Why Israel (Secretly) Loves the Islamic State

Boundaries of the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS or the Caliphate) shift from day to day. Currently most of the Islamic State territory is a good day's drive from northern Israel, about 350 miles. But pockets of Islamic State control are already within a few miles of Israel, or at least the Golan Heights (illegally and apparently permanently occupied by Israel), according to the Carter Center map that tracks the Syrian conflict:



The bottom left of the map touches Israel. Lebanon is to the east, Turkey to the north, and Jordan below the long slant at the bottom.

While many people in the world are upset at the to-date triumphs of the Islamic State, Israel is not. Here, by Israel, I mean the typically ultra-orthodox, nationalist Jews who have controlled the government for some time now. There are still many Jews in Israel that believe in human rights for all peoples, they just have been marginalized over time.

The Islamic State fits perfectly into the National Zionist Zeitgeist Ideology (NZZI) narrative. Zionists like to pretend that Palestine was empty, more or less, before they arrived. The existence of large numbers of Palestinian survivors of the Holocaust of 1948 has always been an embarrassment. Extremist Zionists have always advocated a Greater Israel with various boundaries, but typically including everything south of Turkey and north of Mecca, to be taken in bites, of course.

The Islamic State appears to Americans and Europeans to have no redeeming qualities. ISIS are ultra-orthodox Islamists hell bent on taking over the world and willing to kill anyone who disagrees with them, even other Sunni Islamic sects. Unlike the Palestinians, who traditionally were either moderates or secular, and the PLO, which was Marxist and therefore atheist, the Islamic State has no appeal to anyone outside its own camp.

The Islamic State is the Israeli caricature of Palestinians, Arabs and Islam made into reality.

So if the Islamic State takes over Syria, the Israelis can dust off the old war plans for the capture of Damascus. No one would stop their fighting ISIS, and the people of Damascus might actually welcome them. At first.

If the Islamic State takes Syria it will also take Lebanon and Jordan. Then Greater Israel is just a matter of eating, digesting, and eating again. Enough area can be left to the Islamic State to make it a permanent global threat that justified anything Israel does, including to the Palestinians within its borders.

For the Israelis and Islamic State, it is a win-win situation. Of course, as Hitler learned when he tried to create Greater Germany, things don't always go according to plan.

Woman in Gold and Austrian Catholics

I was dreading seeing another Holocaust movie, but I thought Woman in Gold (starring Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, and my favorite up-and-coming Tatiana Maslany) was pretty good.

People forget, and Woman in Gold jogs the memory. But it also avoids some issues.

Maria Altmann (played by Mirren) is an Austrian who fled the country shortly after the Nazi takeover. She decides to try to obtain a picture of her aunt that is hanging in an Austrian museum. As portrayed in the movie neither she nor her family were religious.

The movie, in flashback scenes, makes a point that the Austrians, for the most part, welcomed Hitler and the German takeover. But it does not explain why. And why is very important, if you really want to understand history, instead of just thinking Austrians were just a bunch of vicious thugs.

There were three main components to the why: (1) the aftermath of World War I (2) pan-German nationalism (3) the domination of Austria by the Roman Catholic Church.

Before World War I Austria had been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. World War I was largely a battle between imperialist countries for world domination, and the Empire ended up on the losing side. The victors broke it up into the states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and portions of other states. Austria had the core of the German speaking population.

Despite Woodrow Wilson's chatter about "national self-determination," the Austrians were forbidden from becoming part of Germany. Many were not happy about that.

Pan-German nationalism then came into play. Hitler himself was Austrian, though he had become a German citizen. Many Austrians did not feel they were being invaded by the Nazis: they felt they were being liberated. The Nazis were by no means the only extremist nationalist group in Austria in the 1930s.

When the Protestant Revolution had shaken up the world, it had left the German-speaking population of Europe divided mainly between two religions: Lutheranism mostly in the north, and Roman Catholicism mostly in the south.

The Roman Catholic Church has always been officially anti-Jewish, but in the religious sense, not the racial sense. Jewish converts to Catholicism were welcome, if somewhat suspect. The Roman Catholic Church in Austria had a tradition of being particularly anti-Jewish, and most of the people who joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party had been raised anti-semitic Catholics.

Adolf Hitler himself was Roman Catholic, which made his storm troopers easy to welcome in Austria. Surprised? Most modern Catholics are, because the Church colluded with the U.S. government (particularly the Democratic Party) to rewrite history after Germany was defeated.

So when you see Austrians abusing Jews in Woman in Gold, you can bet that they are Roman Catholics.

The other funny thing about the movie is the hypocritical propaganda about private property. In the courts and in major motion pictures we are constantly reminded about how European Jews, in addition to losing their lives in the Holocaust, also lost their private property. The message is constant: Jewish private property should be returned to Jews.

But don't think about Palestine. Because American Jews, and ex-European Jews that are now Israeli Palestinians, don't want you to think about the private property rights of non-Jewish Palestinians.

If stolen property is to be returned, should not the land and other property stolen from Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel be returned to the rightful owners?

Don't hold your breath waiting for a major motion picture bringing up that issue. Or a court ruling in favor of the Palestinians.

Palestine, Israel, and U.N. Resolution 181

When tempers are high people tend, even more than normal, to discard any evidence that anything is wrong with the side they have chosen. They rally around the flag.

Add that to the tendency for history to be treated as propaganda, rather than a true record of the past, and it is not surprising that many people are confused by the history of Palestine as told by its partisans, which appears have very little in common with the history of the modern nation of Israel, as told by its partisans. Voices in the middle tend to get drowned out.

Here I want to take a look at the myth that the United Nations (U. N.) sanctioned the creation of the nation of Israel, and that the non-Judaic Palestinians were opposing a fair and just plan to create that nation. To do that I will be referring to the original 1947 document, available from Yale University at this link:

• United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine"

I highly recommend you read the document first, and think about it, before I walk you through how I see it. You may not agree with my analysis.

The key word to look at, in distinguishing historical propaganda from what actually happened, is the word "state." The document uses the word "state" frequently. It is a word that can mean "nation" or a government. But as we know from our own United States, the word "state" can mean a level of government different from (usually subordinate to) a national government.

Everyone agrees that a majority of non-Judaic citizens in the British Mandate of Palestine, possibly a majority of all citizens, rejected the U.N. resolution. They preferred the better-established international standard for transitions from imperial dominance to local freedom: national self-determination. Under that system all the voting-age citizens would elect representatives, mainly by geographic units, and those representatives would then write a Constitution for the nation, then have another election, and start writing the laws of the nation.

The Zionist Palestinians and their foreign supporters (but not all Judaic Palestinians) preferred a Jewish-majority, explicitly theocratic and ethnically defined Nation of Israel. They did not want to have a merely Jewish-majority "state" within a Palestinian nation.

How do we know that the U.N. did not intend to set up a sovereign Nation of Israel through Resolution 181?

In propaganda Resolution 181 is usually called the "United Nation Partition Plan for Palestine" which implies a two-nation solution. You can see that it is actually an attempt at a a one-nation solution from the text in the very first paragraph, which bears repeating: "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine."

The word Partition comes from the phrase "plan of partition with economic union" which first occurs in paragraph 6. Some relevant U.S. history is the partition of the various areas taken from Native American Indians and partitioned into a variety of states. Partition does not, in itself, imply nation. If historians focussed on the word "union" and minimized the word "partition," people would think about the events of 1948 dfferently.

The words "Jewish State" first appear (Part I, A., para. 3) in the context of withdrawal of British troops. After that the terms Jewish State, Arab State, and City of Jerusalem are used frequently, and they are described as "independent."

But Palestine is not really granted independence. Instead a U.N. commission is to take over the power formerly exercised from the British. The commission is empowered to make the final lines of demarcation of the Jewish, Arab and Jerusalem sectors.

Rather than holding elections, the commission is to appoint Provisional Councils for each of the "states". Among other responsibilities, each Provisional Council is to recruit an "armed militia." Even then "general political and military control, including the choice of the militia's High Command, shall be exercised by the Commission."

Then there are to be elections, and illegal immigrants (who would be mostly European Jews) can vote simply if they "have signed a notice of intention to become citizens of such State."

Neither elected government is supposed to discriminate based on religion or ethnic origin. There is to be freedom of transit, and you can see that a peculiar lapse in language consistency by a referral to "the other State in Palestine, " where elsewhere the term Arab State is used.

The three States are to establish "the Economic Union and Joint Economic Board." Recall that the original call in the United States to go beyond the Articles of Confederation was for an economic union between the 13 states, to be planned at the Annapolis Convention.

Resolution 181 even provides for Arabs living in the Jewish State and Jews living in the Arab state to have the option to vote instead for representatives in the state they are ethnically aligned with, and to be considered citizens of the State which they have opted to vote for. (Section C., Chapter 3)

You can see both the ambiguity of the word "state" and that the Resolution did not intend to create a Nation of Israel most clearly in Section C. Chapter 3, Subsections 2 and 3 where the overall state is again called "Palestine." The phrasing, "These obligations shall be fulfilled through participation in the Joint Economic Board in respect of those obligations applicable to Palestine as a whole, and individually in respect of those applicable to, and fairly apportionable between, the States" is particularly telling.

I'm figuring that is about as much information as anyone can be expected to absorb in one blog post.

I conclude that while Resolution 181 is somewhat ambiguous on the question of whether it authorized a Jewish nation in Palestine, the ambiguity results from the complicated political balance it seeks to impose. The most reasonable reading is that the intention is that a Nation of Palestine is to have three subordinate States, and that each state is to guarantee the usual generally accepted freedoms to all of its inhabitants. It is an attempt to guarantee some protection for minorities, in particular the Jewish minority, rather than to set up two or more racially supremacist or theocratic nations.

My own opinion is that the United Nations had no right to impose a solution on Palestine. The people of Palestine should have been allowed to go through the usual national self-determination process without United Nations (or any other outside) interference.

Although it begins a more complex topic (the history of the conflict), I would also add that the evidence is that a majority of Palestinians would have rejected the dictation from the U.N. had they been allowed to vote on it. However, the actual armies that opposed the creation of the Nation of Israel in 1948 were not Palestinian. The Palestinians had no army. The opposing armies were from other, pre-established Arab nations. In addition, the State of Israel, really a new nation, was declared on May 15, 1948, well before the August 1, 1948 expiration of the British occupation.

1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 2014 Gaza Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in 1943. Essentially, some of the Jews who had been trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms against the German army. They were aware that Jews from the Ghetto were being systemically taken to death camps.

This essay is about comparing the current militant movement in Gaza, and more broadly among non-Jews in Palestine/Israel, to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There are some similarities and many differences. A lot can be learned about people by noting how they interpret this data.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in the context of World War II and the Holocaust, which was Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. The situation in Gaza today is in the context of the aftermath of the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, known as Israel, and the contemporary U.S.-led "War on Terror."

While Adolf Hitler was raised as a Roman Catholic in Austria, where anti-Semitism (more properly, anti-Judaism) was virulent among the Church hierarchy, his stance towards Jews was essentially racist, not religious. While Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church agreed on many things in the 1930's (notably the need to exterminate socialists, atheists and communists), they disagreed on the disposition of the Jews in Europe. The Catholic Church sought to convert them.

Hitler, who had added racist doctrines to the Church's anti-Judaism, thought the Jews were genetically inferior (actually, different in a dangerous way). Converting them would simply allow their genes to mix more with his beloved concept of the Aryan race. Hitler and his more radical followers within the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis), decided to exterminate the Jews in the midst of World War II.

Anti-jewish laws came first, in the mid 1930's, but they were not much different than similar anti-Negro laws in the U.S., or discriminatory laws common in most of the world's nations at the time. Then came concentration camps, at first used to house political prisoners (atheists, socialists and communists), and then increasingly to use Jews for slave labor. Ultimately some of the concentration camps became death camps.

The Warsaw Ghetto, created in 1940, was effectively a concentration camp within a city. Perhaps 300,000 Jews were packed into about 1.25 square miles of city. Gaza is much less densely populated, currently estimated to have a population of 1.8 million enclosed in an area of 139 square miles. However, because Gaza is desert terrain, most of the population lives in Gaza City and other urbanized areas. In both the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza the citizens were (or are) not free to travel outside of the designated limits.

The Warsaw Ghetto was meant to be temporary; its residents were meant to be deported to death camps beginning in 1942. The residents of Gaza have been there, for the most part, since 1948 and have hereditary refugee status. They are being confined, not exterminated.

The "uprising" began around January 18, 1943. Only a small percentage of Jews, perhaps 1000, appear to have fought the Germans. This may have been partly due to a shortage of weapons. Still, the German army needed only about 2000 troops to regain enough control of the ghetto to continue the deportations.

The same is true of Gaza. While people, when given the opportunities in elections, voted for Hamas, and to a lesser degree for the PLO, the number of active Hamas militants is estimated at about 10,000 (estimated by Israel), but that includes irregular volunteers. The other resistance groups in Gaza appear to be much smaller than Hamas.

Tunnels played a crucial role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Tunnels were used to bring in food and weapons. Without tunnels, the earlier death rate in the ghetto from malnutrition and consequent disease would likely have been higher. In the end, many of the fighters used the tunnels to escape the fate of those who did not fight: transit to a death camp.

The various groups in Gaza did not build tunnels because the like to dig. The were dug for the same reasons the Jews had in Warsaw: to get supplies. And both some of the Jews and some of the Palestinians used the tunnels to get the weapons they needed to fight the army of the nation that had put them in their respective ghettos.

Very few German soldiers, officially just 17, were killed by the Warsaw Jewish resistance, and it is unlikely that the real total was over 100. The Germans disproportionately killed civilians, most of whom died from fires or smoke inhalation.

The army of Israel, and its air force, have elected to fight in a manner that kills far more civilians in Gaza than actual Hamas militants.

In both cases the resistance fighters were poorly armed compared to the army they fought. The Polish Jews had only one machine gun and a limited number of small arms. Gaza is confronted with an Israeli army far better armed than the German army was. In addition, Israel conducts much of its war on non-Jewish Palestinians from the air. The use of (mostly inneffective) rockets launched from Gaza is also a new phenomena.

So we have a paradox. In matching the contenders up, Hamas gunmen match up well with ZOB and ZZW, the Jewish Warsaw gunmen. The civilians of Gaza match well with the civilians of the Warsaw Ghetto.

And the Israeli state matches the Nazi German state well. And the Israeli Army matches the German army quite well.

But once racism, religious intolerance, or even nationalism enter the picture, this obvious way to connect the dots goes out the window. Racism makes it impossible to do a rational analysis of who is in the right, and who is being wronged. See my recent essay Ethical Asymmetry [July 22, 2014] for a treatment of the ethical problems resulting from bias.

More:

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Gaza
Hamas

Hitler and the problems of National Self-determination

"The most believing Protestant could stand in the ranks of our movement next to the most believing Catholic, without ever having to come into the slightest conflict of conscience to his religious obligations." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The idea of national self-determination is closely linked to American President Woodrow Wilson and the post-World War I peace settlements. Nations are conceived of along ethnic, linguistic, racial and cultural lines. National self-determination provides that each group of people who constitute a definable nation has the right to their own national government.

The Democratic Party lauds Woodrow Wilson as a great President, a man of progressive (liberal) ideals who was also a man of peace and yet led the U.S. to its first great international war victory. A closer examination reveals a more complex picture, in which Wilson, a college professor turned politician, was a conservative racist who turned against his own idea of national self-determination as soon as he saw its global consequences, which did not sit well with his Aryan, racist agenda.

[Who's lying to you Litmus Test: if Woodrow Wilson was not a racist, why did racism remain legal in the U.S. after he had two terms as President?]

As I write this, ethnic and religious conflicts continue to escalate. Israel is bombing parts of Palestine it made into reservations for the natives when it got tired of its ethnic cleansing chore. Kurds are asserting their rights to recognition as a nation. The lines drawn by Wilson's colonial-era pals of the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires are still not working, largely due to their failure to correspond to natural national boundaries.

But there is another important consideration: the negative consequences of stressing ethnic cultures, religion, and nationalism.

After World War I Poland was created from former parts of Germany (and a bit of Russia). There was a substantial German-speaking population within the new Poland. The new Austria was German speaking, Roman Catholic, and highly anti-semitic.

Meanwhile, a lot of other cultural nations thought they should have the same rights as the Poles. Famously, Ho Chi Minh demanded independence for Vietnam, but he represented just one of hundreds of nations seeking self-determination. The Brits and French gave the right to self-determination to exactly one nation within their empires between World War I and World War II (the Republic of Ireland, but Britain kept Northern Ireland). The lesson was clear: only losers in wars might get dismembered into smaller nations with borders drawn on ethnic lines.

It should not be surprising that Hitler's Germany had strange allies in World War II (some in hostile neutrality, like Ireland). In almost every colony of the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch empires there were groups hoping Hitler would win, and in many cases fighting against the British or French.

While Britain won the war (and the French empire was re-instated), the cost was so high it was unable to maintain much of its empire afterwards. National revolutions, often led by Communists, lined up much more of the world along lines of national self-determination.

Many of the new nations had sub-nations within them. Vietnam had Roman Catholics and Buddhists who did not like communism or each other. India had many sub-nations that had be be invaded by Mahatma Gandhi's tanks to persuade them that they were not to be allowed to exercise their own rights to self-determination. Most African nations had multiple rival tribal or clan groups arbitrarily thrown together.

And a whole bunch of European Jews who survived the Holocaust decided they needed a land of their own, the land their ancestors had abandoned almost two thousand years earlier. They invaded Palestine, kicked out most other Palestinians, and set up a racist state they call Israel.

The United States of America, for all of its legendary past faults (genocide, racism, etc.), meanwhile has developed a new model. I just call it the Modern state. It is not based on race or religion, though there is nationalism. It is based on ideals tempered with pragmatism: liberty of conscience, a semblance of equality under the law, and pragmatic good government: good roads, fair schools, and not too much air pollution, even a bit of a social safety net, as long as taxes are not too high.

But this modern America had advantages in developing. Not just a lot of resources that were easily stolen from the natives, but a population (excepting black slaves) who came here more or less voluntarily at an exceptional time in history. At a time when people were questioning revealed religions like Christianity and Islam. At a time when Republics were a reality and were moving in the direction of becoming Democracies. And when agricultural and industrial revolutions were getting underway that would raise the standards of living for almost everyone.

I believe people have a right to self-determination, but I believe they should be cautious with that right. The Nazis determined that no Jews, atheists, or communists would be allowed to live in Germany. Then they decided to greatly enlarge Germany. That is not the example I am hoping other nations will follow.

When a people has been deprived of their own nation for a long time, and has been treated poorly by the nation(s) they inhabit, I think they might benefit from setting up as a nation-state. Thus I favor Kurdish and Palestinian states, among others. But ... I hope they are modern states, or turn into modern states. I hope the people choose to join the modern world, with modern values: equality and justice for all. Not states based on religious or ethnic tests.

When there is equality and justice for all, it does not matter which government rules us, nor which ethnic group we descend from or identify with.

It is sad that America's leaders after World War II (mirroring the equally culpable leaders of the U.S.S.R.) sought to create a new commercial-imperial global system run from Washington D.C. America's making enemies so readily, and imposing our will when possible with bombs, assassinations, rigged elections and embargoes, marred our international image and robbed our modern system of moral authority (as did discrimination in the U.S. against non-whites, until around 1970).

Adolf Hitler was not a self-made man. Germany, Austria and Turkey surrendered at the end of World War I, after Woodrow Wilson and his allies had promised a just peace. Instead the defeated Central Powers  were treated to dismemberment and economic pillage. Hitler blamed this "stab in the back" on Jews and communists, and an angry nation elevated him to power. Nor were the Zionists who fought to create Israel in Palestine self-made: they were Hitler's creation. Hamas, in turn, was created by the Israeli Zionists.

We need the opposite chain-reaction. Self-determination based on nationalism or religion is not necessarily bad, but it is just as dangerous as imperialism. I hope when people assert their right to self-determination, they determine that they want equality and justice for all humans, not a new round of sectarian conflict.

Good Friday with Five Broken Cameras and Broken Commandments

The Jewish festival of Passover may celebrate a myth, or more likely the Passover story is part mythology, with a germ of truth. The basic tale is in the second book of the Bible, Exodus, Chapters 11 and 12. The key point is that when the Jews were getting ready to leave Egypt, all the first born Egyptian children and cattle died on an appointed night.

If the whole story is not a myth, and if you don't believe in supernatural crimes against humanity, then there is only one conclusion. Gangs organized by Moses went around and killed a bunch of innocent children, and cattle, in the night.

And so the Jews celebrate passover. They make it a celebration of freedom from slavery in Egypt, and I am all for freedom, and for celebrating freedom.

But given at least 3000 years have passed, would it not be a good idea to stop reminding the world every year that instead of killing the Pharaoh that night, which would have been justifiable tyranicide, they killed an untold number of Egyptian children?

Imagine if Germans annually celebrated the Holocaust like it was a good thing, or if Americans celebrated Wounded Knee or some other massacre of native American Indians.

Good Friday is pretty weird too. If there is anything that whips up Christians to kill Jews, besides high interest rates, it is Good Friday. The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God or at least the Messiah or a Prophet or some sort of rabble rouser who was against the quaint Jewish custom of stoning people to death for sex outside of one man to one woman marriages.

Good Friday follows Holy Thursday, at which Jesus had his last meal with the Apostles. This was on or near the Passover, according to Mark Chapter 14. Mark is the Gospel with the best pedigree. There is reasonably good evidence that it was dictated by the Apostle Peter in Jerusalem, and in it Peter confesses to having denied Jesus three times. It contains no childhood account of Jesus, the account of the resurrection is short and sounds appended, and Peter is not marked out as the head of the church. According to most Bible academics, the other three Gospels make up stuff to add to Mark's version.

I doubt the crucifixion is merely symbolic. Taking everything into account, it was probably a historic event. Psychologists have documented how it is common for bereaved people to imagine a visit (while asleep or even while awake) from someone who recently died. If even one Apostle (or Mary Magdalene, the first person to see him in Mark) had such a vision, it is easy to understand that a decade later every survivor in the inner circle would at least refrain from contradicting the story that Jesus rose from the dead. It is notable that in Mark there is no "doubting Thomas" story to counteract the cynicism of the less gullible.

In time the false Apostle Paul made the Jesus cult into a story about Jesus's triumph over death. This was not a new story: Osiris, Hercules, and Cybele all had cults promising some sort of life after death. Passover became part of the tradition of non-Jewish Christians. Paul also began wrangling for control against Peter and James, Jesus's brother, who led the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. This led to the hatred of Jews that became such a strong component of Christianity and led directly to the Holocaust of the 20th century, not to mention 19 centuries of Jew killing in between.

But perhaps the best (as in most uplifting) interpretation of Good Friday is that, since Jesus was the first born Son of God, that God is an Egyptian. The Jews murdered Jesus like they murdered the Son of the Pharaoh back in Egypt. Tie that into the story of the Good Samaritan and a few choice other sayings from the Gospels, and you can argue that it is bad to kill people just because they don't belong to your religious or ethnic group.

What a concept.

Many of the parables of Jesus clearly speak to peasants, who were in the majority for most of the world's post-hunter-gatherer history but are now becoming a rare breed.

5 Broken Cameras was nominated for an Academy Award this year as Best Documentary Feature. In it we see arrogant expatriate European Ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers stealing land from and beating up lovable Palestinian peasants just east of Jerusalem. Some (but not all) Zionists believe that God hands out title deeds, that they are not subject to the commandments in Exodus: "Thou Shall Not Steal," and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house ... nor anything that is thy neighbors."

Think of how many people get recruited into Islamic Jihadist groups after watching such obvious injustice. They won't think "Just a few bad Jews are doing this." They won't even think "All Jews are doing this." They will think "Jews are doing this with American help."

We (Americans) should not be helping anyone steal anyone's land. In fact, American's might want to consider all the land (and other stuff, including labor) we've stolen (including by fraud) over the past 300 or so years. In the name of Justice, or Jesus, or Osiris, or Nature, we should make restitution. Or at least stop killing and stealing.

Is Zionism a Crime Against Humanity?

Newly appointed United States of America Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday chastised the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for saying Zionism is a crime against humanity.

Actually, Mr. Erdogan was saying that the international community should consider Islamophobia, or prejudice against people who have Islam as a religion, as a crime against humanity "like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism."

There are so many problems with both Mr. Erdogan's and Mr. Kerry's statements that it is worth teasing out the many facts and ideas encompassed by them. Is Zionism a crime against humanity? Let's begin by understanding that Erdogan used the term "crime against humanity" in a rather loose manner.

Crimes against humanity have been defined by international agreement to be serious attacks on humans, possibly including humiliation or degradation, that are a result of government policy. They include, but are not limited to, government-sponsored or enabled murder (particularly mass murder), torture, and physical brutality including rape, as well as denial of human rights for political, racial, gender, or religious reasons. In the context of war they become war crimes. In the worst case they include genocide, the mass murdering of an ethnic or national group, and ethnic cleansing, the murder or expulsion of people from a state for ethnic reasons.

On its face, the general term Zionism is simply the wish of ethnically Jewish people to live in the region near Jerusalem. There is nothing inherently criminal about that, any more than wishing to live in Paris or Nebraska.

Then again, being anti-Semitic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Being anti-Islamic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Even being fascist is not a crime against humanity; there were fascist states that did not commit such crimes, such as Austria before it was united with Germany in 1938.

However, in practice crimes against humanity have been committed. Fascist crimes against humanity and war crimes are well-documented. Where does Zionism stand in the historic record?

In the 1800s when the modern Zionist movement picked up steam, modern Palestine (including what would become the State of Israel) was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Many Jews had long lived peacefully in Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem. Zionists were able to move to Palestine and buy land there, expanding the Jewish population. Perhaps there was some illegal immigration, but for the most part Zionism was characterized by legal immigration into Palestine.

When the British Empire took over Palestine (and most of the Middle East) after World War I, they were obligated to Jews for helping them to win the war. They allowed much more Jewish immigration into Palestine, which created some Arab discontent, but still the immigration was legal and peaceful.

Then came the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors were angry, militant, and did not feel bound to the old system of ethics or law. Zionism changed. Terrorist Jewish groups appeared in Palestine (they mainly targeted the British at first) and Zionist organizations brought in large numbers of Jewish settlers illegally (by then the British were limiting Jewish immigration to try to placate the increasingly powerful Arab states).

Then the United Nations, which was still largely a military coalition, interfered. The Jewish minority (particularly the newly-arrived European Jews) wanted to create a Jewish State. The native Palestinians wanted to kick out the British Empire and have a democratic state, in which they would be a 65% majority, more if illegal immigrants were expelled. The British and United States pushed the U.N. to favor the Jewish nationalist plan.

U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) was also not, in itself, a war crime or crime against humanity, but it acted as an enabler. Rather than calling for elections within a united Palestine, which would have led to peaceful electoral struggle, it called for partition, or racial segregation. It was actually just a recommendation to the British Empire, not a law. While the word independence was used for Arab-Palestinian and Jewish-Palestinian "states," they were to be in an economic union together, with recognized rights for minorities in each.

Another interpretation would be there would be two autonomous regions within the State of Palestine. It should also be noted that the vote was rigged. 13 nations voted against the resolution, including most neutral nations. The 33 votes in favor came mainly from the U.S. and its puppets in Latin America, the Soviet block, and the British imperial block.

There was no declaration of war. Violence escalated. Both Arab and Jewish militias were encouraged by Resolution 181 iteself. Both sides weaponed up and outsiders (more Zionists, including American Jewish organized criminals, and Arab hotheads from several nations) helped promote the situation into a civil war. Both sides had factions that engaged in ethnic cleansing (and both sides had citizens and groups that were appalled by the violence). The better armed, trained, and motivated Jews won. The new State of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948 when the British quit the scene.

I cannot recount all the wars since that time, or all the crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides.

Is Zionism a crime against humanity? In the post 1948 setting we find the most troubling evidence that Zionists, now controlling the Israeli government, committed crimes against humanity. There was clearly a great deal of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians driven off by violence were not allowed to return, and so their lands were seized and occupied by Jewish settlers. This was the policy of the State of Israel, and its courts, not just individual Zionists. The process has continued decade by decade since that time, punctuated by attempts by Arab states to obtain a military victory over Israel.

On the other hand, a large number of non-Jewish persons remained within the State of Israel, and they have at least nominal human rights, including the right to vote.

While it is worth examining all the actions that might be construed as crimes against humanity committed in the region, that would take a voluminous study.

I would refrain, and would recommend politicians refrain, from calling Zionism a crime against humanity. The thing to do is to address current injustices by restoring private property that has been stolen from anyone in occupied Palestine since 1948, and by carefully investigating all deaths of unarmed civilians on both sides.

Few nations and ideologies are truly free of the taint of crimes against humanity. The goal of the "law" is to eliminate these practices. In particular, the treatment of African Americans in the officially segregated States of the United States before roughly 1968 appears to amount to a crime against humanity.

Mr. Kerry should help clean up his own house before busying himself with lecturing other national leaders, Israeli, Turkish, or Palestinian. Perhaps, thrust into a prominent role, he is thinking of running for President in his old age. Perhaps he is just prepping to do the traditional campaign shake down of Zionists in the United States.

Resolution 181 is worth a read (see link above). The nation as a whole is called the Economic Union of Palestine.

It is my fond hope that any Palestinian state will be secular and tolerant of all religions, rather than Islamic. Given the definition of crimes against humanity, any state that plays favorites, or promotes segregation of religious or ethnic groups is engaging in crimes against humanity. That should include the United States and the United Nations.

The State of Barack Obama

An interesting way to teach American History would be to have the students read each of the State of the Union addresses, starting with George Washington's first. What students would mainly learn would, hopefully, was to not put too much stock in the opinions of a single politician, even if he is the President of the United States. [for the record, I have read only a limited set of these addresses, notable those I included in my Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson.]

In four years we will know how much of the objectives outlined in Barack Obama's speech have been achieved. Probably little.

What we already know is the 2013 State of the Union speech failed to inform Congress or America of the State of the Union. It was filled with misleading statistics, political hype, digs at the Republicans, meaningless tales of individual Americans, and just plain obfuscation. President Obama wants some good things: more confidence in the private sector, resulting in more jobs; world peace (without sacrificing American power or imperialist loot); a higher minimum wage; more careful Federal spending. He even wants both more natural gas production and less global warming. But wanting things is the easy part. We all want to have our cake and eat it too. That is why we are not a nation of savers.

The word "bank" is not mentioned in the speech, except for "food bank." That is a pretty funny thing. Compare Andrew Jackson's speeches, which almost always had something to say about banks. What's wrong with this picture, Mr. President? Could not 90% of the problems of "middle class" Americans be summed up in one word: banks?

His speech provokes the Islamic faithful, which means we must continue to spend more money on bloodshed, or leave the Islamic nations to work out their own fates. "And we will stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace." Which means the private property of the Palestinians will not be returned to them, nor will damages be paid. So the prior sentence, "but we can -- and will -- insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people," is just a bold-faced lie. The oppression of women in Israel, Ireland, Saudi Arabia and numerous American allies will be overlooked, but used to justify murder with drones in Pakistan, Somalia, Iran, and other states not buckling under our imperialist demands.

As to good jobs, the President wants to fill them with immigrants: "real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers." Perhaps the President should be required by the Constitution to report on his campaign donations. Then we would know what policies he will pursue.

Getting $9 per hour will not make anyone "middle class." Thirty years ago, even, $9 an hour would not have made a person middle class. Why won't the President use the term "working class?" There are a lot more working class American citizens than middle class ones.

History has shown their is only one sure way to make working class Americans middle class. Unionize them, and use the power of the union (One Big Union, united to seek fairness for all) to take, not just higher wages, but a fair share of capital and a majority share of decision making power. But the state of union organizing is not mentioned.

Nothing about clear cut forests from sea to shining sea. Nothing about mountaintop removal. Nothing about overpopulation. Nothing about reproductive rights.

Nothing about the rapid proletariatization of the work force by robots and artificial intelligence. No honest talk about foreign policy or the destruction of the American economy by the imperialist military budget.

Nothing about the Obama policy of closing down marijuana clinics in states where they are legal; nothing at all about the effects of U.S. recreational drug consumption on crime in the U.S. and in Mexico.

Mr. Obama just proved again that he is a very good political campaigner, but can't settle down to actually governing a nation with liberty and justice for all.

Of course Democrats will find much to love in the speech, and Republicans will find much to hate. Again, illustrating what George Washington and other Founders foresaw, that the party system would be bad for America. That is why political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

Hagel, Hitler, Iran and Zionism

As American mainstream politicians go, Chuck Hagel can be counted as one of the good guys. A number of Senate Republicans disagree, and mainly showed their own evil agendas when questioning Mr. Hagel, who stood before them as President Barack Obama's nominee to become the new Secretary of Defense.

The Republicans think Mr. Hagel is soft on Iran, and so Obama must be soft on Iran too. What has Iran ever done to the Republican Party, or to the U.S.? They kicked out our puppet, the mass-murdering dictator Shah of Iran, decades ago, and set up a democracy. They hold elections in which pro-American politicians can't win a majority in parliament. They are developing nuclear power (note the Republicans are all gung ho for nuclear power in the U.S.). I think nuclear power is a bad idea, but it should be stopped in the U.S. before we go meddling in other nation's business.

They suspect Mr. Hagel of not being a Zionist and anti-Palestinian racist. He is not sufficiently pro-Israel, as shown by past remarks in which he pointed out that Zionists have a lot of political power in the U.S. Note the Republican Party is competing with the Democratic Party for Zionist campaign contributions. You'd think they were a bunch of ultra-orthodox Jews, the way they promote Israel's occupation of Palestine.

Here on the opposite side of the nation a seemingly unrelated Letter to the Editor in the Gualala, California based Independent Coast Observer [subscription required], reminded me that a lot of this whole misidentification of enemies goes back to fundamental mistakes of fact and ideology originating in the 1930s. Modern Americans universally agree that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were evil, but they don't have the facts at hand to make reasonable comparisons to new "enemies" like Iran and Islam, or "friends" like Israel.

I've frequently heard "progressive" Democrats and those few brave people left of Democrat call Republicans fascists. I try to refrain: there are both minor and major differences between Republican politicians and Fascism proper. Nor should we forget that the much more radical American left of, say, 1930 to 1980 had little problem calling the Democratic Party fascist, which I can't agree with either. In both cases I think there have been specific policies or at least rhetoric that did deserve the fascist label. I just believe over-gereralizing is a major part of the American political laziness problem.

The letter, from R. Silva, wants to correct a previous letter on the subject of Christianity. R. wants Christianity to be about love, which is fine. But R. can't quite refrain from attacking non-Christians, saying in his or her 4th paragraph: "Sir, I would remind you that is exactly what Hitler successfully did in the 1930s and 1940s, resulting in the holocost (sic), which killed six million Christians and Jews [...]" The ellipsis is the editors, and is one of the few cases where I wish the rest had been printed.

Christians were killed in the holocaust? Well, yes, but ... that is almost like saying we should pity Catholics because Catholics were killed in the Inquisition in Spain. It turns the Holocaust on its head. Hitler imprisoned and killed everyone who openly disagreed with him (but not the young man who grew up to become Pope Benedict XVI). He did not kill them for their religious affiliation. He killed them because they disagreed with him, or were in his way, or had something he wanted. He killed Jews because of their race; converting to Christianity was no escape. The Christians he killed were mainly Lutherans and Roman Catholics, but most Lutherans and Roman Catholics joined the Nazi Party if they could, and fought in the German army. Hitler even killed substantial numbers of Nazi Party members for disagreeing with him.

The big losers, by denomination, aside from the Jews were atheists [See the Atheist Holocaust].

Although there was some promotion of German/Nordic, pre-Christian ideas, the Nazi (German National Socialist) Party was explicitly Christian. Article 24 of the Nazi Party Program states as a party demands "liberty for all religious denominations in the State so far as they are not a danger to ... the moral feelings of the German race. The party stands for positive Christianity." [1] The Nazi Party was opposed to Communism, atheism, and secularism.

At the time, while there was a typical modern secular trend in Germany, the Lutheran Church was by far the largest denomination in Germany. The Roman Catholic Church was the only other major organized religion, and had local majorities in much of southern Germany. In particular the former Kingdom of Bavaria, where the Nazi Party originally triumphed, was majority Catholic.

While Hitler's rise to power has to be credited mainly to him and his party, it was the Catholic Church, and the votes of the members of the Reichstag controlled by the Vatican, that effectively chose to give Hitler power in 1933. Franz von Papen was the Roman Catholic power broker for the deal, along with Eugenio Maria Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, known as the Nazi Pope.

So why does R. Silva believe Hitler was not a Christian? Why does R. Silva not know Hitler was born Catholic and died Catholic, and that all the great fascist leaders were Roman Catholic? It is not R. Silva's fault. History in detail is time consuming, so most people must take their cues from summaries, including grade-school text books and TV. I would not say Hitler was a pious Catholic, unlike Spain's General Franco. But neither was the fact that Hitler was a Roman Catholic hidden from the world at the time.

Things were different in 1933 when both Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to power after their years in the political wilderness. Americans and Germans, pretty much everyone in the world, were mainly worried about the economy. It was the Depression, those who did not have jobs were barely surviving, and those who had jobs worried they would not have them long. Hitler came to power mainly on the basis of his economic program, not because of his anti-Semitism or militarism. Germany's economy improved much faster than America's, and FDR's economic program was practically a copy of Hitler's, just lagging a year or two.

The party that elected Roosevelt to office (and Democratic majorities to Congress) was really an alliance of convenience of two parties. The Southern Democratic party was based on racism (segregation) and corruption, and was almost exclusively Protestant in religious affiliation. The Northern Democratic party was based on corrupt urban machines and was almost entirely ethnic (non-Anglo) and Roman Catholic in religious affiliation. The Vatican, through the American Roman Catholic Church, worked hard to keep the United States neutral in the fight against fascism and later in the first couple of years of World War II.

When the United States finally entered the war after Pearl Harbor, it was a propaganda problem for the Democratic Party, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States. Any American sympathy for Hitler, Franco, Petain, and Mussolini disappeared overnight (though some hid their lights under baskets). Although the Japanese had initiated the war, Adolf Hitler was designated Public Enemy Number One, as Roosevelt had previously planned with the British Empire,

The Vatican was quite please with Hitler's extermination of atheist-communism in central Europe, but remembered what had happened late in World War I. America had tipped the balance against Germany. Suddenly Pope Pius XI eased the Vatican into neutral. As the atheists (Russians) started crushing the Catholics & Lutherans (Germans) on the Eastern Front, and especially after the Allies invaded southern Italy, the Pope became increasingly critical of Hitler. In the United States, powerful Catholic figures in the Democratic Party prepared for a soft landing.

Hitler a Catholic? Forget about it! Such a bad man must be a satanist pagan. In any case, America's right wing (Democrat and Republican alike) was preparing to go back into completion with Communism after the war. Who would be our new ally? Why, Pope Pius XI. And his pet dictator, General Franco. And a bunch of Catholics and Lutherans who took off their swastikas and waved American flags to welcome the New World Order. To get public buy in for an alliance with global Catholicism, the actual religious affiliations of the fascists had to be allowed to fade from public memory.

William Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, gives some key insights about Martin Luther, the first Protestant (well, first who did not fall victim to the Inquisition). "The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of Jews ... advice that was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler." [2]

Since the Republicans who questioned Chuck Hagel act as non-Jewish Zionists, it might seem strange to compare them to Luther, Pius XI, and Hitler. But the point is not the particular group that is hated or attacked. Justice should be blind to a person's race and creed. Zionism is inseparable from crimes against Palestinians. War and economic crimes against Iran (or any other nation) are no different than Hitler's economic crimes against Jews or his invasion of Poland, Russia, and France.

The Republican Party has created its own Hell on Earth. No one is allowed to say, "Palestinians have human rights," or "Iranians have human rights" or "Islam should be treated like any other religion." The misinformation and hatred build on each other until a once reasonable man like John McCain ends up sounding like Hitler. The Republican Party rhetoric meant to secure Zionist campaign contributions (and Jewish and pro-Israel Christian votes in swing states) has already hurt many people around the globe. It helps Al-Qaeda do its recruiting. It is ethically wrong and pragmatically idiotic. It needs to stop.

Notes:
[1] Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 1960. page 234.
[2] Ibid, p. 236.

Settlements, War Crimes, Israel and Palestine

It is a war crime for an aggressor to settle its citizens in a conquered area.

Is it the most serious of war crimes? No, initiating a war is the most serious of war crimes.

Why is it a war crime, when an exactly similar settlement of foreign citizens may be legal in times of peace? Well, a peacetime settlement by foreigners would occur through the invitation of the host country, or through the normal process of paying for land from people who are willing to sell. Settlement during or after a war indicates a plan to retain territory conquered in a criminal manner. It is like the difference between an honest trade and a theft.

Why bring up this topic now? Because today the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report noting that the most recent Israeli settlement in eastern Palestine violates this war crimes law. The implications are large. [See the Press release, Israeli settlements symbolize the acute lack of justice experience by Palestinian People, which links to the full report.]

Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don't think so, though there probably should be. I know the Israeli and other governments continue to hunt down and prosecute alleged war criminals from the Nazi era, over sixty years ago.

If there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, or if the statute of limitations is 60 years, then the entire state of Israel is in trouble. Most Jews in Palestine had converted (perhaps not voluntarily) to Islam by about 700 A.D. Jewish communities that remained were small until the Zionist movement of the late 19th century. The early Zionists were legal immigrants, and as a result several small areas of Palestine had Jewish majorities by World War II.

Most of the post-war Jewish immigration to Palestine can be characterized as illegal. The war that established the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the ejection of non-Jewish Palestinians, followed by Jewish settlements on their land. Thus it is not just the remnants of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, that are at stake. The creation of the State of Israel can be characterized as a war crime.

It is often said that the United Nations (then newly formed, and basically a war organization for fighting Germany and Japan) created the State of Israel. It appears that all the U.N. did was endorse a Jewish semi-autonomous partition zone within Palestine. But supposing the U.N. did in fact back the creation of Israel by settling Jews on lands taken from Palestinians. Then the U.N. itself should be said to have committed a war crime.

The implications are staggering the further we go back in history. What if, after a war of aggression takes place, there is a peace treaty? Does that make it legal to settle on land occupied in a war of aggression? Peace treaties tend to be imposed by aggressors. They are not really voluntary agreements.

What about the settlement of Europeans in colonial nations? What about the United States, which would not exist except for a constant clamor of wars, occupations, and settlements?

If the purpose of war crimes laws is to stop wars and war crimes, then they must be enforced. American settlements occurred, in the main, before the war crime laws were written. Israel, however, creates a different case. It came into existence after the war crimes laws were on the books.

But the real question is, will anyone enforce the war crimes laws? Conquered nations like Japan and Germany have had their leaders prosecuted for war crimes. But no victorious nation has ever been prosecuted for war crimes.

Like Hitler marching into Russia, it looks like the Israeli occupation of eastern Palestine has gone too far, endangering the entire Israeli project. A sane leadership of Israel would cut their losses to hold onto their gains. A sane leadership would trade forgiveness for their earlier crimes against humanity and war crimes in order to hold onto the lands gained by those crimes. A sane leadership would offer to remove all Jewish settlers to Israel proper, in return for an immediate and permanent peace.

Jesus, Dagon and Mitt Romney

Now is one of those rare times when people are interested in talking not just about religion, but about how religions arise in the first place. In particular people are talking about the Mormons, as represented by their largest denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mormon men believe that they can become Gods, and so for Mitt Romney the White House is just a stepping stone to ruling, as a God, his own planet. At the same time Mitt and the Mormons want protective coloring, the acceptance that theirs is a legitimate religion within the broad Christian spectrum.

The Christians themselves went through that process within the Roman Empire. That empire was already in intellectual decline by the time Jesus is believed to have been born. The Greeks of three to four hundred years earlier, or at least their intellectual class, was cultivating science and philosophy, trying to distinguish those from religious mythology. Religion, however, is a useful tool for rulers. Julius Caesar, who died in 44 B.C., had been declared a living God, a sign of both his power and his need to prop up his power with superstition.

In Palestine in that (post-Caesar) era the Romans ruled over a fragmented, multi-ethnic, multi-religious culture. Although the Jews had been a leading tribe in the area for over a thousand years, even before the Romans came they still had large numbers of non-Jews residing in the area. Recall that the Romans took over Judea in 63 B.C., and that the Jewish state had rarely been independent, but had been previously part of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Macedonian/Seleucid empires.

Given that Egyptians, Canaanites of various sorts, Jews (who had their own various sects), Greeks, and various Arab tribes all mingled in the area of Palestine around the time of Jesus and the formation of the original Christian movement, it should not be surprising that, whatever Jesus himself believed or taught, the early Christians had many possible sources of influence. The crucial differences between early Christianity and the Jewish beliefs of that era was the promise of personal resurrection, or immortality, based on the belief that Jesus was not just the Messiah, but was a god, or the Son of God.

This actually just brought the Christian religion into conformity with the dominant pagan religions of that era, all of which worshipped resurrected gods: the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek gods Hercules and Dionysus, and several resurrection cults closer to home, with god-names varying by ethnic group. Anthropologists generally agree that resurrected gods are associated with agricultural societies that made a ritual of the harvest of grain and its resurrection from seeds each spring.

Possibly the main historical event of the early Christian Church, other than the life and death of its founder, was the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D./C.E. If the earliest Christians were divided as to whether Jesus had been a Jewish Messiah or a Canaanite resurrected god, that destruction of the Jewish state, which would not be resurrected for 1900 years, settled the question. Whatever Jesus was, he was not the Messiah who would make Judah an independent state again.

The New Testament is self-disproving: it has one clear prophecy made by Jesus (Matthew 24:34): "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." The generation did pass, and nothing was fulfilled. To survive Christianity needed a belief system and a structure that could perpetuate itself without divine intervention. The Christians never took over the old Jewish kingdom, but they did eventually take over the Roman Empire.

Which brings us to fish. There is no plant or animal more closely associated with Jesus Christ and the early Christians than fish. Fish are everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus's favorite recruits as Apostles are fishermen. One of his most important miracles is the multiplication of fishes. Early Christians used the fish symbol more than they used the cross. Jesus also displayed the powers of a sea god by calming the seas and walking on water.

That points to Dagon (which has many spelling variations), who the Jews believed was a fish god. He was also a resurrected god, probably originally a grain god who became associated with fishing later. The Jews claimed they destroyed him with the Ark of the Covenant, but more likely that is just a symbol of a period of successful ethnic cleansing (I do not mean to pick on the Jews here. Back then ethnic cleansing was an almost universal human practice).

This raises an important question: was Jesus really Jewish, and it so, how so?

How many of the Twelve Apostles were fishermen? It is hard to say because the list of Apostle names differs somewhat in each of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) [See Apostles for tables]. Only Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are specifically identified as fishermen from Bethsaida in Galilee, and Philip is also from Bethsaida. James and John abandon their nets to follow Jesus, so that would be at least five out of twelve. The prior occupations of most of the other apostles are not mentioned. The apostles were supposed to have been Jews, but were just as likely to have Greek names.

Jesus himself is "of Nazareth." Nazareth was nowhere. It was, at best, a town so small that the Jews did not include it in maps or lists of town names during Jesus's era. Nazareth was about halfway between the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast. A thousand years before Jesus it had been occupied by the Jewish tribe of Zebulun, but that was one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Even if Jesus was a Jew, some his neighbors probably were not. They were Palestinians of some ancient tribe, and Dagon was one of their gods. Jesus grew up north of the areas controlled by Samaritans, who thought the Jews of Jerusalem were innovators who brought back a false version of the old religion when they returned from the Babylonian Exile. In Jesus's time the Samaritans and Jews hated each other, the Jews having destroyed the Samaritans temple in 110 B.C.

The Jewish rebellion against Rome that started in 66 A.D. was not the wholesale rising of a united people against a foreign oppressor. Only a few Jewish cities, notably Jerusalem, actually fought the Romans. Many Jews were expelled by the Romans, though many remained. Most of the inhabitants of the area would later convert to Islam, including the ancient Jewish villagers. Christianity arose in this chaotic context and fragmented deeply. The Apostle Paul was self-appointed. His version of Christianity conflicted, by his own admission, with version of the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem. It also conflicted with the many other self-appointed preachers who brought the idea of communal living and tithing to support ministers to whoever would pitch in. By 100 A.D. the original Christians were probably all or mostly dead and the fight for the intellectual property, the magic formula for converting pagans to cash cows, was full on.

It's all very fishy. I like the Dagon Hypothesis. If Jesus was a non-Jewish or semi-Jewish Palestinian who tried to convert the Jews to Dagon's ways, it all almost makes some sense.

Recognize Palestine

The United Nations (U.N.) is a funny place. And I don't mean ha-ha funny.

On the one hand it is as close as one can get to a recognizable global government. Therefore it makes sense for the Palestinians to ask the U.N. to recognize their existence as a nation.

On the other hand, it has most of the attributes of a bad government, and few attributes of a good government. Given its history, that should not be a surprise. The UN was, and remains, a profoundly racist institution, dedicated to maintaining the system of imperialist domination of the industrial, mainly "white race" nations over all others.

The UN had as its predecessor the League of Nations. In American history books Woodrow Wilson is almost always portrayed as the progressive peace-lover who worked to create the League of Nations, to promote world peace, only to see the U.S. Senate reject American membership in the body. That is not untrue. But Woodrow Wilson was one of the intellectual architects of racism in the United States, and the leader of the overtly racist Democratic Party. His Fourteen Points for world peace and international relations basically amounted to democracy for white people.

President Wilson effectively called for new nations based on ethnic majorities when those new nations had been part of rivals to the American, British, and French empires. For instance Poland, which did not exist as a state before World War I, was to be created out of parts of Russian and Germany. But he did not call for independent states to be carved out of any part of the American or British empire. Neither the Philippines nor Puerto Rico, both U.S. colonies, were considered nations capable of self-determination.

Japan was one of the few nations that had, at that time, escaped colonization by one of the imperialist nations (often referred to then as the Great Powers: the United States, Russia, Germany, France, the British Empire, and perhaps Italy). During negotiations Japan raised the idea that Asian peoples had a right to self-determination. That would mean the U.S., Britain, France and Holland giving up their colonies (Germany's were taken from it for losing the war). Woodrow Wilson, chairing the committee that considered that proposal, killed it. He really truly thought that only people of European descent were capable of self-government. Instead of a peaceful withdrawal of imperialists from Asia in 1920, the issue led to the Asian Anti-colonial War (always lumped by U.S. historians into World War II, to confuse the issue) and then to a series of national liberation struggles lasting into the 1970s, including the Vietnam War. [See also: The U.S. War Against Asia]

Palestine, after World War I, was not allowed national self-determination. It was removed from the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire and places in the British Empire. The British, in order to receive Jewish financial backing during World War I, had promised to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration). While there were (fluctuating degrees) of Jewish immigration into Palestine before World War II, the British never official created a Jewish state or region in Palestine.

The United Nations was a reboot of the old League of Nations, with most of its flaws. It did not call for the abolition of colonialism. It was designed expressly to give the appearance of global backing to the new British-American alliance. It was not democratic in any reasonable sense of the term, as the one-person one-vote guideline was subverted by the colonial system and other un-democratic structures. Where independent nations had been established in Asia, the UN allowed them to be re-colonized. In particular when Korea tried to become an independent nation (the Korean War) the UN voted to attack Korea. Similarly, in almost every case where it has been involved, the UN has helped strong nations attack weaker nations.

Meanwhile, back in Palestine, the Jewish section of the population threw out the British and established a state by force of arms in 1946 through 1948. Unfortunately, this was not simply a matter of making reality out of the Wilsonian rhetoric of national self-determination. It was largely a land grab and instance of ethnic cleansing, for the native Palestinians were largely thrown out with the British, by the mostly European jewish invaders. The new state of Israel made further conquests in a series of wars, leaving the Palestinians with no territory of their own. Although at first reluctant to back the tiny new state and anger the Arab states in the region, in the U.S. Jewish votes in the key states of Florida and New York, along with a vast corruption of government through election campaign donations eventually made the U.S. government the primary military and economic backer of the state of Israel.

Despite their troubles, the Palestinians have retained their national identity and have created a culture of resistance to Israeli tyranny. This week the Palestinian National Authority petitioned the United Nations to recognize the Nation of Palestine.

President Obama is too worried about getting himself re-elected with American Jewish money and votes to support Palestinian statehood. Given the anti-democratic structure of the U.N., that means the Palestinian request will be blocked by its Security Council. Based solely on a military alliance that existed during World War II, five security council seats have permanent members (the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, France, and China) with permanent veto powers. Basically, the form of the United Nations is an oligarchy bordering on dictatorship.

However, a vote in the General Assembly is likely to show that the majority of the nations of the world want to recognize Palestine as a nation, and that implies they want to see justice done for the Palestinian people.

Americans should support democracy and national self-determination, including for the nation of Palestine. The United States government should voluntarily relinquish its veto power in the U.N., along with the other permanent Security Council members.
Further, the United States of America should recognize the Palestinian state, regardless of the outcome in the United Nations. President Obama should be ashamed of his self-serving following in the footsteps of that architect of racism, Woodrow Wilson.

Hitler, Obama, and Netanyahu

President Barack Obama's call for a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders provoked an infantile response from Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. Republican politicians, always eager to snatch Jewish political donations from the hands of Democrats, frothed at the mouth against Obama's message as if they were getting ready to develop land in the West Bank themselves.

That is the way the State of Israel and its Jewish supporters in the United States have always (since 1946) worked. No American taxpayer subsidy to the wealthy Jewish settlers in Palestine is every enough. No peace is possible. The Jewish state of Israel will not be complete until the (probably imaginary) vast empire of King David is restored.

The goal of Israeli policy is simple: no Palestinian state.

Hitler is the model for all modern Israeli right-wing politicians. Of course he hated Jews the way they hate non-Jews. There the dissimilarity ends. Screaming and frothing at the mouth is a given. Taking Palestinian private property is no different than Hitler's taking Jewish property in his day. Nazi's beating up Jews is no different than Jews beating up Palestinians.

There are Israeli Jews and American Jews who see that in asking to be treated respectfully themselves, they are obligated to treat Palestinians with respect. That includes returning to them that which has been stolen since 1946. That includes land. If someone has land returned to them, they should have the option of living on it, without further harassment. If they are residents, they should have full citizenship rights, regardless of their religion and ethnicity. Any backing off these basic principles amounts to endorsing crimes.

The Republican Party likes to proclaim that it upholds private property rights. It should uphold the private property rights of Palestinians. The Tea Party in particular should uphold the private property rights of Palestinians. Instead, in response to President Obama's remarks, have said that Israel's borders have been set by the right of conquest.

What is the right of conquest except the "right" to take private property by force? What distinguishes the Republican Party from organized crime, or Hitler's National Socialist Party, when they promote such ideas?

Barack Obama's position is only a baby-step in the correct direction. If the State of Israel does not agree to a Palestinian state soon, the U.S. at the very least should cut off all funding to Israel.

Jews should have the same civil and property rights that every human person in the world deserves. They should not have ever had to move to Israel to feel safe. But if they want respect, they should respect other people's rights as well. If Jews want to settle in the West Bank, they need to let Palestinians settle on the East Bank. That is what is fair and just.

Helen Thomas

Just to say that Helen Thomas should not have been fired from the White House Press Corps for saying that a solution to the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel is to send back Israelis to their nations of origin. Outrageously anti-Palestinian remarks are made by U.S. politicians and public opinionators all the time; they enhance careers. Helen's remark was quite reasonable.

Large numbers of Jews lived in Palestine before the terrorists began fighting to create the State of Israel. I consider them natives of Palestine along with the various other religious and ethnic sub-groups that were there before 1945. The best solution would be a peace plan that would accomodate all. But as long as the Israelis act like Nazis, I have to support the natives against the terrorist invaders.

I wrote to the White House demanding that Helen Thomas be kept in the Press Corps. Regardless of whether she has a big-time employer. You can do this (or for that matter, diagree with me and demand that she be shot like a Palestinian child who has thrown a pebble at an Isreali tank) quickly and easily at the White House contact page. Tell Barack Obama what you think.

Or add a comment here.

Seattle Days

I spent a long weekend in Seattle. That brought back memories of the Left, when the left in the United States still consisted of socialists, communists, and anarchists. True, these types can still be found here and there in tiny numbers, but in 1983 and 1984 there were some twenty coherent leftist organizations in Seattle. If nothing else, this provided a lot of political cover for the "left of center" politics that pose as the left today. Except the center has itself moved far to the right. Most of the leftists I knew then were five to thirty years older than I was, so most of them are probably retired or dead now. Events never produced a new generation of such leftists in the United States. Marxism has largely gone out of style since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Anarchism has fared better, but is largely a self-serve fringe phenomena, not an organized movement capable of laying and executing plans.

In 1984 it never occured to me that 25 years or so later we would be fighting what amounts to religious wars. They are also wars of imperialism. I guess if you grew up while the Cold War was on, you thought imperialism was always opposed by national liberation movements with essentially Marxist theology.

If I had been more perceptive I might have realized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would some day split the world in a new way. I had a conversation with two young Palestinians who were Maoists at the time. They told me they saw Maoism as the best alternative for getting justice for the Palestinian people. They were not really committed to Maoism. The did not like the PLO, which you might recall at least pretended to be a Marxist organization, Soviet camp. But they were open to joining up with a Moslem group (Hamas would not be founded until 1987) if that was what would mobilize their country to fight for their freedom. I never saw them after that. Since they were students in the U.S., probably they just grew up, got jobs, and never joined any fighting organization.

Hamas, of course, won elections in Palestine in 2006. The U.S. promptly decided Democracy was not such a good idea. So it came down to fighting again, and Hamas ended up with Gaza and the PLO ended up being West Bank jailors for Israel and the U.S. Situations do not get much sadder.

In the U.S. the Democratic Party has again proven that it is just as much a front for the capitalist, ruling class as the Republican Party ever was. The war against the people of Afghanistan goes on, and we constantly threaten Iran, Somalia, and everyone else who disagrees with America's idea of how the world should be run.

I am still deeply anti-religious, but that does not make me want to join up with ruthless bitches like Hilary Clinton to kill Taliban sympathisers. If I were an Afghan, I might not let the Taliban push me around. Just like I don't want Christians bossing me around with their lifestyle legislation in the U.S. But what goes on inside Afghanistan is not my business, and it is not the business of the United States government. Every politicians who votes for the war in Afghanistan is a war criminal, and both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are war crimes organizations, whatever else they might be.

On the whole, things are a whole lot worse than they were in 1984. It is hard to believe that a government, and a bunch of hard-nosed capitalists, could run an economy even worse than they were doing in 1984, but apparently they can. While destroying what is left of the environment at the same time, and involving just about everyone in the stupidist global war in human history.

I looked for a couple of buildings I where I worked in Seattle. They were still there, though obscurred by new skyscrapers. I spent a considerable amount of time learning about just how dangerous nuclear power plants were, working on the mess left by the Washington Public Power Supply System's attempt to build five of them.

Now Obama wants to start building nuclear power plants again. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is a devil. Maybe everyone who wants to be President has to sell his (or her) soul to the Devil. Certainly Obama had his crossroads, probably back when he saw how shitty the pay was for "community organizers." Maybe the Devil is a metaphor. But I don't think Obama would be making such horrendously bad decissions if he had worked some real jobs before seeking political office. The kind where the bosses treat you like dog leavings, so you get to smell the reality really, really good. It is a smell you should never forget.

I'm not betting on it, but what with the budget deficit the way it is, and Californians tired of being bossed around by a bunch of demented halfwits in the Old South, I would not be very surprised if some day the United States became the Untied States of America.

Eminent Domain, Israel and Palestine

A couple of years ago Americans were in an uproar about eminent domain. In the state of Connecticut a town had taken (forcibly bought) residences from citizens in order to sell them to a project developer. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that is okay. More typically eminent domain is used to take private land for something like a new road, so it becomes public property. In the U.S. Constitution the power of eminent domain, and the requirement of paying compensation, is recognized in the Fifth Amendment: "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." [See also eminent domain at Wikipedia and eminent domain at ExpertLaw.]

Arguments about, and discontent with, eminent domain in the U.S. are more typically about the amount of compensation given for the land the government takes.

Most Americans are big believers in private property. Eminent domain seems to be the exception that proves the rule. We are usually okay with losing our homes to eminent domain when we can walk away with the cash to buy an equivalent or better property. We would be totally up in arms if the government just took our houses without paying for them, whether or not the government kept the property or handed it over to some corporation for development. But we understand that sometimes a road has to be built, and a straight line of a road usually makes a lot of sense.

Most Americans would also agree that everyone in the world should have private property rights, that they are one of the most important human rights. If someone has freedom of speech, but can have their land or personal possessions taken away by government whim, what do they really have?

But there is one big loophole in our world view. We don't give a rat's exit hole about the private property of Palestinians. We don't care if the government of Israel took land in Palestine by eminent domain, paid or unpaid.

Before 1946, when Jewish settlers obtained land in Palestine, Zionists obtained land by buying it. This sometimes created an upset because Arab land title holders would sell land that peasants could have sworn was communal land. Still, the British were still in charge and deemed these transfers to be legal.

Then the terror began, but it began as Zionists killing British officials [See Irgun]. After the United Nations (with no authority beyond its own arrogance) decreed that there should be a semi-autonomous Jewish government of part of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing began. In 1948 large numbers of Palestinians were killed or scared off their lands during what became an war to create the state of Israel. When the war was over the new government of Israel allowed only extremely limited numbers of exiled Palestinians to return to their land inside the new state. A variety of subterfuges were used to confiscate the land. The theft was sometimes cloaked with legitimacy by seizing the land in lieu of taxes. Sometimes private sales were faked and duly recorded by the Israel land office. But mostly the land was just declare to belong to the State of Israel, then sold or parceled out to Jewish immigrants.

If you, as an American, are upset by eminent domain, should you not be upset when a government steals land from people, giving no compensation at all?

The takings have gone on and on, decade after decade. Acre by acre the land of Israel has been stolen. Wouldn't you be mad if you owned land and some government, any government, stole it from you?

It would be nice to see one of the zealous private-property rights organizations in the United States take up the cause of the Palestinians. Where's that Hoover Institute, or the Cato Foundation, when they are needed? Oh, all too busy helping corporate lawyers rape and pillage the world. Too busy to demand that the U.S. government recognize the private property rights of Palestinians.

One of the problems, in getting the United States government to support rights for Palestine, has been the leftist orientation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Had they named themselves the Palestinian Private Property Defense Organization, they might have gotten more sympathy in the U.S.

The Ten Commandments: Israel Scorecard

Citizens of the state of Israel (or occupied Palestine) seem to have a lot of trouble with "Thou shalt not steal." According to my Gideon Bible, that would be in the Old Testament, Chapter 20 of Exodus, verse 15 [Exodus 20:17]. In fact, Israelis seem to have left the Ten Commandments, or the majority of them, behind in Germany or Poland or Russia or wherever they came from before they invaded Palestine after World War II.

There were a lot of Jews in Palestine before World War II, and as far as I can tell they were about as law abiding as people are in general in the world. Occasionally in history Jews have occupied or ruled bits of Palestine for brief periods of time. Even then they always shared it with other ethnic groups: Canaanite, Philistines, Egyptians, Greeks, other Arab tribes, etc. The Romans kicked the Jews out of Palestine in 132 A.D. An Islamic ruler, Caliph Umar, let them back in after 638 A.D., but the majority of Jews still live outside of Palestine even today.

Up until about 1948, Jews migrating to Palestine bought land from willing sellers. There were some problems even with that, for instance peasants found themselves turned out of their lands when whichever Arab patriarch held the title decided to cash in and live the good life somewhere else. Sad as that might be, it was no different than similar land deals elsewhere in the world.

The Jews, or the Jews in Palestine known as Israelis, started massive land thefts beginning with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This theft took many forms. In all too many cases for a particular piece of land some Palestinians were murdered and the rest fled; title to the land was worked out later. In other cases after Palestinians fled they were unable to pay the real estate taxes imposed by the Israeli government, so they lost their land, which Israel gave or sold to Jewish settlers. This process has ebbed and flowed but never stopped. Fraudulent conveyance continues to this day. In a recent case investigated by the Associated Press, land newly settled by Jews in the West Bank had been ruled legally transferred by Israel even though the documents were forged. The guy who supposedly signed the deed transferring title had been dead for over two decades. [See also West Bank Sites on Private Lands]

Maybe God should have made it more specific: using lawyers and courts to steal is still stealing. Most of the land that now constitutes Israel is stolen land. But if you talk to Jewish fanatics (which I have on more than one occasion) none of this is theft. No, it is the Palestinians who are thieves. God gave the land to the Jews. It is okay to take away land, or lives, from Palestinians because they are "animals." Devoid of human rights, presumably created by a different God than the one worshipped by Israel. Throw in the "terrorist" word and you can justify anything.

Let's take a quick trip through the other Commandments. The stealing one is number 8 [See numbering the Ten Commandments; I am following the Catholic system, but quoting from the Protestant King James Bible].

1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." I think the Israeli nationalists have made the actual land of Israel their false god. They are willing to break all other commandments to attain it.

2. Don't misuse God's name ("Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord they God in vain). I think they are okay on this one, or at least about the same as other groups.

3. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." It seems to me the Israelis have been raining terror on the Palestinians, including on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, lately. Killing on a Saturday seems to break two commandments at once.

4. Honor your father and mother. Jews are probably no worse than at this than any other people.

5. "Thou shalt not kill." I'll admit, this is a difficult one, most people allow an exception for killing for self-defense. But Israel is an act of aggression. The right of the Jews to defend themselves against the Catholic Church and its fascist minions in the 1930's and 1940's should not have been perverted into a license to kill Palestinians every time an Israeli had a bullet to spare.

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Fine, as far as I have observed Jews are not the chosen people compared to any other religious or ethnic group when it comes to adultery.

7. Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor. That would seem to preclude forged land transfer documents. But perhaps some logic Rabbinical excludes non-Jews from the concept of "neighbor."

8. Is discussed above.

9. You shall not lust after your neighbor's wife. I know of no objective evidence that Jews or Israelis lust more or less than other people.

10. Thou shall not covet they neighbor's property. Again, most of Palestine belonged to non-Jewish Palestinians, and the state of Israel is the manifestation of desire for other people's property.

So I would give the Israeli Jews, as a society, a failing score of following only 4 of the 10 commandments. Of course individuals vary, and few people have the time to break all of the commandments every day.

If I recall my Old Testament, some very bad things happen to Jews who do not keep the commandments. Worst case scenario: an army expels them from the Holy Land.

2008 Made History

I think 2008 made history. You think 2008 was historic. But it is hard to tell which years mark major changes in our civilization until decades, perhaps centuries later. Events that seem historic to us now may not even get a sentence in the history books of 2200, yet events we did not hear of yet may seem earth-shaking in retrospect.

When American war ships "opened" Japan in 1854 [See U.S. Bullies Japan], newspapers noted the event. No one in the U.S. and Europe, however, expected Japan to become anything other than another subjugated Asian nation.

This year Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and George W. Bush became the most unpopular American President since Abraham Lincoln. [Honest Abe won the 1860 election with only 40% of the popular vote, and in 1864, even with the Confederacy not voting, he won the election with only 55% of the vote.]. Conversely Herbert Hoover won 59% of the vote in 1928; no one foresaw the economic unraveling of 1929-1933.

This week, to cap off what most consider to be the worst year in American history since maybe 1932, Israel launched a large scale air attack against Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip. This because Hamas occasionally was lobbing a mortar or crude missile into occupied Palestine as an act of defiance. Why should the Palestinians not be able to use the land that has been stolen from them for target practice? Especially since their aim is so bad?

I doubt the timing had anything to do with the cease fire ending or Hamas missiles. It probably had the secret blessing of President Bush in advance. Bush will claim he can't, as a lame duck, do anything, and Barack Obama will be able to treat it as an accomplished fact. Those who hope Barack will stand for justice for the Palestinians are truly deluded. It's a brilliant strategy for Israel: enrage 1 billion Moslems, most of whom will find it easier to take out their anger on the U.S. than on Zion. Then, attacked by Moslem patriots, the U.S. will feel an even closer emotional bond to Israel.

But what is on everyone's mind is the economy. Negative overall economic growth is treated as a far greater disaster than global warming, the U.S. engineered famine in Somalia, or even the disintegration of support in Afghanistan for the U.S. puppet government.

I don't expect Barack Obama to straighten out these problems. The economy is likely to right itself during 2009 as long as the banking system is restored to soundness. Like any President, he will take credit for anything good that happens on his watch, and will be blamed by the other party for anything bad that happens. I believe Obama will turn out to be the first black imperialist U.S. President. Part of my plan for 2009 is to point this out, constantly, to the Democrats who should be in the Green Party but continue to drink Democratic Party kool-aid. But if I am wrong, I will admit it, even cheer as he withdraws all U.S. troops stationed outside our own territories.

On a positive note, the Internet continues to bind the world together. Whether that is good or bad is anybody's guess. Iranian mullahs can eye American cam girls, and American teenagers can read Al-Qaeda propaganda. We can all read what individuals think now, not just the news (or misinformation) their governments or corporate news networks want us to read.

While the U.S. wastes its soldiers' lives and what is left of its industry on subduing its colonies, China and India are making great economic, political, and cultural strides. More importantly, most trends worth watching are transnational. Even the localization, anti-globalization folk are now a global phenomena. Imagine a world in which peace, protecting the environment, and knowledge of the real world are the dominant paradigms. That would be history worth making. And that is what this Natural Liberation blog is about.