About Israel

If you’ve looked at the news lately, Israel has a lot going on. There has been a pretty serious war taking place between Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and even potentially some Iraqi Shiite militias, and the nation of Israel since the inhuman meth-fuelled satanic attack against the country on October 7, 2023. This was no ordinary attack on Israel. It included babies in microwaves, grandmothers raped until their bones broke, young women paraded around naked before being torn apart, beheadings, and kidnappings. This attack was not going to be met with a standard response from Israel. To do so would merely be to roll over and beg for more attacks.

The public has largely forgotten about October 7th, however, and the world at large sees only Israeli villainy in the country’s response, which has amounted to an absolute decimation of the Gaza strip, and an ongoing war that is ramping up with Hezbollah in the north, which threatens to erupt into a larger conflict. The news doesn’t report much on the violence against Israel as these events unfold, but being in the process of preparing to make Aliyah (immigration to the country as a Jew), I follow a variety of other channels that give a clearer picture of the back and forth.

Now I am in an unusual situation that, for me, isn’t unusual. The first time I set about to go to Israel, COVID appeared, the flu that the world decided to treat like an ebola outbreak, and Israel basically shut down, which resulted in my being deported at the border. Now that I have decided to have another go at Israel, war breaks out, such that nobody in their right mind would consider moving there under the current circumstances.

I’m not going to let this deter me, though, and I’ve come to the point where I want to write about Israel. Almost everything I have ever written about the country has been wholly and intensely negative. I first started writing about the Israel after leaving it in the dust following my interaction with the van Ouwerkerk family there, and my impression of was negative. Random deportations for no reason, corrupt consulates and courts, all of this didn’t improve my impression of the place.

I came to feel that I was being played, however, with whatever infernal forces were being allowed into my life and mind seeming to be leading me through all of these experiences that, first, were unique to me (not everybody has such a wretched time with the place), and second, seemed to be designed with masterful precision to lead a person to hate the country, if, that is, they cannot bring themselves to look past, to forgive, to find the diamond in the rough, and to love one’s enemy. Those are all qualities that I aspire to possess, and so I wasn’t going to let those infernal forces ruin my perspectives.

I am not, however, going to delete those old writings or say I didn’t mean them. They say a lot. To begin with, I think every honest, whole person who thinks about an entire country is going to have aspects they approve of and those they don’t. If you ask me, it’s the duty of every patriotic American to be critical of America when America is messing something up. Further, every responsible member of the US Democrat party is obligated to be critical of the Republicans in America that they think are screwing things up. Finally, though, every truly discriminating Democrat needs to be able to oppose other Democrats insofar as they think these other Democrats are working against the good of the party and the country. As far as I am concerned, when I find myself talking to a Democrat who has only ever had positive things to say about America and Democrats, I tend to think I’ve found myself talking to someone not worth talking politics with.

So I am going to leave those writings there to convey a certain sense of “that was then, this is now,” but also to wear my views, including previous ones, transparently on my sleeve. I’ve always described my relationship with that country in terms of a prophet on a holy mission to the place, and at times I have wondered if my lot was to be wrathful prophet, sent to a godless land with words of fire from heaven.

The book isn’t exactly closed on some elements of that possibility making their way into reality, but with everything that has been unfolding on the international stage, that is absolutely and in no way the case currently. The country is being vehemently attacked, and the world reaction to what is happening there is absolutely pregnant with spiritual meaning. It’s this sphere that I want to talk about. I’m not going to be mounting traditional political and social defenses of Israel. I want to talk about some spiritual things, though, with the hope that these spiritual matters will have some effect of generating empathy for Israel’s political and social situation.

So after having defended my years old attacks against Israel, let me add, presumptively, that I wouldn’t exactly give Israel a ten out of ten on a scale of national excellence in the political and social spheres. Saying that, though, I’ll add that I’d probably only give myself a four on a scale of one to ten for excellence as a human being. That is, I can be critical, and a score of ten would be reserved for a place of absolute perfection. I’d only give the USA a seven, for example. But this last little bit of harping on Israel and calling attention to my past (not present) anger at the her is actually important because I would give Hamas a ONE. Here we see that it’s important to keep my criticisms of Israel on the table. I want you to understand that you are not talking about some mindless fanboy. I am no Democrat who only ever loves everything Democrat and all things American. I now have the privilege of saying, with all openness and honesty that due to past perspectives and phases of life, I can be quite coldly cruel in my assessment of Israel, yet even doing so, the moral activity with which Israel has been conducting herself is in every way galaxies ahead of her opponents.

Again, though, I don’t want to mount the typical defense of Israel. Others are doing that, and anyone who wants to know about it need only look for those. Nobody does, but they can. Here I want to talk Israel’s position regardless of its moral excellence or lack thereof. This is where the spiritual aspects begin.

The Bible is pretty tough on Israel as well. Israelites begged constantly to go back to Egypt on the way to the Promised Land. Israelites forgot the miracles of God in just one generation when Joshua took over to conquer the country after Moses. We split into two kingdoms and made false gods after Solomon’s reign. We ignored the prophets who said Babylon was coming. I can really only bring myself to read the book of Exekiel once in a great while. Reading chapter after chapter about how messed up and worthless Israel is in that book depresses me, if I must say so.

The defense of Israel doesn’t revolve around Israel being perfect or better than others, though again, being better than Hamas isn’t hard to do. What’s interesting here is the nature of the attacks against Israel and the agendas of her foes, and the way the world reacts to what is going on with the country.

Concerning world reaction, hypocrisy is the name of the game. In 2001, Al-Qaida killed 3,000 American civilians in a terrorist attack. The result was the obliteration of the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan leading to wars lasting over a decade and producing Iraqi casualty counts with six figures, and Iraq didn’t even have anything to do with the twin tower attacks! There were no weapons of mass destruction that would be used in future attacks. Yet the Western World was happy to provide troops to the invading coalition, and still a decade later, America bears no shame in retaliating against that act of supreme evil. Now, all the world will know what will happen to you if you attack America. And if you are unattackable, that’s not going to stop America. America will attack the roof over your head, the ground under your feet, your neighbors, your friends. You will not attack America. This has been the program of empires since history began. America is no exception. Israel also has rights and obligations to defend herself.

Again, to hypocrisy, in 1945 the US Army 8th Air Force flew scores of sorties of B-17 and B-29 bombers over Germany every day for years dropping their payloads over entire cities without ceasing.

The above scene looks to be from Cologne, in Germany. I remember that double-spired cathedral. I’ll say that this scene is not genocide. One may debate whether the response was disproportionate. I can tell you that other, more measured responses would have greatly increased casualty counts of allied soldiers. Determining proportionality can be tricky business. If you tell any general that the only proportionate response allowable would be to send all his soldiers to their deaths by tying their hands behind their backs, he will cry foul, and he will win in court. Unless he is an Israeli general, it seems.

After hypocrisy we have delusion. Since Israel began to mount her defense, the term “genocide” has been bandied about in the media. Now I am a retired US Army officer. I am familiar with US and NATO rules of engagement and theories of warfare from Genghis Khan to Carl von Clausewitz to Colin Powell. I’ve read General Petraus’ manual on asymmetric warfare. I’m familiar with the Geneva Conventions. If I did not know the things I know, my soldiers would go to prison. I’m trying to tell you that I know the meaning of terms like genocide, disproportionate response, escalation of force, and others.

Just a matter of months after the above photo was taken, the individuals who caused the damage it depicts were executing nazi leaders in Nuremburg for genocide. I think they had different things in their minds about these concepts than many of us today.

I know that genocide is a concerted effort to eliminate a population that is distinguished from indiscriminate action, disproportionate response, and collateral damage. Yet this word finds itself in legal documents written by legal adults who are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the United Nations in describing Israel’s actions. If they aren’t under the influence of alcohol or drugs, what are they under the influence of? Forces from below. Forces of irrationality. Forces of hypocrisy. Forces of delusion.

When it comes to this issue, I know when I am being lied to, and I can tell that I am being lied to by newspapers and media outlets as well as political speeches and letters all over the world. This should tell you something when making your judgments and assessments, and in choosing your perspective, and choosing “your team” so to speak.

If you want me to take you seriously, don’t lie to me. It’s that simple. When I see world class courts seeking to convict a country in spite of military laws of warfare, I am shocked about who is lying to me. I won’t expect much from an article by Aljazeera, but an international UN court? It’s difficult to believe the things I’ve been seeing.

It’s obvious to me that the world reaction to what is happening in Israel is not something natural or logical. It seems that a story is being played out, and in the story, the world, with the exception of some evangelical Christians and a few Jews in the USA, hates Israel. There is a message in this.

I’ve written a lot about the idea that life has meaning, and the events in our lives end up making stories that are written by God that we learn from. Well, a long time ago, a Judean king set about to establish a national archive. The history that was collected contained recollection of a fantastic miracle of epic proportion involving a mountain on fire in front of a half a million people, miracle food popping up out of the ground every day, in front of everybody, for decades, and a variety of other incredible events as well as the various political struggles of the warlords and kings that would come after.

At some point, someone noticed that the historical events recounted, even the mundane ones, ended up being stories with allegorical spiritual meaning. The history of the nation of Israel mirrors the life of the individual servant of God. Above I mentioned Israel forgetting the miracles of the time of Moses within just one generation, by the time of his successor Joshua. We too forget all the great things God does in our lives, and we often undertake challenges fearfully, not meditating on God’s power to get us through our trials, but rather quivering at the fact that the challenge exists in the first place. So that Israel forgot the deeds of the days of Moses represents allegorically that God’s people, whether Jew or gentile, tend to forget the great things he does quickly and approach our challenges with unnecessary fear.

I also mentioned that Israel split into two kingdoms after Solomon. One of those kingdoms followed God some of the time, but not all that much. The other one broke away from God altogether. We too are individuals in conflict with ourselves. We have a part of us that wants to serve God, but doesn’t do it all that often, and we have a part of us that just loves to oppose God, that we need to fight against sometimes. So, the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah from after the reign of Solomon represent different parts of ourselves.

Through our lives, if we walk with God, the part of us that opposes God can get stripped away. Likewise, in the history of Israel, the northern kingdom that opposed God was obliterated by the Assyrians. This left the southern kingdom that served God every now and then. But the southern kingdom didn’t really serve God that much, so it was taken into captivity. Likewise, God will put us into challenging situations in order to trap us in circumstances where we do not have the freedom to ignore him. In the same way, the southern kingdom was taken into captivity by the Babylonians less than two hundred years after the northern kingdom went away. Just as Israel was taken to Babylon in captivity, a servant of God addicted to hookers and drugs might just find himself in a situation where he can’t get any of those things because God has put him into a kind of “captivity.”

The last example of this correspondence that I want to mention pertains to future things. Religious people in the Judeo-Christian vein debate whether things are going to get better before the end or get worse. Among religious Jews who concern themselves with such things, particularly among the kabbalists who I associate with, the overwhelming majority believe that things will get better before the end. The thinking is that the ills of the Jews come from lack of obedience to God, and a point will come when Israel will finally be obedient, and with that the world will become a better and better place, at which point the Messiah will come to reign in peace.

The Christians, who tend to be more doctrinarian and whose doctrines I am rather familiar with, have named these different perspectives. There are postmillennialism and premillennialism. In postmillennialism, Jesus is already reigning through his church, and the point will come when the church is so good, Jesus will finally show up himself to reign in peace. Like with the Judaism, things will get better until the end. Premillennialism, however, states that things will get so bad that Jesus will come to set things straight.

Though not particularly pertinent here, the Islamic perspective is that things will get bad to the point that a character called the Mahdi will show up to fight evil, and once he is victorious, Jesus will show up to reign in peace. So the Muslims agree with the Christian premillennialists when it comes to that point.

Now as a recently converted Jew, and as a kabbalist, I do have to say that I am going to go against the common Jewish view. It’s colored by the destruction of the temple and the diaspora, predicated on this idea that our travails were because of disobedience, and that the cure to those travails is obedience. I’m not going to say that disobedience doesn’t bring hardship, but I look at things a different way. And no, my perspective is not related to Jesus. It’s because the life of Israel mimics the life of a person.

First of all, death is an ultimate. Don’t forget that. There is nothing more intense on the scale of personal injury than death. When that ultimate thing happens, the situation can only be addressed by another ultimate: God. There is no being with qualities more intense than the qualities of God. Omniscience? Omnipotence? Nothing beats that. So, the only address to the absolute obliteration of the self is God. When we die, we deal with God.

Now for most of us, death isn’t going to be pleasant. Some of us die in our sleep. Others die before we know it, walking along calmly when a piano falls on us or something. But the general mode of death is to age and get more decrepit, losing the power of our bodies and minds, and then in some frightening and painful way, when life in the human body becomes just untenable, we have no other option but to shed our mortal coil.

Likewise, then, Israel is not going to get younger and stronger and then come to an end. Israel will die like most of us do, in some sort of scary, painful situation. But it’s just then, when there is no hope, when the Israel’s “body” has failed, that the Messiah will show up. That is, the Messiah’s relationship with the nation of Israel corresponds to God’s relationship with a person who loves him. The two get together completely and totally at death. And just as every human must undergo the death experience, so to must Israel undergo a death experience. It’s likely to be bloody. It’s probably not going to be fun. But just as my death will result in paradise with God, so will the “death” of the nation of Israel result in the Messianic kingdom. So then it can be said that I’m never really going to die, but rather I am an immortal shedding one mode of life for another, so also will the nation of Israel never really die, but just be transformed from one mode of existence to another.

So life is a story with meaning, and the history of Israel is a story with meaning. The story of Israel has been written out from beginning to end, including events not yet come to pass. Now this situation can only be the case if history has already been determined by the God who wrote it. The enemies of God, Satan and his demons, do not think there is a God outside of time writing history. Their definition of “God” is simply the angel with the strongest will, who can will anything to be the case regardless of what anybody else wants or what anybody else sees.

Satan wants to be that angel, to be God as he understands God to be, and the idea that he is destined not to be is a big problem for him. He will therefore oppose any view of reality that depicts existence as a story with an author that he must submit to. Concerning Israel, a number of prophecies about the nation have already come true. There are more prophecies set to come true in the future. According to Satan, however, Israel must be obliterated, and no Messiah can come to rectify things. If there is a prophecy that Israel will persist until the end of days and then finally be saved by the Messiah, but Satan can get rid of Israel and make sure that never happens, then he can prove that there is no omnipotent God determining history.

That’s how we got nazi Germany. According to the prophecies, Israel will be in its land and will be attacked, specifically from the north. So, in the 20th century during the diaspora, the Jews were lured to Germany. In the 19th century, Germany was the best place in the world to be a Jew. The idea was that Israel could be lured in and destroyed while there was no land or temple, thus rendering the prophecies false, and with that the notion that there is a God writing history.

A few years after Hitler’s death, the nation of Israel was reformed, however. His attempt to destroy the Jews ultimately resulted in the establishment of the land of Israel once again. They even speak the same language they spoke thousands of years ago. This sort of thing has never happened elsewhere in history. Further, as soon as the country was formed, things went exactly back to how they’d been two thousand years before, with hostile countries warring against the nation, and hostile tribes within and around Israel attacking it as much as possible, even from the same areas the Bible talks about, with Philistines in Gaza and Canaanites in the West Bank. So the game is still on. In fact, the prophecies are closer to being fulfilled than they were before. You’d just about have to have a divine author of history for such a thing to take place.

For the next idea I want to present, I’ll get a bit academic. I’ll start with a section from the Talmud.

All Israel has a share in the world to come, as it is stated: And your people are all righteous, forever shall they inherit the land, the branch of my plantings, my handiwork in which to take pride. However, the following are the ones who do not have a share in the world to come: one who says there is no reference to the resurrection of the dead in the Torah, or that the Torah is not from heaven, or an apikoros. Rabbi Akiva says: Also one who reads external books, or one who incants over a wound and says the verse: all the diseases I have placed upon Egypt I shall not place on you because I am Hashem your healer. Abba Shaul says: also one who pronounces the name of God according to its letters.

Mishnah Sanhedrin 90a

Now the above is pretty trippy. The Talmud can be like that. I’m not going to advocate for the specifics of what it says about who goes to heaven and who doesn’t, but there is a general concept here to point out. The section is basically saying: “Who gets to go to heaven? ALL ISRAEL! YAY! Except this bad guy, that bad guy, this other bad guy, etc.”

This means that all Israel is going to heaven, but a lot of people in Israel aren’t, so there must be a difference between a “true Israel” and “regular Israel.” It’s a bit reminiscent of the “No True Scotsman” logic. So Liam here is a Scot. True Scots drink Scotch whiskey. Liam doesn’t drink Scotch. Therefore Liam isn’t really a true Scot.

This idea has permeated Judaism. Haredi Jews think the modern orthodox aren’t truly Jews. Or at least they don’t conform to this spiritual ideal of what a Jew should be. Orthodox Jews don’t think reform Jews are true Jews. Or at least they don’t conform to the idea of what a Jew should be. A Jew should be a servant of God, and a servant of God is going to be a certain way, so if you’re not that way, you fail to conform to the ideal.

Now this was written down in the early part of the second century CE. However, nearly a hundred years earlier, a heretical rabbi named Paul, an apostle in a movement within Judaism that had a particular candidate for Messiah, would write an enigmatic note that draws absolutely on this Mishnaic idea.

But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Romans 2:29

He is telling his followers that they don’t need to get circumcised according to Jewish ritual because they are true Jews by din of their love of God. To boot, he was writing to gentiles! He was saying that people who aren’t even regular Jews are actually the true ones! I think Christianity has drawn a lot of terrible conclusions from this idea, particularly that Christians have REPLACED Jews as God’s people. I’d have to talk at length about this, and will likely dig into it at some point when the time is right, but for now, I want to say that as a Christian I had a strong understanding that in a kind of a spiritual way, because I was one of God’s people, I was in a kind of a sense a Jew, even before I converted to Judaism.

So above I’ve been describing the history of the nation of Israel as a depiction of a kind of a dude. I’ve said that this dude loves God, but tends to forget about his blessings, is in conflict with himself, has to be kind of put in captivity to stay out of trouble, is out there doing some pretty great things, but everywhere he goes, he is attacked by people in the world with far more force than anything he really deserves.

Guys. I’m describing Jonathan Bailey. That’s me in a nutshell. I’d even deign to say, that’s about 99% of us who serve God, whether Christian or Jew or anything else. We love God, we have gifts and blessings and knowledge and talents associated with that. We are in conflict with ourselves, however. Our faith is fleeting, we forget the blessings, we disregard the knowledge, we stray, we repent and try to serve, rinse, repeat. And we constantly get attacked for things we didn’t do, or if we did something, we get attacked for something else, and we get attacked out of proportion to what we did.

When I look at this life of Israel that I’ve described, I see the life of Jonathan Bailey. Down to the last detail. And I see it in friends of various religious allegiances. Their common denominator is that they really love God, and they suffer opposition. Opposition from within their own hearts and opposition from those around them.

When I look at Israel, I can’t demand that Israel be perfect, because Israel is experiencing nationally what I experience personally. Israel should be allowed to exist, and to contribute to the world in prosperity, but the world just hates that country. I would expect Israel to do nationally what I do personally. I fight the opposition within my heart, and I fight the opposition in the world that is dragging me down. My goal is to destroy the opposition in my heart. My sloth, my doubt, my inconsistency, my anger, I fight those things. I fight the people and the organizations that are always coming after me via inappropriate reactions to my failing, if I’ve even messed anything up at all.

I see these forces setting the world against Israel. Kids singing “death to Israel” in schoolyards and parents writing “death to Israel” on their children’s birthday cakes. Terrorist organizations elected by landslides. The hatred of Israel is inexplicable. Yes, many of Israel’s staunchest and closest opponents are disenfranchised. Multinational coalitions have attacked Israel in offensive wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and have lost every time. There have been some consequences to that, but nothing like the consequences should have been for losing such wars. Israel still pays their electricity and provides water while they fire rockets into the country. This has been going on for decades and has finally culminated in the absurdly wicked attacks on October 7.

I want Israel to defeat the opposition. I want her to have victory. Only in victory will there be peace. A ceasefire will result in the regular humdrum of rocket attacks, stabbings, and shootings, just as has been going on for decades, and will ultimately result in more October 7 type attacks and further multilateral wars against the country. That much is certain. Right now, Israel is experiencing the frustration of Captain Kirk in this scene from an old classic science fiction film.

“I have had enough of you!” is where Israel is with her enemies. I have had enough of my enemies as well, internal and external. I am therefore supportive of Israel, even though she may not be perfect. True peace will only be obtained through victory. This much we know after looking at the last century of Israel’s history, and this much I know after looking at my life.

Now the last part of this post should be dedicated to the fact of the tremendous suffering of the Palestinian people. That is, I’ve spoken much about allegories, spiritual patterns, tendencies, etc, but behind all that there are the thousands of starving Palestinian children, absolute destruction, etc. But the things I would have to say about that are further rooted in complex ideas that would involve much explanation, so I will have to table that for another time. Therefore, with this post I’ll seem like something of a militant, justifying draconian action in the name of spiritual metaphor. This is not actually the case, and my heart bleeds for the Arabs of that place. I don’t think I will be able to offer a short explanation of my perspective on the basic human suffering involved in all of this, though.

So as I end this, I’ll do so saying that I support Israel for spiritual reasons that do not depend on Israel being perfect. I will not erase my old criticisms of and animosity toward the place, though I will say that they do not apply here. And finally, though I will leave those writings up, I do offer Israel my most sincere apology for any antisemitism or hostility toward the country and the people that they may have caused.