A Lesson Learned: If You Believe God Has Chosen You, You Become Evil and Insane

When sweeping collective support is given to open, sadistic, supremacist, anti-human psychopathy, a newly-formed ideology like Zionism simply cannot be the full explanation why

Alon Mizrahi

The horrors of Israel's genocide oblige nonconformist Jews to honestly examine widely-held Jewish beliefs. There is no escaping that calling.

Zionism and the disgraceful, despicable, barbaric, and stupid behavior of the Jewish collective in the last 18 months have erected immense walls between Jews and humanity. We have to dig underneath them.

The age of gatekept communal discourse is over. We are all one humanity, and all should be known about everyone. With machine translation and fast internet available almost everywhere, this interconnectedness is already a reality.

Additionally, if we don’t do this examination ourselves, and sincerely, not only will others do it for us, but future generations of Jews, and those who are now but children and babies, will find an ominous absence at the center of their history and identity, radiating denial and concealment.

We owe them better than that, and if you don’t feel that way, that’s ok. But I do.

We need to reach out to those young and unborn Jewish children and allow them to connect with normalcy and their collective past in a way that supports healing and being with humanity (Israel is not normal, and will never be considered normal).

Alon Mizrahi

We need to prepare for what’s coming, which we can anticipate (based on, of all other things, the same Jewish history the proponents of child murder pretend to carry in their degenerate hearts). It is a complete fantasy to think ‘Zionists‘ and ‘Jews‘ will be allowed to exist separately in humanity’s consciousness. The overlap not only cannot be denied on the merits of known realities (namely, virtually unanimous Jewish support for the genocide of Gaza); it has been actively, strenuously strengthened in public perception thanks to huge investments made by Zionists to create the impression that Israel and only Israel represents all Jews.

In their viciousness, Zionist Jews chose genocide. In their cowardice, they labored to silence opposition and dissent, to hide from blame behind as big a wall as possible of popular support. In their great malevolent stupidity, they have convinced humanity that the entirety of the Jewish people was indeed behind every crime against humanity committed in Gaza.

Truth be told, we have no way of knowing how many Jews hate and oppose the genocide. We do know that close to zero public or consequential dissent has been voiced (no position was quit and no door was slammed behind anyone in anger, and no synagogue split into two). So both Zionist and those who blame all Jews for the horrors of Gaza seem to be mostly correct in their assertions.

I don’t say it sardonically. I say it with rage.

In light of all the bloodshed, the astonishing, nonstop, gleeful, duplicitous. self-righteous cruelty and lack of any remorse and shame, I feel that we (Jews) owe humanity an explanation as to what caused this outbreak of genocidal amok, which hasn’t subsided one bit after 18 months.

I invite other nonconformist and rebel Jews to join me on this mission.

As I write these words, I find difficulty believing them. The duration of this horror, along with the acute, almost unbearable pain and stress its atrocities cause, can hardly be believed. We have to document this, too, for future generations.

Zionism has been dissected and analyzed profusely. Judaism, on the other hand, is almost always exempt from scrutiny and criticism, or gets to have any criticism limited to enclosed Jewish circles. This should not be the case anymore.

The genocide of Gaza explodes like a series of hydrogen bombs in humanity’s consciousness. The response cannot be evasive and muted, nor can it be delayed. It needs to be loud and swift. It must reverberate and cause shocks and tremors across the entire landscape.

We need to scream like Israel’s victims scream in their final moments.

If Judaism survives the great crime of Gaza, it must not be allowed to be as before. And if it insists on being as before, conscientious Jews need to openly quit it.

It is personal. Of course it is.

I was not born into an ultra-orthodox or anti-religion family. Like most Arab-Jewish families that had Zionism thrust upon them, mine was a mostly secular family, but one that respected and lived comfortably with Jewish religious traditions.

My siblings and I went to secular schools (the systems in Israel are segregated along every metric you can imagine), and during my early childhood we would go to the beach on Shabbat (which religious Jews can never do).

Things took a turn for a more, how shall I call it, rigorous religious regimen, after my grandfather was hit by a car at a crosswalk in Haifa in 1979, and died the next day.

In Judaism, an entire year is considered the formal mourning period over a deceased parent. During that year, religious rules are more strictly followed. It is that year of mourning that causes many Mizrahi Jews to become more religious permanently.

While religion blends with personal feelings and emotions in ways that make disengaging from it extremely hard in some communities, I suspect it is especially true for Mizrahi Jews of my mother’s generation. Kids from her generation (roughly the equivalent of baby boomers in the US) were the first out of Morocco as young children and the first to grow up as ‘Israeli’.

For them, being first-generation children in a migrant setting, the loss of a parent meant not only personal pain and loss. It was an undoing of a connection to a world they barely remembered and sometimes didn’t even know firsthand (the younger siblings in those migrant families were already born in Israel); a world lost to them, but still an irreplaceable part of their identity, and a rare source of softness, authenticity and identity in a hostile, harsh environment that mocked, rejected and sought to redo them in its ‘Western‘ and very Ashkenazi image.

After my maternal grandparents died, my siblings and I were sent to religious schools, and there was no more going to the beach on Shabbat. There was going to Beit Knesset.

I hated being forced to go to Beit Knesset, but I never hated the Beit Knesset itself, or the people in it. The Moroccan working-class men who came to pray were cordial, proud, and good-humored people. The atmosphere was communal and overall very sweet. I still have fond memories, as they say.

As the years went by, my curiosity for knowledge (I read everything from encyclopedias to every word written in every newspaper or comic book I got my hands on) started shifting toward religion. I took a genuine interest in studying the Talmud and reading great Jewish authors of different religious schools. I was so attracted to that world that I insisted my parents should send me to a proper Yeshiva (an institution dedicated solely to religious studies).

My love affair with formal religion did not last long, but my curiosity and liking for religious thought and dialectic persisted for more than a decade. I read hundreds of books and spent thousands of hours of my life studying Talmud and other canonical Jewish books. All in all, I can hold my own in a fairly decent level Jewish religious debate, and where deduction and connection-making are required, I excel.

I was not born into the world of Jewish orthodoxy, nor was I born into the world that hates it. I stepped in and had a serious amount of education after having already self-acquired excellent general knowledge. My judgment is not painted by prejudice or ignorance.

I don’t think I would ever write a text like that without the genocide: heated anti-religious polemic is a very Ashkenazi and tedious thing. As a native Arab, I feel comfortable in the company of simple believers of any faith, and I never feel better than they are in any way.

My heart shatters every day for Gaza’s innocents. It also hurts for young Jewish kids who have done no wrong and are subjected to a merciless indoctrination that prepares them for a life of paranoia, suspicion, and isolation from humanity.

This is such a shitty and cowardly choice for a people to make.

A history of barbarism and a future of apocalyptic, bloody revenge

Everybody wanted to hurt them for no reason, and God told them to murder everybody. If you want a concise version of the geopolitics of the Hebrew Bible, that’s it. From the ancient kings of Canaan to Egypt to Amalek (and 10 other regional nations the Hebrews are instructed to exterminate), everyone was out to get the Hebrews, and God’s answer was always to encourage and help the Hebrews to murder as many of them, or all of them, as possible.

Pages upon pages of the Bible are dedicated to murder and slaughter, which are always holy and righteous when done by the Hebrews, but always an abomination and defiance of God’s will when done to them.

When Korah questions Moses’ authority, the ground opens and swallows him and all his people and their families, too. When Elijah hears about Baal worshipers, he slaughters hundreds of their prophets on Mount Carmel in a public display. When Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped, her bothers murder all the males in that city. And when Pharaoh won’t allow the Hebrews to enjoy their freedom, God hardens his heart and then unleashes 10 plagues upon Egypt, each more murderous and insane than the previous.

On and on and on, almost every page in the Bible is soaked in blood, revenge, and religious derangement. And everything is vividly described and presented as just normal behavior. This is what people do, this is what God does, and this is what the Hebrews are expected to do in the Hebrew Bible.

And let’s not forget Amalek, the cutting edge of Gaza’s genociders: the Hebrew Bible stipulates that no one of that tribe must be spared - not even babies or livestock. All must be slaughtered.

We can see in Israel’s conduct in Gaza a clear enactment of that perceived divine command.

And to make matters worse, in later Jewish thought and interpretation, Amalek was no longer one ethnic group: the concept evolved to represent evil. And what is evil? Whatever the Hebrews hate, or whatever puts their power in danger. A concept of ‘spiritual Amalek‘ was born, and could be applied to any non-Jew at any moment.

Combined with a deeply ingrained sense of paranoia (‘everybody is sick with hate for us for no reason but our righteousness, which they can’t tolerate, and because they are inherently evil‘), the idea of permissible horrific revenge and correction of perceived past sins by mass slaughter is the most reliable way to make a society patently insane.

Almost needless to say, being confined to a philosophical doctrine that always and unconditionally identifies the Jewish collective with righteousness and God only makes things a hundred times worse.

It is precisely this extremely dangerous and unsettling tradition of universal delegitimization that young nonconformist Jews need to speak up against. If there’s one thing the Gaza genocide teaches us is that this tradition is not harmless folklore and cannot be recontextualized to mean something else, more palatable.

This deep existential delegitimization of the other is a literal, fundamental way of being and reading the Bible for too many Jews not to be confronted head-on.

The easiest part of this essay is the main argument

You can spin it anyway you want and try all you can to present it favorably, but the bottom line always stands: Judaism is a belief system whose core teaches Jewish exceptionalism and supremacy.

Every Jewish kid who got the most minimal amount of Jewish education got to hear the story of how God chose the Jews to give the Torah to: God went around and offered every nation the Torah. But all other nations asked what was written in it. God answered each nation with a commandment: ‘You shall not murder‘, ‘You shall not commit adultery‘, or ‘You shall not steal‘, but every other nation except the Hebrews said, ‘well, so we don’t want it‘, meaning they would not abandon their evil ways, thank you very much.

Everybody else was too preoccupied with sinfulness. Only the Hebrews immediately and unconditionally said yes to all. So God chose them, as they had the best characters of all the nations of the earth.

This relatively innocuous (believe me, it is) story and a million others like it play a crucial role in shaping a Jewish consciousness of inherent moral and spiritual superiority, which is based on perpetual moral righteousness.

And not only that: according to Jewish belief, Jews have a different, richer, and more complex soul containing parts that non-Jews don’t have (as they resemble animals in their spiritual composition). Many dissertations can be written about this, but they are not necessary, at this point, as all of us, Jews and others, know the truth: Jews in Judaism are superior beings compared to other people. They are God’s chosen, they have better character and morality, they are more spiritually and metaphysically developed, and their lives are infinitely more valuable than other people’s. The IDF’s propaganda, or Hasbara, invented nothing new.

As you would expect from a religion, this hierarchical structure is based on mystical, unconditional, and irrevocable principles. This means, for instance, that anyone born Jewish is automatically and unconditionally better and more righteous than any non-Jew in existence, even if they are criminal scum and the non-Jew is the most righteous person on earth.

This is not a side issue: it is a fundamental tenet of Jewish religious belief. Jews are the reason God created humanity, so that he would be able to give them the Torah. All other people are inconsequential. Jews are the stars of God’s production; the rest- all the rest - are extras.

In this regard, both Christianity and Islam can be seen as attempts to rewrite the link Judaism created between God’s will, or existence in the world, and one predetermined group of people. And it makes sense: if there is a moral god, logic dictates that humans must strive to be more moral, or accept some holiness into their lives, to become closer to him.

In Judaism, the logic is reversed, and already contains the seeds of the poisoned fruit: if you’re Jewish, it is not you who needs to strive to become worthy of God; it is God’s duty and responsibility to take care of you. Because you’re unconditionally the best (as evidenced by his choosing you, in an unbreakable tautology of self-affirmation).

In Judaism, you do not choose God: God already chose you. And you are the best of humanity, the way you were born, and no matter what you do.

We can kind of understand why a group of people that was losing every battle it participated in chose to shape its belief system like that: it is a childish form of comfort and payback against a hostile environment they thought of as ‘the world‘ (who could love people that claim the creator of the univesrse chose them over you because they are better is an open question).

On a good day, you could understand how a small, insignificant, and downtrodden clan might adopt this line of reasoning under some peculiar historical circumstances. But then some things happened that changed the picture for the worse in a drastic, fatal way.

How Zionism, secularism, and demographics disrupted the relative stability of the old model

As long as Jews (who only began to be called that after the Second Temple was destroyed; before that they were Hebrews) (no evidence, by the way, was ever found to affirm the existence of a First Temple) were a small, religious and politically insignificant group, the problematic message described here could be contained relatively well.

Serious problems began to present themselves during the 18th and 19th centuries (leading to the disastrous present), when the population of European Jews unexplainably exploded (from 100K in 1500 to 9 million in 1900), and they began to be more politically and financially powerful, and also secular.

You see, orthodox Judaism incorporated a wise safety mechanism for the overpouring self-importance, not to say narcissism and God-complex, of Jewish beliefs. How orthodox Judaism solved, or softened this problem substantially, was by stressing not the fact that God chose the Jews, but the reason and purpose of that supposed choice, namely the Torah. For religious Jews in the old days, the burden of keeping the Torah and all its rules was both the reward and true meaning of God’s choice, and not the superior position it put them relative to other people.

Throughout the Middle Ages, European Jews were a small and not particularly liked group, and the idea of chosenness and holiness were very idiosyncratic and tightly connected to their religious practice and experience. Those beliefs were never meant to be communicated to the world or boasted about. Again, this may not be the most graceful concept, but keep in mind we’re talking about a time when legal slavey, exorcisms, corporal punishments, witch trials, and beheadings were still practiced in much of the ‘civilized‘ world.

The same civilized world that is an equal partner in Gaza’s extermination.

When they lost their religion, Europe’s Jews lost a vital restraining factor. As secular Jews, they were chosen by a God they didn’t even have to believe in and follow his laws. The delicate balance between ‘God’s chosen‘ and ‘God’s servant‘ was destroyed, and Jews began to see Jewish existence, presence, and influence as the main thing, and not the Torah.

Also, as more equality was practiced in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the religious Jewish ideas of chosenness and superiority were no longer a comfort for a small group of frightened and unloved people; they now had the allure of possible, and maybe deserved, domination over others.

Finally, Zionism was the stone that completely broke the old dam of Jewish mechanisms put in place to prevent Jews from going crazy with self-admiration. With Zionism, and after secularism, the supremacy was given something it had never had before: political and then military power, with no conditions of following God’s (or anyone’s) laws.

I think that the gift of a double-edged sword of actual power, free from any conditions and restraints, simply drove secular, European Jews crazy. Traditional religious Judaism was carefully designed to be practiced by small, humble, and mentally balanced communities that had no political power in the outside world. It could not contain the outburst of nationalistic, violent, and colonial zeal that Zionism espoused.

And remember, Christian Zionists played a major role in building up Jewish Zionism, thus making Jews the kings of both Muslim societies in the Middle East and Christian societies in Europe and the US. Such power has completely swept away any sense of proportion and realism.

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Another major development of the 18th century that needs to be mentioned in the context of this discussion was Hasidut, a revivalist Jewish movement that stressed the spiritual and the religious experience over rigorous adherence to every small detail of the Jewish Halacha (the collections of religious rules).

This movement helped to create a Jewish self-image that was based on mysticism and fantasy and, again, did not necessitate being seriously religious. That caused a huge rift in the Ashkenazi world of those days.

The Hasidic movement also contributed, early in the 20th century, to the development of a new Jewish stream, known as Religious Zionism. This movement took the spiritual mambo-jumbo of Hasidut and baked it into a new religious doctrine that preached conquering and settling in Palestine as the highest and most noble Jewish calling. In doing so, it, too, stressed the supposedly ‘natural‘ and ‘spiritual‘ Jewish supremacy, but this time relative to very concrete victims: the Palestinians.

Here is a good example of Religious Zionist thinking. Keep in mind that in present-day Israel, Religious Zionism is the most powerful political and cultural force:

Interestingly, orthodox Jews (those wearing black suits and black/fur hats) always rejected Zionism, totally or to a degree. Most of them, for instance, refuse to enlist in the IDF to this day, despite massive pressures and economic enticements.

Many orthodox leaders of the late 19th century and early 20th century vehemently opposed and denounced Zionism as heretical; they saw it as a rebellion against God and the Torah, which specifically forbade Jews from creating their secular state by force. According to ancient Jewish religious beliefs, that was the exclusive role of the Messiah, who would perform it at the End of Days.

It was not only the secularist and Torah-hating aspect of Zionism that led rabbis to oppose it. I believe that traditional rabbis and Jewish spiritual leaders understood early on that zionism had the potential of making Jews drunk and megalomaniac with a sense of power, leading to catastrophic miscalculations and terrible consequences.

The damage can’t be undone

If I sounded rather conciliatory in the previous part of this essay, it is not because I don’t know what Judaism means for its believers; it’s because I do.

But the minor defence I’ve put up for traditional Judaism cannot replace, and cannot fix, the deep structural damage Zionism has caused to Jewish identity with its barbaric colonialism and cannibalism of every resource and human being that got in its way.

I did not even mention how Ashkenazi Zionism utterly destroyed Arab Jewish communities that stood in place for more than a thousand years in some cases. Personally, I find it almost impossible to overcome this sense of loss - the heritage and culture of my actual ancestors, totally erased from existence by white European Jews who suddenly had an idea.

It is not just me, of course: Mizrahi Jews have been chewed up by Zionism and corrupted beyond recognition. They lost their language, their traditions, and their culture. All they have is Zionism, which essentially is the negation of the humanity of Arabs, which they are, and their people have always been.

It does not help that some Jews remain ultra-orthodox and uncorrupted by Zionism. That population makes up maybe 15-20% of Jews. Anti-Zionist Jews add maybe one percent or two more, but let’s make it a generous 5%. The rest are either zealous or ‘liberal‘ Zionists and Religious Zionists who support Israel’s genocide wholeheartedly, and who never have and never will back any step against Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

We are, after 140 years of malignant Zionism and many centuries more of dubious self-education at best, at a dead end as a human collective.

By rejecting Judaism, the religion, and embracing only Judaism, the fantastical national myth, Zionism ended up amplifying everything that was wrong about the Jewish faith: the supremacy and chosenness, the paranoia, and the horrific Biblical bloodshed and vengeance.

Jews now are more separate and isolated from humanity than they were 150 or 500 years ago, and Arab Jews are more rejected than they have ever been in their entire history. We are hated in the Middle East like we have never been before; we have become the messengers of Islamophobia and fascism in Europe, and we have collaborated with the craziest, most racist elements of American political culture, while pushing that country to one war after another on our behalf.

Where can we look as a collective and see hope? We’ve burned all the bridges. We, as a collective, are responsible for the greatest horror most living humans have ever witnessed in their lives. And our representatives are doing all that while quoting the Bible and adorning themselves in Jewish symbols, with no one in the Jewish world protesting.

What have we to look forward to as a collective?

Can anyone even imagine that it is possible to rehabilitate millions of people who feel emboldened and encouraged to cheer on 18 months of nonstop child murder, and do so openly and willingly?

Do we, as anti-Zionist Jews, have anyone to even talk to, apart from a tiny circle of activists? Can we stay part of that community?

The answer to all these questions is ‘I don’t think so’. Something has broken, and the continued protection of the US and Western countries is not allowing us to see and feel it yet, but I feel it. This genocide is the end of Jewish life as we’ve known it.

Once the US is removed from its position as the world’s hegemon and Israel has to face the consequences of its ruthless, sadistic megalomania, all will become clear.

Epilogue 1: Judaism is just an extreme example. All known religions are guilty of this destructive sin

I have felt fed up with Judaism for many, many years. I don’t think I ever liked it, even though, for a while, some aspects of it were interesting to me. It is too oppressive, and almost masochistic: who wants such a brutal and vengeful god carefully monitoring all they do, think, and feel 24 hours a day? Who can enjoy feeling superior to others? The very idea makes me sick.

Judaism is a system where universal justice is not possible, as Jews are a super group in it, with special privileges no other group has. This is a guaranteed way to become a terrible human being. Nothing corrupts more than privilege.

But as I talked so much about Judaism, I will share why no other religion is a solution for me. You see, once you’re a member of any religion, you’re separate from other people who are not members of it.

I don’t want this separateness. I can only accept ideas that embrace, in principle, all people (I won’t embrace child murderers). And there’s nothing I hate more in the whole world than being in a club that makes me special. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate this notion.

So I can’t be a Muslim, a Christian, or even a Buddhist. I cannot be and cannot have what other people can’t be and can’t have. If life has a meaning, it has to be rooted in a shared story and available to all.

I just want a world where children are safe and no one goes hungry. Anything more than that is luxury, and other people can have it. I don’t need it. No God, no mythologies, no higher meanings. Thank you.

Epilogue 2: Our job is to quietly disappear into the night and be reborn as non-Jews

I don’t know that even if you had asked me 10 or 20 years ago, I’d have told you that Judaism can be reformed and saved. I believe in the value of preserving beautiful old buildings. But faith systems and ideologies? Why bother?

And besides, I hate forcing things on people. If people want to believe they are superior and that some exotic ritual has some unique meaning, let them. It’s not my problem and not my ‘challenge ‘ to amend.

And what else will you make of Judaism? How will you make it universal? Christianity and Islam already exist. Removing the chosennes of Jews from Judaism makes the whole thing pointless.

But if you don’t believe in or especially need the kind of God that the Hebrew Bible has to offer, and of you’re appaled by cruellty and violence and would rather die 100 times before killing one innocent child, and if what you really want is to be one with humanity - which is the most spiritual and most beautiful, and natural, aspiration - just leave.

Say that you’re done with it, and don’t want to be a member of a club that demands you strip yourself of your humanity to join. And, for the children of Gaza, explain why you do it, and why you broke. We owe them this.

Our job, as nonconformist Jews, is not to reform Zionism or Judaism. Our job is, once we’ve fulfilled our duty to Palestine, to get out and disappear quietly into the night, only to be born again as simple human beings, nothing more.

Source: The Mizrahi Perspective