Let’s make something clear from the start: Jews don’t have to apologize for Israel’s sins. Israelis must do that. But because I am a Jew, I cherish its traditions, and because Zionism lays claim to all Jews–I am dedicating this post to Yom Kippur. It is a day filled with majesty and awe. A day to ponder one’s place in the world. A day to be humble in the face of God and fate.
Yet today, Yom Kippur is a day of mourning; of sackcloth and ashes. A day of pondering how our people (or some of them) have desecrated their faith by slaughtering another people who worship a God not unlike our own. Genesis says that God created Man in His own image. How can Israel have anything of the image of God?
I am a Jew. I renounce slaughter. I renounce genocide, I renounce child murder. I renounce Israel. It is not a Jewish state. There is nothing Jewish about genocide.
— Tikun Olam 🍉 (@richards1052) September 28, 2024
| We have sinned We have betrayed We have stolen We have spoken ill We have made others sin We have sinned maliciously We have joined others in a lie We urged doing wrong We deceived We mocked We damaged We denied our misdeeds We corrupted We strayed We led others astray | We have murdered We have maimed We have bombed We have shot We have starved We have widowed We have martyred We have stolen We have burned We have made homeless We have slaughtered We have expelled We have degraded We have humiliated We have hated We have cursed We have abused |
Another powerful prayer, U’Netaneh Tokef (“Let us speak of awe”) is a meditation on the mysteries of life and death. It suggests Yom Kippur is a the day when the Book of Life is sealed and fates are decreed for the coming year. The original on the left; my version on the right:
| Who shall live and who shall die, Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, Who by water and who by fire, Who by sword and who by beast, Who by famine and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague, Who by strangulation and who by stoning, Who shall rest and who shall wander, Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued, Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented, Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low, Who shall be rich and who shall be poor.But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree. | On 10/7 Israel mourned On 10/8 Palestine mourned. It mourns still and ponders its fate: Who will live and who will die, But justice, courage, and resistance can avert the evil decree. |
On Rosh Hashanah, the Book of Life is opened. Jews greet each other: Happy holiday, may you be inscribed [in the Book of Life]. At the close of Yom Kippur, the Neilah prayer, Jews are sealed in the Book of Life. Our fate has been determined for the new year.
But Palestinians have no Book of Life. They have only the Book of Death. Instead of God sealing us in His Book, Israel has sealed them in the Book of Death. I feel tremendous grief at such a chilul Ha-Shem (“desecration of God’s Name”).
The prayer Eyleh Ezkerah (“These I Will Remember”), portrays the martyrdom of ten of the greatest of the Talmudic rabbis during the Roman rebellion. It describes the tortures they suffered for refusing to bow to the brutal occupier; refusing to give up teaching Torah and passing on the tradition. Some were burned at the stake. But even in the throes of death they maintained dignity and courage:
Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon was wrapped in a Torah scroll while he was burned alive. His students were watching him and asked him what he saw, to which he replied that he saw the scroll burning but the letters were ascending to heaven.
Compare this to these words delivered during Operation Cast Lead (2008) by the late Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, himself martyred by Israel:
“We say with full confidence that even if we are hung on the gallows or they make our blood flow in the streets or they tear our bodies apart, we will bow only before God and we will not abandon Palestine…”
We Jews have our martyrs whom we revere for their holiness and courage in the face of certain death. Yet we who suffered such martyrdom, make martyrs for the Palestinian people. Their steadfastness, their courage, their willingness to die–are the same as ours.
Israel today is no different than the brutal Roman occupiers who destroyed the Temple, conquered Jerusalem and burned it to ashes. In the past year, it burned Palestinians alive, buried them in the rubble of their homes, wounded them and left them to bleed to death in the street like dogs, raped their men, starved their children, destroyed their mosques. What perverse solace can Israel take from causing the same suffering to Gaza that Rome did to us? Are we even? Can we ever be even? Will the score finally be settled when we eliminate them–something not even the mighty Romans could achieve?
I completely agree. Israel has been killing Palestinians and destroying their towns and villages before Hamas came along. One could say Hamas is the result of Israel’s constant humiliation and killing of Palestinians through the decades. October 7th was horrendous, but Palestinians were frustrated at the world not listening to them and angry at Israel’s continous killing and destruction of their lives. Other races have been in the same position: blacks in America, Algerians and other Africans dominated by Europeans, Indians dominated by the British They have all eventually expressed themselves in violence.
Don’t forget the indigenous people in the Americas, who were slaughtered by European settler-colonialists who stole their land and resources. In my own nation, the U.S., the convenient myth of “Manifest Destiny” was created to brainwash U.S. citizens into believing it was “God’s will” that descendants of Europeans should spread from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific coast, regardless of the people who had already been living there for thousands of years.
Outside of the maxim that “any civilians being killed anywhere is bad”, I see nothing that happened on October 7th as anything more horrendous than what Israel and the IDF have done a thousand times before on a far larger scale, and far more disproportionately (considering that per israel’s official records, at least 400 of those killed on october 7th were israeli military or otherwise armed combatants).
Considering this, the fact that israel repeatedly lied and made up spurious atrocity stories, and the fact that israel engaged in a mass “Hannibal” action killing who knows how many– I find it pointless to act as though what happened on october 7th was “uniquely bad”, especially when we consider israel’s decision to carry out a genocide in “revenge”.
Any condemnation of the deliberate murder of civilians on october 7th must be coupled with a condemnation a thousand times over of the civilians deliberately murdered by israel in far greater numbers, as far as I’m concerned.
Tikun Olam … Thank you !!
GENOCIDE NEVER AGAIN FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸
Changing the world for the worse … Islamophobia industry post 9/11 … shameful funding from pro-Israel billionaires … funding neo-Nazis to gain cover for apartheid and occupation of Palestinian land. Strength to the courageous voices like yourself that these may be amplified many times over.
There seems to be some confusion. Israel is not a Jewish state. It is a secular state. It is the state of the Jews with the other citizens’ rights protected under law. Isael was not re-established as a theocracy. It was re-established as a refuge for any Jew being persecuted because they are a Jew. Not because they practice some form of Judaism, but because they were born to a Jew or converted.
As for the genocide accusation, that is for an international court to decide. It is a legal matter. It is not up to scholars’ own interpretation of the word nor their interpretation of the Genocide Convention.
As for the God of the Jews not committing genocide, there are too many biblical examples such as “the Flood,” Sodom and Gamora. As for Jews themselves: Jacob’s sons in Sachem, Saul in Edom, Jews against the Persians in Esther. Whether real or fictitious, they are examples.
In defense of genocide in Gaza … perhaps an excellent start are the decisions of the ICJ in 2024 and the statements from the members in the war cabinet of alleged war criminal Netanyahu. Further the Kahanist terrorists inside the apartheid state and settler violence on occupied Palestine.
Indeed not established as a Jewish state in 1948 … The Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018)
@ Jack:
You have no idea what you’re talking about. First, the Declaration of Independence declares Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state.” So there’s that. But we know Israel is not a democratic state. But of course it IS a Jewish state. But a particular form of Judaism. I would call it deviant Judaism. But certainly it is a theocratic state. The settlers are ultra-Orthodox Jews. As I’ve written here before, they not only control the state, they are the state.
That’s not really true either, is it? Saying Israel is a refuge for persecuted Jews is what the tourist brochure says. But not what is. Israel is far more dangerous for Jews than the Diaspora. That’s why half of Jews haven’t made that magic ride to Zion. They’re doing fine where they are. As for the Holocaust, Israel’s leaders gave lip service to saving Jews.
First, there were no Jews at the time of the Flood. Second, Lot was a distant relative of Abram, before he became the father of the Jewish people). So Lot wasn’t a Jew either (yet).
As for Sodom and Gomora, God actually agreed to Abram’s plea to spare the cities destruction if he could 10 righteous people there. That’s when they attempted to rape Lot’s “visitors” and their fate was sealed. So your examples are falling flat here.
In almost all of your examples, God does not approve of the violence portrayed by the Biblical text. In fact, God isn’t even mentioned in the Book of Esther. So nice try saying God approved of the slaughter of the House of Haman. Isn’t it interesting when Orthodox Israeli Jews want to find Biblical precedent for genocide against Palestinians they turn to the story of Esther to justify their own latter day crimes.
Finally, there’s the perversity of you essentially arguing that the God of the Jews approves genocide. I don’t know what religion you practice, but it sure isn’t Judaism.
No need to reply to this post. You’ve exhausted your single comment in this thread.
It appears you have mischaracterized every comment I made, adding concepts I did not use. Good luck with that.
@Sigman: I am not surprised you have a PhD from Gratz College. It apparently turns out shoddy scholarship with a woeful ignorance of Jewish history. I too have a degree from a Jewish seminary. But my views of Jewish history are grounded in research and scholarship. I can’t say the same for yours.
As for censorship that is nonsense. Every newspaper has rules about publishing comments to its articles, as do I. When I foresee that someone will argue ad nauseam, I limit them to a single comment per thread. You may publish a single comment in any other thread, if you choose. Or not. Do not respond to this comment.
I dont think the word “democratic” apears in the English version of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
@ Jeffrey: I’ve just reviewed the wording. In effect we are both right. The original document does not use the word “democracy.” But it does lay out these democratic principles in the text:
The word is used in various amendments to the Basic Law passed in 1985 and 2002. In the absence of a constitution, the Basic Law serves as a quasi-constitutional document. The 1985 amendment states:
The 2002 amendment changed that wording, which attenuates the 1985 wording, as it clearly refers only to Israeli Palestinian citizens and not Israeli Jews:
The Biden-Blinken-Austin team was complicit in Israel’s war crimes from 20 Jan. 2021 forward … see the Gaza attacks of May 2021. Biden refused to honor his campaign promise to renegotiate the JCPOA deal with allies and Iran. Appointed hawks in positions of National Security and Foreign Policy. Refused normal diplomacy, chose for bullying tactic and force of sanctions … coercive diplomacy.
Leaned over backwards and followed the path of his predecessor, Trump, in support of the ill-fated Abraham Accords that left out a Palestinian voice. Supported the interest of the Jewish State and the Zionist goal by blocking any headway for a Palestinian State. The horror show of Joe continues to the abyss.
“The Abraham Accords” ? Surely Abraham’s descendents includes Arabs, therefore they have a right to live in the Promised Land. Am I wrong?
Keep in mind that the braintrust behind the so-called Abraham Accords was the ghoulish stepford robot Jared Kushner, whose family is notoriously kahanist or kahanist-adjacent.
Dare not criticize the holy state of Israel and its war crimes ..
Why was Israel angry with Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate?
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/10/b1210ceafdfa-israel-ambassador-says-gaza-post-wwii-japan-comparison-baseless.html
Explanation of IAF War Crimes on Beirut Bombing
Chilling explanation from the other pariah state bombing and terrorizing with impunity …
A Closer Look at Israel’s Use of 80 Bunker-Buster JDAMs in Beirut | U.S. Naval Academy |
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/october/closer-look-israels-use-80-bunker-buster-jdams-beirut
ICC Bends Over Backward to Avoid Netanyahu Prosecution
Months ago … offered Israel an escape route through complementarity …
’Alarming’: Palestinians accuse ICC prosecutor of bias after Israel visit | Al Jazeera – 2 Dec 2023 |
Complementarity in the Palestine Situation at the ICC: Could Article 70 Conduct Render Israel “Unwilling” to Investigate Genuinely?
I think this new video from Gaza provides important context
https://x.com/PrincessJewess/status/1848952236711227447
@ Herzi: Do not post any “Jewess” content. The group offers pure hasbara and is garbage. I don’t wish my sites to be used to promote their claims, even with a link to their tweet. I am going to break the link. But anyone who truly needs/wants to visit can easily fix it if they wish to view the trash it offers.
It’s “cute” to use Herzi Halevi as your email and handle. But I’m not amused. I don’t want any reference to that war criminal here. Don’t try that shit here.