Gilad Atzmon- The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza

The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza by Gilad Atzmon December 23, 2009

To mark one year to the Israeli Christmas Massacre
I re-post a text I wrote in early January 2009. Published originally on January 8, 2009, at http://www.gilad.co.uk/ as:
"The Old Testament and the Genocide in Gaza"

---

You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you. — Leviticus 26:7-9 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ... then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. — Deuteronomy 7:1-2,
... do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them ... as the Lord your God has commanded you ... — Deuteronomy 20:16

There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwagerhas found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.
As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF was using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to ‘destroy’ the Gazans while showing ‘no mercy’ whatsoever.
Interestingly enough, Israel regards itself as a secular state. Ehud Barak is not exactly a qualified Rabbi and Tzipi Livni is not a Rabbi’s wife. Accordingly, we are entitled to assume that it isn’t actually Judaism per se that directly transforms Israeli politicians and military leaders into war criminals. Moreover, early Zionists believed that within a national home Jews would become 'people like all other people', i.e., civilised and ethical.
In that very respect, Israeli reality is pretty peculiar. The Hebraic secular Jews may have managed to drop their God, most of them do not follow Judaic law, they are largely secular, and yet 94% of them interpret their Jewish identity as a genocidal mission. They have successfully managed to transform the Bible from being a spiritual text into a bloodsoaked land registry. They are there, in Zion, i.e., Palestine, to invade the land and to lock up, starve and destroy its indigenous habitants.
Accordingly, it seems as if the artillery commanders and IAF pilots that erased northern Gaza were following Deuteronomy 20:16 as they indeed did “not leave alive anything that breathes.” And yet, one question is left open. Why should a secular commander follow Deuteronomy verses or any other Biblical text?
Some very few sporadic Jewish voices within the left are insisting upon telling us that Jewishness is not necessarily inherently murderous. I tend to believe them that they themselves consider their words as genuine and truthful. But then one may wonder, what is it that makes the Jewish state brutal with no comparison?
The truth of the matter is actually pretty sad. As far as we can see, Zionism is the only secular ideological and political Jewish collective around and as it happens, it has proved once again that it is genocidal to the bone. As far as genocide is concerned the difference between Judaism and Zionism can be illustrated as follows: While the Judaic Biblical context is soaked with genocidal references, usually in the name of God, within the Zionist context, Jews are killing Palestinians in the name of themselves, i.e., the ‘Jewish people’. This is indeed the ultimate success of the Zionist revolution. It taught the Jews to believe in themselves. To believe in the Jewish state. ‘The Israeli’ is Israel’s God.
Accordingly, the Israeli kills in the name of ‘his or her security’, in the name of ‘his or her democracy’. The Israelis destroy in the name of ‘their war against terror’ and in the name of ‘their America’. Seemingly, in the Jewish state, the Hebraic subject reverts to mass killing as soon as he finds a ‘name’ to associate with.This doesn’t really leave us too much room for speculation. The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism.
Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in.
Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews. The merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving an emerging volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations’ duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the ‘name’ of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred.