Knock, Knock, Jews There: Seeking The Real Remnant of Israel

Reading The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand

Israel as Ethnocracy

In the last part of the book, Sand focuses on the contradiction between the Jewish state and the democratic state: the democratic state makes all its citizens equal, and Israel can’t—or won’t—follow this principle, since you have to be “Jewish” to be an Israeli.

If you’re not (certified) Jewish, you can live in Israel, but you do not get equal rights. You’re not allowed to marry a Jew, for example (by the same token, Jews aren’t allowed to marry non-Jews, so that law cuts both ways). This is because Israel is under rabbinical law.

Sand quotes a professor of Jewish philosophy, Eliezer Schweid, on how the idea of a contradiction between Jews and democracy is baseless, because: “the Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism contained the ethical sources which defined human rights and the idea of the social pact that forms constitutional democracy” (p. 297).

As far as I can tell, this is a reference to the well-known idea that the western governmental and legal system stems out of Judeo-Christianity, and that democracy couldn’t have come to exist, at all, without these religions as its foundation.

This raises the interesting possibility that Judaism has created a geopolitical system which appears to be democratic but isn’t; and that one of the ways it is undemocratic is that those who created it—as in the example of Israel—are not beholden to it.

This is something we can see happens in (para-)political systems throughout history: those who create the laws are exempt from observing them. They are in a special position, not really in the system but above it (the superculture). This evokes the Biblical saying quoted earlier: “the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7.6:).

If you create a system, by definition you are on the outside of that system—because how else can you regulate it?—albeit with the option of moving freely in and out of it.

This may be a key regarding the so-called “Jewish conspiracy”—how the idea has proliferated, and how it has a kernel of truth in it.1

Is Jewishness Inherently Racist?

Jewish identity politics is predicated on Jews as “chosen people” destined to rule over all other peoples (and/or to convert them, depending on whose version we accept).

One way or another, they are special and unique, their God is the only God, and all other Gods must be abolished by, or submit to/give dominion to, the one God.

This can then be extended to the human, societal realm, via the creation of a (super-)state in which one type of citizen is inherently and inalterably superior to, and separate from, another type of citizen.

There is really no way around this, because it is baked into the very identification of “Jewishness.” It creates an impossible conundrum, a double-bind, which is this: there is no actual way to separate Jewish identity from a Jewish assertion of superiority, or at the very least, distinctness.

Essentially what this can be reduced to—though Sand doesn’t take this final step of logic—is that racism is the basis for Jewish identity.

That the word “Gentile” even exists is a clue to this: how many other words define a type of people in relation to—distinct from—another type of people? “Gentile” is a way to define all human beings from a Jewish perspective (it is a polite word for goyim).2

Of course, racism is a word that, in our current multicultural mindset, is poorly understood and catastrophically misapplied (that is, “weaponized”). But, insofar as there is almost universal agreement that “racism”—discrimination against people different from oneself—is a social evil, then Jewishness, being inherently racist, poses a seemingly untenable paradox-conundrum in the field of identity politics.

Back to Sand:

Israel must still be described as an “ethnocracy.” Better still, call it a Jewish ethnocracy with liberal features—that is, a state whose main purpose is to serve not a civil egalitarian demos but the biological-religious ethnos that is wholly fictitious historically, but dynamic, exclusive and discriminatory in its political manifestation. Such a state, for all its liberalism and pluralism, is committed to isolating its chosen ethnos through ideological, pedagogical and legislative means, not only from those of its own citizens who are not classified as Jews, not only from the Israeli-born children of foreign workers, but from the rest of humanity (p. 307, emphasis added).

This is the last in this current series. Judging by the recent hemorrhaging of paid subscribers, the “JQ” isn’t a popular topic with CoJ readers. However, it is impossible to proceed honestly with an inquiry into Christology (which has always been, and will increasingly be, central to this site), without considering the JQ, for what are surely obvious reasons.

Since I follow the impulse of truth and not “the money,” this focus will continue for as long as there are enough supporters to justify it. If this exploration does interest you, consider becoming a paid subscriber and/or sharing this with others who might be interested, and help uncover the head cornerstone that the builders rejected.

(Over the Paywall: Summing up, & Who’s a True Jew Anyway?)