Racialism, Hatred and Revenge
Cover. Al-Ḍaffah al-Gharbiyyah [West Bank], area of the former British-mandated [1920–47] territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River, also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria.
Preface
This text is an extract from The Controversy of Zion [1951 - 56] by British journalist, playwright, novelist and writer of books with political themes, Douglas Lancelot Reed [1895 - 1976].
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Foreword
Ivor Benson
The Author
In Europe during the years immediately before and after World War II the name of Douglas Reed was on everyone's lips; his books were being sold by scores of thousand, and he was known with intimate familiarity throughout the English-speaking world by a vast army of readers and admirers. Former London Times correspondent in Central Europe, he had won great fame with books like Insanity Fair, Disgrace Abounding, Lest We Regret, Somewhere South of Suez, Far and Wide and several others, each amplifying a hundredfold the scope available to him as one of the world's leading foreign correspondents.
The disappearance into almost total oblivion of Douglas Reed and all his works was a change that could not have been wrought by time alone; indeed, the correctness of his interpretation of the unfolding history of the times found some confirmation in what happened to him when at the height of his powers.
After 1951, with the publication of Far and Wide, in which he set the history of the United States of America into the context of all he had learned in Europe of the politics of the world, Reed found himself banished from the bookstands, all publishers' doors closed to him, and those books already published liable to be withdrawn from library shelves and 'lost', never to be replaced.
His public career as a writer now apparently at an end, Reed was at last free to undertake a great task for which all that had gone before was but a kind of preparation and education that no university could provide and which only the fortunate and gifted few could fully use - his years as a foreign correspondent, his travels in Europe and America, his conversations and contacts with the great political leaders of his day, plus his eager absorption through reading and observation of all that was best in European culture.
Experiences which other men might have accepted as defeat, served only to focus Douglas Reed's powers on what was to be his most important undertaking - that of researching and retelling the story of the last 2000 years and more in such a way as to render intelligible much of modern history which for the masses remains in our time steeped in darkness and closely guarded by the terrors of an invisible system of censorship.
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'Experiences which other men might have accepted as defeat, served only to focus Douglas Reed's powers on what was to be his most important undertaking - that of researching and retelling the story of the last 2000 years and more in such a way as to render intelligible much of modern history which for the masses remains in our time steeped in darkness and closely guarded by the terrors of an invisible system of censorship.'
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The Book:
Commencing in 1951, Douglas Reed spent more than three years - much of this time separated from his wife and young family - working in the New York Central Library, or tapping away at his typewriter in spartan lodgings in New York or Montreal. With workmanlike zeal, the book was rewritten, all 300,000 words of it, and the Epilogue only added in 1956.
The story of the book itself - the unusual circumstances in which it was written, and how the manuscript, after having remained hidden for more than 20 years, came to light and was at last made available for publication - is part of the history of our century, throwing some light on a struggle of which the multitudes know nothing: that conducted relentlessly and unceasingly on the battleground of the human mind.
It needed some unusual source of spiritual power and motivation to bring to completion so big a book involving so much laborious research and cross-checking, a book, moreover, which seemed to have little or no chance of being published in the author's lifetime.
Although there is correspondence to show that the title was briefly discussed with one publisher, the manuscript was never submitted but remained for 22 years stowed away in three zippered files on top of a wardrobe in Reed's home in Durban, South Africa.
Relaxed and at peace with himself in the knowledge that he had carried his great enterprise as far as was possible in the circumstances of the times, Douglas Reed patiently accepted his forced retirement as journalist and writer, put behind him all that belonged to the past and adjusted himself cheerfully to a different mode of existence, in which most of his new-found friends and acquaintances, charmed by his lively mind and rich sense of humour, remained for years wholly unaware that this was indeed the Douglas Reed of literary fame.
Of this he was sure, whether or not it would happen in his lifetime, there would come a time when circumstances would permit, and the means be found, to communicate to the world his message of history rewritten, and the central message of Christianity restated.
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Interpretation:
For the rest, The Controversy of Zion, can be left to speak for itself; indeed, it is a work of revisionist* history and religious exposition the central message of which is revealed in almost every page, understanding and compassionate of people but severely critical of the inordinate and dangerous ambitions of their leaders.
* revisionism [n.] Originally in reference to a policy of introducing socialism gradually, by evolution rather than revolution. The general sense of revision is in reference to one who favours or supports corection and alteration; specifically in reference to historical narratives by 1934, originally of the causes of World War I.
In the final chapter, under the heading the Climacteric, Douglas Reed remarks that if he could have planned it all when he began writing his book in 1949, he could not have chosen a better moment than the last months of 1956 to review the long history of Talmudic† Zionism‡ and re-examine it against the background of what was still happening on the stage of world politics.
† talmud [n.] The Hebrew term Talmud ['study' or 'learning'] commonly refers to a compilation of ancient teachings regarded as sacred and normative by Jews from the time it was compiled until modern times and still so regarded by traditional religious Jews.
‡ zionism [n.] Jewish nationalist movement, originating in eastern and central Europe. that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the [so-called] ancient homeland of the Jews [Hebrew: Eretz Yisraʾel, 'the Land of Israel'].
For 1956 was the year of another American presidential election in which, once again, the Zionists demonstrated their decisive power to influence Western politics; it was the year in which the nations of the West stood by as helpless spectators as Soviet forces were used to crush a spontaneous revolt and re-install a Jewish-Communist regime in Hungary; and it was the year in which Britain and France, under Zionist pressure, were drawn into the disastrous fiasco of an attempt to capture the Suez Canal, an adventure from which, once again, Israel alone gained any advantage.
Everything that has happened since Reed wrote those last sentences in 1956 has continued to endorse the correctness of his interpretation of more than 2000 years of troubled history.
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'I believe the Jews of the world are equally beginning to see the error of revolutionary Zionism, the twin of the other destructive movement [Communism], and, as this century ends, will at last decide to seek involvement in common mankind'.
- Douglas Reed
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The Middle East has remained an area of intense political activity and of the maximum falsification of news and suppression of genuine debate, and it was only the few with some knowledge of the role of Talmudic Zionism and Communism who could have had any chance of solving the problem of successive events of major importance, like the so-called Six Day War in 1967 and the .... massive and most ruthless attack on Southern Lebanon, ostensibly for the purpose of rooting out the Palestine Liberation Organisation*, but actually in furtherance of an expansionist policy about which Jewish leaders have always been remarkably frank.
* Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO]. In Arabic, Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyyah, Umbrella political organisation representing the Palestinian people in their drive for a Palestinian state. It was formed in 1964 to centralise the leadership of various groups.
By this time, however, the pro-Zionist mythology generated by Western politicians and media in which Israel was always represented as a tiny and virtuous nation in constant need of help and protection, was obviously beginning to lose much of its plausibility, so that few were surprised when the British Institute of Strategic Studies announced that Israel could now be regarded as fourth in the world as a military power, after the USA, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China - well ahead of nations like Britain and France.
More deeply significant was the reaction of the Jewish people, both in Israel and abroad, to an apparent triumph of Zionist arms in Lebanon. While Western politicians and media remained timorously restrained in their comment, even after news of the massacre of an estimated 1500 men, women and children in two Beirut refugee camps, 350,000 of the residents of Tel Aviv staged a public demonstration against their government and there were reports in the Jewish press that controversy over the Lebanese war had rocked the Israel army and affected all ranks.
Of this, too, Douglas Reed seems to have had some presentiment, for among the last words in his book are these: 'I believe the Jews of the world are equally beginning to see the error of revolutionary Zionism, the twin of the other destructive movement, and, as this century ends, will at last decide to seek involvement in common mankind'.
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Chapter One
The Start of the Affair
The true start of this affair occurred on a day in 458 BC which this narrative will reach in its sixth chapter. On that day the petty Palestinian tribe of Judah [earlier disowned by the Israelites] produced a racial creed, the disruptive effect of which on subsequent human affairs may have exceeded that of explosives or epidemics. This was the day on which the theory of the master-race was set up as 'the Law'.
At the time Judah was a small tribe among the subject-peoples of the Persian king, and what today is known as 'the West' could not even be imagined. Now the Christian era is nearly two thousand years old and 'Western civilisation', which grew out of it, is threatened with disintegration.
The creed born in Judah 2,500 years ago, in the author's opinion, has chiefly brought this about. The process, from original cause to present effect, can be fairly clearly traced because the period is, in the main, one of verifiable history.
The creed which a fanatical sect produced that day has shown a great power over the minds of men throughout these twenty-five centuries; hence its destructive achievement. Why it was born at that particular moment, or ever, is something that none can explain. This is among the greatest mysteries of our world, unless the theory that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction is valid in the area of religious thought; so that the impulse which at that remote time set many men searching for a universal, loving God produced this fierce counter-idea of an exclusive, vengeful deity.
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'The creed which a fanatical sect produced that day has shown a great power over the minds of men throughout these twenty-five centuries; hence its destructive achievement. Why it was born at that particular moment, or ever, is something that none can explain. This is among the greatest mysteries of our world .... the impulse which at that remote time set many men searching for a universal, loving God produced this fierce counter-idea of an exclusive, vengeful deity.'
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Judah-ism was retrogressive even in 458 BC, when men in the known world were beginning to turn their eyes away from idols and tribal gods and to look for a God of all men, of justice and of neighbourliness. Confucius and Buddha had already pointed in that direction and the idea of one-God was known among the neighbouring peoples of Judah. Today the claim is often made that the religious man, Christian, Muslim or other, must pay respect to Judaism, whatever its errors, on one incontestable ground: it was the first universal religion, so that in a sense all universal religions descend from it.
Every Jewish child is taught this. In truth, the idea of the one-God of all men was known long before the tribe of Judah even took shape, and Judaism was above all else the denial of that idea. The Egyptian Book of the Dead [manuscripts of which were found in the tombs of kings of 2,600 BC, over two thousand years before the Judaist 'Law' was completed] contains the passage: 'Thou art the one, the God from the very beginnings of time, the heir of immortality, self-produced and self-born; thou didst create the earth and make man'. Conversely, the Scripture produced in Judah of the Levites asked, 'Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods?' [Exodus].
The sect which attached itself to and mastered the tribe of Judah took this rising concept of one-God of all-peoples and embodied it in its Scripture only to destroy it, and to set up the creed* based on its denial. It is denied subtly, but with scorn, and as the creed is based on the theory of the master-race this denial is necessary and inevitable. A master-race, if there be one, must itself be God.
* creed [n.] Old English creda 'article or statement of Christian belief, confession of faith,' from Latin credo 'I believe'. Broadening 17c. to mean 'a statement of belief on any subject.' Meaning 'what is believed, accepted doctrine' is from 1610s.
The creed which was given force of daily law in Judah in 458 BC was then and still is unique in the world. It rested on the assertion, attributed to the tribal deity [Jehovah], that 'the Israelites' [in fact, the Judahites] were his 'chosen people' who, if they did all his 'statutes and judgments', would be set over all other peoples and be established in a 'promised land'. Out of this theory, whether by forethought or unforeseen necessity, grew the pendent theories of 'captivity' and 'destruction'. If Jehovah were to be worshipped, as he demanded, at a certain place in a specified land, all his worshippers had to live there.
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'The creed which was given force of daily law in Judah in 458 BC was then and still is unique in the world. It rested on the assertion, attributed to the tribal deity [Jehovah], that 'the Israelites' [in fact, the Judahites] were his 'chosen people' who, if they did all his 'statutes and judgments', would be set over all other peoples and be established in a 'promised land'.'
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Obviously all of them could not live there, but if they lived elsewhere, whether by constraint or their own choice, they automatically became 'captives' of 'the stranger', whom they had to 'root out', 'pull down' nd 'destroy'. Given this basic tenet of the creed, it made no difference whether the 'captors' were conquerors or friendly hosts; their ordained lot was to be destruction or enslavement.
Before they were destroyed or enslaved, they were, for a time, to be 'captors' of the Judahites, not in their own right, but because the Judahites, having failed in 'observance', deserved punishment. In this way, Jehovah revealed himself as the one-God of all-peoples: though he 'knew' only the 'chosen people', he would employ the heathen to punish them for their 'transgressions', before meting out the foreordained destruction to these heathen.*
* heathen [n.] Old English hæðen 'not Christian or Jewish,' also as a noun, 'heathen man, one of a race or nation which does not acknowledge the God of the Bible' [especially of the Danes], merged with Old Norse heiðinn [adj.] 'heathen, pagan'. Perhaps literally 'dweller on the heath, one inhabiting uncultivated land'
The Judahites had this inheritance thrust on them. It was not even theirs, for the 'covenant', according to these Scriptures, had been made between Jehovah and 'the children of Israel', and by 458 BC the Israelites, spurning the non-Israelitish Judahites, had long since been absorbed by other mankind, taking with them the vision of a universal, loving God of all men. The Israelites, from all the evidence, never knew this racial creed which was to come down through the centuries as the Jewish religion, or Judaism. It stands, for all time, as the product of Judah of the Levites.*
* levite [n.]. Member of a group of clans of religious functionaries in ancient Israel who apparently were given a special religious status, conjecturally for slaughtering idolaters of the golden calf during the time of Moses [Exodus. 32:25–29]. They thus replaced the firstborn sons of Israel who were 'dedicated to the service of the Lord' for having been preserved from death at the time of the first Passover [Exodus. 12].
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What happened before 458 BC is largely lore, legend and mythology .... Before 458 BC, for instance, there were in the main only 'oral traditions'; the documentary period begins in the two centuries leading up to 458 BC, when Judah had been disavowed by the Israelites. At this stage, when the word-of-mouth tradition became written Scripture, the perversion occurred. The surviving words of the earlier Israelites show that their tradition was a widening one of neighbourliness under a universal God. This was changed into its opposite by the itinerant priests who segregated the Judahites and established the worship of Jehovah as the god of racialism, hatred and revenge.
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'At this stage [458 BC], when the word-of-mouth tradition became written Scripture, the perversion occurred. The surviving words of the earlier Israelites show that their tradition was a widening one of neighbourliness under a universal God. This was changed into its opposite by the itinerant priests who segregated the Judahites and established the worship of Jehovah as the god of racialism, hatred and revenge.'
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The masters of Judah, the Levites, as they drew up their Law also took what they could use from the inheritance of other peoples and worked it into the stuff they were moulding. They began with the one just God of all men, whose voice had been briefly heard from the burning bush [in the oral tradition] and in the course of five books of their written Law turned him into the racial, bargaining Jehovah who promised territory, treasure, blood and power over others in return for a ritual of sacrifice, to be performed at a precise place in a specified land.
Thus they founded the permanent counter-movement to all universal religions and identified the name Judah with the doctrine of self-segregation from mankind, racial hatred, murder in the name of religion, and revenge. The perversion thus accomplished may be traced in the Old Testament, where Moses first appears as the bearer of the moral commandments and good neighbour, and ends as a racial mass-murderer, the moral commandments having been converted into their opposites between Exodus and Numbers.
In the course of this same transmutation the God who begins by commanding the people not to kill or to covet their neighbours' goods or wives, finishes by ordering a tribal massacre of a neighbouring people, only the virgins to be saved alive! Thus the achievement of the itinerant priests who mastered the tribe of Judah, so long ago, was to turn one small, captive people away from the rising idea of a God of all men, to reinstate a bloodthirsty tribal deity and racial law, and to send the followers of this creed on their way through the centuries with a destructive mission.
The theme of mass-captivity, ending in a Jehovan vengeance ['all the firstborn of Egypt'], appears when this version of history reaches the Egyptian phase, leading up to the mass-exodus and mass-conquest of the promised land. This episode was necessary if the Judahites were to be organised as a permanent disruptive force among nations and for that reason, evidently, was invented; the Judaist scholars agree that nothing resembling the narrative in Exodus actually occurred. Whether Moses even lived is in dispute. 'They tell you', said the late Rabbi Emil Hirsch, 'that Moses never lived. I acquiesce.* If they tell me that the story that came from Egypt is mythology, I shall not protest; it is mythology. They tell me that the book of Isaiah, as we have it today, is composed of writings of at least three and perhaps four different periods; I knew it before they ever told me; before they knew it, it was my conviction'.
* acquiesce [v.] 1610s, 'remain at rest' [a sense now obsolete]; 1650s as 'agree tacitly, concur,' from French acquiescer 'to yield or agree to; be at rest,' [14c.], from Latin acquiescere/adquiescere 'become quiet, remain at rest, rest, repose,' thus '"be satisfied with, be content'.
Whether Moses lived or not, he cannot have led any mass-exodus from Egypt into Canaan [Palestine]. No sharply-defined Israelitish tribes existed [says Rabbi Elmer Berger] at any time when anyone called Moses may have led some small groups out of Egyptian slavery. A most zealous Zionist historian, Dr. Josef Kastein, is equally specific about this. He will often be quoted during this narrative because his book, like this one, covers the entire span of the controversy of Zion [save for the last twenty-two years; it was published in 1933]. He says, 'Countless other Semitic and Hebrew tribes were already settled in the promised land which, Moses told his followers, was theirs by ancient right of inheritance; what matter that actual conditions in Canaan had long since effaced* this right and rendered it illusory'.
* efface [v.] 'to erase or obliterate,' especially something written or carved, late 15c., from French effacer, from Old French esfacier [12c.] 'to wipe out, destroy,' literally 'to remove the face'.
Dr. Kastein, a fervent Zionist, holds that the Law laid down in the Old Testament must be fulfilled to the letter, but does not pretend to take the version of history seriously, on which this Law is based. In this he differs from Christian polemicists* of the 'every word is true' school. He holds that the Old Testament was in fact a political programme, drafted to meet the conditions of a time, and frequently revised to meet changing conditions.
* polemicist [n.] 'one given to controversy,' 1859, an American English formation parallel to polemist [1825], from Greek polemistēs 'a warrior,' from polemizein 'to wage war, to make war,' from polemos 'war,' a word of unknown origin.
Historically, therefore, the Egyptian captivity, the slaying of 'all the firstborn of Egypt', the exodus toward and conquest of the promised land are myths. The story was invented, but the lesson, of vengeance on the heathen, was implanted in men's minds and the deep effect continues into our time.
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'Historically, therefore, the Egyptian captivity, the slaying of 'all the firstborn of Egypt', the exodus toward and conquest of the promised land are myths. The story was invented, but the lesson, of vengeance on the heathen, was implanted in men's minds and the deep effect continues into our time.'
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It was evidently invented to turn the Judahites away from the earlier tradition of the God who, from the burning bush, laid down a simple law of moral behaviour and neighbourliness; by the insertion of imaginary, allegorical incident, presented as historical truth, this tradition was converted into its opposite and the 'Law' of exclusion, hatred and vengeance established. With this as their religion and inheritance, attested by the historical narrative appended to it, a little band of human beings were sent on their way into the future.
By the time of that achievement of 458 BC, many centuries after any possible period when Moses may have lived, much had happened in Canaan [Palestine]. The nomadic Habiru, supplanting the native Canaanites by penetration, intermarriage, settlement or conquest, had thrown off a tribe called the Ben Yisrael, or Children of Israel, which had split into a number of tribes, very loosely confederated and often at war with each other. The main body of these tribes, the Israelites, held the north of Canaan. In the south, isolated and surrounded by native Canaanitish peoples, a tribe called Judah took shape. This was the tribe from which the racial creed and such words as 'Judaism', 'Jewish' and 'Jew' in the course of centuries emerged.
From the moment when it first appears as an entity this tribe of Judah has a strange look. It was always cut off, and never got on well with its neighbours. Its origins are mysterious. It seems from the beginning, with its ominous name, somehow to have been set apart, rather than to have been 'chosen'. The Levitical Scriptures include it among the tribes of Israel, and as the others mingled themselves with mankind this would leave it the last claimant to the rewards promised by Jehovah to "the chosen people". However, even this claim seems to be false, for the Jewish Encyclopaedia impartially says that Judah was 'in all likelihood a non-Israelitish tribe'.
This tribe with the curious air was the one which set out into the future saddled with the doctrine drawn up by the Levites, namely, that it was Jehovah's 'chosen people' and, when it had done 'all my statutes and judgments', would inherit a promised land and dominion over all peoples.
Among these 'statutes and judgments' as the Levites finally edited them appeared, repeatedly, the commands, 'utterly destroy', 'pull down', 'root out'. Judah was destined to produce a nation dedicated to destruction.
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'In the south, isolated and surrounded by native Canaanitish peoples, a tribe called Judah took shape. This was the tribe from which the racial creed and such words as 'Judaism', 'Jewish' and 'Jew' in the course of centuries emerged .... From the moment when it first appears as an entity this tribe of Judah has a strange look. It was always cut off, and never got on well with its neighbours. Its origins are mysterious.'
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Chapter Two
The End of Israel
About five hundred years before the event of 458 BC, or nearly three thousand years ago today, the brief and troubled association between Judah and the Israelites ['the children of Israel'] came to an end. Israel rejected the chosen people creed which was beginning to take shape in Judah and went its own way. [The adoption of the name [Israel[ by the Zionist state which was set up in Palestine in 1948 was transparent false pretence].
The events which led to the short-lived, unhappy union covered earlier centuries. The mythological or legendary period of Moses was followed by one in Canaan during which 'Israel' was the strong, cohesive and recognisable entity, the northern confederation of the ten tribes. Judah [to which the very small tribe of Benjamin attached itself] was a petty chiefdom in the south.
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'The Israelites were not Jews'
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Judah, from which today's Zionism comes down, was a tribe of ill repute. Judah sold his brother Joseph, the most beloved son of Jacob-called-Israel, to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver [as Judas, the only Judean among the disciples, much later betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver], and then founded the tribe in incest, [Genesis 37-38]. The priestly scribes who wrote this Scriptural account centuries afterwards had made themselves the masters of Judah and as they altered the oral tradition, whenever it suited them, the question prompts itself: why were they at pains to preserve, or possibly even to insert, this attribution of incestuous beginnings and a treacherous nature to the very people who, they said, were the chosen of God? The thing is mysterious, like much else in the Levitical Scriptures, and only the inner sect could supply an answer.
Anyway, those Scriptures and today's authorities agree about the separateness of 'Israel' and 'Judah'. In the Old Testament Israel is often called 'the house of Joseph', in pointed distinction from 'the house of Judah'. The Jewish Encyclopaedia says, 'Joseph and Judah typify two distinct lines of descent' and adds [as already cited] that Judah was 'in all likelihood a non-Israelitish tribe'. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that Judaism developed long after the Israelites had merged themselves with mankind, and that the true relationship of the two peoples is best expressed in the phrase, 'The Israelites were not Jews'. Historically, Judah was to survive for a little while and to bring forth Judaism, which begat Zionism. Israel was to disappear as an entity, and it all came about in this way:
The little tribe in the south, Judah, became identified with the landless tribe, that of the Levites. These hereditary priests, who claimed that their office had been bestowed on them by Jehovah on Mount Sinai, were the true fathers of Judaism. They wandered among the tribes, preaching that the war of one was the war of all, and Jehovah's war. Their aim was power and they strove for a theocracy, a state in which God is the sovereign and religion the law. During the period of the Judges they achieved their aim to some extent, for they naturally were the Judges. What they, and isolated Judah, most needed was union with Israel. Israel, which distrusted this lawgiving priesthood, would not hear of unification unless it were under a king; all the surrounding peoples had kings.
The Levites grasped this opportunity. They saw that if a king were appointed the ruling class would supply the nominee, and they were the ruling class. Samuel, at their head, set up a puppet monarchy, behind which the priesthood wielded true power; this was achieved through the stipulation that the king should reign only for life, which meant that he would not be able to found a dynasty. Samuel chose a young Benjaminite peasant, Saul, who had made some name in tribal warfare and, presumably, was thought likely to be tractable [the choice of a Benjaminite suggests that Israel would not consider any man of Judah for the kingship]. The unified kingdom of Israel then began; in truth it survived but this one reign, Saul's.
In Saul's fate [or in the account given of it in the later Scriptures] the ominous nature of Judaism, as it was to be given shape, may be discerned. He was commanded to begin the holy war by attacking the Amalekites* 'and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass'. He destroyed 'man and woman, infant and suckling', but spared King-Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, yearlings and lambs. For this he was excommunicated by Samuel, who secretly chose one David, of Judah, to be Saul's successor. Thereafter Saul vainly strove by zeal in 'utter destruction' to appease the Levites, and then by attempting David's life to save his throne. At last he killed himself.
* amalekite [n.]. Member of an ancient nomadic tribe, or collection of tribes, described in the Old Testament as relentless enemies of Israel, even though they were closely related to Ephraim, one of the 12 tribes of Israel. The district over which they ranged was south of Judah and probably extended into northern Arabia.
Possibly none of this happened; it is the account given in the Book of Samuel, which the Levites produced centuries later. Whether it is true or allegorical, the importance lies in the plain implication: Jehovah demanded literal obedience when he commanded 'utter destruction', and mercy or pity were capital offences. This lesson is driven home in many other depictments of events which were possibly historical and possibly imaginary.
This was really the end, three thousand years ago, of the united kingdom, for Israel would not accept the man of Judah, David, as king. Dr. Kastein says that 'the rest of Israel ignored him' and proclaimed Saul's son, Ishbosheth, king, whereon the re-division into Israel and Judah 'really took place'. According to Samuel, Ishbosheth was killed and his head was sent to David, who thereon restored a nominal union and made Jerusalem his capital. He never again truly united the kingdom or the tribes; he founded a dynasty which survived one more reign.
Formal Judaism holds to this day that the Messianic consummation will come about under a worldly king of 'the house of David'; and racial exclusion is the first tenet of formal Judaism [and the law of the land in the Zionist state]. The origins of the dynasty founded by David are thus of direct relevance to this narrative.
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'Formal Judaism holds to this day that the Messianic consummation will come about under a worldly king of 'the house of David'; and racial exclusion is the first tenet of formal Judaism [and the law of the land in the Zionist state]. The origins of the dynasty founded by David are thus of direct relevance to this narrative.'
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Racial discrimination and segregation were clearly unknown to the tribespeople in those days of the association between Israel and Judah, for the Old Testament says that David, the Judahite, from his roof, saw 'a very beautiful woman' bathing, commanded her to him and made her with child, and then had her husband, a Hittite, sent into the front battle-line with orders that he be killed. When he was dead David added the woman, Bathsheba, to his wives, and her second son by him became the next king, Solomon [this story of David and Bathsheba, as related in the Old Testament, was bowdlerized in a Hollywood-made moving picture of our day].
Such was the racial descent of Solomon, the last king of the riven confederacy, according to the Levitical scribes. He began his reign with three murders, including that of his brother, and vainly sought to save his dynasty by the Habsburg* method, marriage, though on grander scale. He married princesses from Egypt and many neighbouring tribes and had hundreds of lesser wives, so that in his day, too, racial segregation must have been unknown [my emphasis]. He built the temple and established a hereditary high priesthood.
* Habsburg [n.] House of Habsburg, Habsburg also spelled Hapsburg, also called house of Austria, royal German family, one of the principal sovereign dynasties of Europe from the 15th to the 20th century.
That was the story, concluded in 937 BC, of the short association between Israel and Judah. When Solomon died the incompatible associates finally split, and in the north Israel resumed its independent life. Dr Kastein says:
'The two states had no more in common, for good or evil, than any other two countries with a common frontier. From time to time they waged war against each other or made treaties, but they were entirely separate. The Israelites ceased to believe that they had a destiny apart from their neighbours and King Jeroboam made separation from Judah as complete in the religious as in the political sense'. Then, of the Judahites, Dr. Kastein adds, 'they decided that they were destined to develop as a race apart. . . they demanded an order of existence fundamentally different from that of the people about them. These were differences which allowed of no process of assimilation to others. They demanded separation, absolute differentiation.
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'they [the Judahites] decided that they were destined to develop as a race apart . . . they demanded an order of existence fundamentally different from that of the people about them [Isrealites]. These were differences which allowed of no process of assimilation to others. They demanded separation, absolute differentiation.'
- Dr. Josef Kastein
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Thus the cause of the breach and separation is made clear. Israel believed that its destiny lay with involvement in mankind, and rejected Judah on the very grounds which recurrently, in the ensuing three thousand years, caused other peoples to turn in alarm, resentment and repudiation from Judaism. Judah 'demanded separation, absolute differentiation'. [However, Dr. Kastein, though he says 'Judah', means 'the Levites'. How could even the tribespeople of Judah, at that stage, have demanded 'separation, absolute differentiation', when Solomon had had a thousand wives?].
It was the Levites, with their racial creed, that Israel rejected. The next two hundred years, during which Israel and Judah existed separately, and often in enmity, but side by side, are filled with the voices of the Hebrew 'prophets', arraigning* the Levites and the creed which they were constructing. These voices still call to mankind out of the tribal darkness which beclouds much of the Old Testament, for they scarified the creed which was in the making just as Jesus scarified it seven or eight hundred years later, when it was long established, at the Temple in Jerusalem.
* arraign [v.] late 14c., araynen, 'to call to account,' also 'to call up on a criminal charge,' from Old French araisnier 'speak to, address; accuse [in a law court],' from Vulgar Latin arrationare, from Latin adrationare.
These men were nearly all Israelites; most of them were Josephites. They were on the road to the one-God of all-peoples and to participation in mankind. They were not unique among men in this: soon the Buddha, in India, was to oppose his Sermon at Benares and his Five Commands of Uprightness to the creed of Brahma, the creator of caste-segregation, and to the worship of idols. They were in truth Israelite remonstrants against the Levitical teaching which was to become identified with the name of Judah. The name 'Hebrew prophets' is inapt ['ill-suited to the purpose or occasion'] because they made no pretence to power of divination and were angered by the description ['I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son', Amos]. They were protestants* in their time and gave simple warning of the calculable consequences of the racial creed; their warning remains valid today.
The claims of the Levite priesthood moved them to these protests, particularly the priestly c1aim to the firstborn ['That which openeth the womb is mine,' Exodus], and the priestly insistence on sacrificial rites. The Israelite expostulants [to whom this 'so-called law of Moses' was unknown, according to Mr. Montefiore] saw no virtue in the bloodying of priests, the endless sacrifice of animals and the 'burnt offerings', the 'sweet savour' of which was supposed to please Jehovah. They rebuked the priestly doctrine of slaying and enslaving 'the heathen'. God, they cried, desired moral behaviour, neighbourly conduct and justice towards the poor, the fatherless, the widow and the oppressed, not blood sacrifices and hatred of the heathen.
Then, in 721 BC, Israel was attacked and conquered by Assyria and the Israelites were carried into captivity. Judah was spared for that moment and for another century remained an insignificant vassal, first of Assyria and then of Egypt, and the stronghold of the Levitical sect.
At that point 'the children of Israel' disappear from history and if promises made to them are to be redeemed, this redemption must evidently be from among the ranks of mankind, in which they became involved and merged. Given the prevalent westward trend among the movements of peoples during the last twenty-seven hundred years, it is probable that much of their blood has gone into the European and American peoples.
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'At that point [721 BC] 'the children of Israel' disappear from history and if promises made to them are to be redeemed, this redemption must evidently be from among the ranks of mankind, in which they became involved and merged. Given the prevalent westward trend among the movements of peoples during the last twenty-seven hundred years, it is probable that much of their blood has gone into the European and American peoples.'
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The Judaist claim, on the other hand, is that Israel was totally and deservedly 'lost', because it rejected the Levitical creed and chose 'rapprochement with neighbouring peoples'. Dr. Kastein, whose words these are, nearly twenty-seven centuries later ardently rejoiced, on that very account, in their downfall: 'The ten northern tribes, with their separate development, had drifted so far from their kindred in the south that the chronicle of their fall takes the form of a brief bald statement of fact unrelieved by any expression of grief. No epic poem, no dirge, no sympathy marked the hour of their downfall'.
The student of the controversy of Zion has to plod far before he begins to unveil its mysteries, but very soon discovers that in all things it speaks with two tongues, one for 'the heathen' and one for the initiates.
The Levites of that ancient time did not, and today's Zionists do not believe that the Israelites 'vanished without leaving a trace' [as Dr. Kastein says]. They were pronounced 'dead', in the way that a Jew marrying out of the fold today is pronounced dead [for instance, Dr. John Goldstein]; they were excommunicated and only in that sense 'vanished'.
Peoples do not become extinct; the North American Indians, the Australian Blackfellows, the New Zealand Maoris, the South African Bantu and others are the proofs of that. For that matter, the Israelites could not have been 'taken away captive', had they been physically exterminated. Their blood and thought survive in mankind, somewhere, today.
Israel remained separate from Judah of its own will, and for the very reasons which ever since have aroused the mistrust and misgiving of other peoples. The Israelites 'were not Jews"; the Judahites were 'in all likelihood non-Israelitish'.
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'Israel remained separate from Judah of its own will, and for the very reasons which ever since have aroused the mistrust and misgiving of other peoples. The Israelites 'were not Jews; the Judahites were 'in all likelihood non-Israelitish'.'
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The true meaning of the assertion that Israel 'disappeared' is to be found in the later Talmud, which says: 'The ten tribes have no share in the world to come'. Thus, 'the children of Israel' are banned from heaven by the ruling sect of Judah because they refused to exclude themselves from mankind on earth.
The Chief Rabbi of the British Empire in 1918, the Very Rev. J.H. Hertz, in answer to an enquiry on this point said explicitly, 'The people known at present as Jews are descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with a certain number of descendants of the tribe of Levi'. This statement makes perfectly clear that 'Israel' had no part in what has become Judaism [no authority, Judaist or other, would support the claim made to blood-descent from Judah, for the Jews of today, but this is of little account].
Therefore the use of the name 'Israel' by the Zionist state which was created in Palestine in this century is in the nature of a forgery. Some strong reason must have dictated the use of the name of a people who were not Jews and would have none of the creed which has become Judaism. One tenable theory suggests itself. The Zionist state was set up with the connivance of the great nations of the West, which is also the area of Christendom. The calculation may have been that these peoples would be comforted in their consciences if they could be led to believe that they were fulfilling Biblical prophecy and God's promise to 'Israel', at whatever cost in the 'destruction' of innocent peoples.
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'If the Zionist state of 1948 could lay claim to any name whatever taken from far antiquity, this could only be 'Judah'.
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If that was the motive for the misuse of the name 'Israel', the expedient may for the time being have been successful; the multitude was ever easily 'persuaded'. However, truth will out in the long run, as the surviving remonstrances of the Israelite prophets show.
If the Zionist state of 1948 could lay claim to any name whatever taken from far antiquity, this could only be 'Judah', as this chapter has shown.