Gideon Polya, “Thou Shalt Not Kill. Racist Zionism Violates All Ten Commandments”, MWC News, 12 December 2006, partly cached by Google.
[NB. For an alphabetically organized compendium of anti-racist Jewish opinion critical of racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide see
“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ].
Thou Shalt Not Kill. Racist Zionism Violates All Ten Commandments
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS represent the moral core of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The so-called Decalogue is something one supposes that all members of these three Faiths can essentially agree on, although different weightings are given to particular injunctions and indeed there appear to be THREE versions in the Holy Bible – (a) the injunctions on the First Tables of Stone that were later smashed by an enraged Moses (Exodus 20); (b) “words that were on the first” set of Tablets as set out subsequently in Exodus 34 and (c) the THIRD setting out of these injunctions in Deuteronomy 5. Positive Atheism has published a convenient documented 2-page spread entitled “Which Commandments?” that sets out Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew versions of the Ten Commandments . For a similar summary of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish versions of the Decalogue see Wikipedia. The earnest Atheists declare that “To popularize this knowledge is to knock the wind out of this entire move to place “The” Ten Commandments in our schools.”
Nevertheless, in the spirit of ecumenism for Atheists, Agnostics (such as myself), Muslims, Christians and Jews let us accept a common moral intent enshrined in the various versions of the Decalogue. Thus even Atheist Humanists could accept an “interpretation” of the First Commandment (“have no strange gods before me”) as an instruction not to depart from their core principles of Humanity and Scientific approaches to Truth. However it can be argued that Racist Zionists (RZs) violate ALL of the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments represent a major part of the 3 millennium moral discourse that represents the greatest contribution of the Jewish People to Humanity. Since the Exile of the Jewish People in 135 AD, a core view of Judaism was that “Israel” was a “kingdom of the mind” and that it would only be restored in a physical sense upon the visitation of the Messiah for ALL Mankind. However, associated with de-ghettoizing and secularization of European Jews in the late 19th century, secular Zionism arose as a movement to make Jews like “other Nations” (i.e. with a country, flag, army etc) and based on Palestine at the expense of the Indigenous inhabitants i.e. racism, colonialism and genocide which were de rigeur at the time for Europeans (for an outstanding analysis of European racism and colonialism seeSven Lindqvist (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes, Granta Books, London, 2002). However secular Zionism was strongly opposed by leading Orthodox Jewish religious scholars (and indeed still is) based on their belief in the post-Messianic restoration of physical Israel i.e. pre-Messianic restoration of a physical State of Israel is regarded as blasphemy and heresy.
Political, secular Zionism was opposed, for example, by Raphael Samson Hirsch - perhaps the most outstanding 19th century rabbi in terms of modern Judaism and many other religious Jewish scholars (notably those of the Neturei Karta in Israel and elsewhere) up to and including the present (e.g. see Michael Selzer's book "Zionism Reconsidered" an anthology of the writings of outstanding religious and secular critics of secular, political Zionism). Political Zionism was also opposed by secular Jewish scholars from Nathan Birnbaum (credited with actually coining the term Zionism) to a long list of outstanding contemporary Jewish intellectuals such as Professors Chomsky, Ollman, Finkelstein, Rose, Pappe and Reinhart.
Contemporary Jewish intellectuals opposing Racist Zionism (RZ) are compelled to do so because there is no way that they can be complicit in the racism, violence, and race-based dispossession, abuse and "ethnic cleansing" practised upon Palestinians by the RZs. A powerful summary of the essential moral position of many contemporary Jewish intellectuals is given by outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman.
QUOTE:
“Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis. No, the Zionists are not yet quite as bad as the Nazis, not yet, but isn't the world witnessing a creeping ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians at this very moment? If Zionists (and their supporters) find this comparison unduly insulting and unjust, they have only to stop what they are doing (and supporting), but I fear that the logic of their position will only drive them to committing (and supporting) even greater atrocities in the future, including genocide—another Nazi specialty, than they have up to now. What, if anything, has such Zionism got to do with traditional Jewish values?”
Before proceeding any further we must make a distinction between “religious Zionism” as immortalized in the prayer “next year in Jerusalem” (i.e. when the Messiah returns) – a morally unexceptional wish – and “secular Zionism” which is racist and violent in theory and in horrendous practice. Thus for European holiday makers, saying “next year in the Bahamas, Fiji, the Costa Brava etc ” is unexceptional - unless they mean “violent physical occupation of the destination with disempowerment, deprivation, dispossession and displacement of the Indigenous inhabitants”, which of course is egregious racism.
Accordingly, we can more specifically re-phrase Professor Ollman’s question thus: what has Racist Zionism (RZ) got to do with traditional Jewish values?
We can approach this question from the perspective of the Ten Commandments as the “core” of traditional Jewish values (and indeed of Muslim and Christian values, and in many ways of contemporary human values in general, even for agnostics and atheists). As shown below, the Racist Zionists (RZs) manifestly violate ALL the 10 Commandments of the Jewish Torah (there are subtle differences in the Decalogue numbering in the Abrahamic religions; I will use the Jewish emphasis below; see: here ).
1. I am the Lord thy God: Racist Zionists are secular in approach, about 50% of Israeli Jews are non-observant and the RZs are in fundamentally conflict with religious Jewish Orthodoxy.
2. No other gods before Me: Racist Zionists (RZs) worship Nationalism and are committed to an ethnocratic, racist state to the exclusion of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Holy Land and in violation of the “Divinely-inspired” Torah of Judaism.
3. Do not take the name of the Lord in vain: despite substantial RZ atheism, agnosticism and non-observance (even to the extent of grossly violating Orthodox Jewish practices and sensibilities), the RZs claim the imprimatur of a God they largely do not believe in and whose injunctions they ignore.
4. Observe the Sabbath: this is routinely violated by RZs and by most ordinary Israelis and is a continuing great offence to Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land.
5. Honor thy Father and Mother: the previous Jewish generations were victims of racist pogroms culminating in the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) yet the RZs are committed to racism and genocide in theory and in horrendous practice. The RZs are thus grossly violating the memory of their martyred forebears by mimicking in principle evils variously applied to their own parents and grandparents by the Nazis. The now widespread, RZ-incited and promoted anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are obscene versions of the anti-Jewish anti-Semitism of the Nazi era.
6. Thou shalt not kill: while about 5,000 Jews have been killed by “terrorists” in the Holy Land since 1920, including about 2,300 since the illegal occupation of ALL of the Holy Land by Israel in 1967, the post-1967 excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million and the under-5 infants deaths 0.2 million; the post-1950 excess deaths and under-5 infant deaths in countries occupied by Israel total 24 million and 17 million, respectively; and the post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories associated with RZ-incited US democratic imperialism (democratic tyranny, democratic Nazism) total 0.9 million and 2.1 million respectively – a total of 3.0 million, one thousand (1,000) times the number of people killed on 9/11, 60% under-5 year old infants and largely due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Conventions that demand that Occupiers keep their Conquered Subjects ALIVE (see: and MWC News).
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery: the secular RZs are in fundamental opposition to the traditional Torah values and are politically, militarily and culturally tightly linked to contemporary American culture in which remorseless, unthinking hedonism is enshrined and actual or voyeuristic adultery is a major social practice and cultural obsession.
8. Thou shalt not steal: the RZs stole a large part of the UN-allotted Arab lands in Palestine in 1948; in 1967 they stole the whole lot plus the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsular; they stole Southern Lebanon for 2 decades; they have ethnically cleansed swathes of the region (much of the West Bank, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights); they have seized most of the non-Israeli water resources of the Holy Land; and have stolen Jerusalem, declaring that it will never be returned. The RZs have also stolen the lives of 3.5 million Occupied Palestinian Territory inhabitants kept in abusive and traumatizing imprisonment for 4 decades and the lives of 6 million Palestinian refugees. The RZs have stolen $2.6 trillion from the US taxpayer in support of their racism, colonialism and genocide (see MWC News ).
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness: the RZs lie remorselessly and the lies have been deadly. Thus the RZ lie, successfully sold to the Western public through racist lying politicians and Mainstream media, has been of horrendous threat from Arabs, Muslims, Islam and non-state terrorism. Yet 7,000 Western civilians have been killed by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists over the last 40 years (including Israelis and assuming no US or Israeli complicity in 9/11) as compared to 3.6 million excess deaths in the RZ-incited post-9/11 Bush Wars (see #6 above) (see MWC News and here).
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s possessions: yet that is precisely what Racist Zionism is about in theory and in horrendous practice (see #8 above). Indeed the stated goals of US-Israeli State Terrorism (USIST) involve violent hegemony over lands almost stretching continuously from the Nile to the Indus (the Sinai Desert, the non-occupied part of Syria, acutely-threatened Iran and US-suborned Pakistan’s Baluchistan are the only non-occupied territories in this swathe).
The Racist Zionists (RZs) can be seen to be comprehensively violating ALL of the Ten Commandments of the Jewish Torah. The core of this evil is obsessional and blind racism. Yet once the racism is recognized and eliminated, PEACE with equity, justices and reconciliation is immediately possible in the Holy Land - for humane peace plans that can be implemented NOW see MWC News and here .