From Yahweh to Zion
Page 1
Advance Praise for
FROM YAHWEH TO ZION
There is no question of the extraordinary gifts and achievements of the Jewish people and of their enormous contribution to American culture and intellectual life. Also, we all know that Zionists play a large role in United States in the media, in finance, and in international policy. In addition we know that there is rather tight censorship with respect to what may be said about these matters without ad hominen response. The fact of Gentile crimes against Jews throughout history is used to justify this censorship, much, but not all, of which is self-imposed. In my view, through their role in this censorship, Jews are paving the way for the rise of anti-Jewish feeling and perhaps much worse.
This book may be simply dismissed as anti-Jewish, but it would be far better to engage it in a scholarly, rather than an ad hominem, way. Instead of discouraging scholars from considering the evidence of Jewish crimes, I wish that Jewish scholars would support freedom of inquiry and explain their reasons for disagreeing in open discussion. Otherwise those of us who seek uncensored truth may be misled by errors and exaggerations in what is usually hidden from us and is presented only at the margins of our society.
Much in this book is offensive to Christians and Muslims as well as to Jews. As a Christian, however, I find the offense to be a stimulus to fresh thinking and repentance. What is selected to be said about us is certainly not the inclusive truth. But it has its truth, and the truth it has should not be neglected.
–John B. Cobb, Jr., founding co-director, Center for Process Studies
Cutting against the grain of today’s Judeo-Christian confusion, which is so emblematic of our fearful, submissive era, Laurent Guyenot dares to take up the Jewish question, complex and explosive as it is, from the perspective of a conscientious yet fearless historian.
–Alain Soral, founder, Égalité et Réconcilation
A profound historical study of Judaic exceptionalism. It identifies the cultural and religious roots of Jewish power and Zionist hegemony. Laurent Guyénot’s understanding of Jewish religion is mind blowing. This book is essential for the understanding of Jewish politics.
–Gilad Atzmon, author, The Wandering Who?
Copyright © 2018
Sifting and Winnowing Books
POB 221, Lone Rock, WI 53556
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From Yahweh to Zion: Three Thousand Years of Exile: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land . . .
Clash of Civilizations
By Laurent Guyénot,
Translated and edited by Kevin Barrett
ISBN 978-0-9961430-4-2
1. Judaism, History of. 2. Zionism 3. Old Testament, History of 4. Israel, History of
Cover design by Sandra Taylor, The Graphic Page
The translator-editor gratefully acknowledges proofreading and editing help by Chuck Millar and Cat McGuire.
From Yahweh to Zion:
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF EXILE
Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land . . .
Clash of Civilizations
Laurent Guyénot
translated from French by
Kevin Barrett
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: THE PEOPLE OF SETH
The Birth of Israel
Ezra the Proto-Zionist
Hasmonean Literary Production
Kenites, Midianites, and Arabs
Cain and Abel as mirror images of Seth and Osiris
Osirism versus Judaism
Chapter 2: THE THEOCLASTIC GOD
Jealousy and Narcissistic Hubris
No Goddess for Yahweh
From Deicide to Genocide
The Plunder of the Nations
The Levitic Tyranny
Endogamy and Monotheism
Chapter 3: THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD
Death and Culture in the Antique World
Biblical Materialism
Biblical versus Heroic Cultures
The Eternal People
Chapter 4: THE LAST HERO
Jews, Greeks, and Romans
Jesus, Rome, and Jerusalem
Anastasis
The Return of Osiris and Isis
The Return of Yahweh
The Miracle of Constantine
The Levitical Vatican
Chapter 5: THE WANDERING CRYPTO-JEW
The Jews and Europe in the Middle Ages
Forced Conversions in Spain and Portugal
The Marrano Dispersion
Marranos and the Church
Assimilation or Dissimulation?
Chapter 6: THE IMPERIAL MATRIX
The Two Sides of Albion
The Triumph of Puritanism
The Disraeli Enigma
The Gestation of Zionism
The Balfour-Rothschild Declaration
The Treaty of Versailles
Chapter 7: THE BIRTH PANGS OF ZION
Marxism and Zionism
Russia and the Jews
Zionism and Nazism
Hitler’s Prophecy
“Judea Declares War on Germany”
“An old Zionist like [Churchill]”
Birth of the “Jewish State”
The “Human Material”
The Soviet Union and Israel
Nasser, the Useful Enemy
Chapter 8: THE INVISIBLE COUP
John F. Kennedy, the Lobby, and the Bomb
Who Killed Kennedy?
The Hijacked Conspiracy
Johnson, a “Jewish President”?
Serial Assassinations
The Triumph of Zionist Propaganda
Chapter 9: THE VICIOUS CABAL
Neoconned
The Hijacking of the Republican Party
Setting the Stage for the Clash of Civilizations
The “New Pearl Harbor”
The Controlled Opposition
The Fourth World War
Chapter 10: THE GREAT GAME OF ZION
Darwinism, Racism, and Supremacism
Judaism as Darwinian Strategy
Blood, Race, and Genes
Nomads and Refugees
Assimilation, Dissimulation
The Mission Theory
Hijacking Christianity
Reshaping the Cultural Environment
Chapter 11: CHILDREN OF THE MAD GOD
Yahweh, the Levites, and the People
What Is a Psychopath?
The Psychopathic God
Killing Yahweh
Jewishness and Selective Empathy
Universalism and the Chosenness Complex
The Holocaust Attitude
The Sociopathic State
ENDNOTES
PREFACE
The book you are about to read is a major contribution not only to that overspecialized field known as the History of Religions, but also to its more generalized sibling, the History of Ideas. It is cultural critique of the first order. It is timely, of such relevance to current events as can hardly be overstated. And yet it could never be published by a major publishing house in any English-speaking country.
Why not? After all, in our Brave New World, destructive criticism of almost everything under the sun is permissible, if not encouraged or even re
quired. Brutal, not particularly sophisticated attacks on Islam, Christianity, religion in general, the Pope, Mother Theresa, public decency, and indeed almost every traditional value are ubiquitous, regularly appearing in publishers’ catalogues and bestseller lists, and assigned as required reading in universities and book clubs. How, in such an anything-goes atmosphere, can a scholarly interpretation of ideological history be so controversial as to be virtually unpublishable? How can a book about the history of the idea of God pose such problems in the year of our Lord 2018?
The answer is simple: This book traces the evolution of the concept of God through its relationship to Jewish tribal power. And the rulers of our Western world have made one thing abundantly clear: though God may be criticized, Jewish power must not be.
But what is Yahweh, the earliest known God of the Abrahamic monotheists and their descendants, if not an embodiment and representation of Jewish tribal power in general, and that of Jewish elites in particular? How can we think about what monotheism means in the era of the clash of civilizations without considering this foundational question?
In From Yahweh to Zion, Laurent Guyénot uncovers a mind-virus endemic to Judaism, yet present to greater or lesser degrees in Christianity and Islam as well: a conception of God that stubbornly clings to tribalism and all that it entails, rather than surrendering absolutely to universalism. This misconception of God as tribal shibboleth provides a powerful weapon in the ideological arsenals of unscrupulous elites, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. And it may have mutated and hidden itself inside the secularist fundamentalisms that are substitute religions for the modern educated classes.
When an Iraqi Muslim bombs innocent civilians in a mosque or market, an American Christian flies a drone bomb into a wedding party in Afghanistan, or a secular French policeman forces a Muslim woman to remove her one-piece bathing suit, we may detect an atavistic tribalism driving the perpetrators of these acts to defile, subjugate, or destroy other peoples and their gods, as per the orders of the Old Testament god Yahweh. For though not all ethnocentric intolerance derives from Yahweh—such episodes have occurred in the histories of all peoples—the Yahwist cult has left its mark on the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worlds, and thereby on the world at large, in an especially destructive way. Outbreaks of Old Testament fundamentalism have correlated with many of our worst conquests, subjugations, and genocides—from the Wars of Religion to the Native American holocaust to the settler colonial annihilations and subjugations of the peoples of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and (more recently) Palestine. And in today’s postreligious age—unofficially inaugurated by what National Medal of Science winner Lynn Margolis called the “most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations” on September 11, 2001—a hidden Yahwism seems to guide the hands of allegedly secular elites as they plot their new crusades.
Recognizing our own implication in such ideas and events can be difficult, even painful. But it may also be necessary. Having come to Islam in 1993, and adopted its revisionist account of Old Testament folklore and mythology as my own, I find Guyénot’s critique of Yahwism disquieting and challenging. But I also find it useful, especially in understanding my coreligionists’ lapses into tribalism and intolerance. ISIS, which lashes out at other religious approaches and their adherents as if they were false gods and idolaters, is a facile example. But many mainstream Muslims who would never dream of joining ISIS sometimes act as though fellow Muslims who take a slightly different path to God are mushrikîn (idol worshippers) rather than coreligionists and fellow human beings. The takfiris of ISIS and similar groups mirror the self-righteous, Yahwistic sides of ourselves.
Though Guyénot’s argument could easily be caricatured as simplistically antimonotheistic and propolytheistic, I would not subscribe to that reading. Guyénot draws a portrait of Yahweh as psychopathic father whose war on idolatry amounts to an amoral, self-aggrandizing extinction of the other. Though such a reading may be largely warranted by the Old Testament and the Talmud, I don’t think it applies to the monotheistic religions of Christianity or Islam, at least not to the same degree. And there are aspects of Biblical tradition that cut in the opposite direction, notably those highlighted by René Girard in numerous writings such as The Scapegoat (1986).
Girard suggests that monotheism’s anti-idolatry impetus stems largely from its half-conscious understanding that polytheistic “religions” are, in the final analysis, cults of human sacrifice. Thus, according to the Girardian reading, the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son is less about inculcating blind obedience to Yahweh than about ending the polytheistic pagan practice of sacrificing one’s own children to the likes of Moloch. We could extend Girard’s insight to encompass Muhammad’s war on Meccan idolaters who buried their baby girls alive and sacrificed to monstrous gods around a defiled Kaaba in search of wealth and power for themselves and their cronies.
Such practices still exist, though they are no longer widespread. In today’s North and West Africa, the practice of human sacrifice to gods or jinn by people seeking wealth and power continues on the margins of society, where it has been consigned by the reigning monotheism. Similar abominations apparently persist among so-called dark shamans in parts of Latin America as well as in the satanic cults of Europe and America. Such are the “idol worshippers” denigrated in the most reliable monotheistic scripture, in my view, the Holy Qur’an.
But if there is a positive or at least defensible side to monotheism’s hostility to polytheism and idolatry, it does not form part of Guyénot’s analysis in this book—which could be accused of one-sidedness in other ways as well. For example: Where, one may ask, are the countless examples of noble, selfless Jewish behavior? What about all the wonderful Jewish high achievers in science and the arts? Where are the standard accounts of the endless gratuitous persecutions Jews have suffered everywhere they have settled? Is there not at least some truth to the stereotype of the Jew as eternal victim?
The answer to such objections is simple: Those stories have been endlessly told and retold in all the dominant media of the postwar West. Yet nowhere are they questioned; nowhere are alternative accounts proposed; nowhere are the viewpoints of those who found themselves in conflict with Jewish tribalism given fair consideration. Every historical conflict between Jews and goyim is assumed to be the fault of the goyim. If a man quarrels with everyone in his life—his neighbors, his boss, his coworkers, those he meets on the street—and then insists that all of those people are persecuting him for no reason whatsoever, few of us would take him at his word. Yet we unquestioningly accept such interpretations of interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish communities, whether due to lack of curiosity or fear: fear of being called names, of being socially ostracized, of possibly even being deprived of our livelihood.
It is long past time to stop fearing and start thinking. This book’s task is to provide a plausible revisionist interpretation of critically important questions, not to echo conventional tropes in hopes of appearing “fair and balanced.” By venturing boldly into forbidden territory, Laurent Guyénot forces us to think, freshly and critically, in a way that our culture habitually deems off-limits. A staunch antiracist, Guyénot makes it abundantly clear that he is critiquing ideas, not biology. And unlike much of the shrill, even hysterical “anti-Semitic” writing lurking in disreputable corners of the internet, this book is far less tendentious than the dominant discourse it critiques. Fair-minded yet unflinching, it is a magisterial work by an uncommonly erudite historian, and deserves the widest possible readership.
–Kevin Barrett
INTRODUCTION
“The destiny of the Jewish people appears to the historian as a paradoxical and incredible phenomenon, almost beyond comprehension. It is unique and without equivalent in the history of mankind,” writes French author Alexandre Roudinesco.1 Such commonplace assertions are hard to refute.
To explain what makes t
he Jewish people so special, and Jewish identity so enduring, without resorting to the notion of divine election, one has to agree that the Bible has played a major role. (I use the word “Bible” for the Jewish Tanakh, the Old Testament of the Christians.) Jews around the world have drawn from the Bible pride in their history and confidence in their destiny, no matter what hardship they may endure.
Whether Jewishness is defined as religious or ethnic, its roots are in the Bible. Therefore, its essence must be sought there. Whether he has read it or not, whether he judges it historical or mythical, every Jew ultimately bases his Jewishness on the Bible—or whatever he knows about the Bible. This venerable corpus—which includes the five “Books of Moses” (the Pentateuch, or Torah), the Historical Books, and the Prophets—constitutes the unshakable foundation of both Jewish religion and Jewish identity. (The Talmud is only a commentary on the Bible, and does not fundamentally alter its core ideology). From a religious viewpoint, the Bible preserves the memory and the essence of the Covenant with God that the believer internalizes. From an ethnic viewpoint, the Bible is the foundational collective memory of the Jewish people, and the pattern by which Jews interpret their whole subsequent history (the Dispersion, the Holocaust, the rebirth of Israel, and so on). Any nation is a narration, and what makes the Jewish nation special is ultimately what makes the biblical narration special. The Bible has always been the “portable fatherland” of the Diaspora Jews, as Heinrich Heine once put it. But it also became and has remained the heart of Israel, whose founders did not give it any other Constitution.
It is true that the earliest prophets of political Zionism—Moses Hess (Rome and Jerusalem, 1862), Leon Pinsker (Auto-Emancipation, 1882), and Theodor Herzl (The Jewish State, 1896)—did not draw their inspiration from the Bible, but rather from the great nationalist spirit that swept through Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Pinsker and Herzl actually cared little whether the Jews colonized Palestine or any other region of the globe; the former considered land in North America, while the latter contemplated Argentina and later Uganda. More important still than nationalism, what drove these intellectual pioneers was the persistence of Judeophobia or anti-Semitism: Pinsker, who was from Odessa, converted to Zionism during the pogroms that followed the assassination of Alexander II; Herzl, at the height of the Dreyfus affair. Pinsker, a medical doctor, regarded Judeophobia as a hereditary and incurable “disease transmitted for two thousand years,” and he characterized the Jews as “the people chosen for universal hatred.”2 The most recent manifestation of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany was the justification for the creation of Israel in 1948. And it is still today one of the pillars of Jewish identity throughout the world, as documented in Yoav Shamir’s excellent film Defamation (2009). Indeed, since the end of the 1960s the Holocaust has become the source of a new secular version of the Election—the belief that Jews are God’s chosen people. Yet, as we shall see, the Holocaust resonates deeply with the Bible.