After WWII, economically advanced and well-accepted American Jews represented almost 50 percent of world Jewry. Their economic, social, and political progress and humanist values established a tone for Western Jews. The Zionists usurped the American position. Jews became a nationality within the borderless state of Israel.
Although the Jews are not a people — speaking different languages, having different cultures, not having a shared history, and not residing together in one place for generations — and Judaism has featured rabbis, who are teachers, and has never instituted a hierarchy, Israel’s Nation State Laws unilaterally claimed Israel as being the sole representative of all Jews.
Article 6A ─ The state shall foster the well-being of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship;
Article 6B ─ The state shall act in the Diaspora to preserve the affinity between the state and the Jewish people; and
Article 6C ─ The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historic, and religious heritage of the Jewish people in the diaspora.
With the help of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and its accomplices — Anti defamation League (ADL), Hillel, a Zionist indoctrination organization for college students, Jewish National Fund, and AIPAC, among others — the Zionists wrestled the dominant position from American Jews.
From appearances, Zionism rang well with Jewish populations and achieved success. Population statistics that indicate Jews flocked to their “new country” are a troubling misread of history. Falsely claiming that Israel saved the Jews after the World War II genocide, Zionism has caused a second and more killing Holocaust — the ethical Judaism that shaped Western Jews is dead and the Judaism that rabbinical Jews brought to fruition in Mesopotamia and guided world Jewry is subdued. Jews are at odds with one another and cannot escape the charges of committing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Freed from a pastoral life, dry conditions, and restricted economies in the Levant, new communities of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and worldly, appeared in the Fertile Crescent after the third century B.C. and survived to modern times. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers housed the great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, and best expressed the legacy and heritage of modern Judaism. In The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that “Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800-1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe.”
The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Europeans Jews were Ashkenazi; the Ethiopian Jews were Beta Israel; and the Yemenite Jews were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these unique ethnicities with uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jew. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out a major portion of Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before integrating into the Israeli community.
Most Jews adhere to Rabbinical Judaism, a form of Judaism that achieved its modern status in Mesopotamia during the 5th century A.D. It was in the Persian Parthian and Sassanian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D) that Jewish scribes codified the oral and written laws from the Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara and produced the Babylonian Talmud, which became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the basis for Jewish law.
In 2023, the world’s core Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 15.7 million. With 7.2 million Jews, Israel claimed the largest Jewish population in the world, not all of them lived in Israel, followed by the United States with 5.7 million, which also contained a sizeable population of self-exiled Israelis. By numbers, Israel appears as the selected home of world Jewry. The numbers do not tell the story. Relatively few Jews selected Israel as their home. Jews arrived there temporarily, by mistake, or by accidents of history, and could not get out. Their children, born in Israel, are products of the mistaken voyages and never realized the dilemma their parents faced. The large birth rate of the Israeli Orthodox Jews and Mizrahi (Arab and North African Jews) and the low birth rate of the Western Jews skewed the statistics. Examine the record.
From its beginnings to the start of World War I, Zionism proved a stagnant adventure. During that period, statistics indicate that about 70,000 Jews came to Palestine, not all of them were Zionists, many being adventurists, utopian Socialists, and some seeking opportunities. By 1918, only about 30,000 of the original 70,000 remained. Meanwhile, more than 2,500,000 East European Jews ventured to other places, mostly to the United States. Where are the Zionists?
World War I, destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balfour Declaration revived the Zionist adventure. The League of Nations’ certification of the British Mandate in Palestine prevented formation of a national Palestinian governing body, and provided opportunities for English speaking European Jews to work in the British administration. They came with protection of his Majesty’s forces. From 1918-1922, approximately 24,000 Jews arrived in Palestine.
The year 1924 was more fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and this Act steered Jews to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. Were the new arrivals Zionists or people seeking an improved situation from their depressed surroundings?
During the 1930’s, Nazi persecutions of the Jews drove more than 60,000 German Jews to immigrate to Palestine (about 280,000 German and Austrian Jews migrated to other places, with about 125,000 managing to come to the United States). The German Jews were deficient in wanting to learn Hebrew , unwilling to integrate, and perceived their voyage to the British Mandate as an escape from persecution in Nazi Germany and not necessarily a permanent solution to their refugee problem.
Figures are difficult to certify. Accepted figures are that at the end of World war II, about six million refugees wandered Europe and, after the guns went silent, one million found refuge in displaced person (DP) camps, of which 250,000 were Jews. During 1945-1950, about 120,000 of the Jewish DPs arrived in the former British Mandate. Many of the DPs had no other choice and some were unaware of where the ships were taking them. Their voyages did not conclude in 1950. Not well publicized is that “Between 1945 and 1967, almost 190,000 Jews left Palestine and Israel.”
The vast number of Jews wanting to leave Israel troubled the humanitarian commissions that previously served the refugees. Meetings between commission representatives and Israeli authorities highlighted that “emigration from the country was creating serious complications in Europe, and becoming a political embarrassment for Israel.” What did the Israeli government do? A discussion on Israel’s formation relates:
The government restricted distribution of passports and exit permits….The Israeli government also decided that new immigrants wishing to leave the country would not be allowed to do so unless they refund the state for the value of material benefits that they had received upon immigration to Israel. In some cases, prospective emigrants were even required to repay the costs involved in bringing them to Israel and maintaining them in immigration camps in Israel. And this was a serious obstacle for emigration because many people who wanted to leave the country were unable to pay all those costs, so they had to stay in Israel. And, the government also launched a propaganda campaign in the newspapers against emigration.
The dispossession of the Palestinians , which led to the 1948 war between Israel and Arab states, provoked Arab leaders to question the loyalty of their Arab Jews and placed the Jews living in Arab nations in a difficult position. Although Arabs by ethnicity and having a Jewish heritage in their surroundings for 2000 years, these Jews were now regarded with suspicion. Zionist operations within their nations, military conflicts, and oppression of the Palestinians, provoked the Arab governments into hostile actions against their Jewish citizens who had no recourse but to find safety with those who had caused their plight.
Why would Jews, who survived the ups and downs of having lived among Arabs for 2000 years, suddenly leave their homelands? An Iraqi Jew had closer ethnic relationship to an Egyptian Muslim than to an Ashkenazi Jew. The former differed mainly in religious practices. An Iraqi Jew, except for religious practices, had little commonality with the Ashkenazi Jew.
The sudden exit of Arab Jews from their ancient lands questioned the veracity of the Zionist movement. If Zion was a home for Jews, why hadn’t these Jews moved to the Levant during the Ottoman Empire, and why hadn’t the Zionists considered relocating them from their inception? One answer is contained in an article, “Ideology or Ethnicity? The Israeli Political Crisis,” By Ori Yehudai
The concept of the “new Jew” espoused by Labor Zionists was a project of Western modernization. It emphasized modern “Israeliness”—the product of the Zionist revolution—over “Jewishness,” which was identified with the diasporic past. This approach was less appealing for Jews originating in Muslim countries, many of whom had remained more rooted in Jewish tradition.
It is obvious that it was the creation of apartheid and genocidal Israel that doomed the life of fellow Jews in Arab lands and, in many case, extraordinary lives that were reduced to despair and destitution and could not be easily repaired. Moshe Gat, Professor Emeritus, Bar Ilan University, General History and Political Science reports in Iraq and its Jewish minority: from the establishment of the state to the great Jewish immigration 1921-1951,
Jews were considered among the top tier of Iraqi society and were at the centre of its political and spiritual life. There were judges, lawyers, writers, poets, and politicians among them. They viewed themselves as worthy and capable of shaping the Iraqi state and society, feeling that they were an integral part of it. The community leaders’ good economic status, their influence over the country’s trade and economy, and long history in Iraq served as suitable grounds for integrating into local society since the establishment of Iraq as a state.
The last two great waves of immigration came from the Soviet Union. From 1970 to 1988, 291,000 Soviet Jews were granted exit visas, of who 165,000 migrated to Israel and 126,000 to the United States. The Kremlin granted visas to Soviet Jews who had relatives in Israel, but the Washington Post, February 19, 1989, reports, “Most of the newcomers leave the Soviet Union on Israeli visas, but once they get to the halfway stop in Vienna, more than 90 percent jump ship and opt for the United States.” Arrangements between Israel and the United States steered the recalcitrant back to Israel. Few Soviet Jews cared to go to Israel. They had no choice.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the desperate economic and social situation prompted its citizens to seek comfortable surroundings. Additional opportunities for Soviet Jews to migrate arose and 810,727 came to Israel during the last decade of the 20th century. Did these Jews come to Israel as Zionists or as disenchanted who had no other place to go? A report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) leans to the latter conviction.
The exodus of Soviet Jews increased in 1989 with almost 90 percent wanting to resettle in the United States. Some estimated that as many as 50,000 to 60,000 would leave in 1989. There would be a dual-track system for Soviet Jews to leave the Soviet Union. They could either apply to go to Israel or apply for refugee status at the American Embassy in Moscow….This arrangement of a two-track system in Moscow resulted in Israel becoming, “by default, the destination for the vast majority of Jews seeking refuge.”
Another wave of immigrants to Israel came from Ethiopia. The Beta Israel practiced a more biblical Judaism than rabbinic Judaism and considered themselves Jews. Historians are uncertain how this relationship emerged and when it was first noticed. From 1980 to 2009, they came to Israel in several operations, with a strange logistics support from the United States.
More pull by Israeli rabbis than push from Ethiopians, the Israeli government decided in 1977 that the Beta Israel qualified for the Israeli Law of Return. Israeli forces performed several dramatic operations to rescue the Beta Israel communities from civil war and famine. “At the end of 2019, there were 155,300 Jews of Ethiopian descent in Israel. Approximately 87,500 were Israelis who were born in Ethiopia, and 67,800 were born-and-raised Israelis with fathers born in Ethiopia.”
Despite progress, Ethiopian Jews are still not well assimilated into Israeli-Jewish society. They remain, on average, on a lower economic and educational level than other Israelis. From UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger.” Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children. “The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN. An estimated 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, but while they are supposed to be full citizens with equal rights, their community has continued to face widespread discrimination and socio-economic difficulties, according to its leaders. A recent decision – as reported by local media – by 120 homeowners not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families has brought discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel back into the spotlight
They came as Beta Israel. They survive as converts to a new Israeli, their heritage disappearing in the Zionist regimented surroundings.
Commentary has shown that Zionism attracted a relatively small portion of Jews to Palestine. They came for many other reasons and left for many reasons. The total number of Israelis who migrated to other countries and resided abroad reached 756 thousand at the end of 2020. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said that between 572-612 thousand Israelis lived outside the country, and this estimate does not include the number of those born abroad.
Israel is not composed of Jews who sought a state defined by Israel’s Nation State Laws. It is composed of Jews who sought escape from economic and social oppression or deprivation, only to learn they were to become executioners in victimizing and oppressing others and have their children indoctrinated by a philosophy that traumatized them with the belief that the entire world was composed of anti-Semites waiting to harm them, and only Israel provided a safe haven.
The Zionists have not created an ingathering of the Jewish people or returned them to their ancient lands. As described previously, Jews as a people do not exist, an ancient Hebrew civilization is a fictitious exaggeration, and Jews of today are scarcely related to Hebrews who wandered the hills of Judah 2500 years ago. Want confirmation?
Go to Ashkelon and its open-air museum of civilizations that ruled Ashkelon from the Canaanites to the Ottomans. No mention of a Hebrew civilization or Hebrew rule. Go to any of the great museums of the world — Metropolitan, British, Louvre, several in Berlin, and Jerusalem. No artifacts or presentations of any ancient Hebrew civilization and no reference to Jews governing the Mediterranean coast of present day Israel, the area to which the Zionists “returned.” Go to Jerusalem and learn there is no extant major structure from Biblical Israel. The only well-known structure, the Western wall, is an ancient supporting wall of the platform from Herod’s time, which did not hear worshippers at that time. It became a place of prayer for Jews in the late 15th century after Mameluke authorities permitted Jews a safe place for worship, and suddenly morphed into “the most revered site in Judaism,” during modern times. Revered by default, there is no other.
Another revered Jewish ground is Masada and its heroic fighters against Roman oppression. The balloon recently burst on this one. From the Times of Israel, Masada legend upended: ‘The Romans came, saw and conquered, quickly and brutally.
Recent research by a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists may upend the Masada legend by asserting that the siege likely lasted just a few weeks and not years. [ED: Indicates that Masada Jews did not commit suicide] Likewise, the primary motivation for the Romans in assaulting Masada wasn’t to defeat the last holdout of the Jewish rebellion but rather to preserve the supply of lucrative balsam, a perfume produced in nearby Ein Gedi.
But the dominant faction at Masada was indeed “the bandits,” who, as noted by Josephus, sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem went down from Masada to Ein Gedi in a raid. They killed hundreds of women and children at the balsam plantation there after the workers fled, and disrupted production of the precious fragrance. It was an effective raid designed to damage Roman interests in the region.
The Zionists have not created an ingathering of Jewish people. The Jews, as a people do not exist.
The Zionists have not recreated an ancient Jewish civilization. No vital ancient Jewish civilization ever existed.
Examine closely.
The Zionists recreated the medieval European ghetto, complete with walls and Jewish isolation from other communities. They replaced intermittent attacks against Jews with permanent attacks on Jews; come to Israel and face a daily barrage of flying bullets.
The Zionists have divided Jewish communities, caused severe family frictions, and spurred Jews to relinquish their Jewish faith.
The Zionists shifted intermittent resentment against Jews to perpetual animosity, leading almost the entire world to label Jews as committing genocide of the Palestinian people. We are all anti-Semites now.
The humanism that guided American Jews is almost gone.
Jewish heritage that developed the Talmud, the guiding laws of modern Jewry, has disappeared.
Jews are depicted as people with yarmulkes, living on hilltops, and carrying Uzi guns.
The Messiah that brings Jews back to Jerusalem has arrived and is not wanted.
Judaism is dead and its coffin is in Gaza.
The post Judaism is Dead first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.
Dan Lieberman | Radio Free (2024-09-24T20:25:12+00:00) Judaism is Dead. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/24/judaism-is-dead/
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