[COLUMNIST] The doctrinal basis of the Zionist ideology

MANY around the world are not only appalled, disgusted and enraged by the malevolent acts of Zionists towards the Palestinians.

There are also many who are stupefied as to why Zionists behave in such a beastly, vile and even as it can be put as such, “possessed”, manner.

Nowadays, we have not only become accustomed to the incessant bombardment and destruction of lives and infrastructure in Gaza.

Images of the daily ritual of Palestinians – especially from the West Bank – having to endure long and excruciating queues and being subject to invasive checks and brutal treatment by the Zionist occupation forces or the scenes of Al-Aqsa worshippers beaten and trampled upon seems to have receded into past memory.

We are also now exposed to stories of physical and sexual torture and abuse, including the rape, of Palestinian prisoners (male and female). What has been previously unheard of due to lack of mainstream media coverage has now been laid bare by cyberspace and social media.

Zionist treatment of Palestinians is all part of the continuation and pursuit of their genocidal ideology.

Current news of Zionist brutality and savagery is nothing new.

It did not come into shape post-October 7.

Zionists have been degrading and dehumanising Palestinians continuously ever since the “State of Israel” came into being in 1948 – with the latter driven out from their homes as part of the ethnic cleansing goal.

Palestinians, understandably, have dubbed the founding of the State of Israel as the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), which have had involved large-scale and mass dislocations and displacements of them as the indigenous inhabitants.

Hence, how can Zionists commit what is in effect genocide – as the summation and apex of their atrocities – with impunity and without feeling guilt and remorse?

And that too for the past 76 years and on-going – which seems set to be in perpetuity (until the “final solution” of the Palestinians takes place)?

What is the moral justification for literally driving the indigenous people out of their land and treating them as “vermin”?

There is no denying that the dehumanisation of the Palestinians is no different at all from how the Nazis treated the Jews during the Second World War.

The ostensible and overt founding justification and rationale for the Zionist attitude and worldview towards the Palestinians can be immediately traced back to the Holocaust (Shoah).

The “near-extermination” of European Jewry (official accounts estimated nearly six million) by the Nazis was used as a pretext for the founding of the State of Israel proclaimed as the (“ancestral”) homeland.

By extension, the “State of Israel” would be the safe haven for the supposed descendants of the historic Jewish diaspora traced back to the Roman occupation (i.e., between the Great Revolt of 66 AD to 135 AD with the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in between) to reverse migrate (i.e., the Aliyah).

The founding of the State of Israel then entailed the violent and bloody expulsion and expurgation of Palestinians from their homes and land.

The intended “implication” being that the Palestinians are not the original inhabitants.

So, it’s either them (Palestinians) or us (Zionists).

A matter of pure survival of the Jewish race (post-Holocaust) – but framed within the false dilemma purposely created by the ideology of Zionism.

In the eyes of the modern-day Zionists, whose claimed/touted ancestral connection to Palestine based on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) or genetic studies alone has been definitively disputed or debunked, the Palestinians are the real interlopers based on a spurious historical narrative.

Genetic studies have confirmed time and again the connectedness of Palestinians to their homeland – vindicating claims that they are the true descendants of the Hebrews (see, e.g., the definitive work of geneticist Dr Eran Elhaik’s “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and Khazarian Hypotheses”, Genome Biology Evolution, December 2012).

Even the conditions surrounding the formation of the State of Israel is called into question.

Historians such as Illan Pappe (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, etc.), Schlomo Sand (The Invention of the Land of Israel, 2012, etc.) and Benny Morris (1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, 1990, etc.) have all debunked the official and establishment account.

Professor Pappe has highlighted how Zionists have systematically planned for the mass killings of Arabs under Plan Dalet for the explicit purpose of dispossession and depopulation (see, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, Journal of Palestine Studies, issue 141, Fall 2006).

The notorious and nefarious Plan Dalet was one of the principal reasons behind the massacres and exterminations, some involving horrific incidents such as the beheading of a baby and a child burned alive in a communal oven during the annihilation of the Deir Yassin village (“The Deir Yassin Massacre Reminds Us – Every Zionist Accusation is a Confession”, Dina Elmuti, Mondoweiss, April 9, 2024; see also, “Testimonies from the Censored Deir Yassin Massacre: They Piled Bodies and Burned Them”, Haaretz, June 16, 2017).

The atrocities also aimed at striking fear and instilling terror in order to induce critical mass displacements via voluntary mass flights.

This was also the reason why the United Nations (UN) Partition Plan of 1947 did not fall into place successfully (leaving aside the rejection by the Arabs for obvious and justifiable reasons).

Now, let us turn to the underlying basis of the Zionist ideology.

The doctrinal basis of the Zionist ideology can be drawn from two sources, namely the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud (as the centrepiece commentary).

As we now see, Zionists have become more brazen in espousing their genocidal worldview, thus exposing their doctrinal roots, especially under the latest incarnation of Netanyahu in office (this time in open alliance with the far-right).

We have seen how Netanyahu had flagrantly invoked the example of “Amalek” (the Amalekites) taken from the Hebrew Bible as justification for the genocidal drive against the Palestinians in Gaza.

This represents an outrageously immoral misuse/perverted interpretation of the Bible – which intriguingly parallels the Islamic terrorists’ misuse/perverted interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah.

And then we have the Talmud which has shaped the Zionist conscience and from which springs the commonplace hatred and contempt for Palestinians – and basically all goyims (Gentiles), i.e., non-Jews.

Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible as the original religious and theological text of Judaism applied the term “goy” to the (ancient) Israelites themselves – again highlighting another feature of Zionist perversion of Judaism.

Let us take a quick look at some selected portions of the Talmud.

In Sanhedrin 57a of the Jerusalem Talmud (written circa 200 AD) which predates the Babylonian Talmud, the relevant passage states that no capital punishment is due for the killing of non-Jews.

The same Sanhedrin 57a teaches that it is permissible to rob – and by extension steal from – Gentiles.

This partly explains the violent expropriation of land and homes (not to mention outrightly illegal and immoral) by settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to take two prominent macro-examples.

In the Babylonian Talmud, we find writings such as Bava Metzia 114b which regard non-Jews are sub-human/non-human. The commentary literally says that “… [G]entiles are not called man” (i.e., not human – due to ritual impurity).

According to Bava Kamma 113b of the Babylonian Talmud, it is permissible to cheat non-Jews by refusing to repay their loans. Similarly, we also read in Sanhedrin 57a (of the Jerusalem Talmud) that it is allowable to cheat a non-Jewish employee (worker or labourer) by refusing to pay their wages.

Both of these passages would imply that cheating is permissible in other circumstances by good and necessary consequence (i.e., the extended or rest of the logical implications).

It should be highlighted, however, that there is no hermeneutical consensus regarding the interpretation of the selected verses above as per the Talmud.

Some have sought to assert that there are technical nuances which need to be considered.

Notwithstanding, it is clear that the actions of Zionists unequivocally reflect the literal meaning of these Talmudic verses (whether read in isolation or not) as demonstrated by the allusion to the settlers, many of whom are of European descent with some having arrived only recently, so to speak, from places like New York, again, as one example.

The 2021 video clip of a newly arrived “settler” hailing from Long Island who unabashedly retorted to the Palestinian house owner in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem in his thick New York accent that, “If I don’t steal it, someone will” serves only as a micro-example of what many Palestinians have to endure on a regular or recurrent basis, and worse (see, “‘But if I don’t steal it, someone else is gonna steal it’” – Israeli Settler-Colonial Accumulation by Dispossession, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Middle East Research and Information Project/MERP).

At the end of the day, it is no conspiracy theory to link the doctrines contained in the Talmud as referenced heretofore to the Zionist ideology.

For it is the Zionist themselves who have laid bare, particularly in recent times, the underlying roots of their psychopathy and pathological worldview.

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Jason Loh Seong Wei is Head of Social, Law & Human Rights at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.

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