The U.S. & Israel: Cancers on the Planet

Let’s face it squarely: the United States and Zionist Israel function today as cancers on the body of our planet. Like malignant growths, they spread violence, exploitation, and environmental destruction far beyond their borders. If the earth is to heal, these cancers must be confronted, contained, and ultimately transformed— perhaps not in some apocalyptic purge, but healed through justice, repentance, and the dismantling of imperial systems that have long held humanity hostage.

That may sound harsh. But look at the evidence. Both nations operate as neo-colonial powers whose survival depends on domination—economic, military, and ideological. They perpetuate a global apartheid that privileges a small minority of largely white elites while oppressing and dispossessing the majority of the world’s people. Their leaders speak the language of democracy and freedom while practicing the politics of theft and genocide.

Israel has become a settler-colonial project rooted in dispossession and sustained by U.S. complicity. It violates international law with impunity, massacres civilians under the guise of “self-defense,” and treats the Palestinian people as less than human. The result is genocide—a twenty-first-century repetition of the very atrocities the world once swore “never again” to allow.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson recently observed that Israel’s behavior could easily provoke a war with Iran, a conflict that might finally expose the illegitimacy of Israel’s apartheid state. Though one might pray for peace, it is difficult not to hope for Israel’s utter defeat in its conflict with Iran. The world would be far better off if the Zionist state of Israel did not exist at all.

The same holds true for the United States—Israel’s patron and enabler. The U.S. is guilty of the same imperial arrogance. As economist Jeffrey Sachs reminds us, there is scarcely a conflict anywhere on the globe that cannot be traced back to Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, or Brussels—the old colonial capitals still trying to govern a postcolonial world. Together, they represent barely twelve percent of humanity, yet they presume to dictate the fate of the remaining eighty-eight percent.

Instead of acknowledging their centuries of plunder and offering reparations to the Global South, these powers double down on their arrogance. When formerly colonized nations begin to cooperate for mutual development through alliances such as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the West responds not with support but with sanctions, propaganda, and threats. The message is clear: independence will not be tolerated; self-determination will be punished. The Global South’s neocolonial status and resulting poverty must continue for the benefit of “the developed world.”

Consider the behavior of U.S. presidents—Republican and Democrat alike—who behave less like diplomats than emperors. Donald Trump exemplified this imperial mentality, issuing demands and threats as if the world were his personal fiefdom. He ordered the execution of alleged drug traffickers in Caribbean waters without trial or evidence. He commanded Vladimir Putin to agree to an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, as though Russia were a vassal state. He even demanded that Brazilian President Lula da Silva drop charges against Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right politician accused of attempting a coup.

This is not diplomacy; it is imperial arrogance in its purest form. As Sachs notes, such behavior stems from a toxic blend of stupidity, historical amnesia, and contempt for international law. The U.S., with only 4.2% of the world’s population, continues to imagine it has the divine right to rule the remaining 95.8%. Its military planners openly speak of “full spectrum dominance”—the ambition to control every domain of warfare, from land and sea to air, space, and cyberspace. No other nation on earth — not Russia, not China, not Iran — articulates such a strategy. It is a uniquely American pathology.

Yet history has moved on. The world of 2025 is not the world of 1945. The United States no longer holds uncontested military or economic supremacy. The unipolar moment is over, and multipolar reality has arrived. China has surpassed the U.S. economically and possesses a formidable military that no Western coalition could hope to subdue. Numerous countries now possess nuclear weapons, making large-scale invasions suicidal. Pentagon war games repeatedly reach the same conclusion: in any conventional conflict with China, the United States would lose.

Nor can the U.S. claim superiority in Europe’s proxy war against Russia. The conflict in Ukraine has revealed that the combined military might of NATO—supposedly the greatest alliance in history—cannot defeat Russia on its own borders. Despite unprecedented aid and intelligence sharing, Western powers have been humbled by a nation they long dismissed as backward and fragile. Like David against Goliath, Russia has exposed the limits of Western militarism and the hollowness of its propaganda.

Meanwhile, the rise of digital communication has shattered the West’s monopoly over information. Once, Washington and London could script the global narrative through newspapers, Hollywood, and network television. Today, social media and independent journalism allow the world’s majority to challenge those narratives in real time. The lies that once justified wars and coups are now exposed within hours. The empire’s ideological armor is cracking.

And yet, the rulers of the old order refuse to accept this new reality. They continue to act as though history has not moved on, as though the colonial empires of yesterday still command obedience. They’ve not gotten the memo that humanity has entered a new era—one in which power is shifting toward the Global South, and the earth itself demands a politics rooted in balance rather than domination.

What is at stake is nothing less than planetary survival. The cancers of imperialism and Zionism threaten not only justice but the ecological stability of the planet. Endless war, fossil-fueled militarism, and corporate greed are devouring the biosphere. The U.S. Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of oil on earth. Israel’s occupation of Palestine includes the theft of scarce water resources. Together, these systems of domination represent metastasizing tumors that drain the life force of our shared home.

But cancers, as any doctor will tell you, can be treated. The cure begins with truth-telling—with naming the disease for what it is. It continues with radical surgery: dismantling military bases, ending illegal occupations, canceling debts, and redistributing resources to repair centuries of exploitation. And finally, healing requires transformation: the emergence of a new consciousness that recognizes the oneness of humanity and the sacredness of the earth.

These are the issues voters should insist be addressed. These are the issues both Republicans and Democrats avoid.

The era of empire is ending, whether Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge it or not. The world is awakening to a different vision of civilization—one based on cooperation rather than conquest, on justice rather than greed. If the United States and Israel wish to survive, they must abandon their imperial pretensions and join the human community as equal members, not self-appointed masters.

For the good of the planet—for the sake of life itself—it’s time to stop pretending that the cancers of empire can coexist with the health of the earth. Healing requires courage, repentance, and a willingness to imagine another way of being in the world. The future belongs not to the empires of the past, but to those who choose life, solidarity, and planetary wholeness.

Good Friday: Heretical Trumpists Celebrate an Imperial Jesus

Today is Good Friday. This morning’s New York Times (NYT) correctly identified the day as “part of the holiest week in the Christian calendar.”

It also recalled President Trump’s campaign promise to “bring back Christianity.”  According to him and his first lady that means following “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.”  The pair wants this to be “one of the great Easters ever.”

The article went on to recall how Mr. Trump’s aspirations were following and expanding the lead of George W. Bush who established the first White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives in the early 2000s.

Mr. Trump’s “personal pastor,” Paula White-Cain who heads the Office affirms its ability “to weigh in on any issue it deems appropriate.” Chief among them, she said, were the desire to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” including deviation from the position that there are two sexes, male and female.  Such concerns have afforded the Faith Office “unprecedented access” for faith leaders to “officials in intelligence, domestic policy and national security.”

Accordingly, Mr. Trump has often met with pastors from states like Colorado and Pennsylvania. On returning home, those reverends have shared photos taken with the president sometimes with heads bowed in prayer, imposing hands of blessing on the president’s head, or with Mr. Trump joining them in singing hymns.

All of this led the NYT article and accompanying video to identify the White House as “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.”  In fact, one of the Christian pastors interviewed for the piece said that “he doesn’t see any rails on the limits of the faith office.”

Good Friday Perspective

As a Jesus scholar and theologian, I found all this quite ironic, false, and heretical. In my view it is reminiscent of Germany of the 1930s, when Christian pastors and Catholic bishops routinely endorsed the leader of the Third Reich, who also affirmed allegiance to the Jesus reflected in Mr. and Ms. Trump’s profession of faith.

The reality was, however, that Hitler’s Germany and the policies supported by Trump’s MAGA crowd reveal an actual hatred for Jesus mourned and celebrated this Good Friday. After all he was the son of an impoverished unwed teenage mother who was houseless at birth. He was an immigrant in Egypt. He was an unemployed construction worker. He was a harsh critic of the Jewish political and religious establishment, of the Roman Empire, and of the rich in general. He said that the future belonged to the poor, the non-violent, and those persecuted for justice sake. He ended his life as a victim of imperial torture and capital punishment.

Conclusion

So, if there are no rails, no limits, on Mr. Trump’s faith office how about lowering them for pastors like Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde?  (Remember how she infuriated Donald Trump and JD Vance at Trump’s inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. She did so merely by pleading with Mr. Trump to “have mercy” on LGBTQ people and immigrants targeted by his policies.)   

If there are no rails, how about lowering them for rabbis, ministers, priests, and faithful demanding that Mr. Trump stop the Hitlerian genocide he’s committing in Zionist Israel?

If there are no rails, how about implementing policies that recognize and honor Jesus in the children of poor unwed teenage mothers, in the houseless, in immigrants, in the working class, in opponents of the rich and powerful, in those protesting the hypocrisy of Jewish Zionists, in U.S.-supported torture facilities, and on death row.

Only changes like those can convince followers of the historical Jesus that the White House is “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” Only changes like those can make this “one of the great Easters ever.”

So Far, The World Is Better Off with Trump!

I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.

There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company.  I can’t even say so in my own family.

So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.

I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them.  Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.

Trump’s Not Senile

I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.

How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!

Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.

As such, his defining issues became:

  • Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
  • His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
  • Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
  • Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.

Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.   

Trump Talks Russian

In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.

Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.

In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.

Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.”  Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.

Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.

Ceasefire in Gaza

So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.

The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:

  • Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
  • The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
  • The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
  • The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
  • The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
  • The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.

None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.

To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.

Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.

Dismantling the CIA

And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.

But ask Julian Assange. Ask Chelsea Manning. Ask Edward Snowden. It’s not a joke.

Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.

Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.

That makes all of us better off.

Conclusion Bringing Us All Together

Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?

In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”

The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.

On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.

Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.

Normalizing Genocide

[Sorry for not publishing lately. I recently spent 4 days in the hospital dealing with some ill-effects from my recent knee replacement surgery. And while the new knee is doing great, I still find myself very tired from an unexpected infection and early sepsis.]

__________

You know, it might be my recent illness. But these days I can’t listen to the news without sobbing. Really.

Just the terms genocide, Raffa, Zionists, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), settler colonialism, apartheid, 2000-pound bombs (supplied using my tax dollars), and unrestricted infanticide are enough to make me cry.

And let’s be clear. This is not a war. It’s a genocide. And our president Genocide Joe Biden is at the heart of it along with that butcher, Bibi Netanyahu.

No, it’s not a war. The only army with its air force, tanks, and sophisticated weapons (including a nuclear arsenal) is the IOF. Hamas is a rag tag group of Palestinian freedom fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and protected by an elaborate tunnel system that Zionist butchers find impossible to penetrate.

And their completely justified resistance did not begin on October 7th. It was a response to nearly 100 years of slaughter and mayhem at the bloody hands of Israeli Neo-Nazis.

I keep imagining my grandchildren and their mothers suffering the way little Gazans are. Can you imagine watching them undergo amputations without benefit of anesthesia?  The Zionists evidently love it. They’re sadists.

Yes, they’re committing war crimes before our very eyes – using food and water as weapons, bombing hospitals and schools, administering collective punishment, executing hospital patients with their hands tied behind their backs, beheading some, and machine-gunning starving Palestinians waiting in line for food. When is all this going to stop?

Can you imagine the outcry if Russia performed such atrocities in Ukraine? We’d never hear the end of it. I mean the ICC without a moment’s hesitation issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for removing children from a war zone. Nothing of the sort for Netanyahu, much less for Genocide Joe. They both deserve to be hung the way Nazis were for the genocide they committed in those prison camps that were the precursors of Gaza, “the world’s largest open-air prison” – itself a concentration camp.

Thank God for student protestors at Colombia, Princeton, at the New School, and elsewhere. Shame on the administrators of those institutions for calling in the police to harass and arrest peaceful demonstrators. Such a disgrace to “higher education.”

And then there’s the Mainstream Media (MSM) normalizing it all. This morning’s New York Times published a lead article entitled “The Debate over Rafah.” In it they completely normalized genocide, presenting the dilemma facing Butcher Bibi and Genocide Joe. Here, they said, are the arguments on both sides of the question! There are good reasons for Israel to invade, and equally valid reasons not to. That is: there are good reasons for genocide and equally good reasons against.

Every word written in that vein should make anyone sick. We should all be in tears.

My Homilist’s Writer’s Block in the Face of Genocide

This is the 5th Sunday of Lent. I’ve read the liturgical selections as found on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website. Anticipating Easter in just two weeks, the first reading is about Ezekiel’s 6th century BCE promise of resurrection to a Jewish people in their Babylonian Exile. The day’s selection from the Gospel of John describes Jesus’ raising of his friend Lazarus from his moldering grave.

In in the face of what the odious Benjamin Netanyahu doing in Gaza (with 95% support from his constituents) it all nearly turns my stomach. It has shut down my ability (and desire) to write anything sympathetic to any tradition about “God’s People” returning home.

Think of the ironies contained in today’s readings!

In the selection from Ezekiel, the prophet writes about the sixth century BCE Babylonian Exile. Exile, he laments, has meant death for his people.

So, to encourage them, he writes of a future when graves will be opened, where the dead will rise, and return to Israel, their home. More than that, the prophet promises that the returnees will embody God’s own Holy Spirit.

Then the liturgical response drawn from Psalm 130 acknowledges God as the liberator of the oppressed. It sings of a God whose mercy responds to the prayers of captives by expressing forgiveness and kindness.

Who among us can read such sentiments without throwing up?

I mean, the Zionist Jews with their people’s lamentable history of exiles and occupations by foreigners and with their experience of pogroms, and Holocaust at the hands of Christians have suddenly been revealed as the monsters they’ve always been. Absolute monsters!

Yes, it’s true: the Jewish people have more than once risen from the dead and returned “home” just as Ezekiel promised. But this time since 1948 and especially since October 7th, 2023, contemporary Zionists have completely assumed the identity of their oppressors. They’ve become Nazis! Yes, Nazis!

And the hell of is: so have we Americans. With “Genocide Joe” Biden leading the way, virtually all the U.S. senators and members of Congress have enthusiastically supported Israel’s ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, infanticide, femicide, and starvation tactics. They (and we who fail to protest) are just as guilty of genocide as the Nazi apartheid Zionists.

And in the face of it all, where in the collective west are Christian voices united in protest and calling genocide what it is? Why is Pope Francis not unambiguously joining Jesus portrayed in today’s Gospel selection as railing against death and promising resurrection? Why are he and other Christian leaders not publicly weeping before the mountains of dead bodies who (unlike Jesus’ friend) can’t even claim the dignity of proper burial?

It’s all too much for me.

And so, I’m sorry. In the face of the Zionists’ current genocide against Palestine’s indigenous people, in the face of the apartheid Jews’ utter arrogance and cruelty, I find it impossible to write anything sympathetic to their religious tradition. I find it impossible to comment on “God’s word” that has been invoked so cynically to justify the sadistic slaughter of far more than 31,200 innocents, more than half of them children and their mothers.

My stomach is sickened. I can think of almost nothing else. My heart is broken. My faith is challenged. I can write no more.

Black Liberation Theology & Zionist Genocide of Gazans

Black History Month has me rereading the late James Cone’s seminal work, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Cone, of course, is the father of black liberation theology. I’m finding his work especially relevant to the ongoing genocide of Gazans at the hands of white supremacist Zionist Jews.

A central theme of Cone’s writing, public lectures, and teaching focuses on the difference between white versions of Christianity and their black counterpart. He puts that difference succinctly by alleging that whites have used the Bible to oppress blacks and others, while the latter have used that same Bible as a powerful tool to resist that oppression.

The ongoing slaughter in Gaza coupled with the statements of genocidal intent expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have led me to conclude that something similar might be said of Zionists both in Israel and in the U.S. Recently they have used the Bible to ground their genocide of Palestinian children and their mothers. Meanwhile, Islamic Gazans use the Bible along with their Holy Koran to justify their (sometimes violent) resistance.

Who’s right? And what does Cone – what does liberation theology – say about such controversy?

Let’s see.

Consider first how Zionists are using the Bible. Next think about the approach of theologians like James Cone, and how the contrast between the two approaches applies to the Hamas attack of October 7th and Israel’s genocidal response in Gaza. Finally compare the oppressive violence that Zionists have used against Gazans with the violence of Hamas against their overlords. Theologians like Cone as well as his heroes Malcolm X and Martin King find the latter more justifiable than the former.   

Zionist Use of the Bible  

Consider the Zionists’ use of the Bible first.

Early on, Mr. Netanyahu invoked the biblical account of their ancient leaders claiming divine authority to carry out genocide against Israel’s archenemy, the Amalekites (I Samuel 15:1-9). The Gazans are the contemporary equivalent of Israel’s ancient foe, he said. They deserve the same fate of absolute obliteration – i.e. genocide.  

The Prime Minister’s words were turned into a war anthem adopted by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Force). They shocked the world in a video showing them singing and dancing to the words of that anthem calling for the slaughter of Gazans, today’s Amalekites.

Both Netanyahu’s words and the video of the soldiers’ rally were used recently by South African prosecutors in their presentations before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). There the prosecutors alleged that both Netanyahu’s words and the soldiers’ behavior provided convincing evidence of Israel’s intentional violations of the Genocide Convention.

On the one hand, the presentation of such evidence led the ICJ to conclude that the South African charges merit further court deliberation about Israel’s possible conviction for military actions that provide prima facie evidence of being genocidal.

On the other hand, the evidence in question (Netanyahu’s words and the IOC anthem) offers proof positive that (according to Cone’s allegations) white colonial Europeans continue to use the Bible to justify horrendous oppression of their victims.

But what about the Gazans and their use of the Bible? What does liberation theology say about that?

Liberation Theologians & The Bible

For liberation theologians like James Cone, all human beings are loved by the biblical God about whose nature there is evident difference of opinion and controversy throughout sacred scripture. That is, the Bible contains many contradictory understandings of God. In effect, it presents readers with a “battle of the gods.”

For instance, some texts present him (sic) as petty and jealous. Still other texts show him as the national God of the Jews. In that capacity, he is often a God of war like the one demanding the slaughter of the Amalekites.

The Hebrew prophetic tradition presents a very different God. He’s one who in today’s Zionist parlance might be accused of anti-Semitism. That’s because he is often highly critical and fiercely condemnatory of Israel. He frequently punishes them. On at least two occasions he allows their enemies to cart them off for generations-long exiles in Assyria (722-652) and Babylon (586-516).

Again, the prophetic tradition seconds the divine “anti-Semitic” tradition just mentioned. It’s that tradition in which Jesus appears. The Gospel narratives about him along with his preaching and parables sometimes even centralize Jewish enemies (such as “The Good Samaritan”) as heroes while condemning Jewish priests, scribes, Pharisees, and kings. With that in mind, contemporary Zionists would no doubt characterize Jesus as a “self-hating Jew.”

For Jesus, ethnic identity even became entirely immaterial. One thing alone is important, for him, love of God and love of neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40). Connections to Abraham, Jesus says, are no more significant than connections to a stone (Matthew 3: 9-10).

In fact, for the prophets in general (and for liberation theologians like James Cone), what is overwhelmingly central to morality is treatment of widows, orphans, and resident aliens. The prophets constantly remind their fellow religionists that all of them were once slaves in Egypt. They should never forget that. Accordingly, favorable treatment of slaves, aliens, widows, and orphans is the very touchstone of Israel’s identity. In fact, the prophet Jesus makes treatment of “the least of the brethren” the sole criterion of judgment about the final worth of one’s life (Matthew 25: 31-46).

Liberation theologians summarize all of this by asserting that God has made a “preferential option for the poor.” That is, when push comes to shove, and while God loves everyone, the Divine One sides with the poor and oppressed in their struggles against the rich and powerful.

For followers of the Jewish Jesus, that divine preference is evident in the fact that he chose to fully reveal himself not as a king, prince, or rich person, but in the poorest of the poor.  He surfaced in the working class as a construction worker from the nowheresville called Nazareth. He was conceived by an unwed teenage mother. In his youth, he lived as an immigrant in Egypt (Matthew 2: 13-15). He was accused of being a drunkard and a friend of prostitutes (Matthew 11:19). His family thought he was insane (Mark 3:21). He finished disgraced and a victim of torture and capital punishment.

And very significantly for James Cone, forensic archeologists point out that Jesus was probably black and unimposing. He was probably about 5’1” in height and weighed just over 100 pounds. Probably, they say, looked like the figure (below) on the left, not the familiar one on the right. To repeat, it is quite probable that Jesus was literally black. Cone affirms that he was at least figuratively or poetically black. He came from and sided with the poor and oppressed.

Liberation Theology & Violence

Furthermore, it isn’t all that clear that Jesus was a pacifist and non-violent. For instance, all Gospel lists of his apostles identify one of them as “Simon the Zealot.” “Zealot” was the name of patriots in Jesus’ Palestine who resisted Roman occupation by killing Jewish collaborators with Roman occupation. How could “Jesus meek and mild” have associated himself with murderers like that?

On top of that, all four Gospel traditions record that at least one of Jesus’ closest disciples was armed when Jesus was arrested (John 18:10-11). Jesus must have known that. Moreover, the friend in question knew how to use his weapon; he swung it at one of those who came to arrest Jesus and cut off the man’s ear.

Elsewhere, Jesus is remembered as saying, “Don’t think that I have come to bring peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10: 34-36). In another place, he says “Let the man who has no sword, sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36). And finally, as I said, Jesus was evidently perceived by the Romans as a revolutionary. In any case, they executed him by crucifixion, the means of capital punishment they reserved for violent insurrectionists. He was crucified between two other insurrectionists (not “thieves”}. Jesus must have done something(s) that gave the occupiers the impression that he was in insurrectionist too.

And that brings us back to Gaza, Hamas, and its use of violence on October 7, 2023. Would the revolutionary Jesus have supported such mayhem?

Here’s where distinctions made by liberation theologians {and by James Cone’s primary black hero, Malcolm X} come in. Malcolm was all for peace – but not in response to the oppressor’s aggression. “If someone hits you in the face,” Malcolm would say, “hit him back.” Black people have the right to defend themselves, he was fond of saying, “by any means necessary.”

Liberation theologians like Cone agree. And they go further. They teach that all forms of violence are not the same. At least one form is justifiable; others are not. So, before one can determine possible justification, one must identify its type. Four of them must be considered in any given analysis. Consider them in the context of Israel’s war against Gaza.

  1. The first type of violence is structural and is indefensible. It takes the form of elements such as laws and customs, restrictions, and prohibitions that adversely affect a given population such as inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. European colonialists’ gift of Palestine to white European Jews in 1948 was violent. It resulted in the forced displacement of Palestinians by the hundreds of thousands. Their houses were stolen or destroyed by the Jewish invaders from Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and even from the United States. Palestinians who resisted were often simply murdered by the invaders. Moreover, apartheid laws later imposed on Palestinians by Israel’s settler colonists are also violent. Most of the world hasn’t even recognized this structural form of violence as the “original sin” it represents. However, liberation theologians like James Cone do. This form of violence by the powerful against the powerless is never acceptable.
  2. The second type of violence is the truly justifiable violence of self-defense. This is what Malcolm referred to when he spoke of hitting back. It’s a form of violence that the UN recognizes as legitimate in Article 51 of its Charter. Accordingly, people living under occupation have the right to defend themselves against occupying forces. The latter, however, have no right to self-defense. They are robbers, thieves, and murderers. These are the convictions behind the Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2003. Liberation theologians like James Cone agree. This second form of violence is legitimate. However, its adoption is rarely wise. It can be suicidal because it leads to a third type of violence which is always overwhelming.
  3. The third type of violence is reactionary. It is the overwhelming police and military response of those imposing the first type of violence. This third type is on display at this very moment in Gaza. There cowardly Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 27,000 Gazans – more than half of them children and their mothers – in response to Hamas’ employment of the second type of violence. In this case, the response is so overwhelming that according to the ICJ, it provides prima facie evidence of genocide. Obviously, this type of violence cannot be truly justified since it represents restoration of the “order” imposed by violence’s first level. Nonetheless, in most cases such police and military violence is accepted by most as somehow normal.
  4. The fourth type of violence is terroristic. Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. Nation states such as Israel and the United States routinely define uprisings against their illegal occupations as “terrorism.” According to them, Hamas is terrorist while Israel and the United States stand for law and order. However, theologians like James Cone maintain that the world’s principal terrorists are states like those just mentioned. They are the ones who impose structural violence and respond with reactionary violence. Their routine murders of those defending their families, homes, and cultures against colonialism’s “legal” crimes are the primary forms of terrorism afflicting our world. By comparison, the violence of groups like Hamas (or even the perpetrators of 9/11) is minor. In other words, though terrorism is never justified, its main perpetrators are those who impose the colonialism of white supremacy in all its forms, not those who resist them.

Conclusion

Yes, the Bible’s Battle of the Gods continues to our day. All of us are involved whether we’re believers or not. But believers especially are called to make up their minds about the nature of the God they believe in and about the nature of the violence they find themselves supporting.

All of this means critical evaluation of Netanyahu’s attempts to biblically justify Zionists’ ongoing genocidal attacks in Gaza and the West Bank. Liberation theologians like James Cone contend that the Prime Minister’s invocation of a genocidal God is a typically white supremacist interpretation. As such it runs completely contrary to Israel’s prophetic tradition and its concerns for the impoverished, widows, and orphans. It runs completely contrary to the words of the Jewish prophet from Nazareth, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.”

One thing we do know, in the biblical portrayal of its battle of the Gods, the God of the Jewish prophets and the Jewish Jesus is emphatically not the god of I Samuel 15:1-9.

Instead, the divine one is the God of the construction worker from Nazareth, living in a country occupied by invading Europeans, and who gave the invaders reason to believe he supported the Resistance the Romans feared and hated.

In fact, the white European occupiers hated the second level of violence so much that in the year 70 CE, they acted just like Netanyahu and his genocidal army. They reduced Jerusalem and its environs to the same condition we see in Gaza today.

Following Zionist Logic, Hamas Has the Moral Right to Commit Genocide against Israel

This past week, the world held its breath as South Africa’s top legal team pressed its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The lawyers argued that the state of Israel is guilty of genocide by prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.

On Thursday, the South Africans made their case in exquisite detail. It cited chapter and verse proving, the lawyers said, that Israel not only committed acts of genocide, but that according to its leaders’ own admissions, Israel did so with full genocidal intent. 

On Friday the Israeli defense team gave their reply. It basically held that all of Israel’s actions including the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians (at least half of them children and women) are justified by the Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2023.

Final resolution of the case may take months or even years. Now however, we await the court’s preliminary directives.

Whatever those judgments and injunctions might be, the very fact that the world was forced to listen to the South African case against Israel represented a victory for the Palestinians and an education for the world at large – especially for the United States. That’s because the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) has largely excluded the Palestinian viewpoint from public awareness. In fact, to give sympathetic voice to the Palestinian perspective has been all but criminalized here.

Accordingly, since October 7th, Americans have been subjected to nonstop Israeli propaganda that presents the conflict in Gaza as though it began on October 7th — as though it was initiated without provocation by blood thirsty terrorists driven by irrational anti-Semitism.

So understood, that scenario gives to Israel the right to overlook international law and to follow a “morality” of revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. It is a “morality” completely supported by the United States.

 The argument here is that such morality can have only highly disastrous effects.

To show what I mean, allow me to (1) summarize the case so eloquently argued by the South African legal team, (2) lay out Israel’s exceptionalist morality, (3) put the entire case in historical perspective, (4) apply Israel’s logic to that case, and (5) conclude with specific recommendations about legal responses to Israel’s policies.

South Africa’s Case

The case of the South African legal team was argued convincingly. It was founded on international law. The argument implied and/or specifically held that:           

  • Illegal occupiers enjoy no right to self-defense.
  • Neither does any regime practicing apartheid. Apartheid is a war crime.
  • On the contrary, it is the illegally occupied who have the right of self-defense against their occupiers and any system of apartheid. That right includes taking up arms against the perpetrators in question.
  • No provocation, no matter how egregious justifies direct attacks on civilians.
  • In all cases, any response to terroristic attacks must observe the principle of proportionality. That is, Article 51 Section 6 of the UN Charter states that revenge attacks against civilian populations are strictly forbidden.
  • So are forced relocations of entire populations, deprivation of food and water to civilian populations, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, schools, refugee camps, places of worship, and members of the press.

By ignoring such legal restrictions, the South African lawyers argued, Israel is guilty of genocide defined in law as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The lawyers bolstered their case with statements from Zionists all the way from soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to the country’s prime minister declaring their genocidal intentions.

Israel’s Syllogism of Genocide

In reply to the accusations just cited, Israeli lawyers laid out their case arguing that Israel’s right to self-defense justified all the actions listed by the South African barristers. The Israeli case and exceptionalist “morality” implies the quasi-syllogism immediately below:

  1. Following unprovoked violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.  

a) More specifically, it exempts the offended from all legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.

2. But on October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist organization called Hamas violently attacked Israeli civilians near the Gaza border resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 Israelis (including many civilians) with over 2500 wounded.

3. Hence, according to the above-stated moral principle, Israel’s right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all other moral principles and international law. It exempts Israel from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

Such moral reasoning apparently makes sense to the political leaders of Israel and to most Israeli citizens. It also has been embraced by the political class of the United States, by its mainstream media (MSM), and by many U.S. citizens. For them, Israel’s right to self-defense reduces any talk of genocide (and of ceasefire) to anti-Semitism.

Arguably, this is because the relevant reasoning processes of those just mentioned begin on October 7th, 2023. Hamas struck first, they argue. It is therefore responsible for the violence now directed against it. Hamas has only itself to blame.

Historical Perspective

However, following Israeli logic, the situation changes, if the one’s thinking begins not on October 7th, 2023, but more than 100 years ago. That’s when European Jews supported by Great Britain committed what Pakistan’s UN envoy Munir Akram called the “original sin” in Palestine.

It was in 1917 that Great Britain exercising illegal imperial power issued its infamous Balfour Declaration. Without moral right and absent consultation of the indigenous of Palestine, the decree created a national home for Jewish Europeans from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and other countries where they had a long history subjected to anti-Semitic pogroms and persecutions.

Of course, the indigenous of Palestine experienced the arrival of European settler colonists with the same sort of resentment and sporadic resistance that Native Americans experienced when white conquerors from Europe arrived on the shores of Abya Yala. The latter came with their religious prejudices too, every bit as strong as those of Zionist fundamentalists. Like the latter (as recalled by Enrique Dussel in his Invention of the Americas) the settler colonialists from Europe considered the indigenous “human animals.” As sub-humans, they automatically forfeited their resources to the civilized new arrivals with their “holy Catholic faith.” It granted them rights to the “new world” ratified by the pope himself, the very representative of God on earth.

Palestinian resentment and resistance were compounded in 1948, when following the horrors of Hitler’s Holocaust, European Jews flooded Palestine. The settler colonists destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages, stole the homes of their inhabitants, committed more than 70 massacres, and killed more than 15,000 Palestinians in the process.

It’s no wonder that the Palestinians remember the sequence of events as The Nakba (the Catastrophe). It’s also no wonder that Palestinians aided by key elements of the Arab world fought two wars of resistance in 1967 and 1973 as well as implementing two major campaigns of largely peaceful resistance (Intifadas) against the settler colonists from 1987-1993 and from 2000-2005.

To all this, Israel responded with overwhelming violence taking thousands of Palestinian lives. The most recent non-violent campaign, the Palestinian’s “Great March of Return” in 2018 saw 214 protestors (including 46 children) killed by Israeli sniper fire. More than 36,100 (including almost 9000 children) were also wounded. Virtually none of this received due attention in the U.S. MSM.    

Noam Chomsky summarizes the atrocities just described using the Israeli phrase “mowing the lawn.” That refers to the Israeli practice (at least since 2005) of periodically invading, bombing, and imprisoning (often without charge) thousands of Palestinian civilians. Chomsky enumerates the steps as follows:

  1. A truce accord between Israel and Hamas is established.
  2. Hamas lives up to it.
  3. Israel violates it.
  4. Israel escalates the violation.
  5. This elicits a Hamas response.
  6. The reaction provides a pretext for what Israel calls “mowing the lawn” – i.e. one of its major periodic attacks on Palestinians.
  7. Then comes the western propaganda: “Poor Israel is attacked by rockets. What can it do? They must defend themselves.”

If Hamas Followed Israel’s Moral Logic 

Keeping in mind the history just recounted as well as Israel’s “moral” logic about self-defense and dispensation from observing international law and prohibitions against revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and even genocide, Hamas was perfectly within its rights to perpetrate its acts of violence on October 7th. In fact, those acts compared to Israel’s can be characterized as restrained and moderate.

In any case, following Israel’s logic, here’s how Hamas’ quasi-syllogism might run:

  1. Following violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law. 

a) More specifically, it exempts the offended from all legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.

2. But for the past 100 years and more, Israel has violently attacked Palestinians resulting in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians with many other thousands wounded and maimed.

a) Hence, according to Israeli “moral principles,” Hamas’ right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.

b) More specifically, it exempts Hamas from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

3. And so, Hamas can claim the moral right to ethnically cleanse Israel of its entire population and to commit acts of genocide against it.   

Conclusion

Of course, the point here is not to argue for the genocide of anyone. It is only to underline the absurdity and danger of Israel’s (and the United States’) blatant disregard of international law and common-sense morality.  

It is also to make the point that Israel’s logic cuts both ways. If its attacks on Gazans are justified by Palestinian atrocities, Palestinian attacks on Israel are even more justifiable. That is, it might be argued that the Palestinians as victims of Israel’s “original sin” and repeated atrocities over the last 100 years have much more right to revenge than their colonial occupiers.

In any case, if Israel and its U.S. enablers are found guilty of genocide by the ICJ, the country’s leadership, and its weapons suppliers (including the U.S. President and Secretary of State) should be placed under arrest.

So should those identified as responsible for the planning and execution of Israel’s particularly egregious war crimes. All should be tried following the example of the post-World War II trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Those convicted should be executed or given lengthy prison sentences as were the German war criminals found guilty during the Tribunal held from 1945-1948.

Imperialism, Israel, Hamas, and “Life of Brian”

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, our family watched together one of our favorite films, “Life of Brian.”

It’s the comic story of Brian Cohen, a Jewish man born on the same night as Jesus of Nazareth in an adjoining stable. Like the historical Jesus (described for instance in books like Reza Aslan’s Zealot), Brian becomes part of a political resistance movement intent on expelling Roman occupiers from the Jewish homeland.

Setting comedy aside, what struck me this time while watching the film were its undeniable and highly ironic echoes of the current struggle in Palestine between Jewish colonial settlers there and resistance movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Fatah. That’s because the movie successfully portrays the overbearing nature of Roman imperialism itself, the consequent resistance of Israel’s people, and the power of Rome’s “divide and rule” tactics bolstered by highly effective imperial propaganda.

I find the same techniques employed today in Israel’s struggle with Hamas. Like the Romans in the first century, the settler-colonial regime in Israel seeks to impose its will on indigenous Palestinians by overwhelming force of arms. The Zionists employ imperialism’s traditional “divide and rule” strategy. They also disseminate powerful propaganda that to this day convinces many of the benign nature of colonial robbery and oppression.

Let me show you what I mean.

The Life of Brian 

As already indicated, “Life of Brian” portrays a biography that parallels in many ways the life of the prophet, Jesus of Nazareth. Both along with thousands of other Jewish insurgents suffered crucifixion under Rome’s cruel imperialism. (Remember, crucifixion was a form of capital punishment reserved for insurgents, revolutionaries, and related “terrorists.”)

Despite that threat, Brian decides to join one of the many Jewish resistance movements that characterized early first century Israel. Young and naïve, he seems unsure of his exact motivation. But it’s somehow connected with trying to impress a girl in the movement called Judith.

Because of his “success” in covering Jerusalem’s walls with anti-Roman graffiti, Brian soon finds himself gradually moving up in the ranks of The Jewish Resistance Front. He also becomes associated with resistance preachers who, like Jesus, find anti-Roman inspiration in Judaism’s religious traditions. People gradually come to regard him as a prophet.  

Somewhat reluctantly fulfilling that role and after many narrow escapes from the pursuing Roman occupiers, Brian is finally arrested. In the end, he’s crucified like Jesus who, of course, found himself identified as a prophet as well.

Divide and Rule

In terms of understanding Roman and today’s Zionist imperialism, “Life of Brian” places high emphasis on Rome’s infamous tactics of “divide and rule.” This means setting resistance groups against one another, so that they end up identifying comrades in arms as enemies rather than their real oppressors, the foreign occupiers themselves. To the bemusement of the Roman occupiers, “The Jewish Resistance Front” finds itself at odds with “The People’s Front of Judea,” “The Front for Jewish Resistance,” and with “Jews against Roman Occupation.”

The effectiveness of “divide and rule” is portrayed in a key scene in “Life of Brian” where members of two opposition movements meet on their way to a kidnapping (a traditional resistance tactic employed even today by Hamas). In any case, the two groups end up fighting each other over whose idea it was to employ the tactic. Meanwhile the Roman military observes the encounter from afar– as if they were unaware of Rome’s deliberate complicity in sowing discord among resistance movements.

Similarly, “Life of Brian” portrays the complete effectiveness of propaganda both in our contemporary world and even among those suffering directly under foreign occupation. In the contemporary world, our schools portray Rome as somehow benign and beneficial to the occupied. In doing so, our teachers forget the telling words of the Briton insurgent, Calgacus (as recorded by Tacitus). Calgacus reportedly said “ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.” (They create a desert and call it peace.) The Romans were brutal.

According to “Life of Brian,” that propaganda’s effectiveness was accepted even by those directly experiencing the brutality. In one memorable scene, a resistance leader gives a speech whose central question asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

In response the leader’s audience end up listing one after another, benefits such as sanitation, the aqueducts, education, safe streets, wine, and peace. In so doing, they put the leader to shame. He must admit such benefits of the Roman Empire.

Forgotten in all of this is that the benefits listed overwhelmingly belonged to the imperial center, Rome itself, and typically not to remote and “backward” provinces. The Romans weren’t interested in educating Jewish provincials. Any roads they built were meant to ensure quick passage by Roman Legions responding to outbreaks of Jewish rebellion.

Above all, Jews could hardly consider streets patrolled by Roman occupiers as somehow “safe.” Nor could they consider their occupiers as bringers of peace. Again, the Romans had no respect for Jewish life. Recall that in the end (70 CE) the Romans absolutely wiped Jerusalem and its temple off the map. They killed more than a million Jews and enslaved 97,000 more. Safe streets for Jews was not high on their list of priorities. What the Romans called peace was the tranquility of the graveyard.   

Imperialism in Contemporary Israel

Figures like the ones just cited remind one of the brutalities of today’s Zionist occupiers of Palestinian territory. In a few short weeks since October 7, 2023, the settler-colonialists have slaughtered more than 14,000 Palestinians – half of them children, women, and the elderly.

At the same time, forgotten in all of this is the history of Israel’s “creation” of Hamas as a force against other Palestinian resistance movements such as Hezbollah and al Fatah. Yes, by all accounts, Hamas is a Zionist product. It represents their implementation of Rome’s infamous “divide and rule” strategy.

Similarly, Zionist propaganda has persuaded many beyond Palestine of the following absurdities, viz., that:

  • Zionists illegally occupying Palestinian territories have the right to self-defense. As illegal occupiers, they do not.
  • Meanwhile, those illegally occupied do not have the right to self-defense. UN Charter Article 51 says they do.
  • We should unquestioningly believe Zionist accounts of Hamas’ attacks on Jewish settlements on October 7th, 2023, even if the only sources of those accounts are Israeli officials who have repeatedly lied to us before.
  • The alleged brutalities of Hamas attacks nullify the application of international law forbidding population transfer, collective punishment, the bombing of hospitals, schools, and United Nations facilities.
  • Cutting off food, water, and electricity are legitimate military tactics.
  • All Palestinians (including babies and children) are somehow legitimate targets of Zionist bombs and artillery fire.

Conclusion

After watching Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” the conclusion I’ve reached is that imperialism is imperialism. On the one hand, it is a system of robbery intended to transfer resources from resource-rich provinces to a resource-poor imperial centers such as Rome. As such, imperialism has no humanitarian intent.

On the other hand, imperialism (like Zionists in Palestine) establishes location in an area rich in resources (like the Middle East floating on its ocean of oil). In the latter case, the purpose is to protect the resource in question from control by those to whom the resource belongs (viz., the Arab nations).

The imperial tactics that ensure such resource transfer and control are those depicted in “Life of Brian.” They involve setting resistance movements against one another and spreading propaganda that has the rest of us (and even some of the colonized) believing that the oppressors are world benefactors, and that their indigenous opponents are somehow terrorists.

As I see it, “Life of Brian” should awaken viewers to such absurdities.

Simply put, empire is empire. Robbery is robbery. Propaganda is propaganda.

The film warns us: open your eyes; identify your real enemies; don’t believe the lies.

Truth-Telling Is Not Anti-Semitism or Holocaust Denial: A Personal Reflection

This is a follow-up to and revision of my last posting about a Zoom call that recently caused a stir on OpEdNews

Rob Kall, the editor in chief of OpEdNews (OEN) recently published a provocative edition of a weekly Zoom call among editors and contributors to his website. It was provocative because the remarks of one of the participants about fascism and the Great Holocaust caused several Jewish attendees to take offense and vehemently accuse him of holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

Basically, the offending remarks identified Germany’s wealthy Jewish 1% as providing Hitler’s fascism with pretext for his genocide of the other 99%.  (I’ve summarized what was actually said here.) The discussion that ensued led Rob to wisely recommend caution in approaching such sensitive topics.

Rob’s recommendation reminded me of a sobering experience I had years ago in Mexico. It put me in the position of the OEN provocateur. It also caused me to reflect on the role of self-criticism that is part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian tradition and of critical thinking in general.

My Report from Israel

The experience I’m referring to came when I was invited to give a “Report from Israel” after a three-week study tour of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt sponsored by Berea College, where I taught in the Philosophy and Religion Department for 40 years. The invitation came from the Unitarian Universalist (U.U.) congregation of San Miguel de Allende.

My report was heavily influenced not only by our time spent in the Palestinian community, but by a separate visit my wife, Peggy, and I made to the Sabeel Ecumenical Center for liberation theology in Jerusalem. Scholars there connected the Palestinians’ situation with colonialism. They pointed out that ever-expanding Jewish settlements stood in blatant contravention of UN Resolution 242. It was a continuation of the European colonial system that had supposedly been abolished following World War II. In Israel-Palestine, Jewish occupation represented the familiar European settler pattern repeated throughout the former colonies. It had (Zionist) settlers from Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and elsewhere arriving unexpectedly in lands belonging for millennia to poor unsuspecting Palestinian peasants, and then confiscating their homes, fields and resources.

With all of that fresh on my mind, the thesis of my U.U. presentation was clear and unambiguous. “The real terrorists in Israel,” I said, “are the Zionists who run the country.” I didn’t consider my basically historical argument particularly original or shocking. The Sabeel Center and Noam Chomsky had been making it for years.

What I didn’t realize was that almost everyone in my audience was Jewish. (I didn’t even know about San Miguel’s large Jewish population – mostly “snowbirds” from New York City.) Nonetheless, my remarks that Sunday stimulated an engrossing extended discussion. Everyone was respectful, and the enthusiastic conversation even spilled over beyond the allotted time.

The trouble started after the head of San Miguel’s Center for Global Justice (CGJ) where Peggy and I were working at the time invited me to publish my talk as an article in San Miguel’s weekly English newspaper, Atención.

I’ll never forget what followed; it was very similar to what occurred during Rob’s OEN Zoom call. All hell broke loose:

  • A barrage of angry letters flooded the Atención pages for the next two weeks and more.
  • As a result, Atención threatened to cancel the column space set aside for the CGJ each week.
  • San Miguel’s Bibliotheca (library) talked about ending the CGJ’s access to meeting rooms there.
  • My article was removed from Atención’s archives.
  • Someone from the AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) phoned my provost at Berea College reporting me for my inflammatory article, asking whether I really taught there and if my credentials were genuine.
  • The CGJ’s leadership was forced to do some back-pedaling distancing itself from me and my remarks.
  • They lit candles of reconciliation at a subsequent U.U. meeting begging forgiveness from the community and absolution for that mad man from Berea.
  • The guiding assumption in all of this was that my argument was patently false.

In other words, an article that should have stimulated critical thinking and discussion (with CGJ activists leading the way as a voice for Palestine’s voiceless) was met instead with denial, dismissal, and apology.

Biblical Perspective

Of course, I know that criticizing Zionists for their treatment of Palestinians is quite different from the holocaust denial that some on the OEN call perceived a few weeks ago.

It is also probably futile for members of the goyim like me to comment on the topic. Frankly, I’m unqualified to do so, because:

  • My relatives and loved ones weren’t the ones slaughtered in Hitler’s crematoria and gas chambers.
  • They weren’t among the peasants, laborers, shopkeepers, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children whose lives were cruelly wasted and destroyed by the Third Reich.
  • Instead, as Elie Wiesel has pointed out again and again, my Christian religious cohorts were the very ones who incinerated Jews during the week, went to confession on Saturday, were given absolution, received Holy Communion on Sunday, and then returned to their gruesome work the following day.

Yet, it must be acknowledged that my religious tradition is also specifically Judeo-Christian. Its central figure is the Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who was a reformer of Judaism and had no intention of founding a new religion. Jesus was not a Christian; from his birth to his death, he was a proud and faithful Jew.

In a sense, then, especially as a theologian in this tradition, I too am somehow a spiritual Semite. (Whether they realize it or not, all Christians are.) Additionally, what separates Zionists from other contemporary neo-colonizers is their claimed religious identity. So, to ignore the role of religion here overlooks the proverbial elephant in the room.  

Recognizing the elephant gives license to say that what really happened in the Zoom conversation and in reaction to my remarks in San Miguel mirrored exactly the traditional dynamic between Jewish prophets like Amos and Jesus and their contemporaries. Both Amos and Jesus (as typical Jewish prophets):

  • Denounced their nation’s elite in no uncertain terms
  • Predicted that their crimes would lead to destruction of the entire nation
  • Were vilified as unpatriotic, self-hating Jews
  • Were threatened with ostracism, imprisonment and death
  • And were often (as in the case of Jesus) assassinated for their prophetic words      

Put otherwise, the Jewish prophets were social critics – the kind of clear-eyed seers who weren’t afraid to blame the powerful in their own nation for crimes that brought harm, ruin, death and destruction to the entire nation. The prophets did not blame the widows, orphans, foreigners, peasants, unemployed, beggars, prostitutes, or the hobbled and ill. Instead, they unstintingly impugned the equivalents of Germany’s Jewish 1% while recognizing that the crimes of those few inevitably brought ruin, pain, exile and death even to the innocent among their own people. It’s simply the way the world works. The blameworthy crimes of the powerful cause suffering, death and massacre for the innocent majority. Pointing that out is simply telling the truth.

Conclusion

Despite what I said about being unqualified to comment on words that seem cruel and insensitive to victimized Jews, I do know something about being tarred with a broad brush. As a Roman Catholic and former priest, I could easily be accused of being part of a worldwide pedophilic ring represented by the priesthood and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. It would even be true to say that the ring has connections to a still wider movement of pedophiles among the world’s elite whose iceberg tip revealed (e.g. in the Epstein scandal) connections with the CIA, mi5, mi6, Mossad, and Mafias of various types throughout the world.

All of that would be true even though I never personally encountered any hint of pedophilia in all my more than 20 years preparing for and direct involvement in the Roman Catholic priesthood. It remains true despite the innumerable saints, martyrs, and holy men and women I’ve known personally and from the otherwise hallowed history of the Catholic Church.

The point here is that as an American, and much more as a former priest, I’ve been deeply associated with horrendous institutional delinquencies that I’d rather not discuss, because they hit too close to my spiritual and cultural identity. In other words, as both a Roman Catholic and a U.S. citizen, I find in my own community, uncomfortable truths that parallel the “accusations” against the Jewish 1% in Hitler’s Germany and against contemporary Zionists. I feel resentment at the very mention of such truths.

Nonetheless, and despite my hurt feelings, truth remains truth. And in the spirit of Amos and Jesus, I must face the facts and draw appropriate conclusions. Doing so draws me out of parochial consciousness and self-defensive denial. It creates room for the dialog and recognitions that might head off further community disaster.

As Paulo Freire puts it in The Politics of Education, all critical thinking begins with self-criticism.

Mike Silenced by the AIPAC: A Case Study of Zionist Control of Media and “Peace Groups”

AIPAC

Peggy and I are in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We’re here to give papers at the “Moving beyond Capitalism” conference of the Center for Global Justice (CGJ). I’m honored to be part of a panel with Rabbi Michael Lerner (editor of Tikkun Magazine, the Jewish left-progressive quarterly). My job will be to present the Palestinian viewpoint on the conflict with Israel.

Frankly, there’s only one reason I’ve been invited. It’s because of a crisis I created in San Miguel eight years ago when I spoke on the same topic. It nearly brought the end of the Center for Global Justice. It even threatened my job at Berea College.

The whole incident illustrates the way even small-time publications and good-willed advocates of social justice can be intimidated and silenced by champions of Zionism. The incident represents a summons to such agents to break the silence and speak the truth regardless of Zionist bullying and threats.

You see in 2006, Peggy and I were working with the CGJ directing a summer intern project for students from the U.S., Mexico and Cuba. Out of the blue, one week the program chair of the local Unitarian Universalist (U.U.) meeting asked me to speak at their Sunday gathering. I had done that in several places before and accepted without a second thought. The invitation came specifically because of my connection with the Center for Global Justice.

“Why do you want me to speak about?” I asked the organizer.

“Anything you want,” she replied.

“Well, I speak on conflicting understandings of Jesus,” I said. “As a liberation theologian, I like that topic.”

“Oh no,” came the immediate reply. “The last time someone spoke on Jesus we were all bored to tears. Can you talk about something else?”

That gave me pause. . . . But I had just returned from a three week trip to Israel sponsored by Berea College where I taught for 36 years. So I said, “How about sharing observations from my recent trip to Israel?”

“That sounds great,” the program chair said. “Let’s call your talk, ‘A Report from Israel.’”

I agreed, prepared my remarks, and delivered them the next Sunday. My thesis was clear and unambiguous. “The real terrorists in Israel, I said, “are the Jewish Zionists who run the country.” I didn’t consider my basically historical argument particularly original or shocking. Chomsky and others had been making it for years.

What I didn’t realize was that almost everyone in my audience was Jewish. (I didn’t even know about San Miguel’s large Jewish population – mostly “snowbirds” from New York City.) Nonetheless, my remarks that Sunday stimulated an engrossing extended discussion. Everyone was respectful, and the enthusiastic conversation even spilled over beyond the allotted time.

Immediately afterwards, during breakfast in the U.U. center, one of the founders of the CGJ said, “That was great, Mike. You really ought to put all of that down on paper. You can publish it as an article in San Miguel’s weekly English newspaper, Atencion. They give us column space there each week.”

“Great,” I said. (I already had the talk written out.) I sent it into Atencion and it was published about a month later. By then I was back in the states teaching at Berea.

I’ll never forget what followed: all hell broke loose:

• A barrage of angry letters flooded the Atencion pages for the next two weeks and more.
• As a result, Atencion threatened to cancel the CGJ’s weekly column.
• San Miguel’s Bibliotheca talked about ending the CGJ’s access to meeting space there.
• My article was removed from Atencion’s archives and (I think) from the archives of the Center for Global Justice.
• Someone from the AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) phoned my provost at Berea College reporting me for my inflammatory article, asking whether I really taught there and if my credentials were genuine.
• The CGJ’s leadership was forced to do some back-pedaling distancing itself from me and my remarks.
• They lit candles of reconciliation at a subsequent U.U. meeting begging forgiveness from the community and absolution for that mad man from Berea.
• The guiding assumption in all of this was that my argument was patently false.

In other words, an article that should have stimulated discussion of its thesis (with CGJ activists leading the way as a voice for the voiceless) was met instead with denial and apology.

However, the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza only confirms my original thesis. So let me repeat it here: the real terrorists in Israel are the Jewish Zionists. I’ll go even further and say that in the present phase of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians, the Jews have little or no right to claim they are acting in self-defense. They are clearly the aggressors guilty of extreme war crimes.

This time I base that argument on helpful analytic distinctions concerning “violence” commonly made be liberation theologians in general and by Palestinian liberation theologians in particular. I interviewed the latter back in 2006 at the Sabeel
Ecumenical Center for Liberation Theology in Jerusalem.

I’ll explain the relevant distinctions in the second part of this posting. For now my points are these:

• Zionist defenders are afraid of open discussion of the conflict in Palestine.
• Zionist media control extends far beyond The New York Times.
• It even blacks out Palestinian viewpoints in small-time publications like San Miguel de Allende’s Atencion.
• It threatens academic integrity as well attempting to reach into classrooms like my own at Berea College.
• It even intimidates well-meaning and highly informed activists like those at the CGJ.

My conclusion for now: the media and even would-be “radicals” need to own their power in fearlessly denouncing the war crimes of Israel’s Zionists which will be discussed in the article following this one: “The Conflict in Israel: the Perspective of Palestinian Liberation Theology.”