I just watched a horrifying video of eyewitnesses to a massacre. Please keep reading my friends. Please keep reading before you know which “side” committed the massacre. Please keep reading even if the event feeds a narrative that is inconvenient to your opinions. Please keep reading even if you want to shut such horrors out of your awareness. I promise I will take this to a place where something on the other side of horror is visible.
Hi Charles. This is Yusuf, I interviewed you many years ago where we explored your book Sacred Economics and some of the wisdom in the Islamic tradition pertaining to its condemntation of Usury. Thank you for finally letting us know what you think in your previous piece "Friends Don't let Friends Destroy Themselves" where you were honest about your conflict in working for RFK.Jr and his position on Israel. I'm glad you finally let us know what you thought, my heart could not accept that a heart like yours (which I greatly admire) would accept RFK Jr.'s position, I was also glad to read you highlight Chris Hedges writings, and his views on RFK.Jr and the Israel Lobby are clear for everyone to read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys/comments
On this piece, I completely agree with the sentiment, Sufis and mystics on both sides have tried to do what you are stating for years, there is a power imbalance in the equation you are proposing, one that can be redressed by the proposals you have highlighted, but for that to happen, alongside the condemning and removal of Hamas and extremist elements on the Palestinian side we need to call out the underpinning ideology of Zionism which is an extreme manifestation of the Science and Technological Programme you alluded to in the Ascent. There is a reason why Zionism and the inception of Israel was opposed by traditional Judaism, the orthodox position that was later rebranded as an ultra orthodox position, despite Israel being a violation of Judaism's Three Oaths, which entails a submission to God, to await for the Messiah, to not forcefully reclaim the Land of Israel and not to rebel against the other nations - all of which were abrogated in a paradigm of control, and the "fix" of lobbies, armaments, media and financial manipulation. The problem with any paradigm of such control, is the longer one goes down that road, the more the narrative falls apart, and if the solution then becomes more control and manipulation, the crisis just deepens more. Zionists have unmasked themselves, there is no going back now, they can't reclaim the moral narrative, because all the lies and deceit over 75 years have been laid bare. Rupert Murdoch's media empire can try as much as it wants to control the narrative, and the lobbies and political power of their machine can keep trying to deligitamize the Palestinians and demonize them but the world has shifted, the Global South sees the hypocrisy (South Africa is leading the way for a reason), and alternative/social media, the Max Blumenthals/Aaaron Mates/Chris Hedges of this world, will keep exposing the media lies. In the Muslim world, we are now getting educated on who the Zionists really are, see these extremely informative videos:
The last video is particularly relevant, because Paul Keeler was someone from the generation who were educated with the narrative of the Empire, and he speaks about how the loss of that narrative, has exposed Zionism.
In truth Charles, the Muslim world already extended the branch to Israel, the Abraham Accords only asked for the Israelis to stop building the settlements in return for normalization, but they continued building. Even the Hamas 2017 Charter (unlike the oft quoted 2008 one, this is the only Charter established when they were a political group) implicitly accepted an Israel and a separate Palestine state on the 1967 borders, but the Zionist Project is committed to the idea of the Greater Israel, and the ethnocentric supremacist state they seek to establish for that purpose. This is why the genocide and ethnic cleansing has been systemic and incremental, even if its one house at a time, as documented by the likes of Illan Pappe.
I know you probably know how integral to all this the Zionist Project for control is, and why it needs to be called out. I do suspect RFJ. Jr. knows this, which makes his association with the likes of the Likudnik Zionist Propagandist and so called Rabbi Shmuley Boteach all the more unconscionable. If he had associated with the likes of Rabbi Michael Lerner (https://www.tikkun.org/a-jewish-renewal-understanding/) he wouldn't have got the support from the Zionist machine but he would have won hearts and shown that he is consistent with the other stated positions he claims to hold. This association with Zionism for him negates his talk about being against the war machine, as Chris Hedges notes, the Israel-Palestine issue is not one issue amongst many issues, but " is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized...if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity. Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage." [https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/15/chris-hedges-the-israel-lobbys-useful-idiot/]
I know you know this, and as your brother in heart, I know you must have grappled with this for some broader reason of bringing good. But from where I am, I can't see it my brother, I think RFK.Jr has revealed who he really is with this, and I hope and pray you will be liberated from this association soon, so your voice can shine with the luminosity it has.
Thank you Yusuf for putting the time and thought into this response. it has been a real dilemma for me. I support RFK Jr. on most other issues. I think he is the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart. But this is no small issue. The US relationship with Israel is central to the imperialistic unipolar project. It is one of the key wedges that divides the world (in the mind of the foreign policy establishment) into a world of friends and foes. it is inseparable from all of foreign policy. My temptation has been to make a conspicuous exit from the campaign on this matter of principle. Everyone would applaud me for my principled resignation. But would this actually do the Gazans any good? Would it do any good to anyone except me and my public image? Or, if I can still have a positive influence by staying an advisor, should I do that even though it creates a public perception that I am a hypocrite? And furthermore, am I actually having any influence, or is that wishful thinking? You can see how these are not simple questions. What I have arrived at, for now, is that I will under no circumstances silence myself. If I am kept on as an advisor despite my outspoken dissent, that is a good sign.
I will have a look at the links you have provided. Thank you for taking the time.
Charles, perhaps you need to drop the idea that you can do any good at all and then your sense of integrity will lead you in the direction that is most healthy for you yourself? It's not about who would or wouldn't applaud you for whatever you decided to do, nor is about your having influence or not. When you are in alignment with what you know is right for you, there will be no more questions and it has nothing to do with public perceptions of you.
Another thing, peace lovers and genocide haters, that can be done to move things forward in the correct direction, would be to boycott the news papers and media that are spreading lies that harm and promote escalation of the Genocide against the Palestinians. The Adelson owned newspaper in Israel is not helping the Jews or Israel by spreading their lies. They are only fattening a few corrupt gangsters. Don't read, watch or listen. Put them out of business. Instead support independent journalists that tell the truth, as in exact place, time, format, and result. Support the families of Journalists that have been murdered trying to get the truth out there. There are over 100 journalists murdered now.
Is Penny Lernoux on that list? She reminded the world about Iran-Contra from the Reagan years when George Bush Sr. stole the 1988 election from Michael Dukakis, the overwhelming Democratic candidate. I doubt that most of the fans here read the propaganda news, otherwise why would they be here? Nobody that has some finesse, by now, follows the news channels, mainstream newspapers, and the party-line ideologies. We want the evil-doers brought down by the justice system that we thought we could respect and count on. This is now a very flimsy proposition. Killing truth reporters is a clue to the situation in a world without Willy Wonka :) Nobody wins, and that's life.
Maybe RFK was threatened into drawing back on his campaign. Remember, he is supposedly a Democratic Party candidate, and isn't even being considered at all today. One prominent urban legend is that after his uncle and father were murdered, and his other uncle, Teddy suffered the disgrace of Chappaquiddick in 1969, and then JFK Jr.'s sudden and untimely death by airplane crash in 1999, that no member of the Kennedy family would ever get close to the presidency again. Even if RFK is siding with Israel, so is Biden and Trump. Yet, we hear nothing from him, while Trump and Biden spew their political rants. Indeed, the question is this: What has happened to this candidate? Charles, maybe you can answer this question. A silent candidate for POTUS can hardly be expected to get elected.
I see that RFK Jr. dropped his Democratic candidacy and went Independent Party last October. At least, he's on the ballot in a couple of state primaries.
Thank you Charles, I understand and appreciate the dilemma you are in, as RFK Jr., given his other stances does appear better than the two other options out there, either of whom pretty much spell further destruction down the lizard's hole. I'm just glad you were/are able to spell out your thinking here, which I recognize is part of your process of not being silent, and requires bravery which I commend. It makes sense to let your intention and heart guide you, whilst not compromising on your own integrity and truth. Peace.
SOME GOOD NEWS FIRST AS RELAYED VIA SAM HUSSEINI QUOTING PROFESSOR FRANCIS BOYLE:
Sam Husseini
@samhusseini:
Francis Boyle on the ICJ Orders “This is a massive, overwhelming legal victory for the Republic of South Africa against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. The UN General Assembly now can suspend Israel from participation in its activities as it did for South Africa and Yugoslavia. It can admit Palestine as a full member. And -- especially since the International Criminal Court has been a farce -- it can establish a tribunal to prosecute the highest level officials of the Israeli government, both civilian and military.”
10:04 AM · Jan 26, 2024
SO..... Charles:
Stick with your own integrity. Be willing to experience anything. Be willing to change your mind and allow others to do so. Forward truth. Speak against lies. If everyone were to resign from an organization, group or activity thar was usurped by ill intentioned corrupt who would be left to whistleblow and expose the lies, corruption and falsehoods.
Lets all celebrate courageous South Africa and it's willingness to stand up for Human Rights and the law. We are all equal under the law and this needs to be reflected in our justice systems!
The interaction between the both of you has me crying. Charles, your reply feels like hope when thats so hard to find. Your questions are an acknowledgement of the complexities that exist, but are often disallowed or denied by the big machine. Thankyou both
Just to balance out the Chris Hedges link....as he speaks in black/white terms re Kennedy. My understanding he is "connected" to Cornel West's campaign....so motivations have to be considered as a potential piece of what he is writing. I listen to Chris Hedges quite a bit.
Please do leave the RFK campaign. This is a principle too important to compromise. It bothers me that Israel's total area is 0.077% of the combined area of the Muslim majority countries. Israel is half the size of San Bernardino County, CA; Israel is just way too big! It also bothers me that Israel fights back after every massacre of its civilians. Unfortunately, 80% of Americans support Israel. It's probably that 9/11 thing, when some people did something.
It's strange, it's almost as if RFK wants to win the election or something.
I highly doubt that 80% of Americans still support Israel after all that has come out since October 7, 2023. The reference to the 9/11 thing, "when some people did something", refers to Ilhan Omar's remarks made in March 2019, which was here first term as House Representative from Minnesota, and wherein she speaks about the real causes of 9/11 in a very veiled way. You see, after coming to the United States in 1997, after years in Somalia as a refugee, she began to grow a conscience, and wherein she wanted to be a representative doing good in some way, which turned out to be politics. Her remarks in 2019 were designed to expose the real cause of 911, and based on her own study of the 9/11 Truth Movement since its inception after September 2001.
As a fledgling politician from Minnesota, and being Islamic Muslim, she needed to find a way to say, "some people did something". She left off the completion of the sentence, which was, "but it wasn't us". You see, she hoped that people would adduce from that statement that the 9/11 Truth Movement, banned since 2011, would get her meaning. Do you?
Sadly, Americans still do back Israel. You see, they cling to their Bibles and their religion. Their Bible features Genesis 12:3, which tells us that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.
People of conscience, like yourself, can do more to endear Americans to the Palestinian-Arab cause. For example, more screaming demonstrations in front of hospitals, blocking highways so transplant patients can't get the organs they need, you know the drill.
With the right attitude, we can still realize the goal of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ally of the Nazis, who dreamed of a Judenfrei Palestine!
I was thinking more along the lines of American Muslims, Christians, Agnostics, and Atheists, who are sick of all this Israel support. Of course, the Zionists here wield a huge amount of power, and the government yields to it. It is still, "We the People" though, and a fair, equitable, and peaceful world.
American Christians are not sick of all this Israel support; they form the largest body of Zionists in the world. Still, I hear you. You meant to say (((Zionists))) but were too scared.
Many of us hope for a peaceful world governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Allahu akbar!
the Government in Israel and their Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have shown complete disobeyance to the orders of the highest court in the world. The World Court (ICJ) now has the legal right to prosecute ahead of the ascribed month due to Israel continuing the Genocide.
Wherever you are in the world, reader, imagine being suddenly bombed, your baby lost in the rubble. Imagine being completely innocent laying in a hospital unable to search for your child due to your injuries, and then being bombed in the hospital and seeing the brave and selfless doctor, who is trying to save you, mercilessly killed. All because some gangsters want your land and energy resources as an excuse for their psychotic and murderous actions.
Meyer Lanskey and Sheldon Adelson are dead. Their Media will collapse shortly because people are tired of being force fed lies, lies, and more LIES, that lead to murder, misery, suffering, war, and GENOCIDES.
I truly hope that the World Court (ICJ) has this power to prosecute Israel, which they have condemned based on the South Africa investigation and complaint. Yet, if we consider the United States, which has vigorously supported the defense of Israel since 1948, it will likely see this prosecution as a criticism of U.S. government involvement, which is continuing to occur, as we speak. Remember, the United States does not recognize the ICC, nor the ICJ. At least, not in terms of who rules the world.
The thing I do love about Charles articles is that he is a proponent of ideas. He may have some false data on the exactitude of events, which we can thank the beasts that own the media for, and our inferior education/indoctrination into world history for. It is those few slimy slugs unseen that propel us to ceaseless war and misery. We are only allowed to see the pawns and the puppets. The death pushers are proponents of force, not ideas. They would wish to crush the idea that the US, the Americas, Middle Eastern countries, Europe, all of Asia, including Russia and China, Africa, Australia and Oceana could live in harmony with human rights. Although Russia was our ally in WWII, the death pushers were already working their plans to divide, conquer and dissolve as much life as possible. The overseers above that chessboard feel threatened by the living and life. Yet, ideas and not force mark the greatest forward progress in mankind. The brotherhood of mankind is what the death pushers wish us to be numb to. They make the politicians believe the lie that force is our greatest way to achieve national security, when indeed it is the worst.
Thanks for that link, Sheila. And for reminding me that Charles didn't need to wade into this quagmire at all, one where he knew half of his audience would be upset no matter what he said, and by urging understanding towards both sides, that ups the ante to most. He knows that his readers are not happy with RFK's stance and see him as compromised by the association. And yet he had the courage to 1) watch and read this evidence and 2) link and talk about it here. So thank you for keeping that in mind that the false data is in a sea of propaganda but the willingness to engage is the lifeboat.
good article linked below on the world court's ruling on the genocide case against Israel. It's a little tiny in print but can be expanded. It's interesting to see the various mainstream and even independent medias different accounts too. One can tell which ones are compromised by war monger owners and manipulaters by how they report on the findings. But the below one is good, thanks to Sam Husseini :
Love your comment. I'm responding before I have finished reading it to the end. I wanted to say I read a psychologist commenting on arguments between marital partners. He states that when one partner has wronged another partner and finally apologizes--you might expect that the other partner would be delighted to receive the apology and welcome the prodigal son (or daughter). HOWEVER, the psychologist stated this was rarely the case. Like an auto continuing to travel after the breaks were applied, the partner often doesn't acknowledge the apology at first but continues complaining and raving/ranting as if they must discharge all of their resentment or cannot believe the apology was heartfelt.
If this happens--you know war will then start up again. The people may feel predisposed to peace--but their leaders may feel otherwise.
Jerry K and Tereza, I think our language has been hi- jacked and that is what I object to. Whenever a person is forced, manipulated or indoctrinated to believe something without understanding it, it has a bad effect. Such alterations have ignorant or nefarious intentions behind them. The beast that wears the cloak called education or religion is simply hiding its true intentions. What has been purpetrated in the name of Christ or Buddha, Mohammed or many spiritual guides would alarm and disgust them. Even the word soul or spirit has been violated in such a way. Truth and Understanding are spiritual matters and belong in the field of religion, not war. Does not Jihad mean "struggle for truth"? We need to take back our language in this twisted barbaric world we call civilization, and seek truth.
Absolutely. Jesus knew his words would be twisted even in the garden of gethsemone. False power, which is all most of the world knows, depends on twisted words. Real power is always evolving...
It is most interesting that when Jesus was confronted in the Garden of Gethsemane by the Roman cohort and the officials of the High Priest, all led there by Judas Iscariot, that He said, "Whom do you seek?" They responded, "Jesus the Nazarene". He said, "I am He". And they all fell down.
I know she does. But, when Christ first met the enemy in the Garden, they could not withstand His power and all fell down. Only after "drinking the Cup", which He tells Peter about, ref. 18:10, is He captured without resistance. Then, His words would get twisted when He is brought before the High Priest, and then Pontius Pilate. So, you are absolutely right in this twisting of words that would ultimately lead to the crucifixion of the Messiah.
Very informative comment Yusuf, an article in itself. I used to be friends with a Lebanese guy, who said this: "man, what I say to people is that if they want to understand world politics, they need to understand what's going on in the Middle East". He came to mind because for some time now, my understanding has been that, regarding the pursuit of peace, there is a silent bully lurking in the shadow of Zionism (alledgelly along the lines of the Anglo-American Empire's agenda for global control). Very few people (at least people in the West) talk about this covert interest that will never ever, under any circumstances, allow for peace to happen. Rather, they focus on details about either one side or the other. Do any of the links you've provided go into this?
Hi Eduard, the links I provided where more an exporation of the historical evolution of Zionism, and whilst there often are nefarious links behind the Zionist movement it did not go into that in much detail, highlighthing how the movement first arose out of a heretical distortion of Christianity (Christian Zionism preceded Jewish), and then was enacted and supported by the world powers for various reasons. Its been educational for me to explore the reasoning behind the Chrsitian Zionist lobby's (like John Hagee's Christians United for Israel) blind commitment to Israel, and the seeking of the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque for the building of the Third Temple. the idea that it is mostly based on a deliberate misreading of what is called the "Abrahamic Covenant" : https://nikeinsights.famguardian.org/forums/topic/genesis-12-scofields-distortion-of-the-abrahamic-promises/ for example.
Hi, Eduard. A couple of Substackers, Frances Leader and Nefahotep, go into what they call the Black Nobility or the Dragon Court. I look at the Torah as the genealogy of the Shemitic dynasty and the God-given right to rule the world. Jews and Israelis are another part of the blood sacrifice to this tiny faction of ruler-gods. It's not Palestine that's being sacrificed now, despite the horrors, it's Israel that won't survive. Here are a couple of episodes on the Biblical underpinnings: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/hot-and-cold-hatred and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/empire-and-religion.
It's all about money, and following the money trail. This is where the evildoers expose themselves, and certainly no less today. These two books provide the convincing proof: of what mammon means. It was Judas Iscariot that first came up with the scheme, ref. Luke 16 on the Unrighteous Steward.
In any conflict or war both sides lose horribly. As there is a current DEFINITE AND UNDENIABLE GENOCIDE happening against the Palestinians currently, they are losing the most. Unimaginably so. But both sides are losing. So who benefits? Well, it is the hidden factor that considers they do benefit. This is the third party, undetected by both sides, that cannibalize off the destruction of both sides, that needs to be discovered. Any leader or politician who sincerely desires to help his people needs to be alert to this as a path to peace and stability. An example of this kind of exposure is linked below.
The word philanthropist and the term war hawk do not and cannot rationally exist together.
This was a disgusting bit of sophistry. What happened on Oct 6th has been so misrepresented in the press (US/Zionist propaganda) that you need to do a little research. Hamas executed a very legal military operation. The zionist entity shot up the festival and one kibbutz for 4 hours with tanks and helicopters, shooting hellfire missiles at anything that moved. The civilians killed were mostly killed by the zionist entity. Hamas fighters didn't even know about the rave. (One has to question the humanity of idiots who do drugs and dance in the desert right next to a concentration camp.) The personal interviews of Israelis showed polite fighters who left women and children alone. Their hostages were far fewer than the thousands held in zionist prisons, often being tortured. There is no balance here. People who have been deprived of their land, their homes, their jobs, their dignity, and murdered at the whim of hopped up zionist youth and settlers for 75 years have responded with more humanity than one could expect. Sure, some bad things happened, but nothing like the daily abuses suffered for decades by the native population. Its pretty obvious that the zionists slaughter was meant to be used to justify the final solution; ethnic cleansing and mass murder, which is what has been going on for 4 months now. It was a intel operation, complete with media lies. It was the new 9/11, done by some of the same actors for some of the same reasons. After 9/11, the US planned to invade 9 countries, and only 2 are left; Lebanon and Iran. When you hear the preface `Iran backed´ before any group in a news story, know that is the beating of war drums. Is it OK with you that the zionist entity plans to take over Lebanon, parts of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq? Because they have proudly announced that. That they plan to steal the gas reserves off Gaza? They are already stealing Syria´s oil and gas, via Turkey. The zionist entity has shown its fangs. If you cannot stand against this, you are a moral coward or an imbecile. Stop the ridiculous rationalization, and look at realities on the ground. Its not OK to establish a nation, and murder and steal from all of your neighbors. No good will come of it. There is an area of Russia for Jews, where they are safe due to the rule of law. The zionist entity is making Jews look bad, and putting them in danger everywhere by using them as a cover for godless, vile behaviors. I can say all of this from a position of compassion. I have compassion for the Israeli kids who were raised on propaganda to commit crimes against humanity. I can have compassion for every human hurt, killed or driven mad by the current state of things. That doesn't stop a clear analysis.
Yusuf is the Arabic version of the JudeoChristian name Joseph. I need Arabs to discover my substack at https://ishmaelhandinhand.substack.com?utm_campaign=email-home&r=rjka5 so I tried to subscribe. Once I posted on Fakebook that Jews and Christians should help financially support building mosques and suddenly had 500 new friends. When are you going to start your substack, Yusuf?
Hi Esther, I don't think I will have capacity to start my own substack anytime soon, given how overwhelmed I get just in responding to the comments section of my own comment! But it is nice to exchange views and benefit from the knowledge and thoughts of so many perspectives with like minded people.
Mohammed's biography is very interesting and important to start with. He was a bad guy that became a good guy when he was forty years old and compelled to enter a cave and receive an angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael. Thus was born the Arabic Bible into the world, c. 610 -623 AD. What a wait for Islam to begin after a thousand years of Judaism. He even offered his revelations to the Jews, including the fact of the existence of Jesus as a peace offering, and they spit on him. What else could Mohammed do but declare an enemy of the truth.
HI Steve. Not sure what your sources are, they seem almost entirely fictitious. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) was "not a bad guy that became a good guy when he was forty years old and compelled to enter a cave and receive an angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael." Rather he was known as the most truthworthy and sincere man of his people,never took part in any of the "bad" things of his time, and used to frequent the cave of Mt.Hira for meditations and seclusion as a way to get away from the societal ills around him. Muslims believe he was already a Prophet from the moment he was born, but his formal declaration of Prophethood came at 40, through the Arch Angel Gabriel visiting him and causing him to recite the first five verses of the Qur'an, commencing with the word "Iqra" or "Read/Recite". The Qur'an was then revealed to him incrementally over 23 years, and was not an "angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael.", but was the Divine Message to all of mankind, being what Muslims believe to be the final revealtion, in continuity of previous revealtions which include the Torah (which was partially distorted), and the Injeel (the Gospel of Jesus) which was likewise not preserved and lost. The Quran is therefore not the Arabic Bible - that would be the Bible translated into Arabic. Islam does not see itself as beginning a thousand years after Judaism, rather Muslims see Islam as being the primordial religion since Adam, and all Prophets effectively teaching Islam for their age, hence the religion of Moses, Abraham and the other Prophets of Israel, was Islam, even if it may not have been named that at their times. The rest of what you wrote about peace offerings and being spat on does not seem to have any historical accuracy either, and even if you meant it metaphorically it simply is not true. If you would like to know more about the Prophet's life, I sincerely recommend this book by the late Martin Lings: https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Life-Based-Earliest-Sources/dp/1594771537
If you prefer audio, then an audio course based on this Book can be accessed on youtube, taught by the contemporary scholar Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, please see below:
Please don't write things about the Prophet or Islam that are not based on fact. There is too much distortion and misinformation as already. Thank you.
I had a chance to review my sources on Muhammad, and they come from a well acknowledged scholar, W. Montgomery Watt, who wrote: Muhammad at Mecca (1953), Muhammad at Medina (1956), and Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961). This is all compressed in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the life of Muhammad, which I was able to review today. I do see an interpretational variance between Watt and my own focus, and wherein Muhammad's increasing use of Razziah's in order to defeat his enemies, becomes quite brutal and blood-thirsty. He had first learned of this technique when he was 25 years old, c. 595 AD, and getting experience from his uncle, Abu Talib, in mercantile operations there in Mecca. Thus, he was a stagecoach robber, like we see in the western movies today. Muhammad met his first wife in one of these engagements, Khadija, who was several years his senior. This is a most extraordinary story of the birth of Islam, which bypassed the Jewish-Christ event by some 600 years, in order to receive the reincarnated Ishmael into the fold of the overall Abraham enterprise. We need Islam, but we need it spiritualized. We need Judaism, but we need it spiritualized. We need Christianity, but we need it spiritualized, which means embracing the Christ Impulse, which is the forever promise.
I have my sources, and I never said he was spat on. I didn't write what I wrote to condemn Mohammed in any way, but to say that he founded the religion of Islam for his people some 600 years after the pivotal events occurred in Palestine between Judaism, and the Messiah that they rejected. The Arabic cultural stream bypassed this confrontation until Mohammed, the Prophet, began to receive his revelation in that cave, and indeed, Angel Gabriel was the Messenger to Mohammed in the forming of the Koran. He did offer this revelation to the Jews about Jesus as a living figure, which they still refused to accept, and this created the original war between these two monotheistic powers,now established and coexisting. Judaism and Islam. And, of course, it is a fact that Abraham's first born son, and his mother, were exiled, and that Ishamel would become a mighty man and leader of his own tribes, and this begat the Arabic Cultural Stream, which of necessity bypassed the Judeo-Christian events of two thousand years ago. Then, Ishmael was reborn with an interval of six hundred years, as Mohammed (Mahomet), which brings Abraham''s two sons together in terms of Judaism and Islam. Yet, it didn't work, and they have been fighting ever since. Why? Because the element of the "all too human, human" got in the way, and it is still that way.
Nice try. Does infidel mean bad guy? Never could quite figure it out, given its such an orientalist trope and what appears to be a deliberate mistranslation and imposition of alien worldviews on the Muslim one. I'll leave the infidel classifications to you. What I do know is that rfk.jr is a hypocrite who as Chris Hedges points out: "regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. He peddles the myth of what Pappe calls “Fantasy Israel.” This alone discredits him as a progressive candidate. It calls into question his judgment and sincerity. It makes him another ....hack who dances to the macabre tune the Israeli government plays." https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys
Can you offer a more appropriate translation than “infidel?” I’ve spent some time with an English translation of the Q’ran and infidel seems to adequately convey the sentiment. I’m open to translation generating and perpetuating orientalist tropes and potentially misrepresenting the tone of the text thereby altering the meaning.
At one time I was less critical of the Abrahamic religions and found the translation of the Q’ran to convey a beautiful and inspired work. Today however the vitriol and sense of superiority seem to leap out of so many Suras.
Hi Co, my response to some of the points/queries you raise are below, apologies in advance if this gets a bit lengthy or academic :
"Can you offer a more appropriate translation than “infidel?” I’ve spent some time with an English translation of the Q’ran and infidel seems to adequately convey the sentiment."
May I ask what translation you are using? I cannot think of any contemporary translation of any worth that would choose to translate the word “kafir (as derived from the word “kafara”) as “infidel” – precisely because it reflects an orientalist bias and does not reflect the semantic worldview of the language (classical Arabic) of the Qur’an. The word infidel is derived from the latin īnfidēlis, meaning the non-faithful, and was used in an ecclesiastical sense of denoting someone outside the community of the Church. In contrast the word kafir reveals no such meaning. The late Japanese Scholar of Islam Toshiko Izutsu (d.1993) who wrote the book God and Man in the Qur'an. Semantics of the Qur'anic Weltanschauung in relying on established linguistic theory (the weaker form of Sapir–Whorf hypothesis) stated the obvious in indicating that all languages have an inherent semantic weltanschauung (worldview) which means our dominant languages also affect the way we think and construe things. Effectively, this means when translating from one language to another we need to be very careful and ensure we step out of our own worldview to imbibe the inherent semantic worldview of the other language. Izutsu in doing that for the Qur’an found that the semantic meaning field of the word kufr based on parsing its applications is that it was living life in the opposite spirit of being in gratitude (shukr), a meaning inherently stated in the verse : Indeed, We guided him (Man) to the way, be he grateful (Arabic: shakiran) or be he ungrateful.(Arabic: kafuran) [76:3]. So as this thread is connected to Charles’ thought, it is the opposite of “Living in the Gift”. Interestingly, linguistically the word kafara literally means “to cover over”, and the word “kafir” is also used for a farmer, in that he covers the seed with soil. The implication here being that being “In the Gift” is inherent to us all, even if we are not experiencing it, in that our covers established through thoughts, ideas, perceptions may occlude us from the inherent gratitude that arises from knowing one’s existence is a gift given, freely and undeserved at every moment. So you’ll find some contemporary translators trying to reflect this meaning in their translations like Leila Bakhtiar in her The Sublime Quran, as translating kafir as ingrate. Some try and be innovative in their translations, like Thomas Cleary who translated kafir as “those who scoff” or bizarrely “atheist” but it seems because of limitations of translation as a medium most translations seem to use “disbelief/disbelievers” with the idea being the concealment of one’s gratitude to God, is really a type of disbelief in the evident signs being displayed that should bring about such gratitude. All of that said, I hope you can see why the word infidel doesn’t quite carry the field of meaning in the word.
“At one time I was less critical of the Abrahamic religions and found the translation of the Q’ran to convey a beautiful and inspired work. Today however the vitriol and sense of superiority seem to leap out of so many Suras.”
I wonder what has changed to make you see vitriol instead of beauty? One thing I would caution you and myself, is that the Qur’an is a living text, by which I mean, it reads us as much as we attempt to read it. And by its own testimony it will reflect back to us what we are ultimately seeking which is why the Qur’an itself says that it misguides as much as it guides, “He misleads many thereby and guides many thereby” [2:26]. One of the common refrains in the Qur’an is to say none will truly understand it, except of deep inner hearts - “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of hearts” [3:190], For indeed, it is not eyes that are blinded, but blinded are the hearts…[22:46]. So if I can humbly advise you, and myself of course, it helps to approach these texts from a position of humility, actually seeking guidance, and being open to the message given, avoiding to the best possible degree any preconcieved filters we may have.
As for your finding supremacy, I can’t deny that would exist in the Qur’an, but only in giving that supremacy to the Divine Voice – and I appreciate that can be challenging, because it simply does not read the way we would expect books to read to the western mind. But if I can humbly say once again, if we are open to letting its treasures open itself it to us, it is well worth the effort I would say. Peace.
Yusef J, Hi! from Sheila 2 Feb 2024 and some thoughts on words and meanings including an accurate definition of "plausibly" and the ICJ case, the recent Oakland case, and the recent UNSC meeting called by Algeria. Re: the Oakland case: So we wonder which court HAS jurisdiction then, and aside from taking a win on the truthful comments of the Judge against the continuing complicity in the atrocities against the Palestinians, how would we move forward for a more acceptable win?
Perhaps Professor Francis Boyle, who has experience winning cases against genocide, could be consulted.
It appears that the US is either accepting and forwarding faulty Intel, refusing to believe valid Intel they ARE getting, or ignoring truthful Intel and being two faced about it, for any number of plausible reasons.
Also, as language in legal matters tends to be used, and misused, in legal battles, perhaps we should look MUCH, MUCH closer at the words Genocide, and Plausibly. How do they translate into 17 different languages? And just because a person grows up with a language does not guarantee they know what the words they use and forward mean.
As words tend to change and acquire new meanings because of the afore mentioned difficilty, it is helpful to use a variety of dictionaries and even Etymology reference books to gain the most precise understandings.
In the Microsoft Encarta dictionary from 2001 the first definition of plausible is : "1. believable and appearing likely to be true, usually in the absence of proof". Okay, that fits. However, for the first time, perhaps, in history, we have the very UNUSUAL case that we DO have proof of Genocide occurring in real time. This is due to technological advances in our communications systems of our current age. There are documented evidences, statements, recordings of officials, eye witness accounts and their recordings. Okay, so, if one then looks at the derivation of the word plausible, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1985, one sees : laudable, acceptable, agreeable; having an appearance of truth or value. It comes originally from the Latin "plaudere" which means to clap the hands in approval. Applaud and explode are related.
Plausibly DOES NOT mean possibly. LET'S BE HONEST. Truly honest.
Besides, there is NO WAY to stop the killing without a CEASEFIRE. The highest court on the planet made it clear that Israel's claims of self defence are INVALID.
It is true that Israel considers it's current, provably genocidal actions valuable, and this also appears to be true in the words and actions of other colonizing powers. They are applauding it. They have been freely confessing to the most alarming of genocidal crimes. It may be cold and calculating, but it IS, none the less, highly irrational. NO ONE BENEFITS FROM GENOCIDE - ANYWHERE. Not even the countries or individuals who consider they do. The future tells. THE GENOCIDE MUST STOP AND LEGAL ACTIONS OF A SUFFICIENT NATURE TO DO SO MUST BE STEPPED UP.
Please allow me to intervene. I know that you want Yusuf J to respond to your comments, which are very important. So, what is the issue in defining genocide. Was a forced extermination of the Jewish population in the 1940's in Europe a demand for a Jewish State, when a solution had already been made with the Balfour Declaration, c. 1918, which would have prevented this from ever taking place? Only the forming of the Jewish state in 1948 gives the rationale for what is going on now, and wherein Jewish lawyers say to the ICJ today that they have the right to defend what is going on in Gaza. They were given the Jewish State in the 1948 vote of the United Nations. This is when retaliation started with the Palestinians, who were already there for many millennia. Here's the rationale : Move 700,000 Palestinians to the west bank in order to make way for 70,000 Jewish into their own territory. Sounds unfair, and maybe this is where we start. Most Jews remained in Europe and America after 1948. This left the Palestinians to be heaved to the Gaza strip, and here we are today in discussing it.
It's bullshit in how these people are being treated . Can we agree on that?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I take your points on shakiran/kafuran. I can see that the kafir may be ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam” for bestowing the gifts of life. Perhaps they give thanks to the gods or the satans that they mistake for the bestowers of gifts. Their misplaced gratitude results from their infidelity to the one true God making them ingrates. Their gratitude misplaced is infidelity and infidelity the source of their ingratitude.
It just seems tragic that the one true God has sealed up these people’s ears and hearts and sent a prophet with a book designed to mislead them, a book which seems quite preoccupied with calling these people out and putting them down (the instances of this must number in thousands). People who may have prayed and sacrificed for generations are now purposely misled by a magic book and cast into the fire by the very God that sealed their ears and hearts all for their ingratitude to Him. Maybe it’s my contemporary western mind and feeble heart but that seems cruel. Maybe it’s so.
As for the translation I am most familiar with it is unsurprisingly an old one by Rodwell. I was raised in the Baha’i faith, perhaps you are familiar with it. To Christians I have often compared the relationship of the Baha’i Faith to Islam as being similar to Christianity’s relationship with Judaism. I was raised according to the doctrine of progressive revelation to hold all the sacred texts attributed to the messengers of God as of equal merit while the revelation for this day takes some precedence insofar as it is intended for our time. Born a third generation Baha’i of Christian ancestry in a broadly Christian context I am of course most familiar with Baha’i texts and the Bible but a multicultural and ecumenical bent instilled from a young age led me to explore various sacred texts with The Qur’an being foremost. These days I find my alignment with the spirit of the gift and my general sense of gratitude hampered by religious entanglements and the textual explorations I once enjoyed. I am horrified by the evil that can be concealed by self righteousness and the certainty of goodness bestowed on religious followers, tyrannical niceness and acceptance of atrocities as divine Will. I have become skeptical of monotheism’s grip on the world and on the hearts and minds of its peoples, myself included. I certainly don’t claim to be guided aright but I see a world of guidance and a multitude of paths straight, crooked, narrow, and wide all claiming to be the beaten path of the Lord. I may have to wait til the day of judgement to find out where I went wrong. On that day I hope it’s finally clear. If I’m cast into the fire at least I’ll know it was God’s will and hopefully that will solace me for eternity.
Interesting that you were raised in the Baha’i faith. I loved my trip to the Lotus Temple in Delhi, and have fleeting knowledge of them in that I have noticed the Bahais seem to use many of Sufi understandings in their theological expositions. I’ll try and use some of these understandings in my clarification of what I was trying to say, but I suspect your skepticism may mean we can agree to disagree in the end.
You wrote: “I take your points on shakiran/kafuran. I can see that the kafir may be ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam” for bestowing the gifts of life. Perhaps they give thanks to the gods or the satans that they mistake for the bestowers of gifts. Their misplaced gratitude results from their infidelity to the one true God making them ingrates. Their gratitude misplaced is infidelity and infidelity the source of their ingratitude.”
I didn’t write/say the Kafir is ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam”, that seems to be an attempt to caricature what I was saying into a tribalistic conception of “my God” versus “yours”. Rather, what I wrote is that the word Kafir implies ingratitude, because there is a lack of recognition of the bestowal of existence. So if I was referring to God, then it would be as the perpetual bestower of existence, it was a reference to the God of Ontology, the One who has True Being, wherein all of creation’s being/existence has continual contingent Being, dependent on the Fiat of bestowal. That is not the God of Islam versus other gods, it is the God that can be realized in all of these faiths, and indeed no declared faith, as mystics have come from all backgrounds, sometimes coming to the direct experience and realization of the Oneness of God underpinning all apparent multiplicity even when they’re not looking through faiths! This is the God who is manifest wheresoever you turn:
Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God [Qur’an: 2:115]
And who is the only self-evident and constant, in the inevitable flux built into creation:
Everything that exists is perishing except His Face. [Qur’an: 28:88]
This is what David Bentley Hart calls The Experience of God, namely that “Nothing within the cosmos contains the ground of its own being” and hence, God is “the only sort of Being (indeed, the only Ground of Being) that could provide a final explanation of why the universe exists. The only other alternatives seem to be an absurd infinite regress or saying “that the universe is just there, and that’s all,” which is not an answer but an evasion of the question.”
If you understand what I mean above, then I hope you can also see that the gift I was referring to were not “gifts” as in arbitrary types of gifts, but the gift of existence, whereby every experience in our consciousness becomes actually a gift, in that it is coming to us freely and undeserved, by the fact we have been gifted being itself. I hope you will also see why taken from that perspective, the term “infidel” does not resonate with the deeper meaning implied by the word kafir, which transcends the tribal affiliation of belonging or faithfulness to a group/creed/church, and refers more to a sense of connection or disconnection with one’s own essentiality primordiality of existence. Only an English speaker disconnected/unfamiliar from the Islamic tradition or unfamiliar with the semantic sense of infidel would translate kafir as infidel, and you’ve made my point by citing that the translation you read came from John Medows Rodwell (d.1900), a clergyman of the Church of England, who was reading in his own ecclesiastical understanding of faith and belonging and then imposing it in the translation. I’d be wary of drawing any conclusions of the Qur’an from what you think you maybe reading with Rodwell’s translation. Despite the Qur’an being inherently untranslatable you would be doing a fairer job getting something like The Study Quran (https://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125873)
You also wrote: “It just seems tragic that the one true God has sealed up these people’s ears and hearts and sent a prophet with a book designed to mislead them, a book which seems quite preoccupied with calling these people out and putting them down (the instances of this must number in thousands). People who may have prayed and sacrificed for generations are now purposely misled by a magic book and cast into the fire by the very God that sealed their ears and hearts all for their ingratitude to Him. Maybe it’s my contemporary western mind and feeble heart but that seems cruel. Maybe it’s so.”
Given that you refer to the Quran as a “magic book”, I can’t imagine you are still that attached to the Bahai worldview, as that would entail more respect for the Qur’an as a form of Divine revelation. It also appears in the essential points you are making, you are once again caricaturing my position, or maybe what I wrote appeared as a caricature to you. The essential point you are making, namely that God should not allow people to be misguided and be responsible for their misguidance in some way, is not just against Islam per se, but seems to be against most if not all religions, and indeed the idea of Divinity itself – as the natural extension to that argument of theodicy is that God Himself is not just, for surely there should be no suffering at all, given God holds complete agency at the end of the day, right?
The Islamic answer is to positive relative agency, in that free will appears in our experience, at the level of expierence, even if we were to drill up higher levels of Being, then all agency lies with God. So the references in the Qur’an to being misguided, and hearts being sealed don’t assume absolute lack of agency, there are actions, attitudes and behaviours that requite that, and even in the ultimate apportioning of Agency to the Agency of God, the Qur’an affirms that God’s mercy conquers and envelops all.
My mercy encompasses everything. [Qur’an: 7:156]
That encompassing of mercy would include hell too, given hell is a thing. Contrary to the thousands of instances of hell you cite, the word hell comes 77 times in the Qur’an (had to use google for that), whereas Heaven comes 147 times. And yes, ultimately the Sufis see hell as being “separation from God” and heaven as being the “removal of the veil” – and the intimacy of that witnessing. Have you heard of Ibn Arabi (https://ibnarabisociety.org/the-anthropology-of-compassion-william-chittick/)? There is a reason why Sufis like him see the fundamental ontology of the created universe as being mercy/compassion, which means even hell as some point, in the end of the trajectory returns back to that mercy. All shall be saved, all shall be in bliss and mercy, because all shall eventually return to the primordiality of witnessing God, or rather God’s witnessing of Himself, which is the real purpose underpinning creation.
Sorry, if it is too convoluted or metaphysical, but as the Sufis say we need two eyes to see and judge things, one eye being that of duality and causality, and the other being the eye of ultimate Reality, the One underpinning all form.
I love this sincere treatment of your life and position, Co. It represents what monotheism in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam mean today in a world where in reality only egos (individuals) really matter. Most interesting to consider is the last of these developments, Islam, which only began to be developed when Mahomet (Muhammad) at age forty, c., 610 AD, felt compelled to give up his former life, and enter a cave in order to receive from an Angelic source, the Qur'an, which is said to be the Arabic Bible of Abraham's first born son, Ishmael, who was eventually cast out with his Egyptian mother, Hagar, although Abraham loved him very much. This is an important connecting thread because when Muhammad offered his Qu'ran as a peace offering to the Jews of Judaism, and verified the authenticity of Jesus as having actually lived, the Jews rejected him and his Islam. This is where the war between the Jews and the Arabs really begins. Islam acknowledges Christ from the beginning, while Judaism still rejects Him. When the Hasidic community cries, "No State of Israel without the Messiah, it means they failed to recognize the One in their midst two thousand years ago. This can only be a major part of the detrimental conditions of existence seen today in this region of conflict.
Thank you for the comment Tereza. In truth, I've fallen for the bait in the past, but am learning. That is part of what I meant by the masks have come off, the attempts to divert, distract and provide disinformation have become so repetitive and predictable, that you eventually learn to spot it from a mile off. As a comedian commenting on the crisis pointed out, with Israel we are all getting a crash course in what it means to be in a relationship with a narcissist, and our sanity rests on finally getting to grips with and calling out the manipulation and control.
Oh, that made me laugh! What comedian? I will need to quote you in the piece I'm working on, it could use some lightening up.
A major focus for me has been looking at the Torah as the right of the Shemitic dynasty to rule the world and the curse of the Canaanites to be their slaves, along with the descendants of Ham (Africa, Egypt, parts of Asia). It turned history upside-down and inside-out, making the villains into heroes and the heroes into villains, the victims into aggressors and the aggressors into victims.
So the victim narrative, while actually being in power, fits the narcissist profile exactly and gaslighting any evidence to the contrary!
Though I feel I have to say, I can't agree with some of your research Tereza, the Germans did commit a Genocide of the Jews, and I think part of the seeking of the Truth, is finding that middle ground, being willing to call out all sides. The Zionists want us to go into the "us vs them" paradigm, because that is their fuel. They also love it when the pendulum of trying to criticize them goes so far to one side, that they can dismiss us as conspiracy theorists.
No one said/wrote that - but nice to see the usual resort to false binaries, to justify an opressive agenda. The solution I incline to is what Charles wrote, its just that he didn't highlight the obvious Elephant in the room, being the Zionist project which has distorted everything, including Judaism, to suit its aim.
There you go with the existential fears again!! Can you consider an Israel where Palestinians and Jews live together as equals with equal rights and protections?
If you cannot, then that's the reason for all this violence.
That (an Israel where Palestinians and Jews live together as equals with equal rights and protections) is the ONLY solution. But how do we get there from here?
Yes, but you have to understand first what it means to be powerless and helpless in the face of evil, and surrender (yield) to that. Then, power comes to solve all issues. Minds meet in the integer of sympathies and antipathies. For example, if RFK Jr. can no longer be counted on, then leadership will have to be ours. How to do that is the 64 thousand dollar question? They say that a candidate will likely suddenly appear, name unknown as yet.
Is your preferred solution the elimination of what's left of Palestine and the deportation of the Palestinians ? Oh wait, that's what's happening right now! Please stop being so reductive and see the enormity of what he's saying. This insane need to destroy each other is not serving you is it? Can't you see it's an endless cycle of hopeless, pointless violence? It can't be solved by outside forces carving up land and randomly giving it to people, it can't be that the solution is to kill thousands of people and wage a forever war, therefore something bigger than any of it needs to happen. Doesn't it? Can you drop the hatred and lies fed to you since birth and start from now. Start again. Believe it. Act on it. It starts with everybody. We all want resolution because we all feel this malignant force coming from those who hate. The concept of Charles Eisenstein's suggestion is so simple yet many can't seem to grasp it. It is the hardest thing to do because we all have to drop the righteousness we carry. it's hard because it challenges everything you have ever thought about what it is to be you. What do you want to happen? How do you think it can be resolved - with fairness and equity. With compassion even?
Yusuf is correct that no one said/wrote that, but I will. As I've said in previous posts, I don't believe that a military occupation IS a country that can enact laws making the residents into foreigners on their own land. The Torah and World Wars, the justifications for Israel, both turned history upside-down and inside-out, making the villains into heroes and the heroes into villains, the victims into aggressors and the aggressors into victims. These lies resulted in genocide against the German people, not the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was given in exchange for getting the US to enter WWI, at a time when peace without reparations had been offered by Germany. Without the Zionist interference, there would have been no WWII. Should the mass slaughters of two World Wars be rewarded with permission to slaughter the inhabitants of another country? Israel has never existed as a country, only a military force occupying someone else's country. And yes, that military presence should be eliminated, like all militaries occupying other countries.
the de facto general absence of the argument you make is the elephant in the room. Israelis are the victim of their own “nation”...as genuinely spiritual rabbis have been saying all along.
I read these pieces from you and I can't help but wonder if you're having any of the hoped-for influence on RFK. As a part of his campaign, are you having regular conversations on the topic? I like RFK for so many other reasons, so I hope you are having some effect. But in some ways, I wonder how you can continue working for him if he remains deaf and blind to these horrors.
Lots of people are asking me that. I'm asking me that! I'll paste in my comment to Yusuf above:
it has been a real dilemma for me. I support RFK Jr. on most other issues. I think he is the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart. But this is no small issue. The US relationship with Israel is central to the imperialistic unipolar project. It is one of the key wedges that divides the world (in the mind of the foreign policy establishment) into a world of friends and foes. it is inseparable from all of foreign policy. My temptation has been to make a conspicuous exit from the campaign on this matter of principle. Everyone would applaud me for my principled resignation. But would this actually do the Gazans any good? Would it do any good to anyone except me and my public image? Or, if I can still have a positive influence by staying an advisor, should I do that even though it creates a public perception that I am a hypocrite? And furthermore, am I actually having any influence, or is that wishful thinking? You can see how these are not simple questions. What I have arrived at, for now, is that I will under no circumstances silence myself. If I am kept on as an advisor despite my outspoken dissent, that is a good sign.
I imagine that, being a Kennedy, it’s pretty complicated for him. Possibly to the level of threats or compromat. This complexity of pressure and allegiance is one of the structures that has to (and is) coming down. I’m not sure you’re best off being in it. Personally I think you have it in you, and the support - mine included - to foster an independent movement. Maybe it won’t win elections, but it will be winning hearts and minds.
Thanks for the reply. I hope you stay with the campaign. But like I asked in my comment, I hope you are actually having conversations with him on the matter. I hope there are opportunities for you to have some influence, regardless of how effective it is.
Charles, if you're reading this, I encourage you to stay with RFK, Jr. He IS the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart, which may then be an example for other countries on the brink of medical / digital tyranny. That is tremendous.
I agree with your balanced perspective on Israel and Palestine. I would love there to be deep and difficult and respectful conversations between, as someone suggested, RFK, Jr and Rabbi Michael Lerner (perhaps Rabbi Lerner may look at the covid "vaccines", and his illness that I don't know enough about, but heard of during the vaccine rollout, in a new light also).
I see the good that RFK, Jr can do as surpassing even this huge negative of supporting Israel. Politics is described as compromise, but that usually means compromise on some issues from a starting point of candidates who have no integrity to begin with.
I believe RFK, Jr has integrity, and that's why you're there. From that place things can be learned, and even if they're not, significant good can be done.
And I wonder also, is he understanding that things don't add up with the Oct 7th attack and Israel's lag in response, and prior silencing of someone warning them, and having so much capabilities of surveillance but supposedly being caught by surprise, and then going immediately to the story of knowing exactly where each Hamas terrorist is inside Gaza to bomb at only those locations?
Even keeping the focus entirely on Israel and the innocent hostages, (who of course are not the only innocent civilians caught up in horrors who need to be freed) - but even from that perspective, wasn't there many hours of lag time before orders were given to respond to the attack? Weren't there many things that don't add up about possible prior knowledge, having no security presence there on that day of all days, and not letting fighter pilots who could hear the sounds and wanted to respond, respond for many hours? I would hope RFK, Jr would be concerned about that ...
Still, we are on the precipice of digital totalitarianism, and not just mandated and tracked poisons from pharma, so much else, and endless war, with bloodshed in so many places. RFK, Jr is the best candidate possible, with the right skills And good heart (how often does that happen? almost never ... )
I support you staying with him ... and of course speaking honestly along the way.
Oh, I relate, Michael! I wonder the same.....I just finished listening to a talk given by Chris Hedges entitled "The Death of Israel". I recommend all to listen, and learn. Learn that of all atrocities, the one of genocide, which is indeed being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, is the most grave of all nations' sins. Indeed, those who stand with others who refuse to acknowledge this truth are equally complicit. RFK, who I deeply admired for his stance on the environment, his desire to listen to all sides, and his bravery concerning the potential risks of the covid vaccines, and letting voters know he would not repeat the mistakes of, both, the Trump and Biden administrations policies, is simply on the wrong side of history, not to mention making a grave, immoral choice by refusing to condemn the utterly vile and unceasing attacks on innocents. I am not a one issue voter, but as pertains to genocide, I will replace my once secure vote (and donations) for RFK Jr and work for people who's conscience dictates they, too, must support a ceasefire.
I agree whole heartedly on the Eisenstein RFK Jr. disconnect. I don’t believe for a moment that either see this for anything other than what it is: A genocide. Most every country on the planet has condemned this horrific hypocritical genocide of a subjugated people. My intuition says that Bobby Kennedy and his family have been blackmailed and threatened with death if he says what is really in his heart. ‘The most pampered people’ on earth’ ????? come on now Bobby... anyone with a conscience can see the hypocrisy in that statement. Charles, I am a college professor and have been sharing all your work, podcasts, interviews with my students since The Ascent of Humanity was released. I have also been made the black sheep of my family and many other social and professional circles due to my unwavering respect and support for Bobby Kennedy’s tireless work for the truth and for justice. I am now hovering around a political and spiritual abyss. Have you all been threatened??? There is no other explanation for this.
You will have noted that Charles has not called the genocide a genocide or anything else. He has been criticised for pro Israel bias since he started commenting post Oct 7. I find it odd, when so many other Jewish intellectuals have no reservations about calling out Israel’s appalling actions.
Right about possible blackmail & death threats. It could be against Bobby’s family members- wife, etc. That would probably be a more potent threat. These people are ruthless🤨
I'm taking a course offered by Ipak-edu.org. The course is "Literature of Resistance" We are reading 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 459, and We. In all of these dystopias there are examples of SEVERE lack of empathy. In 1984 people laughed at war videos showing drowning people with limbs blown off limbs. Similar scenes were featured in the other stories. I guess being brutalized is not conducive to feeling sympathy for others. It is always much easier to notice life's unfairness when one is the victim.
Thank you so much for continuing to drill down into this solution. It IS completely possible and is the only possible way to bring about the transformation you outline. You have put yourself fully on the line in the process. Thank you for caring so much.
I was once a supporter of RFK Junior's presidential run, and was delighted to see someone of Charles Eisenstein's caliber working for his election. Sadly, Bobby has lost my support for his refusal to accept that Israel can do no wrong, and his continued support of the Israeli state in spite of the atrocities being committed. It saddens me to think of how many others have also left, and how we had a chance at advancing the peace which RFK Jr appeared to believe in. Alas, you cannot both, promote an end to aggression and war on other nations, and yet not call for a ceasefire on the nation that has killed over 20,000 civilians - mostly woman and children.
The "animating spirit" that you Charles, and I, both desire, can only come about from those who support, and usher in leaders who take off their blinders. Oh, how I wish this could have "reached the ear" of one whom I thought might have had a chance to make those policies more just. The man currently at the helm, and the one who might just unseat him have shown no courage or morality to change that dynamic. In the meantime we can support a brave nation such as South Africa who is willing to risk the wrath of the mighty "great nations" by standing firm for Gaza, and condemning the genocide being perpetrated by Israel.
So glad that you brought in South Africa's 84-page lawsuit at the Hague, backed by 61 other countries, saying that Israel has committed genocide. Now 85-90% of Gaza's 2.3M people are displaced with 93% experiencing crisis levels of hunger and one out of four facing imminent death from starvation. Seventy percent of Gaza's buildings have been reduced to rubble, with no count of the dead under them. There are no two sides to this.
I, too, want to see a positive and effective response from the ICJ at the Hague on the genocide allegations. Yet, it has also been shown that the ICC at the Hague has condemned Vladimir Putin no less than two times for war crimes against humanity in the Ukraine War, and it does no good. We need more than ceremonial gestures. For example, the US wants a scaling back of what is going on in Gaza because 24 Israeli soldiers were killed today. What does that sound like?
What turns the adorable 2 yr old Israeli twins in my aerial class into IDF soldiers giddily patrolling the West Bank and randomly shooting down streets, torturing men and arresting anyone who 'likes' a social media post? Or into the IDF soldiers committing the massacre you saw?
A lifetime of being told that they are the world's victims and anything they do is justified. And every thing that you write, Charles, that perpetuates a falsehood gives that young person, barely out-of-adolescence, the justification to commit another atrocity.
The rave was relocated to the border 48 hrs before it was scheduled. Hamas never intended to target them, their target was the military base down Rt 124, in order to get hostages to trade for Palestinians. When they heard shots, the music was turned off and everyone evacuated a half-hour before there was any military presence. The IDF blocked the 124 in both directions 1/2 mi. away. The only ones to escape fled across the field and into the woods where Israeli survivors say the IDF shot at them. And bombed the cars in the parking lot from Apache helicopters.
Here's one article on it: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/. You have access to real information, Charles. If this is a lie, maybe so is "historical conditions of persecution and genocide and expulsion that leave Jews feeling unwelcome and unsafe." When I pulled on that thread, the whole history unravelled. The only two sides here are lies and truth.
Can you say more? It does seem true to me that people can do terribly abusive things--meanwhile feeling themselves innocent and victimized. The psychiatrist, Frank Yeomans,, speaks on youtube about Arab terrorists beheading their enemies or priests feeling justified in torturing "witches" to drive out their sin. He states that people who perform these actions often feel morally justified and don't even realize their actions are hurtful--because they think such actions are justified. They identify with goodness and feel "all good," while the enemy is viewed as "all bad." For example, many people felt that unvaccinated people during Covid should be locked up, jailed--maybe even forbidden medical care. Noam Chomsky, who used to champion exploited minorities, was asked what if the unvaccinated couldn't shop for food and starved in quarantine. "That's their problem," he replied, obviously believing it would be fine if they suffered since they were threatening the health of the worthy community.
Hi, Diana. Charles is drawing an equivalency between Hamas and IDF soldiers both committing atrocities. I notice that he's no longer talking about beheaded babies or eviscerated pregnant mothers or babies baked in ovens or gang rapes--all of which have been completely debunked. Now he's talking about innocent dancers begging for their lives. I'm not sure where he's getting that from, but it's still propaganda. Israel is a military occupation and the taking of hostages in a war is not an act of terrorism. We only think that way because we don't think Palestine has any rights, Israel can take their children and put them in cages (yes there are photos) and that's fine.
The deaths of the hostages were because of the Hannibal Directive that Netanyahu gave that all Israeli hostages should be killed so Palestine would have no leverage. At most, Hamas killed 115 Israeli civilians on Oct 7. Israel killed a minimum of 125.
The IDF soldiers were not reacting to a life-threatening situation when they committed this massacre. They're reacting to a story, one they've been told all their lives. And that story, I've discovered over the last year, is a lie. The IDF soldier is just the puppet, but those who write the stories pull the strings. That's why I can't let Charles repeat those lies when he can find out the truth for himself. Lies kill.
Appreciate your weighing in on this, Tereza, and the work you've done revealing the deep lies in the accepted WWII narrative. It remains key to so many other false narratives, so many other abuses. May the world wake up to this one and understand how easy it is to manufacture a 'reality' guaranteed to perpetuate suffering.
For me there is adequate evidence and logic for understanding that Hamas is not what it is claimed to be, but rather a "scripted" entity that plays a part in a narrative that assumes justification for control and harassment, for promoting hatred and enmity. It fulfills the Mossad motto: By way of deception thou shalt make war.
The voice of the (conditioned, programmed) mind should never take the role of master of one's understanding/knowing, but has potential to be of service to one's Heart, once Heart has set forth the direction, Love and Truth.
A side shoot, Tereza... I keep getting asked what I think about Chomsky being on the Epstein list...and finding myself my justifying, speculating about an innocent explanation. Not saying he’s a sex pest, but it seems potentially odd... what’s your take?
I just walked over to look at them, and I have the Chomsky Trilogy, The Indispensable Chomsky, and What We Say Goes. I've learned a tremendous amount from him, particularly in Manufacturing Consent. I did a play on his title in this one: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/manufacturing-contempt.
I have two theories. One is that he reached the limits he could stretch, like an old pair of underwear, and couldn't evolve his thinking past that point. I've seen that before, in other arenas. He was a liberal icon and beloved for that, so when liberal contempt was manufactured against anti-vaxxers and free speech, he stood with liberals and not principles.
The other theory is that he was captured. How early on is a good question. His connection to Epstein was financial, I wouldn't guess sexual blackmail. He has a big chunk of money from Epstein that he said was a loan or some nonsense. I don't buy that. He took the money.
If you've followed him, I think you'd like my episode on him. It goes into his contradictory stance, saying he's an anarchist but first we need big gov't to solve the climate crisis. I think he's too smart to be spouting the things he is. I think he's a sell-out, and the only difference is whether he's fooling himself that he believes it or just fooling us. Thanks for asking!
Psychiatrist Frank Yoemans states (regarding the harsh measures of people thinking they are only doing good): "Please do not inflict your goodness on me!"
Oh that is so well said, Jerry. I'm doing a post today on The Words of God looking at the question 'What is scripture?' I woke up thinking about how it 'conscripts' us into acts of violence. May I quote you?
I did find it, here it is in full which really fits my topic:
"Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."― Steven Weinberg
Thank you for 124 details etc. I have independent reliable news on daily as I sew and watch a toddler. If witnessing, rallies and complaining is al Grandma can do then I won’t turn away from this outrage. Ive followed it since 1970s and never more intensely. ICJ better come through then Security Council and individual nations. Theres no two sides balance here in the slaughter or in a defensive srgument to justify grnocide or future remedy. Free independent Palestine for peaceful sane people! Reparations, rebuild, return, restore all archives and willing refugees!
Writing from the Balkans, the area which has witnessed many wars. So I have a first hand experience, and also work on national reconciliation using the method of Systemic Constellations developed by Bert Hellinger, yes, a German, who had plenty of war dynamics material to study in his country. There are lot of insights about what fuels wars coming from this field. One of them is that we are ALL capable of turning into a heartless perpetrator, perpetrators are NOT just some extra evil guys. It all depends on the context and conditions. The second insight is that it is very easy to manipulate people into hatred from which becoming a perpetrator is easy - you just play on the survival instinct of the group through extreme nationalism and create "us" and "them" situation, creating "the delusion that one is made of better stuff than the other" and that our survival is jeopardised. From there it is a small step to take arms with desire to annihilate "the other" with clear conscience. This is a universal pattern which affects all of us, regardless of nation, colour or ideology. Another major insight is that there is no universal "good" or "bad", it is all relevant only for the groups we belong too, so we have to stop fighting for "our good". We have to see others as equals and equally worthy. How do we do that? Yet another insight from Systemic Constellations Work is that every war finds a justification in the one before. How do we stop that cycle in which victims often become perpetrators? We leave it all in the past, we grieve the dead and give up on revenge. And we give up our belonging to our cherished groups and identities: national, ethnic, religious, ideological...Not easy, but possible. I see it happen in my work. I would also say that it is good to be this "naive" as you are in your suggestions Charles and seek possibilities which, from our current state seem impossible.
Thanks, Alemka. Constellation work is powerful indeed. I also practice this work, and come from a German family as well and have used constellations to go deeper into the healing of this lineage, war, and perpetrator/victim bondage.
God once deemed it appropriate to respond to violence with overwhelming vengeance as a form of punishment. God then deemed it appropriate to respond to violence with an eye for an eye. A messenger then deemed it appropriate to turn the other cheek and to love the enemy. However loving one's enemy was rarely understood. This God seems to continue to evolve, for he suggests now that we engage those who have been radicalized to attack with deep listening from an open heart, so we react from an equanimous centre, we react with humility and patience to look towards the source of their conditioning, to hear of their life of trauma, to learn of their disparagement, to experience empathy for their extreme suffering. And so with open hearts instead of anger and notions of revenge, we react with a loving kind compassion which finally breaks the intergenerational cycle of violence. And yet we are asked by this God to evolve even further to love unconditionally, to see one another as brother and sister, of the same father, to see the unity in all humanity. This journey seems to be one of the evolution of our collective human consciousness. It is one which reflects the evolution of the sanctity within each one of us. A return of our true nature to manifest love on earth as it is in heaven.
sounds to me like the coming of an anti-christ-- a leader "god" presenting itself as enlightened & evolving in accordance with the needs of humanity, one who brings a message of unity/love who then imposes this "brother/sister love unity" by means of existing violence-backed force of law.
"heaven on earth" if it is to be achieved for real, in a deeply conscious, lasting way, can only be achieved by means of greater human spirit choosing to act in the interest of peace & love. this means no guns pointed at people, no prisons, no fake money subject to elite interest-based control mechanisms.
human civilization based on love-consciousness, would not this be the death knell of ruling/controlling powers? to imagine that these powers would idly stand by and allow this to happen seems quite a stretch to me. more likely they observe our "call for peace and unity" then deliver what we want-- dressing one of their own in jesus robes and fool us all yet again.
that power interests are just a bunch of well-intended miscreants who one day will surely come to their senses at the behest of greater humanity appears to be the general line of thinking here, according the writings of Charles Eisenstein. while this view may warm our hearts and allow us to see ourselves as enlightened, loving beings, neither historical precedent nor current reality supports it. like all ruling tyrannical entities who wind up losing power, these folks, should this actually happen, will undoubtedly torch the place before they run, hide and regroup.
Hi Charles. I didn't read this article past the first paragraph, but I still wanted to comment. I value your writing so much, and I love hearing your perspective. I just don't want to read of more horror. I don't believe that reading about heinous acts brings me any closer to peace or understanding. I don't want to read any descriptions of atrocities even if they are to illustrate a really good point. I wanted to let you know why I don't see skipping this article as "shutting such horrors out of my awareness". While I agree with you that we shouldn't shut things out of our awareness, to me, news about something which is told to me from someone else, whether it is from you, my neighbour, or the major news media outlets, is not something I have to necessarily bring into my awareness. My awareness needs to be connected to the reality of the present moment, to what is around me. I choose how much to read and watch other people's accounts, and wherever possible I choose to read and watch peace instead of violence. If my neighbour tells me she wants my help, I listen. If she wants to tell me something terrible that happened to someone she knew, I don't see any useful reason for me to hear that. It may be that some of your readers want to have their narratives challenged by reading of brutal violence. I am striving to live free of narratives and open to where my help is most needed. I am interested in hearing more about that. I write this not to criticize you for your choice of topic, in this or anything else. I admire your passion and your willingness to speak up for what you feel is write. I just wanted to offer my perspective on how I see consuming news of violence for whatever reason. Thanks.
That's an interesting perspective, Sarah. If an act of horrific violence happened to you and your loved ones, would you feel the same? It would be okay with you that no one wanted to even know about it? There are many things I can't do anything about but I can know the truth, and that's a real action that changes the future, I think.
I want you to know that any horror inflicted on you and those you love, I would want to know about. And I'd talk about it to others and get them to care. I wouldn't let them ignore it just because it wasn't happening to them. Even if it didn't change what had happened to you, it would give it meaning by making sure it didn't go unnoticed and keep happening again and again.
Hi Tereza, it's a good question. I can't know how I would feel in the event of violence against myself or my family, but from my current position I don't think I would want details of the specifics of the violence, or graphic pictures shared as some commentators/social media posters do. And for the suffering (non war related) people in my family have experienced, I have no interest in sharing the details beyond very close friends nor do I want others talking about it. Other people debating or writing about the specifics of my and my family's life doesn't reduce it, it just repeats and replays trauma over and over. Of course, that's me, and I can't speak for other people. If they want the specifics of violent stories told or want to tell themselves, I would never argue against that. I'm also not suggesting that we turn a blind eye when we can help people. Nor am I arguing that we refuse to hear people speaking to us from the other side if we are entrenched in a position - I'm imagining that this article by Charles is asking people to open their minds to compassion rather than taking sides, and that goal I fully agree with. It's just how we do it that I'm questioning. For myself, I feel I don't need to hear brutal or horrific stories to act in service of peace and compassion. And I also don't need to hear traumatic details to be aware of conflict.
I completely agree about individual acts of violence. My daughters and I can't imagine why people read horror and detective stories for pleasure. If they have the stomach for it, put it to good use understanding US programs of torture. I hate being emotionally manipulated by sensationalized violence, and have zero interest in 'news' about random acts of violence in the US done by deranged individuals.
Charles' message, which you're okay with, is not to take sides. But the details of the massacre shatter that neutrality, as many of us here have pointed out. You can't read that without knowing the truth, and that's disturbing to you--as it should be.
You could have merely stopped reading and not commented. But your comment blamed Charles for exposing you to this extremely uncomfortable reality. Couldn't he just say something philosophical about compassion for both sides? No, he had to ruin it by inconveniently planting the images in your head that give the lie to that easy moral out.
If your family was subject to a private act of violence, I wouldn't want to know about it because what difference would it make? But if you were subjected to systemic violence, say, born as a South African in a land occupied by a foreign military and tortured at will, wouldn't you want the world to know? Or should that have never been exposed, because people didn't want to hear about it?
Just to tone things down- the intent is not to blame Charles for writing what he did. The intent was to explain why I stopped reading. I see those two things as different.
I know that tone of voice doesn't translate in writing, but I can assure you there's no vehemence in what I'm saying. You're representing a point of view that people should not be subjected to the details of violence, even when they're funding it and it's an ongoing campaign that 62 countries have claimed is genocide in their 84 pp lawsuit at the Hague.
It seems to me that you felt ambushed by Charles. You came here to read his perspective on life and instead got hit with irrefutable evidence that 20 yr old Israeli soldiers are engaging in massacres, that will also scar them for life.
You could have just closed the page after the first paragraph and no one, including Charles, would ever know. But you wrote, "I don't want to read any descriptions of atrocities even if they are to illustrate a really good point. I wanted to let you know why I don't see skipping this article as 'shutting such horrors out of my awareness'." You justify your disinterest as "It may be that some of your readers want to have their narratives challenged by reading of brutal violence. I am striving to live free of narratives and open to where my help is most needed."
How exactly do you live free of narratives if you don't allow anything in that might challenge them? I'm taking you seriously as making a moral argument for intentionally rejecting knowledge of ongoing atrocities. Rather than defend your point, you're accusing me of being emotional.
If hearing about atrocities is too upsetting for you, I don't blame you. But it should come with gratitude to the people who are willing to face it, who are taking on that emotional burden for you. No one wants to absorb the brutality of violence. But you want to shirk that responsibility and still feel morally superior. I don't accept that point of view.
The difference between what I am saying and what you are saying I'm saying, what I represent, what I'm thinking, is vast. So much of what you say I'm saying is an inference far beyond what I said. I didn't mean to imply you were emotional. I meant to tone down the accusations against me because I felt hurt by what you said I was thinking, that's it. I don't want to try to explain myself anymore, you are welcome to keep your perception of me and what I'm saying.
Actually what happened at the festival was more complicated. Hamas didn't do most of the killing there. We need to be objective about all sides of the conflict!
I have read a couple of your treatises on the actions in Gaza and Israel. I listened months ago to what l think was a very good zoom meeting produced by Humanity Rising. They had two Jewish men interviewed plus the moderator. The two Jewish men were not Zionists and separated themselves from that mindset and have been excluded from their families and friends who are in that mindset.
What l learned and felt is authentic is that the Israeli government funded and put Hamas in control of Gaza. I feel that the Israeli government orchestrated the whole thing…Hamas coming into Israel killing ‘innocent’ people in order to present the watching world with an ‘accepted’ excuse to attack Gaza…PR. It’s obvious to me that that faction in Israel has the intent to take over the land that they feel God gave to them long long ago. No ones possess any land on this earth. It is not a possession.
In the big picture this is all orchestrated by the powers that be, the Israeli and US governments who really only care about money and power.
Then we can bring in the aspect of karma. This is true for everyone and all who feel they are trodden upon. It’s very very hard to watch. Extreme sadness in me for that but it’s all done in love, opportunity for growth.
I have joined several peace mediations for what is happening in the Middle East as I feel it is something positive I can do. I have compassion for everyone caught up in that hamster wheel of horrors (a phrase I got from Pam Gregory). Because that describes exactly what is going on: there is no end to the horrors that can be perpetrated when you come from a place of fear, separation, and otherness. It will never, ever end. Someone has to be peace to bring peace. It is universal law.
Greetings from Wakefield RI. Thank you for this essay. There is much here in the way of moving toward peace, but I am with the commenters who are questioning the implied equivalencies. There are other elements at work here: atrocity propaganda, AIPAC influence on media coverage and legislative decisionmaking, US made bombs, a US President who has taken $4.3 million from pro-Israel groups since he became a US Senator in 1990. $500 billion of natural gas in the Levant Basin off of Gaza, and prime oceanfront property already being promised to settlers. There is a madman, Netanyahu, using war as a means of his own political survival, .......and a Zionist ideology rooted in supremacy and racism, fueling a government hell-bent on collective punishment, expulsion and yes, genocide. And there is the unfortunate fact of Israel having nuclear weapons, and key Cabinet members being potentially deranged enough to use them. Yet RFK Jr, objective and enlightened on other issues continues to trot out the same BS as other candidates when it comes to this conflict. It is clear that AIPAC will own him too.
Absolutely beautiful Charles. Brought tears to my eyes. And 100% possible. But all of us, even those on this forum, have to make a concerted effort to escape the dualistic thinking in which we are seemingly trapped. I personally am trying to worry less about "what effect Charles is having on RFK's position" and focus on understanding the origins of my own dogmatic conditioning first.
In the first place we honestly do not know very much aside from propaganda about October 7. In the second place Israel from it's violent birth saw the need for superior firepower and superior propaganda that could turn night into day. Israel is an ethnic state building itself into a curious Zionist mirror of National Socialism, sharing a blood and soil and master race ideology and Macht Politik. Had the Reich been able to transfer the European Jews to the Holy Land I suspect the process of extermination would be complete. No peace will come to this land in our lifetimes. No need for it in the end as hatred is a useful weapon for all. This may be the true power of the powerless-the ability to fully hate and dehumanize another person into a thing.
In response to Stephan, I've come to a place in my research where I wonder if Nazi was a separate group and not a contraction of National Socialism. From the early papers, this isn't a word they used for themselves and their economic program that replaced foreign debt with sovereign credit, getting them out of the Weimar imposed starvation.
You're right, Stegiel, that Zionism is a curious mirror of Nazism, leading some to look at AshkeNazi as the source. Was it 1913 that headlines read "Judea Declares War on Germany"? Resulting in the Transfer Agreement where Hitler enabled 50,000 Jews to take $100M of German wealth to build Israel, even though their betrayal for the Balfour Declaration had created Germany's utter destruction and enabled the Bolshevik Jews to amass that wealth at the expense of German starvation.
It was lies that turned a two-year European war into WWI and WWII. And the holocaust is another lie that didn't emerge until 1961, the same year that Benjamin Freedman exposed how the Bolshevik Jews created the World Wars in exchange for Israel. We need to know this history: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/my-hitler-journey.
NSDAP is the name of the political organization abbreviated as Nazi. Hitler was sold like soap in the first mass media political campaign. Wall Street backed him. Anthony Sutton discussed this matter. Hitler also worked as a spy for the German state during the Beer Hall putsch and was treated like a hero in prison by certain groups,
Light on as of people maybe you don’t remember national Socialism When you contract it becomes Nazi that’s good not me just a contraction of national Socialism thanks for bringing that out for us much appreciated
Thank you for this Charles. Love your heart, brother. I was given at birth the labels "Jewish" and Israeli". I very much like your suggestions here (and I can think of a few changes to make them even better) but at the root of it, it seems to me that such suggestions are only secondary to something more fundamental, which is that absolutely nothing can work as long as the vast majority of Israelis do NOT view the local people in Palestine as equal human beings!! And do not view the pain of someone who did not receive at birth the label "Jewish" as equal to the pain of someone who received at birth this label
(Or more accurately, are very very deeply indoctrinated from a very young age into this profoundly destructive God-rejecting sectarian supremacist tribalist/nationalist mentality and worldview, which is by far the most common and mainstream in Israel).
In my view, that is at the absolute root of everything. The heart of people. I can say from experience that for the vast majority of Israelis, the local people in Palestine simply do not exist, and the pain and trauma we inflicted and inflict on them simply cannot be heard or understood by the deeply corrupted tribalist supremacist heart of the vast majority of indoctrinated Israelis.
We hear absolutely nothing in the zionist propaganda media or in the manipulative zionist indoctrination camps (schools) about the local people or the unspeakable horror, cruelty, inhumanity, aystematic dispossesion, theft, pushing-out, abuse, torture, trauma, erasure and genocide that we, heavily-brainwashed and heart-corrupted zionists, inflicted and inflict on them.
I just don't see how can anything fundamentally change if this root issue doesn't change, if we are programmed from birth to NOT see the local people in Palestine as equal human beings with equal value. Absolutely everything in Israel pushes in the exact opposite direction of equally valued humanity, in the opposite direction of God. Absolutely evwrything in Israel pushes towards supremacy and greater and greater dehumanization. Supremacy is 99% of Israeli society and politics and you are considered a criminal and dangerous outcast and traitor if you're not a supremacist too. I am not optimistic at all that any change can happen within the very deeply indoctrinated and deeply fascistic and supremacist israeli society..
Thoughtful comment. Thank you for teaching me how Israelis are socialized. As I read about the Jewish religion, I am often struck by how Israel doesn't really follow the religion. It seems more like a secular state, versus a Jewish state. What about "Love thy neighbor" penned in Leviticus. There is quite a bit of compassion and love embedded into the 613 laws... yet, few of us Gentiles would ever know this, given how modern Israeli behaves.
Yes, and the ironic thing is that those in Israeli society who are the most violent and hateful towards the local people of Palestine, the most cheering for their genocide, the most inhumane cruel and merciless in their celebration of Palestinian suffering, who dehumanize the native people most and see them as less than dirt (definitely far inferior in value to 'the chosen people'), who are the most right-wing, the most fascistic (and even neo-Nazi) in their supremacist ideology, are actually those who call themselves "religious nationalists" and love to invoke the name of their divisive sectarian nationalist "god" (which in my view is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) as justification for the unspeakable cruelty, inhumanity, domination, mass-murder, subjugation, torture, dispossesion, theft, abuse and trauma that they're inflicting on the native people.
It is indeed quite amazing and heartbreakkng, this profound corruption of religion and of God for pursuit of the most God-denying ideology and actions..
In my view the path forward out of this horror is not strictly in political arrangemnts (that's also important but secondary) but rather it lies in the heart of people, in the ability/capacity to see the humanity of another before viewing them as a label (palestinian, israeli, muslim, jew), as well as in coming to terms with and acknowledging the IMMENSE AND PROFOUND TRAUMA that each "side" has caused the other and in finding ways to heal together.
(And the trauma that we supremacist zionists immigrants caused the local people over the last century - in their brutal ruthless cruel project to disposses, throw out, annihilate, dehumanize and erase of the local people in Palestine - is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around (the trauma caused to the zionists immigrants by the resistence of the local people to being dispossesed, massacred, abused and driven out of their home). Some of it is detailed in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which i can confirm is 100% true to reality based on my own personal experience in the Israeli military. As well as in this distreaaing https://youtu.be/CSff-Ip1kZs?si=udYd0XxYz6kbcDMb that gives one example of the horrific TRUTH of what is being done, everything that the billionaire-owned corporate media never mentions..
This capacity mentioned above, to step out of one's bubble and hear/see the humanity of another before seeing a label (and the stories attached to the label), requires having CONTACT between the "sides" so that they may hear each other's stories and each other's pain, but this contact is prevented and denied becasue of the incredible dominance of the sectarian nationalist divisive ideology in both sides.
what allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but for more than a century now) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism driven by the ultra-wealthy ruling class, to divide and tribalistically pit against each other those who for centuries lived together, before the introduction of the divisive nationalist mind virus to the region) SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/dispossesors) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm us for no reason"
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself, it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism, there is a complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters"
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that people in the region (and especially Israelis) undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that they teach me is at odds with this identity.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity.
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose tribalism also involves divisive, excluding, supremacist and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that their saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and anyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common & mainstream worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic & exclucivist Israeli society, and it plays a huge part in what brought about this conflict in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian exclucivist zionist nationalism, and its arrival in the middle east from (mostly) eastern Europe.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God/Consciousness actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our ignorance & blindness we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
Head and Heart, dont give up. You are more awake. Other people can awaken. The indoctrinaters that instill the lies need to be detected and moved aside. The truth needs to be kept from being censored. The people who cannot restrain themselves from leading their country into genocide need to be held to account for their crimes. Im not calling for hate, simply accountability and justice.
Hi Charles. This is Yusuf, I interviewed you many years ago where we explored your book Sacred Economics and some of the wisdom in the Islamic tradition pertaining to its condemntation of Usury. Thank you for finally letting us know what you think in your previous piece "Friends Don't let Friends Destroy Themselves" where you were honest about your conflict in working for RFK.Jr and his position on Israel. I'm glad you finally let us know what you thought, my heart could not accept that a heart like yours (which I greatly admire) would accept RFK Jr.'s position, I was also glad to read you highlight Chris Hedges writings, and his views on RFK.Jr and the Israel Lobby are clear for everyone to read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys/comments
On this piece, I completely agree with the sentiment, Sufis and mystics on both sides have tried to do what you are stating for years, there is a power imbalance in the equation you are proposing, one that can be redressed by the proposals you have highlighted, but for that to happen, alongside the condemning and removal of Hamas and extremist elements on the Palestinian side we need to call out the underpinning ideology of Zionism which is an extreme manifestation of the Science and Technological Programme you alluded to in the Ascent. There is a reason why Zionism and the inception of Israel was opposed by traditional Judaism, the orthodox position that was later rebranded as an ultra orthodox position, despite Israel being a violation of Judaism's Three Oaths, which entails a submission to God, to await for the Messiah, to not forcefully reclaim the Land of Israel and not to rebel against the other nations - all of which were abrogated in a paradigm of control, and the "fix" of lobbies, armaments, media and financial manipulation. The problem with any paradigm of such control, is the longer one goes down that road, the more the narrative falls apart, and if the solution then becomes more control and manipulation, the crisis just deepens more. Zionists have unmasked themselves, there is no going back now, they can't reclaim the moral narrative, because all the lies and deceit over 75 years have been laid bare. Rupert Murdoch's media empire can try as much as it wants to control the narrative, and the lobbies and political power of their machine can keep trying to deligitamize the Palestinians and demonize them but the world has shifted, the Global South sees the hypocrisy (South Africa is leading the way for a reason), and alternative/social media, the Max Blumenthals/Aaaron Mates/Chris Hedges of this world, will keep exposing the media lies. In the Muslim world, we are now getting educated on who the Zionists really are, see these extremely informative videos:
[1] Unveiling Zionism: Philosophical and Historical insights with Dr. Ali Ataie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egvFSx-J3b8
[2] How Zionism Indoctrinated the West with Ahmed Paul Keeler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2tKwj4GNYI
The last video is particularly relevant, because Paul Keeler was someone from the generation who were educated with the narrative of the Empire, and he speaks about how the loss of that narrative, has exposed Zionism.
In truth Charles, the Muslim world already extended the branch to Israel, the Abraham Accords only asked for the Israelis to stop building the settlements in return for normalization, but they continued building. Even the Hamas 2017 Charter (unlike the oft quoted 2008 one, this is the only Charter established when they were a political group) implicitly accepted an Israel and a separate Palestine state on the 1967 borders, but the Zionist Project is committed to the idea of the Greater Israel, and the ethnocentric supremacist state they seek to establish for that purpose. This is why the genocide and ethnic cleansing has been systemic and incremental, even if its one house at a time, as documented by the likes of Illan Pappe.
I know you probably know how integral to all this the Zionist Project for control is, and why it needs to be called out. I do suspect RFJ. Jr. knows this, which makes his association with the likes of the Likudnik Zionist Propagandist and so called Rabbi Shmuley Boteach all the more unconscionable. If he had associated with the likes of Rabbi Michael Lerner (https://www.tikkun.org/a-jewish-renewal-understanding/) he wouldn't have got the support from the Zionist machine but he would have won hearts and shown that he is consistent with the other stated positions he claims to hold. This association with Zionism for him negates his talk about being against the war machine, as Chris Hedges notes, the Israel-Palestine issue is not one issue amongst many issues, but " is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized...if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity. Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage." [https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/15/chris-hedges-the-israel-lobbys-useful-idiot/]
I know you know this, and as your brother in heart, I know you must have grappled with this for some broader reason of bringing good. But from where I am, I can't see it my brother, I think RFK.Jr has revealed who he really is with this, and I hope and pray you will be liberated from this association soon, so your voice can shine with the luminosity it has.
Thank you Yusuf for putting the time and thought into this response. it has been a real dilemma for me. I support RFK Jr. on most other issues. I think he is the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart. But this is no small issue. The US relationship with Israel is central to the imperialistic unipolar project. It is one of the key wedges that divides the world (in the mind of the foreign policy establishment) into a world of friends and foes. it is inseparable from all of foreign policy. My temptation has been to make a conspicuous exit from the campaign on this matter of principle. Everyone would applaud me for my principled resignation. But would this actually do the Gazans any good? Would it do any good to anyone except me and my public image? Or, if I can still have a positive influence by staying an advisor, should I do that even though it creates a public perception that I am a hypocrite? And furthermore, am I actually having any influence, or is that wishful thinking? You can see how these are not simple questions. What I have arrived at, for now, is that I will under no circumstances silence myself. If I am kept on as an advisor despite my outspoken dissent, that is a good sign.
I will have a look at the links you have provided. Thank you for taking the time.
Charles, perhaps you need to drop the idea that you can do any good at all and then your sense of integrity will lead you in the direction that is most healthy for you yourself? It's not about who would or wouldn't applaud you for whatever you decided to do, nor is about your having influence or not. When you are in alignment with what you know is right for you, there will be no more questions and it has nothing to do with public perceptions of you.
Another thing, peace lovers and genocide haters, that can be done to move things forward in the correct direction, would be to boycott the news papers and media that are spreading lies that harm and promote escalation of the Genocide against the Palestinians. The Adelson owned newspaper in Israel is not helping the Jews or Israel by spreading their lies. They are only fattening a few corrupt gangsters. Don't read, watch or listen. Put them out of business. Instead support independent journalists that tell the truth, as in exact place, time, format, and result. Support the families of Journalists that have been murdered trying to get the truth out there. There are over 100 journalists murdered now.
Is Penny Lernoux on that list? She reminded the world about Iran-Contra from the Reagan years when George Bush Sr. stole the 1988 election from Michael Dukakis, the overwhelming Democratic candidate. I doubt that most of the fans here read the propaganda news, otherwise why would they be here? Nobody that has some finesse, by now, follows the news channels, mainstream newspapers, and the party-line ideologies. We want the evil-doers brought down by the justice system that we thought we could respect and count on. This is now a very flimsy proposition. Killing truth reporters is a clue to the situation in a world without Willy Wonka :) Nobody wins, and that's life.
So true Helen.
Also, I fear the state of ruin the US is in isn't something Zionists care about, fixing the US isn't why they bought RFK.😕
Maybe RFK was threatened into drawing back on his campaign. Remember, he is supposedly a Democratic Party candidate, and isn't even being considered at all today. One prominent urban legend is that after his uncle and father were murdered, and his other uncle, Teddy suffered the disgrace of Chappaquiddick in 1969, and then JFK Jr.'s sudden and untimely death by airplane crash in 1999, that no member of the Kennedy family would ever get close to the presidency again. Even if RFK is siding with Israel, so is Biden and Trump. Yet, we hear nothing from him, while Trump and Biden spew their political rants. Indeed, the question is this: What has happened to this candidate? Charles, maybe you can answer this question. A silent candidate for POTUS can hardly be expected to get elected.
Yes, there are famous rabbis who brag about the Kennedy curse. It's been shocking for me to read that it's that outspoken.
I see that RFK Jr. dropped his Democratic candidacy and went Independent Party last October. At least, he's on the ballot in a couple of state primaries.
Thank you Charles, I understand and appreciate the dilemma you are in, as RFK Jr., given his other stances does appear better than the two other options out there, either of whom pretty much spell further destruction down the lizard's hole. I'm just glad you were/are able to spell out your thinking here, which I recognize is part of your process of not being silent, and requires bravery which I commend. It makes sense to let your intention and heart guide you, whilst not compromising on your own integrity and truth. Peace.
SOME GOOD NEWS FIRST AS RELAYED VIA SAM HUSSEINI QUOTING PROFESSOR FRANCIS BOYLE:
Sam Husseini
@samhusseini:
Francis Boyle on the ICJ Orders “This is a massive, overwhelming legal victory for the Republic of South Africa against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. The UN General Assembly now can suspend Israel from participation in its activities as it did for South Africa and Yugoslavia. It can admit Palestine as a full member. And -- especially since the International Criminal Court has been a farce -- it can establish a tribunal to prosecute the highest level officials of the Israeli government, both civilian and military.”
10:04 AM · Jan 26, 2024
SO..... Charles:
Stick with your own integrity. Be willing to experience anything. Be willing to change your mind and allow others to do so. Forward truth. Speak against lies. If everyone were to resign from an organization, group or activity thar was usurped by ill intentioned corrupt who would be left to whistleblow and expose the lies, corruption and falsehoods.
Lets all celebrate courageous South Africa and it's willingness to stand up for Human Rights and the law. We are all equal under the law and this needs to be reflected in our justice systems!
The interaction between the both of you has me crying. Charles, your reply feels like hope when thats so hard to find. Your questions are an acknowledgement of the complexities that exist, but are often disallowed or denied by the big machine. Thankyou both
Just to balance out the Chris Hedges link....as he speaks in black/white terms re Kennedy. My understanding he is "connected" to Cornel West's campaign....so motivations have to be considered as a potential piece of what he is writing. I listen to Chris Hedges quite a bit.
Please do leave the RFK campaign. This is a principle too important to compromise. It bothers me that Israel's total area is 0.077% of the combined area of the Muslim majority countries. Israel is half the size of San Bernardino County, CA; Israel is just way too big! It also bothers me that Israel fights back after every massacre of its civilians. Unfortunately, 80% of Americans support Israel. It's probably that 9/11 thing, when some people did something.
It's strange, it's almost as if RFK wants to win the election or something.
I highly doubt that 80% of Americans still support Israel after all that has come out since October 7, 2023. The reference to the 9/11 thing, "when some people did something", refers to Ilhan Omar's remarks made in March 2019, which was here first term as House Representative from Minnesota, and wherein she speaks about the real causes of 9/11 in a very veiled way. You see, after coming to the United States in 1997, after years in Somalia as a refugee, she began to grow a conscience, and wherein she wanted to be a representative doing good in some way, which turned out to be politics. Her remarks in 2019 were designed to expose the real cause of 911, and based on her own study of the 9/11 Truth Movement since its inception after September 2001.
As a fledgling politician from Minnesota, and being Islamic Muslim, she needed to find a way to say, "some people did something". She left off the completion of the sentence, which was, "but it wasn't us". You see, she hoped that people would adduce from that statement that the 9/11 Truth Movement, banned since 2011, would get her meaning. Do you?
Sadly, Americans still do back Israel. You see, they cling to their Bibles and their religion. Their Bible features Genesis 12:3, which tells us that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.
People of conscience, like yourself, can do more to endear Americans to the Palestinian-Arab cause. For example, more screaming demonstrations in front of hospitals, blocking highways so transplant patients can't get the organs they need, you know the drill.
With the right attitude, we can still realize the goal of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ally of the Nazis, who dreamed of a Judenfrei Palestine!
I was thinking more along the lines of American Muslims, Christians, Agnostics, and Atheists, who are sick of all this Israel support. Of course, the Zionists here wield a huge amount of power, and the government yields to it. It is still, "We the People" though, and a fair, equitable, and peaceful world.
American Christians are not sick of all this Israel support; they form the largest body of Zionists in the world. Still, I hear you. You meant to say (((Zionists))) but were too scared.
Many of us hope for a peaceful world governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Allahu akbar!
the Government in Israel and their Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have shown complete disobeyance to the orders of the highest court in the world. The World Court (ICJ) now has the legal right to prosecute ahead of the ascribed month due to Israel continuing the Genocide.
Wherever you are in the world, reader, imagine being suddenly bombed, your baby lost in the rubble. Imagine being completely innocent laying in a hospital unable to search for your child due to your injuries, and then being bombed in the hospital and seeing the brave and selfless doctor, who is trying to save you, mercilessly killed. All because some gangsters want your land and energy resources as an excuse for their psychotic and murderous actions.
Meyer Lanskey and Sheldon Adelson are dead. Their Media will collapse shortly because people are tired of being force fed lies, lies, and more LIES, that lead to murder, misery, suffering, war, and GENOCIDES.
I truly hope that the World Court (ICJ) has this power to prosecute Israel, which they have condemned based on the South Africa investigation and complaint. Yet, if we consider the United States, which has vigorously supported the defense of Israel since 1948, it will likely see this prosecution as a criticism of U.S. government involvement, which is continuing to occur, as we speak. Remember, the United States does not recognize the ICC, nor the ICJ. At least, not in terms of who rules the world.
Beautifully written, Yusuf, and I would add Vanessa Beeley to those shining a light in this darkness. And this, perhaps, gives some additional background to the Zionist agenda: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/kissinger-and-the-balfour-declaration.
Hi Tereza! Have you seen this? Max Blumenthal with the Gray Zone: What Really Happened on October 7th:
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/18/video-what-happened-october-7/
Thanks for sharing that, Sheila. Max and the Grayzone are doing amazing work. I used his research debunking the beheaded babies in this one: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/profiteering-and-propaganda-israelhamas.
There is this too, with Vanessa Beely which is enlightening:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/genocide-and-empire-containing-escalation-how-the-resistance-axis-is-sabotaging-us-intent-to.
The thing I do love about Charles articles is that he is a proponent of ideas. He may have some false data on the exactitude of events, which we can thank the beasts that own the media for, and our inferior education/indoctrination into world history for. It is those few slimy slugs unseen that propel us to ceaseless war and misery. We are only allowed to see the pawns and the puppets. The death pushers are proponents of force, not ideas. They would wish to crush the idea that the US, the Americas, Middle Eastern countries, Europe, all of Asia, including Russia and China, Africa, Australia and Oceana could live in harmony with human rights. Although Russia was our ally in WWII, the death pushers were already working their plans to divide, conquer and dissolve as much life as possible. The overseers above that chessboard feel threatened by the living and life. Yet, ideas and not force mark the greatest forward progress in mankind. The brotherhood of mankind is what the death pushers wish us to be numb to. They make the politicians believe the lie that force is our greatest way to achieve national security, when indeed it is the worst.
Thanks for that link, Sheila. And for reminding me that Charles didn't need to wade into this quagmire at all, one where he knew half of his audience would be upset no matter what he said, and by urging understanding towards both sides, that ups the ante to most. He knows that his readers are not happy with RFK's stance and see him as compromised by the association. And yet he had the courage to 1) watch and read this evidence and 2) link and talk about it here. So thank you for keeping that in mind that the false data is in a sea of propaganda but the willingness to engage is the lifeboat.
love that "false data is in a sea of propaganda but the willingness to engage is the lifeboat" Beautiful!
good article linked below on the world court's ruling on the genocide case against Israel. It's a little tiny in print but can be expanded. It's interesting to see the various mainstream and even independent medias different accounts too. One can tell which ones are compromised by war monger owners and manipulaters by how they report on the findings. But the below one is good, thanks to Sam Husseini :
https://accuracy.org/release/world-court-orders-israel-to-abide-by-genocide-convention-and-stop-killing/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
This is also a good one on the ruling: https://oliverboydbarrett.substack.com/p/usa-israel-and-europe-against-the. I found him through Vanessa Beeley and he's very astute.
Love your comment. I'm responding before I have finished reading it to the end. I wanted to say I read a psychologist commenting on arguments between marital partners. He states that when one partner has wronged another partner and finally apologizes--you might expect that the other partner would be delighted to receive the apology and welcome the prodigal son (or daughter). HOWEVER, the psychologist stated this was rarely the case. Like an auto continuing to travel after the breaks were applied, the partner often doesn't acknowledge the apology at first but continues complaining and raving/ranting as if they must discharge all of their resentment or cannot believe the apology was heartfelt.
If this happens--you know war will then start up again. The people may feel predisposed to peace--but their leaders may feel otherwise.
Jerry K and Tereza, I think our language has been hi- jacked and that is what I object to. Whenever a person is forced, manipulated or indoctrinated to believe something without understanding it, it has a bad effect. Such alterations have ignorant or nefarious intentions behind them. The beast that wears the cloak called education or religion is simply hiding its true intentions. What has been purpetrated in the name of Christ or Buddha, Mohammed or many spiritual guides would alarm and disgust them. Even the word soul or spirit has been violated in such a way. Truth and Understanding are spiritual matters and belong in the field of religion, not war. Does not Jihad mean "struggle for truth"? We need to take back our language in this twisted barbaric world we call civilization, and seek truth.
Absolutely. Jesus knew his words would be twisted even in the garden of gethsemone. False power, which is all most of the world knows, depends on twisted words. Real power is always evolving...
It is most interesting that when Jesus was confronted in the Garden of Gethsemane by the Roman cohort and the officials of the High Priest, all led there by Judas Iscariot, that He said, "Whom do you seek?" They responded, "Jesus the Nazarene". He said, "I am He". And they all fell down.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+18&version=NASB1995
We must read Tereza’s stuff on this... (she comments on this thread)
I know she does. But, when Christ first met the enemy in the Garden, they could not withstand His power and all fell down. Only after "drinking the Cup", which He tells Peter about, ref. 18:10, is He captured without resistance. Then, His words would get twisted when He is brought before the High Priest, and then Pontius Pilate. So, you are absolutely right in this twisting of words that would ultimately lead to the crucifixion of the Messiah.
Which exactly foreshadows the plight of the Palestinians, and even Hamas. They are denigrated as animals by the incumbent empire.
Friends in truth or Friends in light original Quakers resonating
Very informative comment Yusuf, an article in itself. I used to be friends with a Lebanese guy, who said this: "man, what I say to people is that if they want to understand world politics, they need to understand what's going on in the Middle East". He came to mind because for some time now, my understanding has been that, regarding the pursuit of peace, there is a silent bully lurking in the shadow of Zionism (alledgelly along the lines of the Anglo-American Empire's agenda for global control). Very few people (at least people in the West) talk about this covert interest that will never ever, under any circumstances, allow for peace to happen. Rather, they focus on details about either one side or the other. Do any of the links you've provided go into this?
Hi Eduard, the links I provided where more an exporation of the historical evolution of Zionism, and whilst there often are nefarious links behind the Zionist movement it did not go into that in much detail, highlighthing how the movement first arose out of a heretical distortion of Christianity (Christian Zionism preceded Jewish), and then was enacted and supported by the world powers for various reasons. Its been educational for me to explore the reasoning behind the Chrsitian Zionist lobby's (like John Hagee's Christians United for Israel) blind commitment to Israel, and the seeking of the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque for the building of the Third Temple. the idea that it is mostly based on a deliberate misreading of what is called the "Abrahamic Covenant" : https://nikeinsights.famguardian.org/forums/topic/genesis-12-scofields-distortion-of-the-abrahamic-promises/ for example.
Thanks Yusuf!
Eduard, here is one link below:
Hi, Eduard. A couple of Substackers, Frances Leader and Nefahotep, go into what they call the Black Nobility or the Dragon Court. I look at the Torah as the genealogy of the Shemitic dynasty and the God-given right to rule the world. Jews and Israelis are another part of the blood sacrifice to this tiny faction of ruler-gods. It's not Palestine that's being sacrificed now, despite the horrors, it's Israel that won't survive. Here are a couple of episodes on the Biblical underpinnings: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/hot-and-cold-hatred and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/empire-and-religion.
And the Abrahamic Covenant comes from 'God's' covenant with Noah giving the descendants of Shem rule over the world with the Canaanites to be their slaves along with the descendants of Ham (Africa, Egypt and parts of Asia). Abram was really Abdi-ashirta the mercenary warlord represented as a jackal who was poaching from the Pharaoh's vassal lords. On the Noahite Covenant: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-devil-and-naomi-wolf and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/talmud-tricks-and-torah-curses.
Thanks Tereza!
It's all about money, and following the money trail. This is where the evildoers expose themselves, and certainly no less today. These two books provide the convincing proof: of what mammon means. It was Judas Iscariot that first came up with the scheme, ref. Luke 16 on the Unrighteous Steward.
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf
https://ia801705.us.archive.org/2/items/ConjuringHitler/ConjuringHitler.pdf
Thanks Steve!
Eduard: here is a link below:
In any conflict or war both sides lose horribly. As there is a current DEFINITE AND UNDENIABLE GENOCIDE happening against the Palestinians currently, they are losing the most. Unimaginably so. But both sides are losing. So who benefits? Well, it is the hidden factor that considers they do benefit. This is the third party, undetected by both sides, that cannibalize off the destruction of both sides, that needs to be discovered. Any leader or politician who sincerely desires to help his people needs to be alert to this as a path to peace and stability. An example of this kind of exposure is linked below.
The word philanthropist and the term war hawk do not and cannot rationally exist together.
LINK TO A GREAT EXAMPLE:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/united-against-nuclear-iran-the-shadowy-intelligence-linked-group-driving-the-us-towards-war-with-iran/286596/
Thanks Sheila!
This was a disgusting bit of sophistry. What happened on Oct 6th has been so misrepresented in the press (US/Zionist propaganda) that you need to do a little research. Hamas executed a very legal military operation. The zionist entity shot up the festival and one kibbutz for 4 hours with tanks and helicopters, shooting hellfire missiles at anything that moved. The civilians killed were mostly killed by the zionist entity. Hamas fighters didn't even know about the rave. (One has to question the humanity of idiots who do drugs and dance in the desert right next to a concentration camp.) The personal interviews of Israelis showed polite fighters who left women and children alone. Their hostages were far fewer than the thousands held in zionist prisons, often being tortured. There is no balance here. People who have been deprived of their land, their homes, their jobs, their dignity, and murdered at the whim of hopped up zionist youth and settlers for 75 years have responded with more humanity than one could expect. Sure, some bad things happened, but nothing like the daily abuses suffered for decades by the native population. Its pretty obvious that the zionists slaughter was meant to be used to justify the final solution; ethnic cleansing and mass murder, which is what has been going on for 4 months now. It was a intel operation, complete with media lies. It was the new 9/11, done by some of the same actors for some of the same reasons. After 9/11, the US planned to invade 9 countries, and only 2 are left; Lebanon and Iran. When you hear the preface `Iran backed´ before any group in a news story, know that is the beating of war drums. Is it OK with you that the zionist entity plans to take over Lebanon, parts of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq? Because they have proudly announced that. That they plan to steal the gas reserves off Gaza? They are already stealing Syria´s oil and gas, via Turkey. The zionist entity has shown its fangs. If you cannot stand against this, you are a moral coward or an imbecile. Stop the ridiculous rationalization, and look at realities on the ground. Its not OK to establish a nation, and murder and steal from all of your neighbors. No good will come of it. There is an area of Russia for Jews, where they are safe due to the rule of law. The zionist entity is making Jews look bad, and putting them in danger everywhere by using them as a cover for godless, vile behaviors. I can say all of this from a position of compassion. I have compassion for the Israeli kids who were raised on propaganda to commit crimes against humanity. I can have compassion for every human hurt, killed or driven mad by the current state of things. That doesn't stop a clear analysis.
Yusuf is the Arabic version of the JudeoChristian name Joseph. I need Arabs to discover my substack at https://ishmaelhandinhand.substack.com?utm_campaign=email-home&r=rjka5 so I tried to subscribe. Once I posted on Fakebook that Jews and Christians should help financially support building mosques and suddenly had 500 new friends. When are you going to start your substack, Yusuf?
Hi Esther, I don't think I will have capacity to start my own substack anytime soon, given how overwhelmed I get just in responding to the comments section of my own comment! But it is nice to exchange views and benefit from the knowledge and thoughts of so many perspectives with like minded people.
Oh, well. Do you know of any Muslims with substacks I could follow?
Mohammed's biography is very interesting and important to start with. He was a bad guy that became a good guy when he was forty years old and compelled to enter a cave and receive an angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael. Thus was born the Arabic Bible into the world, c. 610 -623 AD. What a wait for Islam to begin after a thousand years of Judaism. He even offered his revelations to the Jews, including the fact of the existence of Jesus as a peace offering, and they spit on him. What else could Mohammed do but declare an enemy of the truth.
HI Steve. Not sure what your sources are, they seem almost entirely fictitious. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) was "not a bad guy that became a good guy when he was forty years old and compelled to enter a cave and receive an angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael." Rather he was known as the most truthworthy and sincere man of his people,never took part in any of the "bad" things of his time, and used to frequent the cave of Mt.Hira for meditations and seclusion as a way to get away from the societal ills around him. Muslims believe he was already a Prophet from the moment he was born, but his formal declaration of Prophethood came at 40, through the Arch Angel Gabriel visiting him and causing him to recite the first five verses of the Qur'an, commencing with the word "Iqra" or "Read/Recite". The Qur'an was then revealed to him incrementally over 23 years, and was not an "angelic message about Abraham's first son, Ishmael.", but was the Divine Message to all of mankind, being what Muslims believe to be the final revealtion, in continuity of previous revealtions which include the Torah (which was partially distorted), and the Injeel (the Gospel of Jesus) which was likewise not preserved and lost. The Quran is therefore not the Arabic Bible - that would be the Bible translated into Arabic. Islam does not see itself as beginning a thousand years after Judaism, rather Muslims see Islam as being the primordial religion since Adam, and all Prophets effectively teaching Islam for their age, hence the religion of Moses, Abraham and the other Prophets of Israel, was Islam, even if it may not have been named that at their times. The rest of what you wrote about peace offerings and being spat on does not seem to have any historical accuracy either, and even if you meant it metaphorically it simply is not true. If you would like to know more about the Prophet's life, I sincerely recommend this book by the late Martin Lings: https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Life-Based-Earliest-Sources/dp/1594771537
If you prefer audio, then an audio course based on this Book can be accessed on youtube, taught by the contemporary scholar Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, please see below:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M2Ppbtrh6w
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FiaIXSCCc8&t=328s
Please don't write things about the Prophet or Islam that are not based on fact. There is too much distortion and misinformation as already. Thank you.
Hi Yusuf J,
I had a chance to review my sources on Muhammad, and they come from a well acknowledged scholar, W. Montgomery Watt, who wrote: Muhammad at Mecca (1953), Muhammad at Medina (1956), and Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961). This is all compressed in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the life of Muhammad, which I was able to review today. I do see an interpretational variance between Watt and my own focus, and wherein Muhammad's increasing use of Razziah's in order to defeat his enemies, becomes quite brutal and blood-thirsty. He had first learned of this technique when he was 25 years old, c. 595 AD, and getting experience from his uncle, Abu Talib, in mercantile operations there in Mecca. Thus, he was a stagecoach robber, like we see in the western movies today. Muhammad met his first wife in one of these engagements, Khadija, who was several years his senior. This is a most extraordinary story of the birth of Islam, which bypassed the Jewish-Christ event by some 600 years, in order to receive the reincarnated Ishmael into the fold of the overall Abraham enterprise. We need Islam, but we need it spiritualized. We need Judaism, but we need it spiritualized. We need Christianity, but we need it spiritualized, which means embracing the Christ Impulse, which is the forever promise.
I have my sources, and I never said he was spat on. I didn't write what I wrote to condemn Mohammed in any way, but to say that he founded the religion of Islam for his people some 600 years after the pivotal events occurred in Palestine between Judaism, and the Messiah that they rejected. The Arabic cultural stream bypassed this confrontation until Mohammed, the Prophet, began to receive his revelation in that cave, and indeed, Angel Gabriel was the Messenger to Mohammed in the forming of the Koran. He did offer this revelation to the Jews about Jesus as a living figure, which they still refused to accept, and this created the original war between these two monotheistic powers,now established and coexisting. Judaism and Islam. And, of course, it is a fact that Abraham's first born son, and his mother, were exiled, and that Ishamel would become a mighty man and leader of his own tribes, and this begat the Arabic Cultural Stream, which of necessity bypassed the Judeo-Christian events of two thousand years ago. Then, Ishmael was reborn with an interval of six hundred years, as Mohammed (Mahomet), which brings Abraham''s two sons together in terms of Judaism and Islam. Yet, it didn't work, and they have been fighting ever since. Why? Because the element of the "all too human, human" got in the way, and it is still that way.
So rfk jr. Is an infidel? Aka a bad guy?
Nice try. Does infidel mean bad guy? Never could quite figure it out, given its such an orientalist trope and what appears to be a deliberate mistranslation and imposition of alien worldviews on the Muslim one. I'll leave the infidel classifications to you. What I do know is that rfk.jr is a hypocrite who as Chris Hedges points out: "regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. He peddles the myth of what Pappe calls “Fantasy Israel.” This alone discredits him as a progressive candidate. It calls into question his judgment and sincerity. It makes him another ....hack who dances to the macabre tune the Israeli government plays." https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys
Can you offer a more appropriate translation than “infidel?” I’ve spent some time with an English translation of the Q’ran and infidel seems to adequately convey the sentiment. I’m open to translation generating and perpetuating orientalist tropes and potentially misrepresenting the tone of the text thereby altering the meaning.
At one time I was less critical of the Abrahamic religions and found the translation of the Q’ran to convey a beautiful and inspired work. Today however the vitriol and sense of superiority seem to leap out of so many Suras.
Hi Co, my response to some of the points/queries you raise are below, apologies in advance if this gets a bit lengthy or academic :
"Can you offer a more appropriate translation than “infidel?” I’ve spent some time with an English translation of the Q’ran and infidel seems to adequately convey the sentiment."
May I ask what translation you are using? I cannot think of any contemporary translation of any worth that would choose to translate the word “kafir (as derived from the word “kafara”) as “infidel” – precisely because it reflects an orientalist bias and does not reflect the semantic worldview of the language (classical Arabic) of the Qur’an. The word infidel is derived from the latin īnfidēlis, meaning the non-faithful, and was used in an ecclesiastical sense of denoting someone outside the community of the Church. In contrast the word kafir reveals no such meaning. The late Japanese Scholar of Islam Toshiko Izutsu (d.1993) who wrote the book God and Man in the Qur'an. Semantics of the Qur'anic Weltanschauung in relying on established linguistic theory (the weaker form of Sapir–Whorf hypothesis) stated the obvious in indicating that all languages have an inherent semantic weltanschauung (worldview) which means our dominant languages also affect the way we think and construe things. Effectively, this means when translating from one language to another we need to be very careful and ensure we step out of our own worldview to imbibe the inherent semantic worldview of the other language. Izutsu in doing that for the Qur’an found that the semantic meaning field of the word kufr based on parsing its applications is that it was living life in the opposite spirit of being in gratitude (shukr), a meaning inherently stated in the verse : Indeed, We guided him (Man) to the way, be he grateful (Arabic: shakiran) or be he ungrateful.(Arabic: kafuran) [76:3]. So as this thread is connected to Charles’ thought, it is the opposite of “Living in the Gift”. Interestingly, linguistically the word kafara literally means “to cover over”, and the word “kafir” is also used for a farmer, in that he covers the seed with soil. The implication here being that being “In the Gift” is inherent to us all, even if we are not experiencing it, in that our covers established through thoughts, ideas, perceptions may occlude us from the inherent gratitude that arises from knowing one’s existence is a gift given, freely and undeserved at every moment. So you’ll find some contemporary translators trying to reflect this meaning in their translations like Leila Bakhtiar in her The Sublime Quran, as translating kafir as ingrate. Some try and be innovative in their translations, like Thomas Cleary who translated kafir as “those who scoff” or bizarrely “atheist” but it seems because of limitations of translation as a medium most translations seem to use “disbelief/disbelievers” with the idea being the concealment of one’s gratitude to God, is really a type of disbelief in the evident signs being displayed that should bring about such gratitude. All of that said, I hope you can see why the word infidel doesn’t quite carry the field of meaning in the word.
“At one time I was less critical of the Abrahamic religions and found the translation of the Q’ran to convey a beautiful and inspired work. Today however the vitriol and sense of superiority seem to leap out of so many Suras.”
I wonder what has changed to make you see vitriol instead of beauty? One thing I would caution you and myself, is that the Qur’an is a living text, by which I mean, it reads us as much as we attempt to read it. And by its own testimony it will reflect back to us what we are ultimately seeking which is why the Qur’an itself says that it misguides as much as it guides, “He misleads many thereby and guides many thereby” [2:26]. One of the common refrains in the Qur’an is to say none will truly understand it, except of deep inner hearts - “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of hearts” [3:190], For indeed, it is not eyes that are blinded, but blinded are the hearts…[22:46]. So if I can humbly advise you, and myself of course, it helps to approach these texts from a position of humility, actually seeking guidance, and being open to the message given, avoiding to the best possible degree any preconcieved filters we may have.
As for your finding supremacy, I can’t deny that would exist in the Qur’an, but only in giving that supremacy to the Divine Voice – and I appreciate that can be challenging, because it simply does not read the way we would expect books to read to the western mind. But if I can humbly say once again, if we are open to letting its treasures open itself it to us, it is well worth the effort I would say. Peace.
Yusef J, Hi! from Sheila 2 Feb 2024 and some thoughts on words and meanings including an accurate definition of "plausibly" and the ICJ case, the recent Oakland case, and the recent UNSC meeting called by Algeria. Re: the Oakland case: So we wonder which court HAS jurisdiction then, and aside from taking a win on the truthful comments of the Judge against the continuing complicity in the atrocities against the Palestinians, how would we move forward for a more acceptable win?
Perhaps Professor Francis Boyle, who has experience winning cases against genocide, could be consulted.
It appears that the US is either accepting and forwarding faulty Intel, refusing to believe valid Intel they ARE getting, or ignoring truthful Intel and being two faced about it, for any number of plausible reasons.
Also, as language in legal matters tends to be used, and misused, in legal battles, perhaps we should look MUCH, MUCH closer at the words Genocide, and Plausibly. How do they translate into 17 different languages? And just because a person grows up with a language does not guarantee they know what the words they use and forward mean.
As words tend to change and acquire new meanings because of the afore mentioned difficilty, it is helpful to use a variety of dictionaries and even Etymology reference books to gain the most precise understandings.
In the Microsoft Encarta dictionary from 2001 the first definition of plausible is : "1. believable and appearing likely to be true, usually in the absence of proof". Okay, that fits. However, for the first time, perhaps, in history, we have the very UNUSUAL case that we DO have proof of Genocide occurring in real time. This is due to technological advances in our communications systems of our current age. There are documented evidences, statements, recordings of officials, eye witness accounts and their recordings. Okay, so, if one then looks at the derivation of the word plausible, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1985, one sees : laudable, acceptable, agreeable; having an appearance of truth or value. It comes originally from the Latin "plaudere" which means to clap the hands in approval. Applaud and explode are related.
Plausibly DOES NOT mean possibly. LET'S BE HONEST. Truly honest.
Besides, there is NO WAY to stop the killing without a CEASEFIRE. The highest court on the planet made it clear that Israel's claims of self defence are INVALID.
It is true that Israel considers it's current, provably genocidal actions valuable, and this also appears to be true in the words and actions of other colonizing powers. They are applauding it. They have been freely confessing to the most alarming of genocidal crimes. It may be cold and calculating, but it IS, none the less, highly irrational. NO ONE BENEFITS FROM GENOCIDE - ANYWHERE. Not even the countries or individuals who consider they do. The future tells. THE GENOCIDE MUST STOP AND LEGAL ACTIONS OF A SUFFICIENT NATURE TO DO SO MUST BE STEPPED UP.
Hi Sheila,
Please allow me to intervene. I know that you want Yusuf J to respond to your comments, which are very important. So, what is the issue in defining genocide. Was a forced extermination of the Jewish population in the 1940's in Europe a demand for a Jewish State, when a solution had already been made with the Balfour Declaration, c. 1918, which would have prevented this from ever taking place? Only the forming of the Jewish state in 1948 gives the rationale for what is going on now, and wherein Jewish lawyers say to the ICJ today that they have the right to defend what is going on in Gaza. They were given the Jewish State in the 1948 vote of the United Nations. This is when retaliation started with the Palestinians, who were already there for many millennia. Here's the rationale : Move 700,000 Palestinians to the west bank in order to make way for 70,000 Jewish into their own territory. Sounds unfair, and maybe this is where we start. Most Jews remained in Europe and America after 1948. This left the Palestinians to be heaved to the Gaza strip, and here we are today in discussing it.
It's bullshit in how these people are being treated . Can we agree on that?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I take your points on shakiran/kafuran. I can see that the kafir may be ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam” for bestowing the gifts of life. Perhaps they give thanks to the gods or the satans that they mistake for the bestowers of gifts. Their misplaced gratitude results from their infidelity to the one true God making them ingrates. Their gratitude misplaced is infidelity and infidelity the source of their ingratitude.
It just seems tragic that the one true God has sealed up these people’s ears and hearts and sent a prophet with a book designed to mislead them, a book which seems quite preoccupied with calling these people out and putting them down (the instances of this must number in thousands). People who may have prayed and sacrificed for generations are now purposely misled by a magic book and cast into the fire by the very God that sealed their ears and hearts all for their ingratitude to Him. Maybe it’s my contemporary western mind and feeble heart but that seems cruel. Maybe it’s so.
As for the translation I am most familiar with it is unsurprisingly an old one by Rodwell. I was raised in the Baha’i faith, perhaps you are familiar with it. To Christians I have often compared the relationship of the Baha’i Faith to Islam as being similar to Christianity’s relationship with Judaism. I was raised according to the doctrine of progressive revelation to hold all the sacred texts attributed to the messengers of God as of equal merit while the revelation for this day takes some precedence insofar as it is intended for our time. Born a third generation Baha’i of Christian ancestry in a broadly Christian context I am of course most familiar with Baha’i texts and the Bible but a multicultural and ecumenical bent instilled from a young age led me to explore various sacred texts with The Qur’an being foremost. These days I find my alignment with the spirit of the gift and my general sense of gratitude hampered by religious entanglements and the textual explorations I once enjoyed. I am horrified by the evil that can be concealed by self righteousness and the certainty of goodness bestowed on religious followers, tyrannical niceness and acceptance of atrocities as divine Will. I have become skeptical of monotheism’s grip on the world and on the hearts and minds of its peoples, myself included. I certainly don’t claim to be guided aright but I see a world of guidance and a multitude of paths straight, crooked, narrow, and wide all claiming to be the beaten path of the Lord. I may have to wait til the day of judgement to find out where I went wrong. On that day I hope it’s finally clear. If I’m cast into the fire at least I’ll know it was God’s will and hopefully that will solace me for eternity.
Hi Co,
Interesting that you were raised in the Baha’i faith. I loved my trip to the Lotus Temple in Delhi, and have fleeting knowledge of them in that I have noticed the Bahais seem to use many of Sufi understandings in their theological expositions. I’ll try and use some of these understandings in my clarification of what I was trying to say, but I suspect your skepticism may mean we can agree to disagree in the end.
You wrote: “I take your points on shakiran/kafuran. I can see that the kafir may be ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam” for bestowing the gifts of life. Perhaps they give thanks to the gods or the satans that they mistake for the bestowers of gifts. Their misplaced gratitude results from their infidelity to the one true God making them ingrates. Their gratitude misplaced is infidelity and infidelity the source of their ingratitude.”
I didn’t write/say the Kafir is ungrateful to “the one true God of Islam”, that seems to be an attempt to caricature what I was saying into a tribalistic conception of “my God” versus “yours”. Rather, what I wrote is that the word Kafir implies ingratitude, because there is a lack of recognition of the bestowal of existence. So if I was referring to God, then it would be as the perpetual bestower of existence, it was a reference to the God of Ontology, the One who has True Being, wherein all of creation’s being/existence has continual contingent Being, dependent on the Fiat of bestowal. That is not the God of Islam versus other gods, it is the God that can be realized in all of these faiths, and indeed no declared faith, as mystics have come from all backgrounds, sometimes coming to the direct experience and realization of the Oneness of God underpinning all apparent multiplicity even when they’re not looking through faiths! This is the God who is manifest wheresoever you turn:
Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God [Qur’an: 2:115]
And who is the only self-evident and constant, in the inevitable flux built into creation:
Everything that exists is perishing except His Face. [Qur’an: 28:88]
This is what David Bentley Hart calls The Experience of God, namely that “Nothing within the cosmos contains the ground of its own being” and hence, God is “the only sort of Being (indeed, the only Ground of Being) that could provide a final explanation of why the universe exists. The only other alternatives seem to be an absurd infinite regress or saying “that the universe is just there, and that’s all,” which is not an answer but an evasion of the question.”
If you understand what I mean above, then I hope you can also see that the gift I was referring to were not “gifts” as in arbitrary types of gifts, but the gift of existence, whereby every experience in our consciousness becomes actually a gift, in that it is coming to us freely and undeserved, by the fact we have been gifted being itself. I hope you will also see why taken from that perspective, the term “infidel” does not resonate with the deeper meaning implied by the word kafir, which transcends the tribal affiliation of belonging or faithfulness to a group/creed/church, and refers more to a sense of connection or disconnection with one’s own essentiality primordiality of existence. Only an English speaker disconnected/unfamiliar from the Islamic tradition or unfamiliar with the semantic sense of infidel would translate kafir as infidel, and you’ve made my point by citing that the translation you read came from John Medows Rodwell (d.1900), a clergyman of the Church of England, who was reading in his own ecclesiastical understanding of faith and belonging and then imposing it in the translation. I’d be wary of drawing any conclusions of the Qur’an from what you think you maybe reading with Rodwell’s translation. Despite the Qur’an being inherently untranslatable you would be doing a fairer job getting something like The Study Quran (https://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125873)
You also wrote: “It just seems tragic that the one true God has sealed up these people’s ears and hearts and sent a prophet with a book designed to mislead them, a book which seems quite preoccupied with calling these people out and putting them down (the instances of this must number in thousands). People who may have prayed and sacrificed for generations are now purposely misled by a magic book and cast into the fire by the very God that sealed their ears and hearts all for their ingratitude to Him. Maybe it’s my contemporary western mind and feeble heart but that seems cruel. Maybe it’s so.”
Given that you refer to the Quran as a “magic book”, I can’t imagine you are still that attached to the Bahai worldview, as that would entail more respect for the Qur’an as a form of Divine revelation. It also appears in the essential points you are making, you are once again caricaturing my position, or maybe what I wrote appeared as a caricature to you. The essential point you are making, namely that God should not allow people to be misguided and be responsible for their misguidance in some way, is not just against Islam per se, but seems to be against most if not all religions, and indeed the idea of Divinity itself – as the natural extension to that argument of theodicy is that God Himself is not just, for surely there should be no suffering at all, given God holds complete agency at the end of the day, right?
The Islamic answer is to positive relative agency, in that free will appears in our experience, at the level of expierence, even if we were to drill up higher levels of Being, then all agency lies with God. So the references in the Qur’an to being misguided, and hearts being sealed don’t assume absolute lack of agency, there are actions, attitudes and behaviours that requite that, and even in the ultimate apportioning of Agency to the Agency of God, the Qur’an affirms that God’s mercy conquers and envelops all.
My mercy encompasses everything. [Qur’an: 7:156]
That encompassing of mercy would include hell too, given hell is a thing. Contrary to the thousands of instances of hell you cite, the word hell comes 77 times in the Qur’an (had to use google for that), whereas Heaven comes 147 times. And yes, ultimately the Sufis see hell as being “separation from God” and heaven as being the “removal of the veil” – and the intimacy of that witnessing. Have you heard of Ibn Arabi (https://ibnarabisociety.org/the-anthropology-of-compassion-william-chittick/)? There is a reason why Sufis like him see the fundamental ontology of the created universe as being mercy/compassion, which means even hell as some point, in the end of the trajectory returns back to that mercy. All shall be saved, all shall be in bliss and mercy, because all shall eventually return to the primordiality of witnessing God, or rather God’s witnessing of Himself, which is the real purpose underpinning creation.
Sorry, if it is too convoluted or metaphysical, but as the Sufis say we need two eyes to see and judge things, one eye being that of duality and causality, and the other being the eye of ultimate Reality, the One underpinning all form.
I love this sincere treatment of your life and position, Co. It represents what monotheism in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam mean today in a world where in reality only egos (individuals) really matter. Most interesting to consider is the last of these developments, Islam, which only began to be developed when Mahomet (Muhammad) at age forty, c., 610 AD, felt compelled to give up his former life, and enter a cave in order to receive from an Angelic source, the Qur'an, which is said to be the Arabic Bible of Abraham's first born son, Ishmael, who was eventually cast out with his Egyptian mother, Hagar, although Abraham loved him very much. This is an important connecting thread because when Muhammad offered his Qu'ran as a peace offering to the Jews of Judaism, and verified the authenticity of Jesus as having actually lived, the Jews rejected him and his Islam. This is where the war between the Jews and the Arabs really begins. Islam acknowledges Christ from the beginning, while Judaism still rejects Him. When the Hasidic community cries, "No State of Israel without the Messiah, it means they failed to recognize the One in their midst two thousand years ago. This can only be a major part of the detrimental conditions of existence seen today in this region of conflict.
I'm in admiration, Yusef, of your ability to name and deflect rhetorical tricks. Here is one of my episodes on RFK that might make the same point as Chris Hedges, perhaps taking it further: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/kennedy-straddles-the-divide. And it seems like Maajid Narwaz may have common ground with you: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/yuval-bibi-and-maajid.
Thank you for the comment Tereza. In truth, I've fallen for the bait in the past, but am learning. That is part of what I meant by the masks have come off, the attempts to divert, distract and provide disinformation have become so repetitive and predictable, that you eventually learn to spot it from a mile off. As a comedian commenting on the crisis pointed out, with Israel we are all getting a crash course in what it means to be in a relationship with a narcissist, and our sanity rests on finally getting to grips with and calling out the manipulation and control.
Oh, that made me laugh! What comedian? I will need to quote you in the piece I'm working on, it could use some lightening up.
A major focus for me has been looking at the Torah as the right of the Shemitic dynasty to rule the world and the curse of the Canaanites to be their slaves, along with the descendants of Ham (Africa, Egypt, parts of Asia). It turned history upside-down and inside-out, making the villains into heroes and the heroes into villains, the victims into aggressors and the aggressors into victims.
So the victim narrative, while actually being in power, fits the narcissist profile exactly and gaslighting any evidence to the contrary!
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/talmud-tricks-and-torah-curses
It was Bassem Youssef's viral interview with Piers Morgan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4idQbwsvtUo
Though I feel I have to say, I can't agree with some of your research Tereza, the Germans did commit a Genocide of the Jews, and I think part of the seeking of the Truth, is finding that middle ground, being willing to call out all sides. The Zionists want us to go into the "us vs them" paradigm, because that is their fuel. They also love it when the pendulum of trying to criticize them goes so far to one side, that they can dismiss us as conspiracy theorists.
So your solution is to eliminate israel and deport all the jewish people from there?
Just to be clear about it...
No one said/wrote that - but nice to see the usual resort to false binaries, to justify an opressive agenda. The solution I incline to is what Charles wrote, its just that he didn't highlight the obvious Elephant in the room, being the Zionist project which has distorted everything, including Judaism, to suit its aim.
There you go with the existential fears again!! Can you consider an Israel where Palestinians and Jews live together as equals with equal rights and protections?
If you cannot, then that's the reason for all this violence.
That (an Israel where Palestinians and Jews live together as equals with equal rights and protections) is the ONLY solution. But how do we get there from here?
The article's solution is a long series of stop harming them. My solution is actively build peace. Ignore all the tortures and starting loving all the thems. Details in my substack https://ishmaelhandinhand.substack.com?utm_campaign=email-home&r=rjka5
Yes, but you have to understand first what it means to be powerless and helpless in the face of evil, and surrender (yield) to that. Then, power comes to solve all issues. Minds meet in the integer of sympathies and antipathies. For example, if RFK Jr. can no longer be counted on, then leadership will have to be ours. How to do that is the 64 thousand dollar question? They say that a candidate will likely suddenly appear, name unknown as yet.
Is your preferred solution the elimination of what's left of Palestine and the deportation of the Palestinians ? Oh wait, that's what's happening right now! Please stop being so reductive and see the enormity of what he's saying. This insane need to destroy each other is not serving you is it? Can't you see it's an endless cycle of hopeless, pointless violence? It can't be solved by outside forces carving up land and randomly giving it to people, it can't be that the solution is to kill thousands of people and wage a forever war, therefore something bigger than any of it needs to happen. Doesn't it? Can you drop the hatred and lies fed to you since birth and start from now. Start again. Believe it. Act on it. It starts with everybody. We all want resolution because we all feel this malignant force coming from those who hate. The concept of Charles Eisenstein's suggestion is so simple yet many can't seem to grasp it. It is the hardest thing to do because we all have to drop the righteousness we carry. it's hard because it challenges everything you have ever thought about what it is to be you. What do you want to happen? How do you think it can be resolved - with fairness and equity. With compassion even?
Yusuf is correct that no one said/wrote that, but I will. As I've said in previous posts, I don't believe that a military occupation IS a country that can enact laws making the residents into foreigners on their own land. The Torah and World Wars, the justifications for Israel, both turned history upside-down and inside-out, making the villains into heroes and the heroes into villains, the victims into aggressors and the aggressors into victims. These lies resulted in genocide against the German people, not the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was given in exchange for getting the US to enter WWI, at a time when peace without reparations had been offered by Germany. Without the Zionist interference, there would have been no WWII. Should the mass slaughters of two World Wars be rewarded with permission to slaughter the inhabitants of another country? Israel has never existed as a country, only a military force occupying someone else's country. And yes, that military presence should be eliminated, like all militaries occupying other countries.
the de facto general absence of the argument you make is the elephant in the room. Israelis are the victim of their own “nation”...as genuinely spiritual rabbis have been saying all along.
Yes, I'm watching a Max Igan right now that makes that point nicely: https://odysee.com/@thecrowhouse:2/Vigilante.TV-Land-of-the-banned:b
You are literally delusional.
I read these pieces from you and I can't help but wonder if you're having any of the hoped-for influence on RFK. As a part of his campaign, are you having regular conversations on the topic? I like RFK for so many other reasons, so I hope you are having some effect. But in some ways, I wonder how you can continue working for him if he remains deaf and blind to these horrors.
Lots of people are asking me that. I'm asking me that! I'll paste in my comment to Yusuf above:
it has been a real dilemma for me. I support RFK Jr. on most other issues. I think he is the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart. But this is no small issue. The US relationship with Israel is central to the imperialistic unipolar project. It is one of the key wedges that divides the world (in the mind of the foreign policy establishment) into a world of friends and foes. it is inseparable from all of foreign policy. My temptation has been to make a conspicuous exit from the campaign on this matter of principle. Everyone would applaud me for my principled resignation. But would this actually do the Gazans any good? Would it do any good to anyone except me and my public image? Or, if I can still have a positive influence by staying an advisor, should I do that even though it creates a public perception that I am a hypocrite? And furthermore, am I actually having any influence, or is that wishful thinking? You can see how these are not simple questions. What I have arrived at, for now, is that I will under no circumstances silence myself. If I am kept on as an advisor despite my outspoken dissent, that is a good sign.
I imagine that, being a Kennedy, it’s pretty complicated for him. Possibly to the level of threats or compromat. This complexity of pressure and allegiance is one of the structures that has to (and is) coming down. I’m not sure you’re best off being in it. Personally I think you have it in you, and the support - mine included - to foster an independent movement. Maybe it won’t win elections, but it will be winning hearts and minds.
Thanks for the reply. I hope you stay with the campaign. But like I asked in my comment, I hope you are actually having conversations with him on the matter. I hope there are opportunities for you to have some influence, regardless of how effective it is.
Charles, if you're reading this, I encourage you to stay with RFK, Jr. He IS the only candidate who can prevent this country from falling apart, which may then be an example for other countries on the brink of medical / digital tyranny. That is tremendous.
I agree with your balanced perspective on Israel and Palestine. I would love there to be deep and difficult and respectful conversations between, as someone suggested, RFK, Jr and Rabbi Michael Lerner (perhaps Rabbi Lerner may look at the covid "vaccines", and his illness that I don't know enough about, but heard of during the vaccine rollout, in a new light also).
I see the good that RFK, Jr can do as surpassing even this huge negative of supporting Israel. Politics is described as compromise, but that usually means compromise on some issues from a starting point of candidates who have no integrity to begin with.
I believe RFK, Jr has integrity, and that's why you're there. From that place things can be learned, and even if they're not, significant good can be done.
And I wonder also, is he understanding that things don't add up with the Oct 7th attack and Israel's lag in response, and prior silencing of someone warning them, and having so much capabilities of surveillance but supposedly being caught by surprise, and then going immediately to the story of knowing exactly where each Hamas terrorist is inside Gaza to bomb at only those locations?
Even keeping the focus entirely on Israel and the innocent hostages, (who of course are not the only innocent civilians caught up in horrors who need to be freed) - but even from that perspective, wasn't there many hours of lag time before orders were given to respond to the attack? Weren't there many things that don't add up about possible prior knowledge, having no security presence there on that day of all days, and not letting fighter pilots who could hear the sounds and wanted to respond, respond for many hours? I would hope RFK, Jr would be concerned about that ...
Still, we are on the precipice of digital totalitarianism, and not just mandated and tracked poisons from pharma, so much else, and endless war, with bloodshed in so many places. RFK, Jr is the best candidate possible, with the right skills And good heart (how often does that happen? almost never ... )
I support you staying with him ... and of course speaking honestly along the way.
Oh, I relate, Michael! I wonder the same.....I just finished listening to a talk given by Chris Hedges entitled "The Death of Israel". I recommend all to listen, and learn. Learn that of all atrocities, the one of genocide, which is indeed being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, is the most grave of all nations' sins. Indeed, those who stand with others who refuse to acknowledge this truth are equally complicit. RFK, who I deeply admired for his stance on the environment, his desire to listen to all sides, and his bravery concerning the potential risks of the covid vaccines, and letting voters know he would not repeat the mistakes of, both, the Trump and Biden administrations policies, is simply on the wrong side of history, not to mention making a grave, immoral choice by refusing to condemn the utterly vile and unceasing attacks on innocents. I am not a one issue voter, but as pertains to genocide, I will replace my once secure vote (and donations) for RFK Jr and work for people who's conscience dictates they, too, must support a ceasefire.
I agree whole heartedly on the Eisenstein RFK Jr. disconnect. I don’t believe for a moment that either see this for anything other than what it is: A genocide. Most every country on the planet has condemned this horrific hypocritical genocide of a subjugated people. My intuition says that Bobby Kennedy and his family have been blackmailed and threatened with death if he says what is really in his heart. ‘The most pampered people’ on earth’ ????? come on now Bobby... anyone with a conscience can see the hypocrisy in that statement. Charles, I am a college professor and have been sharing all your work, podcasts, interviews with my students since The Ascent of Humanity was released. I have also been made the black sheep of my family and many other social and professional circles due to my unwavering respect and support for Bobby Kennedy’s tireless work for the truth and for justice. I am now hovering around a political and spiritual abyss. Have you all been threatened??? There is no other explanation for this.
You will have noted that Charles has not called the genocide a genocide or anything else. He has been criticised for pro Israel bias since he started commenting post Oct 7. I find it odd, when so many other Jewish intellectuals have no reservations about calling out Israel’s appalling actions.
We heard these same “death threat” apologetics when Sanders betrayed every nickel and minute of support he’d been given in 2016. Politics as usual.
Right about possible blackmail & death threats. It could be against Bobby’s family members- wife, etc. That would probably be a more potent threat. These people are ruthless🤨
This is something Whitney Webb and Kim Iverson discuss here: https://youtu.be/ZZ2vqlC55nU?si=J-wqvxgL93VsEGMu
I'm taking a course offered by Ipak-edu.org. The course is "Literature of Resistance" We are reading 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 459, and We. In all of these dystopias there are examples of SEVERE lack of empathy. In 1984 people laughed at war videos showing drowning people with limbs blown off limbs. Similar scenes were featured in the other stories. I guess being brutalized is not conducive to feeling sympathy for others. It is always much easier to notice life's unfairness when one is the victim.
Thank you so much for continuing to drill down into this solution. It IS completely possible and is the only possible way to bring about the transformation you outline. You have put yourself fully on the line in the process. Thank you for caring so much.
I was once a supporter of RFK Junior's presidential run, and was delighted to see someone of Charles Eisenstein's caliber working for his election. Sadly, Bobby has lost my support for his refusal to accept that Israel can do no wrong, and his continued support of the Israeli state in spite of the atrocities being committed. It saddens me to think of how many others have also left, and how we had a chance at advancing the peace which RFK Jr appeared to believe in. Alas, you cannot both, promote an end to aggression and war on other nations, and yet not call for a ceasefire on the nation that has killed over 20,000 civilians - mostly woman and children.
The "animating spirit" that you Charles, and I, both desire, can only come about from those who support, and usher in leaders who take off their blinders. Oh, how I wish this could have "reached the ear" of one whom I thought might have had a chance to make those policies more just. The man currently at the helm, and the one who might just unseat him have shown no courage or morality to change that dynamic. In the meantime we can support a brave nation such as South Africa who is willing to risk the wrath of the mighty "great nations" by standing firm for Gaza, and condemning the genocide being perpetrated by Israel.
So glad that you brought in South Africa's 84-page lawsuit at the Hague, backed by 61 other countries, saying that Israel has committed genocide. Now 85-90% of Gaza's 2.3M people are displaced with 93% experiencing crisis levels of hunger and one out of four facing imminent death from starvation. Seventy percent of Gaza's buildings have been reduced to rubble, with no count of the dead under them. There are no two sides to this.
I appreciate your clarity here Tereza, and all your comments on this post.
I, too, want to see a positive and effective response from the ICJ at the Hague on the genocide allegations. Yet, it has also been shown that the ICC at the Hague has condemned Vladimir Putin no less than two times for war crimes against humanity in the Ukraine War, and it does no good. We need more than ceremonial gestures. For example, the US wants a scaling back of what is going on in Gaza because 24 Israeli soldiers were killed today. What does that sound like?
Reminds me of Terry Real, a couples therapist who dares to take sides. He says the strong have to melt and the weak have to become empowered.
Ooohh, gonna check Terry Real out. Sounds good!
(Fyi I also like the edgy work of Patrick Teahan re fierceness in therapy.)
What turns the adorable 2 yr old Israeli twins in my aerial class into IDF soldiers giddily patrolling the West Bank and randomly shooting down streets, torturing men and arresting anyone who 'likes' a social media post? Or into the IDF soldiers committing the massacre you saw?
A lifetime of being told that they are the world's victims and anything they do is justified. And every thing that you write, Charles, that perpetuates a falsehood gives that young person, barely out-of-adolescence, the justification to commit another atrocity.
The rave was relocated to the border 48 hrs before it was scheduled. Hamas never intended to target them, their target was the military base down Rt 124, in order to get hostages to trade for Palestinians. When they heard shots, the music was turned off and everyone evacuated a half-hour before there was any military presence. The IDF blocked the 124 in both directions 1/2 mi. away. The only ones to escape fled across the field and into the woods where Israeli survivors say the IDF shot at them. And bombed the cars in the parking lot from Apache helicopters.
Here's one article on it: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/. You have access to real information, Charles. If this is a lie, maybe so is "historical conditions of persecution and genocide and expulsion that leave Jews feeling unwelcome and unsafe." When I pulled on that thread, the whole history unravelled. The only two sides here are lies and truth.
Can you say more? It does seem true to me that people can do terribly abusive things--meanwhile feeling themselves innocent and victimized. The psychiatrist, Frank Yeomans,, speaks on youtube about Arab terrorists beheading their enemies or priests feeling justified in torturing "witches" to drive out their sin. He states that people who perform these actions often feel morally justified and don't even realize their actions are hurtful--because they think such actions are justified. They identify with goodness and feel "all good," while the enemy is viewed as "all bad." For example, many people felt that unvaccinated people during Covid should be locked up, jailed--maybe even forbidden medical care. Noam Chomsky, who used to champion exploited minorities, was asked what if the unvaccinated couldn't shop for food and starved in quarantine. "That's their problem," he replied, obviously believing it would be fine if they suffered since they were threatening the health of the worthy community.
Hi, Diana. Charles is drawing an equivalency between Hamas and IDF soldiers both committing atrocities. I notice that he's no longer talking about beheaded babies or eviscerated pregnant mothers or babies baked in ovens or gang rapes--all of which have been completely debunked. Now he's talking about innocent dancers begging for their lives. I'm not sure where he's getting that from, but it's still propaganda. Israel is a military occupation and the taking of hostages in a war is not an act of terrorism. We only think that way because we don't think Palestine has any rights, Israel can take their children and put them in cages (yes there are photos) and that's fine.
The deaths of the hostages were because of the Hannibal Directive that Netanyahu gave that all Israeli hostages should be killed so Palestine would have no leverage. At most, Hamas killed 115 Israeli civilians on Oct 7. Israel killed a minimum of 125.
The IDF soldiers were not reacting to a life-threatening situation when they committed this massacre. They're reacting to a story, one they've been told all their lives. And that story, I've discovered over the last year, is a lie. The IDF soldier is just the puppet, but those who write the stories pull the strings. That's why I can't let Charles repeat those lies when he can find out the truth for himself. Lies kill.
Here's a recap of where I've come: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/my-hitler-journey and I agree with you about the Noam: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/noam-chomsky-is-the-problem.
Appreciate your weighing in on this, Tereza, and the work you've done revealing the deep lies in the accepted WWII narrative. It remains key to so many other false narratives, so many other abuses. May the world wake up to this one and understand how easy it is to manufacture a 'reality' guaranteed to perpetuate suffering.
For me there is adequate evidence and logic for understanding that Hamas is not what it is claimed to be, but rather a "scripted" entity that plays a part in a narrative that assumes justification for control and harassment, for promoting hatred and enmity. It fulfills the Mossad motto: By way of deception thou shalt make war.
The voice of the (conditioned, programmed) mind should never take the role of master of one's understanding/knowing, but has potential to be of service to one's Heart, once Heart has set forth the direction, Love and Truth.
A side shoot, Tereza... I keep getting asked what I think about Chomsky being on the Epstein list...and finding myself my justifying, speculating about an innocent explanation. Not saying he’s a sex pest, but it seems potentially odd... what’s your take?
Haha, I love a sideshooter ;-)
I just walked over to look at them, and I have the Chomsky Trilogy, The Indispensable Chomsky, and What We Say Goes. I've learned a tremendous amount from him, particularly in Manufacturing Consent. I did a play on his title in this one: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/manufacturing-contempt.
I have two theories. One is that he reached the limits he could stretch, like an old pair of underwear, and couldn't evolve his thinking past that point. I've seen that before, in other arenas. He was a liberal icon and beloved for that, so when liberal contempt was manufactured against anti-vaxxers and free speech, he stood with liberals and not principles.
The other theory is that he was captured. How early on is a good question. His connection to Epstein was financial, I wouldn't guess sexual blackmail. He has a big chunk of money from Epstein that he said was a loan or some nonsense. I don't buy that. He took the money.
If you've followed him, I think you'd like my episode on him. It goes into his contradictory stance, saying he's an anarchist but first we need big gov't to solve the climate crisis. I think he's too smart to be spouting the things he is. I think he's a sell-out, and the only difference is whether he's fooling himself that he believes it or just fooling us. Thanks for asking!
It is easy to get good people to do good things and bad people to do bad things. But to get good people to do bad things takes religion.
Psychiatrist Frank Yoemans states (regarding the harsh measures of people thinking they are only doing good): "Please do not inflict your goodness on me!"
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
I used the quote to start out this episode: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/lies-that-kill-the-words-of-god.
Oh that is so well said, Jerry. I'm doing a post today on The Words of God looking at the question 'What is scripture?' I woke up thinking about how it 'conscripts' us into acts of violence. May I quote you?
You can but I read that somewhere else, don't know where, so it's not my original thought.
I did find it, here it is in full which really fits my topic:
"Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."― Steven Weinberg
Oh good, I'll just take it as a meme and run with it ;-)
Thank you for 124 details etc. I have independent reliable news on daily as I sew and watch a toddler. If witnessing, rallies and complaining is al Grandma can do then I won’t turn away from this outrage. Ive followed it since 1970s and never more intensely. ICJ better come through then Security Council and individual nations. Theres no two sides balance here in the slaughter or in a defensive srgument to justify grnocide or future remedy. Free independent Palestine for peaceful sane people! Reparations, rebuild, return, restore all archives and willing refugees!
Grandmas rock!
Writing from the Balkans, the area which has witnessed many wars. So I have a first hand experience, and also work on national reconciliation using the method of Systemic Constellations developed by Bert Hellinger, yes, a German, who had plenty of war dynamics material to study in his country. There are lot of insights about what fuels wars coming from this field. One of them is that we are ALL capable of turning into a heartless perpetrator, perpetrators are NOT just some extra evil guys. It all depends on the context and conditions. The second insight is that it is very easy to manipulate people into hatred from which becoming a perpetrator is easy - you just play on the survival instinct of the group through extreme nationalism and create "us" and "them" situation, creating "the delusion that one is made of better stuff than the other" and that our survival is jeopardised. From there it is a small step to take arms with desire to annihilate "the other" with clear conscience. This is a universal pattern which affects all of us, regardless of nation, colour or ideology. Another major insight is that there is no universal "good" or "bad", it is all relevant only for the groups we belong too, so we have to stop fighting for "our good". We have to see others as equals and equally worthy. How do we do that? Yet another insight from Systemic Constellations Work is that every war finds a justification in the one before. How do we stop that cycle in which victims often become perpetrators? We leave it all in the past, we grieve the dead and give up on revenge. And we give up our belonging to our cherished groups and identities: national, ethnic, religious, ideological...Not easy, but possible. I see it happen in my work. I would also say that it is good to be this "naive" as you are in your suggestions Charles and seek possibilities which, from our current state seem impossible.
Thanks, Alemka. Constellation work is powerful indeed. I also practice this work, and come from a German family as well and have used constellations to go deeper into the healing of this lineage, war, and perpetrator/victim bondage.
God once deemed it appropriate to respond to violence with overwhelming vengeance as a form of punishment. God then deemed it appropriate to respond to violence with an eye for an eye. A messenger then deemed it appropriate to turn the other cheek and to love the enemy. However loving one's enemy was rarely understood. This God seems to continue to evolve, for he suggests now that we engage those who have been radicalized to attack with deep listening from an open heart, so we react from an equanimous centre, we react with humility and patience to look towards the source of their conditioning, to hear of their life of trauma, to learn of their disparagement, to experience empathy for their extreme suffering. And so with open hearts instead of anger and notions of revenge, we react with a loving kind compassion which finally breaks the intergenerational cycle of violence. And yet we are asked by this God to evolve even further to love unconditionally, to see one another as brother and sister, of the same father, to see the unity in all humanity. This journey seems to be one of the evolution of our collective human consciousness. It is one which reflects the evolution of the sanctity within each one of us. A return of our true nature to manifest love on earth as it is in heaven.
Easier said than done. That is the very first thing to admit, to further the noble process you describe.
If we give it 60 years and those that understand the true potential for future generations give it all of their attention, it is easily achievable.
sounds to me like the coming of an anti-christ-- a leader "god" presenting itself as enlightened & evolving in accordance with the needs of humanity, one who brings a message of unity/love who then imposes this "brother/sister love unity" by means of existing violence-backed force of law.
"heaven on earth" if it is to be achieved for real, in a deeply conscious, lasting way, can only be achieved by means of greater human spirit choosing to act in the interest of peace & love. this means no guns pointed at people, no prisons, no fake money subject to elite interest-based control mechanisms.
human civilization based on love-consciousness, would not this be the death knell of ruling/controlling powers? to imagine that these powers would idly stand by and allow this to happen seems quite a stretch to me. more likely they observe our "call for peace and unity" then deliver what we want-- dressing one of their own in jesus robes and fool us all yet again.
that power interests are just a bunch of well-intended miscreants who one day will surely come to their senses at the behest of greater humanity appears to be the general line of thinking here, according the writings of Charles Eisenstein. while this view may warm our hearts and allow us to see ourselves as enlightened, loving beings, neither historical precedent nor current reality supports it. like all ruling tyrannical entities who wind up losing power, these folks, should this actually happen, will undoubtedly torch the place before they run, hide and regroup.
Hi Charles. I didn't read this article past the first paragraph, but I still wanted to comment. I value your writing so much, and I love hearing your perspective. I just don't want to read of more horror. I don't believe that reading about heinous acts brings me any closer to peace or understanding. I don't want to read any descriptions of atrocities even if they are to illustrate a really good point. I wanted to let you know why I don't see skipping this article as "shutting such horrors out of my awareness". While I agree with you that we shouldn't shut things out of our awareness, to me, news about something which is told to me from someone else, whether it is from you, my neighbour, or the major news media outlets, is not something I have to necessarily bring into my awareness. My awareness needs to be connected to the reality of the present moment, to what is around me. I choose how much to read and watch other people's accounts, and wherever possible I choose to read and watch peace instead of violence. If my neighbour tells me she wants my help, I listen. If she wants to tell me something terrible that happened to someone she knew, I don't see any useful reason for me to hear that. It may be that some of your readers want to have their narratives challenged by reading of brutal violence. I am striving to live free of narratives and open to where my help is most needed. I am interested in hearing more about that. I write this not to criticize you for your choice of topic, in this or anything else. I admire your passion and your willingness to speak up for what you feel is write. I just wanted to offer my perspective on how I see consuming news of violence for whatever reason. Thanks.
That's an interesting perspective, Sarah. If an act of horrific violence happened to you and your loved ones, would you feel the same? It would be okay with you that no one wanted to even know about it? There are many things I can't do anything about but I can know the truth, and that's a real action that changes the future, I think.
I want you to know that any horror inflicted on you and those you love, I would want to know about. And I'd talk about it to others and get them to care. I wouldn't let them ignore it just because it wasn't happening to them. Even if it didn't change what had happened to you, it would give it meaning by making sure it didn't go unnoticed and keep happening again and again.
Hi Tereza, it's a good question. I can't know how I would feel in the event of violence against myself or my family, but from my current position I don't think I would want details of the specifics of the violence, or graphic pictures shared as some commentators/social media posters do. And for the suffering (non war related) people in my family have experienced, I have no interest in sharing the details beyond very close friends nor do I want others talking about it. Other people debating or writing about the specifics of my and my family's life doesn't reduce it, it just repeats and replays trauma over and over. Of course, that's me, and I can't speak for other people. If they want the specifics of violent stories told or want to tell themselves, I would never argue against that. I'm also not suggesting that we turn a blind eye when we can help people. Nor am I arguing that we refuse to hear people speaking to us from the other side if we are entrenched in a position - I'm imagining that this article by Charles is asking people to open their minds to compassion rather than taking sides, and that goal I fully agree with. It's just how we do it that I'm questioning. For myself, I feel I don't need to hear brutal or horrific stories to act in service of peace and compassion. And I also don't need to hear traumatic details to be aware of conflict.
I completely agree about individual acts of violence. My daughters and I can't imagine why people read horror and detective stories for pleasure. If they have the stomach for it, put it to good use understanding US programs of torture. I hate being emotionally manipulated by sensationalized violence, and have zero interest in 'news' about random acts of violence in the US done by deranged individuals.
Charles' message, which you're okay with, is not to take sides. But the details of the massacre shatter that neutrality, as many of us here have pointed out. You can't read that without knowing the truth, and that's disturbing to you--as it should be.
You could have merely stopped reading and not commented. But your comment blamed Charles for exposing you to this extremely uncomfortable reality. Couldn't he just say something philosophical about compassion for both sides? No, he had to ruin it by inconveniently planting the images in your head that give the lie to that easy moral out.
If your family was subject to a private act of violence, I wouldn't want to know about it because what difference would it make? But if you were subjected to systemic violence, say, born as a South African in a land occupied by a foreign military and tortured at will, wouldn't you want the world to know? Or should that have never been exposed, because people didn't want to hear about it?
Just to tone things down- the intent is not to blame Charles for writing what he did. The intent was to explain why I stopped reading. I see those two things as different.
I know that tone of voice doesn't translate in writing, but I can assure you there's no vehemence in what I'm saying. You're representing a point of view that people should not be subjected to the details of violence, even when they're funding it and it's an ongoing campaign that 62 countries have claimed is genocide in their 84 pp lawsuit at the Hague.
It seems to me that you felt ambushed by Charles. You came here to read his perspective on life and instead got hit with irrefutable evidence that 20 yr old Israeli soldiers are engaging in massacres, that will also scar them for life.
You could have just closed the page after the first paragraph and no one, including Charles, would ever know. But you wrote, "I don't want to read any descriptions of atrocities even if they are to illustrate a really good point. I wanted to let you know why I don't see skipping this article as 'shutting such horrors out of my awareness'." You justify your disinterest as "It may be that some of your readers want to have their narratives challenged by reading of brutal violence. I am striving to live free of narratives and open to where my help is most needed."
How exactly do you live free of narratives if you don't allow anything in that might challenge them? I'm taking you seriously as making a moral argument for intentionally rejecting knowledge of ongoing atrocities. Rather than defend your point, you're accusing me of being emotional.
If hearing about atrocities is too upsetting for you, I don't blame you. But it should come with gratitude to the people who are willing to face it, who are taking on that emotional burden for you. No one wants to absorb the brutality of violence. But you want to shirk that responsibility and still feel morally superior. I don't accept that point of view.
The difference between what I am saying and what you are saying I'm saying, what I represent, what I'm thinking, is vast. So much of what you say I'm saying is an inference far beyond what I said. I didn't mean to imply you were emotional. I meant to tone down the accusations against me because I felt hurt by what you said I was thinking, that's it. I don't want to try to explain myself anymore, you are welcome to keep your perception of me and what I'm saying.
Well said, Tereza.
Thank you.
Actually what happened at the festival was more complicated. Hamas didn't do most of the killing there. We need to be objective about all sides of the conflict!
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/
I have read a couple of your treatises on the actions in Gaza and Israel. I listened months ago to what l think was a very good zoom meeting produced by Humanity Rising. They had two Jewish men interviewed plus the moderator. The two Jewish men were not Zionists and separated themselves from that mindset and have been excluded from their families and friends who are in that mindset.
What l learned and felt is authentic is that the Israeli government funded and put Hamas in control of Gaza. I feel that the Israeli government orchestrated the whole thing…Hamas coming into Israel killing ‘innocent’ people in order to present the watching world with an ‘accepted’ excuse to attack Gaza…PR. It’s obvious to me that that faction in Israel has the intent to take over the land that they feel God gave to them long long ago. No ones possess any land on this earth. It is not a possession.
In the big picture this is all orchestrated by the powers that be, the Israeli and US governments who really only care about money and power.
Then we can bring in the aspect of karma. This is true for everyone and all who feel they are trodden upon. It’s very very hard to watch. Extreme sadness in me for that but it’s all done in love, opportunity for growth.
I have joined several peace mediations for what is happening in the Middle East as I feel it is something positive I can do. I have compassion for everyone caught up in that hamster wheel of horrors (a phrase I got from Pam Gregory). Because that describes exactly what is going on: there is no end to the horrors that can be perpetrated when you come from a place of fear, separation, and otherness. It will never, ever end. Someone has to be peace to bring peace. It is universal law.
Greetings from Wakefield RI. Thank you for this essay. There is much here in the way of moving toward peace, but I am with the commenters who are questioning the implied equivalencies. There are other elements at work here: atrocity propaganda, AIPAC influence on media coverage and legislative decisionmaking, US made bombs, a US President who has taken $4.3 million from pro-Israel groups since he became a US Senator in 1990. $500 billion of natural gas in the Levant Basin off of Gaza, and prime oceanfront property already being promised to settlers. There is a madman, Netanyahu, using war as a means of his own political survival, .......and a Zionist ideology rooted in supremacy and racism, fueling a government hell-bent on collective punishment, expulsion and yes, genocide. And there is the unfortunate fact of Israel having nuclear weapons, and key Cabinet members being potentially deranged enough to use them. Yet RFK Jr, objective and enlightened on other issues continues to trot out the same BS as other candidates when it comes to this conflict. It is clear that AIPAC will own him too.
Absolutely beautiful Charles. Brought tears to my eyes. And 100% possible. But all of us, even those on this forum, have to make a concerted effort to escape the dualistic thinking in which we are seemingly trapped. I personally am trying to worry less about "what effect Charles is having on RFK's position" and focus on understanding the origins of my own dogmatic conditioning first.
In the first place we honestly do not know very much aside from propaganda about October 7. In the second place Israel from it's violent birth saw the need for superior firepower and superior propaganda that could turn night into day. Israel is an ethnic state building itself into a curious Zionist mirror of National Socialism, sharing a blood and soil and master race ideology and Macht Politik. Had the Reich been able to transfer the European Jews to the Holy Land I suspect the process of extermination would be complete. No peace will come to this land in our lifetimes. No need for it in the end as hatred is a useful weapon for all. This may be the true power of the powerless-the ability to fully hate and dehumanize another person into a thing.
In response to Stephan, I've come to a place in my research where I wonder if Nazi was a separate group and not a contraction of National Socialism. From the early papers, this isn't a word they used for themselves and their economic program that replaced foreign debt with sovereign credit, getting them out of the Weimar imposed starvation.
You're right, Stegiel, that Zionism is a curious mirror of Nazism, leading some to look at AshkeNazi as the source. Was it 1913 that headlines read "Judea Declares War on Germany"? Resulting in the Transfer Agreement where Hitler enabled 50,000 Jews to take $100M of German wealth to build Israel, even though their betrayal for the Balfour Declaration had created Germany's utter destruction and enabled the Bolshevik Jews to amass that wealth at the expense of German starvation.
It was lies that turned a two-year European war into WWI and WWII. And the holocaust is another lie that didn't emerge until 1961, the same year that Benjamin Freedman exposed how the Bolshevik Jews created the World Wars in exchange for Israel. We need to know this history: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/my-hitler-journey.
NSDAP is the name of the political organization abbreviated as Nazi. Hitler was sold like soap in the first mass media political campaign. Wall Street backed him. Anthony Sutton discussed this matter. Hitler also worked as a spy for the German state during the Beer Hall putsch and was treated like a hero in prison by certain groups,
Read Conjuring Hitler from 2005:
https://ia801705.us.archive.org/2/items/ConjuringHitler/ConjuringHitler.pdf
Check School for Barbarians by Katja Mann and Thomas Mann about education in the Reich dumbing kids down.
Light on as of people maybe you don’t remember national Socialism When you contract it becomes Nazi that’s good not me just a contraction of national Socialism thanks for bringing that out for us much appreciated
I don't doubt this sort of thing is happening. How sad and horrible and tragic. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and dead.
Thank you for this Charles. Love your heart, brother. I was given at birth the labels "Jewish" and Israeli". I very much like your suggestions here (and I can think of a few changes to make them even better) but at the root of it, it seems to me that such suggestions are only secondary to something more fundamental, which is that absolutely nothing can work as long as the vast majority of Israelis do NOT view the local people in Palestine as equal human beings!! And do not view the pain of someone who did not receive at birth the label "Jewish" as equal to the pain of someone who received at birth this label
(Or more accurately, are very very deeply indoctrinated from a very young age into this profoundly destructive God-rejecting sectarian supremacist tribalist/nationalist mentality and worldview, which is by far the most common and mainstream in Israel).
In my view, that is at the absolute root of everything. The heart of people. I can say from experience that for the vast majority of Israelis, the local people in Palestine simply do not exist, and the pain and trauma we inflicted and inflict on them simply cannot be heard or understood by the deeply corrupted tribalist supremacist heart of the vast majority of indoctrinated Israelis.
We hear absolutely nothing in the zionist propaganda media or in the manipulative zionist indoctrination camps (schools) about the local people or the unspeakable horror, cruelty, inhumanity, aystematic dispossesion, theft, pushing-out, abuse, torture, trauma, erasure and genocide that we, heavily-brainwashed and heart-corrupted zionists, inflicted and inflict on them.
I just don't see how can anything fundamentally change if this root issue doesn't change, if we are programmed from birth to NOT see the local people in Palestine as equal human beings with equal value. Absolutely everything in Israel pushes in the exact opposite direction of equally valued humanity, in the opposite direction of God. Absolutely evwrything in Israel pushes towards supremacy and greater and greater dehumanization. Supremacy is 99% of Israeli society and politics and you are considered a criminal and dangerous outcast and traitor if you're not a supremacist too. I am not optimistic at all that any change can happen within the very deeply indoctrinated and deeply fascistic and supremacist israeli society..
Thoughtful comment. Thank you for teaching me how Israelis are socialized. As I read about the Jewish religion, I am often struck by how Israel doesn't really follow the religion. It seems more like a secular state, versus a Jewish state. What about "Love thy neighbor" penned in Leviticus. There is quite a bit of compassion and love embedded into the 613 laws... yet, few of us Gentiles would ever know this, given how modern Israeli behaves.
Yes, and the ironic thing is that those in Israeli society who are the most violent and hateful towards the local people of Palestine, the most cheering for their genocide, the most inhumane cruel and merciless in their celebration of Palestinian suffering, who dehumanize the native people most and see them as less than dirt (definitely far inferior in value to 'the chosen people'), who are the most right-wing, the most fascistic (and even neo-Nazi) in their supremacist ideology, are actually those who call themselves "religious nationalists" and love to invoke the name of their divisive sectarian nationalist "god" (which in my view is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) as justification for the unspeakable cruelty, inhumanity, domination, mass-murder, subjugation, torture, dispossesion, theft, abuse and trauma that they're inflicting on the native people.
It is indeed quite amazing and heartbreakkng, this profound corruption of religion and of God for pursuit of the most God-denying ideology and actions..
In my view the path forward out of this horror is not strictly in political arrangemnts (that's also important but secondary) but rather it lies in the heart of people, in the ability/capacity to see the humanity of another before viewing them as a label (palestinian, israeli, muslim, jew), as well as in coming to terms with and acknowledging the IMMENSE AND PROFOUND TRAUMA that each "side" has caused the other and in finding ways to heal together.
(And the trauma that we supremacist zionists immigrants caused the local people over the last century - in their brutal ruthless cruel project to disposses, throw out, annihilate, dehumanize and erase of the local people in Palestine - is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around (the trauma caused to the zionists immigrants by the resistence of the local people to being dispossesed, massacred, abused and driven out of their home). Some of it is detailed in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which i can confirm is 100% true to reality based on my own personal experience in the Israeli military. As well as in this distreaaing https://youtu.be/CSff-Ip1kZs?si=udYd0XxYz6kbcDMb that gives one example of the horrific TRUTH of what is being done, everything that the billionaire-owned corporate media never mentions..
This capacity mentioned above, to step out of one's bubble and hear/see the humanity of another before seeing a label (and the stories attached to the label), requires having CONTACT between the "sides" so that they may hear each other's stories and each other's pain, but this contact is prevented and denied becasue of the incredible dominance of the sectarian nationalist divisive ideology in both sides.
what allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but for more than a century now) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism driven by the ultra-wealthy ruling class, to divide and tribalistically pit against each other those who for centuries lived together, before the introduction of the divisive nationalist mind virus to the region) SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/dispossesors) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm us for no reason"
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself, it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism, there is a complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters"
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that people in the region (and especially Israelis) undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that they teach me is at odds with this identity.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity.
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose tribalism also involves divisive, excluding, supremacist and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that their saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and anyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common & mainstream worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic & exclucivist Israeli society, and it plays a huge part in what brought about this conflict in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian exclucivist zionist nationalism, and its arrival in the middle east from (mostly) eastern Europe.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God/Consciousness actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our ignorance & blindness we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
Head and Heart, dont give up. You are more awake. Other people can awaken. The indoctrinaters that instill the lies need to be detected and moved aside. The truth needs to be kept from being censored. The people who cannot restrain themselves from leading their country into genocide need to be held to account for their crimes. Im not calling for hate, simply accountability and justice.