ues a rampant nationalism, (i.e. ‘Zionism’), which is – like all variants of bourgeois nationalism – racially motivated and culturally bias. Anti-Semitism, of course, that is the irrational hatred of a race of people, existed prior to the rise of the Christian movement, but has been encapsulated and preserved in that theology, down to the present day. Anti-Semitism, as a manifestation of a bourgeois sham (designed to separate the international working class and make it fight amongst itself), should not be confused with the legitimate criticism of the political, cultural, and military behaviour of the modern state of Israel. The behaviour of Israel, is not the behaviour of all Jewish people that live in the world, but is rather the historically conditioned unfolding of brutal oppression as developed and perpetuated by the international bourgeoisie. Modern Israel behaves in a thoroughly rightwing and intolerant manner, whilst people of the Jewish religion, often face a continuous anti-Semitism from the Christian right (and its supporters), which is in reality simply another branch of the international bourgeoisie. This apparent contradiction and disunity amongst the ruling classes signifies a conflict premised entirely upon the myth of religion. The contradiction and paradox mounts up when it is understood that Christianity is historically a branch of Judaism, and has strove to artificially distance itself from its mother-religion by embracing anti-Semitism. Early Christians were counted as Jews, until their behaviour resulted in their expulsion from the Jewish religion. Whereas at one point these Jewish-Christians would have been the victims of anti-Semitism, following their systemic break with Judaic officialdom, the Christians deliberately aligned themselves with anti-Semitic racism, and this perspective of prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance, has served as a foundation for the development of theology and church policy to the present day. This racist mind-set has been compounded by the Christian pursuance of the Judaic belief in the god-given ‘specialness’ of its adherents. Judaic adherents believe that they form the ‘chosen people’, as do the Christians – who were rejected out of this ‘specialness’. Christianity has had to re-define its ‘specialness’ by making it available to anyone (Judaism does not proselytise), through the socio-psychological and cultural pressure of ‘conversion’. Whereas within Judaism it is believed that only those born ‘Jewish’ are saved, Christianity has developed the counter-myth that only those who ‘convert’ to Christianity will be ‘saved’.
The problems that the modern state of Israel represents, does not require the use of anti-Semitism to convey. From a purely dialectical perspective, the situation is clear-cut, particularly when the words of Marx are remembered, and religion is taken as the basis for all ignorance oppression. The history of religion, that is the history of imagined realities, is the unfolding of mythology mistaken as fact, throughout human society, and which influences its continued development. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are all facets of the same theological mythology. The Jewish Rabbis had reduced polytheism to monotheism, and created the notion that those who were born as ‘Jews’, were simultaneously born ‘special’, and that all those not born within Judaism, were subsequently ‘not special’, and by implication, ‘not blessed by god’. The founders of Christianity and Islam – Yeshua Ben Yoseph (Greek: Jesus Christ), and Mohammed – were both Jewish reformers who took-on the collective ‘specialness’ applied to the Jewish people, firmly onto themselves as individuals. This megalomania led to obsessive faith in select individuals, by followers who fought one another to prove that their particular ‘prophet’ was the most ‘special’, or indeed the ‘only’ special human communicator with a god that no one else could see. Judaism rejects Christianity and Islam as false teachings perpetuated by rebel Jews who attempted to distort the ‘true’ teachings of Judaism into nothing less than a personal fetish. In other words, the fetish of group religion is reduced to the fetish of individual religion, and this irony remains unobserved by the ‘faithful’ in both camps. Jewish resistance and antagonism toward the adherents of Christianity and Islam, is premised solely upon the foundation that these two religious pathways distort rabbinical and biblical teaching. It is an attack on other religions justified through the theology of a vengeful god. It is interesting to note that Christianity attacks both Judaism and Islam for exactly the same reason, as does Islam in its attacks upon Judaism and Christianity. Each of these three inter-related religions all advocate an exclusive ‘specialness’ for their own adherents, that due to its intolerant core, ensures that each generation either completely intellectually dismisses the relevance and validity of the other religions, or openly attacks and destroys their physical presence in the world – quite often both responses are pursued simultaneously. As theology represents a psychological cul-de-sac of an imaginary take on the world, it’s totalitarian and hierarchical statements can never be proven as ‘real’, but which can be continuously fought over by one generation to the next. The conflict and violence is real, whilst the theology that causes it is false.
Modern Israel is a direct product of European – specifically British – imperialism. Following WWII, and the subsequent shock of the Nazi German holocaust against European Jewry, the British bourgeoisie that ruled Palestine, without taking into account the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, arbitrarily separated the country in half and allowed the modern state of Israel to be established in a predominantly Islamic country. Due to the situation in war-torn Europe, people of Jewish origin migrated in their thousands to this newly founded state – this included survivors of the Nazi death-camps. Almost immediately the Islamic population protested and was ignored by the Western powers of the international community. The modern state of Israel, in the meantime, was financially and militarily supported by the USA and Western Europe, and would eventually be given nuclear weapons. The Palestinians, supported by the Soviet Union and other Middle Eastern countries, gathered arms and periodically launched campaigns of open warfare against Israel, but failed to achieve the objective of reuniting their country, Israel, after-all, was materially supported by the advanced capitalist countries, whilst Palestinians lived in a state of abject poverty, having to face the daily presence of heavily armed and aggressive Israeli soldiers at checkpoints and on street corners. Israeli and Palestinian relations have more or less continued in a spiral of death and destruction which has seen the routine exchange of tit for tat torture, kidnap, and murder. The impoverished Palestinians struggle to retain a grip on their own country, whilst Israel continues to build settler-homes (exclusively for Jews) upon Palestinian land.
Young Palestinian children, and youths are routinely maimed and killed by the Israeli military forces. The Western bourgeois media virtually ignores these regular occurrences – deeming them unworthy of reporting. However, whenever an Israeli child or youth is maimed or killed, the Western bourgeois media immediately springs into action with an indepth analysis of the situation and the people involved. The Palestinians are always presented as ‘terrorists’ and the Israelis as otherwise ‘pure’ and ‘innocent’ victims of a pointless violence carried-out by members of a morally bankrupt religion. The tragedy of the three Israeli youths found dead recently, has initiated this sentimentalist response from the Western media, which has begrudgingly, and as an after-thought, also reported that the body a dead Palestinian youth has also been discovered. The message is clear – the value of life ascribed to an Israeli is greater than the value of life ascribed to a Palestinian. Although it is exactly the same ignorant religiosity that underlies all bourgeois thinking and behaviour, the matter is complicated by racism and political expediency. Sixty years ago, political policy was openly dictated by anti-Semitism, which was the norm throughout Europe. Today, the political policy of the USA and Europe is dictated through the auspices of Islamophobia. The lurking religiosity of Christianity can be seen to be behind these two policies of hatred. When all the historical issues surrounding imperialism and colonisation are taken into account, it is the Judeo-Christian mythos of ‘specialness’ that fuels religious and secular nationalism and racism. As Islam (Palestine), is a threat to the hegemony of Judaism (Israel), the life of an Israeli will always be viewed as significantly more valuable to that of a Palestinian.
With the religious notion of ‘specialness’ comes the inevitable shadow of ‘victimhood’. When the notion of religiously inspired specialness is criticised, deconstructed, or condemned for whatever reason, those who believe that they are divinely ‘lifted up’, through its auspices, immediately and habitually condemn the criticism as an ‘attack’ and resort to the counter-strategy of assumed ‘victimhood’. Victimhood and specialness form two-sides of the religiously minted coin – one can not exist without the other. Physical and psychological suffering, imagined or otherwise, is unnecessarily fed through the Judeo-Christian religious filter (including Islam), so that even the assumed mantle of ‘victimhood’ becomes yet another manifestation of religious inspired ‘specialness’. It is a cycle of irrationality preserved and conveyed within the structure of theological teaching. The Judeo-Christian religionist is of the opinion that his ‘specialness’ is greater than any other distinguishing mark in life, and that his suffering is more authentic, worthwhile and legitimate than that experienced by any other individual or group. Indeed, as the bible conveys, to be ‘special’, is to be a ‘victim’, and although Israel is undoubtedly an imperialist presence which oppresses the Palestinians (with the complicity and aid of the bourgeois West), nevertheless, it is equally true that both the Jewish Israelis and the Muslim Palestinians both perpetuate religious ignorance as legitimate aspects of national characteristics. The