Genocide Is Okay For Palestine?

Genocide and Christian stupidity mix well. 

It’s been three more nights of hell for Palestinians. As Ramadan ends, Israeli security forces expel Palestinians. It is another dreadful chapter in a decades-long horror story brutalizing the Palestinian people in an apartheid state, murdering people, and stealing their land and water.  The death toll climbs, and full-scale war between Israel and Hamas looms. The Al-Aqsa Mosque burns in “the city of peace.”

I am horrified by this. But I am also deeply disturbed by many Western Christians’ honest ignorance and sincere stupidity, my fellow Catholics included. 

Most Catholics are oblivious to the following. Observe— 

The Holy Month of Ramadan is defiled by the cheers of genocide from Israeli Zionist fanatics. What does that remind me of? History. 

What sickens me most of all? Fellow U.S. Catholics oscillating somewhere between apathy to the bloodthirsty glee of genocide. 

That’s the saddest thing of all for me. The reaction from many U.S. Christians is depressing and revolting. Either they don’t care about genocide, or they cheer, as when the Al-Aqsa Mosque burns, or when Israeli missiles rain down destroying multi-storey buildings in Gaza. All this while pooling ignorance and making theological justifications for evil. 

Who Is To Blame For Theologically Justifying Genocide?

And I’m sorry, but part of the blame goes to Christian apologists (almost assuredly Catholic fundamentalists) and even my fellow Catholic bloggers (a mixed bag). The vast majority of them ignorantly persist in maintaining that the Jewish people existing today are the same people living in the time of Jesus. 

Genetically and historically speaking, Jews are not a race. Show them scholarly evidence demonstrating this. They’ll ignore it. Back this up exegetically and theologically. They will dismiss you. An old academic hypocrisy is at force—“If it gets me pissed, I must dismiss!” 

Mind you, many of these brothers and sisters would not hesitate to condemn Israeli crimes and would not dream of using Scripture to theologically justify the brutality. But all the same, for them, Jews today are identical with Biblical “Jews,” and if you tell them otherwise, that makes you anti-Semitic. 

It doesn’t matter what scholarship is cited defending essential distinctions. These well-meaning folks persist in enabling both anti-Jewish hatred and justification for the apartheid state destroying the Palestinians. Again, they don’t intend this; but they do it all the same. 

Enabling Apartheid & Genocide

The nuclear-armed supremacist Israeli regime, one of the most militarized in the world, is up to the task to maintain brutal supremacy in its master-race democracy. Enabled by the West and equipped with cutting-edge technology and some of the finest intelligence resources on earth, Israelis track all Palestinian cell phones and communications. Drones and closed-circuit cameras spy on all movements. Israeli armed forces violate human rights constantly in ravaged Occupied Palestine.  

And the reaction of many U.S. Christians? “They are God’s Chosen People.” See that? From Sunday school onward, they are soaked to the bones in pooled ignorance that cannot distinguish:

1.  Ancient Judaeans/Israelites from modern Jews (NOT the same people)

2. Modern Jews from Israelis

3. Israelis from ancient Judaeans/Israelites

4. Israelis from racist Zionists

5. Racist Zionists from ancient Judaeans/Israelites

Who Cares About “Terrorists”?

And what of Palestinians and their rights? “Who cares?” bellows Trumper fundamentalists, the loudest voices in the room. Constantly I see more pooled ignorance enslaved by Zionist genocide from U.S. Christians—

“Israelis are just protecting their God-given land! Palestinians are enemies of God, terrorists! The Bible says, ‘curse them that curseth thee, and bless them that blesseth thee. Israel is the apple of God’s eye!”

“We adamantly stand with and pray for the nation and people of Israel, God’s chosen people of promise and covenant. God grant blessing, protection, favor, and truth to you, in Jesus’ mighty name!”

“God protects his people! Those terrorists get what they deserve!”

Within one century, Christians have gone from the blind stupidity of genocidal racism against Jews to the blind stupidity of supporting racist Zionism and its ethnic cleansing. Zionism is genocide.  

Christian Responsibility For Genocide

If a Palestinian refuses to be meek and invisible and compliant with their Zionist oppressors, they have committed an unpardonable crime. For a Palestinian to exist is a crime. And they will pay dearly for it, guaranteed. Clearly, violations of human rights are rampant and have been so for decades.

And backing up the atrocities is the pooled ignorance of U.S. Christians, and yes, many Catholics. Even Catholics disgusted with the Israeli criminal regime still enable it through careless anachronism and failure to use proper categories.  

Stop the ignorance, Catholic blogger. Relinquish your idolatry for the anachronism of using “Jew” and “Jews” in the Bible. Stop enabling the genocide of Zionism. And don’t cry to me about what your intentions are. Just cease doing it immediately. There are no Jews anywhere in Scripture (or Christianity, by the way). Stop calling Jesus Jewish; he wasn’t. Stop saying Paul was a Jewish Christian; he wasn’t—there is no such thing as “Jewish Christianity.” 

Jews and Christians come centuries after New Testament times. 

History of Hatred & Genocide

Following Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, let’s critically reflect. Do Jews (religious, not a race) enjoy land rights to Palestine because of Zionist mythological ideas on circumstances 2,000 years ago? If so, what then of the Serbs attempting to destroy the Kosovars for land claims only two centuries past? 

Be logically and ethically consistent, Americans! If you support Jewish “rights” to Palestine, does that not demand that you also recognize Serbian claims for Kosovo? Keep in mind that it was only two centuries ago that people with the Serbian dialect resided in Kosovo. Not two millennia ago. 

And sticking with consistency, we should also arm indigenous people to violently uproot the residents of present-day Manhattan and occupy it, right? After all, their ancestors were cheated mere centuries ago. Whereas Israeli Zionists claimed ancestral land rights because of some mythologized Roman deportation 2,000 years ago. (Rome did destroy the Temple-city of Jerusalem, yes, but the Israelites there were not, en masse, forced to leave Palestine—that never happened).

Racist Zionists, enabled by the stupidity of U.S. Christian fundamentalists, claim that all Jews, including American Woody Allen, have absolute rights to the land and water of Palestine. But not the Serbs with Kosovo’s resources? And not the Arabs with Spain? And not first peoples with Manhattan and the Hudson? 

Homelands & Genocide

As I’ve blogged before, again, the Jewish “Land of Israel” is different than the Zionist “Land of Israel.” Like the Christian “heaven,” the Jewish Land of Israel is not the State of Israel or Occupied Palestine. The Jewish Land of Israel is not physical but metaphysical. It lacks any borders. It is a spiritual reality, Olam ha ba. Just like “Kingdom of God” evolved for us Christians and is for us. See? Jews are a SPIRITUAL PEOPLE—that word “people” develops as we move through time and space.

As Sand and others explain, Semitic languages exist, but contrary to widespread ignorance, no Semitic race does. Do you speak Hebrew? Do you write in Hebrew? If so, then, according to Sand, you are Semite. Many who speak in Israeli Hebrew today have parents or grandparents who were Yiddish—they spoke and wrote Yiddish. None of these people were Semitic or belonged to the fiction of the Semitic race. 

Certainly, however, there is a genocidal hatred against Jews. Maybe, we should replace the term antisemitism with judeophobia? This is what Israeli historians Dr. Sand and Dr. David Engel recommend. But whatever term you use, indeed, hatred against Jews has been a hallmark of Christian civilization. 

Try though you might, you can find not a jot of antisemitism or judeophobia in the New Testament (although the translators of the NABRE Gospel of John work really hard to put it there unwittingly). Why? Because there are no Jews in the Bible or biblical times. “But I was always told…!” forget that—metanoia time. People are dying, and your stupidity is helping a new holocaust happen. 

Genocide & Proof-Texting

Any claim that any New Testament document is either anti-Semitic or Judeophobic is an anachronism. Why? No Jews are to be found in that library, despite the irresponsible renderings of English translators. 

Let’s speak genetically and historically. There is no Semitic race. European Jews may have prayed in one of several Semitic tongues, but they did not speak it.

Forget about the fantasy of “the migration of the ancient Jews.” Jews were never Semitic foreigners to Europe, outsiders from the Middle East who came to Europe long ago. They were always natives to Europe, authentic insiders to the continent. At some point in their history, they accepted the evolving Jewish religion.

The idea that Judaeans (1st century CE) were later Jews (post-500 CE) is a Christian myth. Although I like using myth in the positive sense, namely, a story that will always be true but never happened. But here, I employ “myth” in its widespread, pejorative sense—a lie. 

The notion that ancient Jews were Judaeans who migrated to the opposite end of the Mediterranean in a horrific exile, cursed by God for denying and murdering Christ, is an appalling Christian myth. These were not good myths, but myths birthed by hatred and hostility. 

Dark History Of Genocide In Christianity

Who authored these hate-filled myths? Imperially cruel Christians after 325 CE—those of the Constantinian Christianity, the political religion of Constantine’s Christendom. From that time until Adolf Hitler, Christians violently loathed the Jews. They turned a fellow European religion into the Outsider and Antichrist. 

When you, a Christian, insist that Jews are a Semitic race in defiance against history and genetics, you continue with the work of Hitler. He believed in the fantasy of pure German blood and contaminating Jewish blood, about an Aryan race and a Jewish race. But there really is no Aryan blood or Jewish blood. Delusion and faulty ideas fueled genocide. It is happening again. 

After Constantine in imperial cruelty, the Christian civilization founded the ideological and mental basis for ostracizing and detesting the Jews. Although quite different, the shared hatred of Jews by Shakespeare, Erasmus, Luther, Voltaire, Kant, and Hitler (on very different levels) would not be without Constantine’s Christendom. There is good, bad, and ugly there, folks. Right now, we are nose-deep in the muck of the ugliest parts. 

“There Can Be Only One!”

As with Christianity, there is good, bad, and ugly in monotheism, also. Monotheism is a lot like the immortals in the fictional Highlander series. “There can be only one!” Historically, monotheists don’t tolerate other monotheisms well. This explains miserable relations between Christians and Jews throughout history and that between Muslims and Jews as well. But when it comes to monotheists hating Jews, Christians take the cake. It’s a fact that Jews fared far better in the Islamic world than they did in European Christendom.

Get informed, U.S. Catholics. Forget about anything Jewish before about 500 CE. And Zionism? It is of recent vintage. Not all Jews are Israelis, and not all Israelis are Zionists. And there are no theological justifications for apartheid and genocide.