What kind of people reduces a subject population to
the point of desperation where children with kitchen knives
are attacking soldiers armed with machine guns? Jonathan
Offir, an Israeli musician living in Denmark, demands that
Jews "divorce" themselves from Zionism. Increasingly,
Jews are heeding his call.
"The hardest part is to look the horrors in the eye, and then look yourself in the mirror, and see what Zionism has done to you."
by Jonathan Offir
(Abridged by henrymakow.com)
This is probably a culmination of nearly a decade's study of our history.
At some point, beyond the singular stories, cases and arguments, I feel something unequivocal and very generally encompassing needs to be said about our Israeli 'miracle', the manifestation of the Zionist 'dream'.
I will not write this in Hebrew, although that would probably have been the most direct idiomatic tool to reach your minds. I will not do so, because I have had enough of dirty laundry recycled amongst us 'self-understanding' Israelis.
Whilst I write to you, my hopes of change coming from within us Israelis have regrettably declined in the years - and thus, I am ... placing my bets upon... the international community - whose help we need so badly - not for more cash, weapons, or apologetic 'understanding', but rather for its intervention in what we are apparently unable, and mostly unwilling, to fix.
The attitude which I thus exhibit here is an extremely unpopular one in Israeli and Jewish culture - it is the vein of the 'mosser' - the one who 'snitches' against the 'Jewish nation' towards the goyim.
Well, get over it. There are far more serious issues at hand.
I have to tell you, our evaluation of Israeli history omits so much atrocity from our side. Indeed, much of it is still classified - even back to 1948. Yes, you may have heard about Deir Yassin massacre, it is often taught in school books, yet portrayed as an aberration, perpetrated by the 'extremist', 'rogue' factions before the declaration of Independence (although the leaders of those extremist factions became our Prime-Ministers). But what of the dozens of other massacres perpetrated by - us - in 1948, indeed by the very IDF?
Have you read about Al Dawayima, which was apparently worse than Deir Yassin? Yair Auron just wrote about it in Haaretz, I translated and it's out on Mondoweiss - go and read. It's a letter which is out for the first time in full, but it's no secret as such - excerpts of it have been out for decades - as have many other testimonies and documents, for those who care to seek and look.
When you sum up the systematic mass executions, the many gang-rape cases,... the crushing of children's skulls with sticks, the ripping out of fetuses from their mothers' wombs - all, and many more, perpetrated by 'us', the 'good guys', the 'cultured elite' - often in situations which presented no danger, just out of pure gratuitous sadism and hate for the 'Arabs' - then you may begin to realize, that Israel is not in a war of survival, a war of an elite and advanced culture in a 'bad neighborhood' of backwards Arab sub-culture.
Let me put it out there, clearly and directly: We have been acting like animals, with barbarism of a degree which indeed could be, and should be, and has been, compared to those whom we love to hate - the Nazis - whose cruelty is supposed to exonerate ours. As Golda Meir told MK Shulamit Aloni: "After the Holocaust, Jews are allowed to do anything." ...
ALL AGGRESSION IS MASKED AS SELF DEFENCE
Our occupation did not begin in 1967, neither did our cruelty and crimes. We have established a state on the mass graves of others. This was not forced upon us. Just as Begin said in 1982, concerning the 1967 war "we must be honest with ourselves...we decided to attack" - so must we be honest with ourselves about all of our other portrayals of 'self-defense'. Indeed, the whole Zionist venture is essentially portrayed as a 'struggle for survival', a "struggle for self-defense".
Had we not hidden our crimes so well, so deep, and with so much propaganda 'deterrence' rhetoric, it would perhaps be easier to believe our sincerity. On the other hand, when those crimes are exposed for what they are, it also becomes impossible to justify our moral righteousness.
Indeed, as the world media became much more instantly transparent, the reality of our crimes became impossible to hide - so we put an extra focus on propaganda - to twist it all into 'self defense'. We indiscriminately shelled houses and levelled neighborhoods in Gaza for 'self-defense'.
We torture children for 'self-defense'. Let's just say it outright: We torture and terrorize the hell out of Palestinians in order to deter them and make their lives so miserable so they will want to leave - or to revenge, which will justify our next blow.
We have created a monster. Who on earth would want to 'survive' if this is how 'survival' looks? How vile is this 'survival' which maintains itself upon the death and destruction of 'others'? Indeed, who are those 'others'? Are we not really the 'others', who came with our 'better knowing' culture to 'make the desert bloom'? And as this desert 'blooms' with yet another settlement, another fictitious 'military zone', another 'expansion' - the people who are there, the 'others', are gradually removed, encircled, or killed.
We, Jews, have thus created a violent legacy to last for centuries, even if it were to stop now. If all stories were now revealed, all archives declassified (both 1948, 1967 and all others), it is certain that this Zionist venture would constitute another shocking and substantial chapter of barbarism and cruelty in the annals of world history.
NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE COURSE
But it is not over - for worse, but also for better. We have the ability to stop it now. No, this does not mean our annihilation, as the propagandist Zionist hysterics would reflexively profess. It is an option, standing before us - to relinquish the reign of exclusivity, to separate the Jewish from the State, and to live in peace, with all the challenges that may face every human and every state...
Does that necessarily mean divorcing Judaism? No, of course not. It simply means divorcing the ostensibly inextricable tie that Zionism has made between itself and Judaism, in monopoliZing Judaism, using a mafia-style coercion of all those who speak against it, with the (too often) applied ultimate rhetoric WMD of 'anti-Semitism'.
This is a scare tactic that needs to be fought. If we do not rise above the intellectual atavism that this ideology submits us to, we will continue to be committing grave crimes and exonerating them as we go, in the name of this 'religion'.
There is a future. Zionism, nonetheless, is a dead-end. I realize that saying these things today, is far, far from consensus, and is in no uncertain ways a recipe for societal exclusion. I'll take that. I've already resolved to it. But this is not some prophetic martyrdom that I submit myself to. It is actually the only right path that I see. If you want to hope for a good future with Zionism, at least do the minimum to really see what it has meant for Palestinians. That is, surprisingly, perhaps the easier part. The harder part is to look the horrors in the eye, and then look yourself in the mirror, and see what Zionism has done to you.
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Related-
Erik said (April 5, 2016):
If the only problem for jews is zionism, then I suppose Offir think the passages in Talmud about killing Goyim are a legitimate expression of freedom of religion? What is Judaism if Offir is of the opinion that everything is fine as long as Judaism is separated from Zionism? I would say Zionism is Judaism realized. When jews are in minority they should not disturb the peace, when jews have the power they are to use and even kill the Goyim if it suits their purpose. The Catholic way of protecting the goyim from jews is the only viable in my opinion. Jews can live in christian society under strict control in ghettos. This is in order to make sure that they never reach any position of power, since if they do, they will the start killing goyim just as Israel and the US neocons do, and to give them a chance to convert to christianity and thereby avoid going to hell. I am actually very interested in what Offir means by divorcing Zionism from Judaism, and how this would make all the violence and killing in Judaism morally defensible. Does Offir think that the celebration of mass murder during Purim is a Zionist celebration or a Jewish celebration for instance?