mass gravitates in. Consequently political extremists seek that black hole at the center, but most of the energy radiates away by the time it reaches that stage, though what’s left reaches terminal velocity.
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July 29, 2018 at 2:49 pm |
How many of you are familiar with the annual BBC Reith Lecture?
This year’s lecture is called “War’s Fatal Attraction”. The speaker is historian Margaret MacMillan who assesses how the law and international agreements have attempted to address conflict.
Main website is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9
Try listening to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9951v#play
It refers to the war between Israel and Palestine towards the end.
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July 30, 2018 at 9:24 pm |
Plutocratic globalism and pseudo-liberal multiculturalism are mother and father to a resurgent tribalism, often described by ethnic and religious lines. In Israel, this phenomenon is spiced by messianic fervor among the haredim and fear of the long-term consequences of the anti-Zionism and antisemitism of the European left, the Arab bloc and the UN. The result: Fortress Israel.
Great empires triumphed not only because they rejected ethnic tribalism, but because they understand how to make ethnic divides secondary to higher commonalities, some practical, some transcendent. Elite opinion for the last 50 years has demanded a simultaneous increase of multiethnicity and multiculturalism, along with not simply a retreat from higher principles (liberty, equality, fraternity), but the active disparagement of them. And the deplorables have pierced the night with a primary, populist cry.
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July 31, 2018 at 4:31 am |
One engine of racism…
As a plutocracy arises, it undermines the group it arises from. Ultimately it tries to enslave, then extinguish it, with the help of other groups…. To stay in power. The pattern has been found many times in history. Europe and its colonies (US, Russia) avoided it, from periodic revolutions. But Rome didn’t, and thus, collapsed. It’s all too easy, and a fiction, to call the resulting psychological reaction “racism”.
[Sent to NYT.]
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