236 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Vin LoPresti's avatar

Here's Zionism's problem, illustrated when Bibi et al. roll out allusions to Biblical references like Amalek. According to sane humanist rabbis, these references should be interpreted metaphorically -- as should the entire old testament in my view. Although Amalek, for example, was literally the obliteration of an enemy of ancient Israel, these rabbis see it as NO justification for killing anyone now, but rather as a metaphor perhaps calling upon us to stamp out evil inclinations within ourselves. But to take it literally, use it as justification for murdering Gazans, means that Zionism is attempting to bring cultural values of 1400 BCE (era of Joshua) into the modern world. This strikes me as lunacy.

Expand full comment
Jeano's avatar

That’s because it IS lunacy. Like the born agains who were carrying on about Jesus coming back with a sword? It’s somewhere in John I guess. The Lamb as the warrior. But I’m so glad for these reactionaries—they do more to discredit their various religions than all the atheists’ brilliant reasonings down thru the years can possibly do.

Expand full comment
Robert C's avatar

And Islam is still operating under the warlike commands of Mohammad.

Expand full comment
Vin LoPresti's avatar

Right. Throw fundamentalist Christianity in there too. No shortage of religions unwilling to drop the literal interpretations that trap them in the past. Got no use for any of it, except Naturalism -- because the biosphere continually connects with its past -- but actively via adaptive change; not stuck like human-fabricated dogma. Nature brings its past into the present in adapted form; if only these other religions would follow suit.

Expand full comment
Jeano's avatar

Lovely!!! Thank you.

Expand full comment
Kojo's avatar

It’s it any better with the U.S. led by zionists conducting holy war against the Middle East?

I mean that’s the thing. In the past few weeks people like Blinken and Seldowitz have let it slip: they said the quiet part out loud. And it’s dawned on everyone around the world that, no this wasn’t a coincidence and it wasn’t conspiracy theory - we HAVE been witnessing 20 years of zionist jihadism disguised as a “war on terror” and waged under the U.S. flag. More like a war OF terrorism though.

That’s what they branded as the “Project for a New American Century” : a wave of global terrorism under various pretexts.

Expand full comment
Jeano's avatar

What Aboutism, based on faulty premises. Poor you.

Expand full comment
Susan T's avatar

reply to Robert C: and who is giving the warlike commands to Christians?

Expand full comment
Feral Finster's avatar

Good thing no Christians and certainly no Jews ever used religion to justify their wars.

Expand full comment
Kojo's avatar

Unfortunately the theocracy called Israel is way further down that path and in no position to point fingers.

Any national that mobilises 18 year old girls and sends them out with guns to wage war, should ask itself hard question about what is going wrong inside. Because it is literally breeding trauma.

Expand full comment