The Controversy of Zion

by Douglas Reed

This is among the greatest mysteries of our world, unless the theory that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction is valid in the area of religious thought; so that the impulse which at that remote time set many men searching for a universal, loving God produced this fierce counter-idea of an exclusive, vengeful deity.

Obviously all of them could not live there, but if they lived elsewhere, whether by constraint or their own choice, they automatically became ―captives‖ of ―the stranger,‖ whom they had to ―root out,‖ ―pull down‖ and ―destroy.‖ Given this basic tenet of the creed, it made no difference whether the ―captors‖ were conquerors or friendly hosts; their ordained lot was to be destruction or enslavement.

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The theme of mass-captivity, ending in a Jehovan vengeance (―all the firstborn of Egypt‖), appears when this version of history reaches the Egyptian phase, leading up to the mass-exodus and mass-conquest of the Promised Land. This episode was necessary if the Judahites were to be organized as a permanent disruptive force among nations and for that reason, evidently, was invented; the Judaist scholars agree that nothing resembling the narrative in Exodus actually occurred.

by the insertion of imaginary, allegorical incident, presented as historical truth, this tradition was converted into its opposite and the ―Law‖ of exclusion, hatred and vengeance established. With this as their religion and inheritance, attested by the historical narrative appended to it, a little band of human beings were sent on their way into the future.

From the moment when it first appears as an entity this tribe of Judah has a strange look. It was always cut off, and never got on well with its neighbours. Its origins are mysterious. It seems from the beginning, with its ominous name, somehow to have been set apart, rather than to have been ―chosen.‖ The Levitical Scriptures include it among the tribes of Israel, and as the others mingled themselves with mankind this would leave it the last claimant to the rewards promised by Jehovah to ―the chosen people.‖ However, even this claim seems to be false, for the Jewish Encyclopaedia impartially says that Judah was ―in all likelihood a non-Israelitish tribe.‖

Among these ―statutes and judgments‖ as the Levites finally edited them appeared, repeatedly, the commands, ―utterly destroy,‖ ―pull down,‖ ―root out.‖ Judah was destined to produce a nation dedicated to destruction.

why were they at pains to preserve, or possibly even to insert, this attribution of incestuous beginnings and a treacherous nature to the very people who, they said, were the chosen of God? The thing is mysterious, like much else in the Levitical Scriptures, and only the inner sect could supply an answer.

Formal Judaism holds to this day that the Messianic consummation will come about under a worldly king of ―the house of David‖; and racial exclusion is the first tenet of formal Judaism (and the law of the land in the Zionist state). The origins of the dynasty founded by David are thus of direct relevance to this narrative.

saw no virtue in the bloodying of priests, the endless sacrifice of animals and the ―burnt offerings,‖ the ―sweet savour‖ of which was supposed to please Jehovah. They rebuked the priestly doctrine of slaying and enslaving ―the heathen.‖ God, they cried, desired moral behaviour, neighbourly conduct and justice towards the poor, the fatherless, the widow and the oppressed, not blood sacrifices and hatred of the heathen.

―peculiar people‖

The Judaist claim, on the other hand, is that Israel was totally and deservedly ―lost,‖ because it rejected the Levitical creed and chose ―rapprochement with neighbouring peoples.‖ Dr. Kastein, whose words these are, nearly twenty-seven centuries later ardently rejoiced, on that very account, in their downfall: ―The ten northern tribes, with their separate development, had drifted so far from their kindred in the south that the chronicle of their fall takes the form of a brief bald statement of fact unrelieved by any expression of grief. No epic poem, no dirge, no sympathy marked the hour of their downfall.‖

The Levites of that ancient time did not, and today‘s Zionists do not believe that the Israelites ―vanished without leaving a trace‖ (as Dr. Kastein says). They were pronounced ―dead,‖ in the way that a Jew marrying out of the fold today is pronounced dead (for instance, Dr. John Goldstein); they were excommunicated and only in that sense ―vanished.‖

Therefore the use of the name ―Israel‖ by the Zionist state which was created in Palestine in this century is in the nature of a forgery. Some strong reason must have dictated the use of the name of a people who were not Jews and would have none of the creed which has become Judaism. One tenable theory suggests itself. The Zionist state was set up with the connivance of the great nations of the West, which is also the area of Christendom. The calculation may have been that these peoples would be comforted in their consciences if they could be led to believe that they were fulfilling Biblical prophecy and God‘s promise to ―Israel,‖ at whatever cost in the ―destruction‖ of innocent peoples. If that was the motive for the misuse of the name ―Israel,‖ the expedient may for the time being have been successful; the multitude was ever easily ―persuaded.‖ However, truth will out in the long run, as the surviving remonstrances of the Israelite prophets show.

If the Zionist state of 1948 could lay claim to any name whatever taken from far antiquity, this could only be ―Judah,‖ as this chapter has shown.

Significantly, Deuteronomy which appears as the fifth book of today‘s Bible, with an air of growing naturally out of the previous ones, was the first book to be completed as a whole. Though Genesis and Exodus provide the historical background and mount for it, they were later produced by the Levites, and Leviticus and Numbers, the other books of the Torah, were compiled even later. Deuteronomy stood the earlier tradition on its head, if it was in harmony with the moral commandments. However, the Levites were within their selfgranted right in making any changes they chose, for they held that they were divinely authorized to amend the Law, as orally revealed by God to Moses, in order to meet ―the constantly changing conditions of existence in the spirit of traditional teaching‖ (Dr. Kastein). For that matter, they also claimed that Moses had received at Sinai a secret oral Torah, which must never be committed to writing. In view of the later inclusion of the Old Testament in one volume with the Christian New Testament, and the average Gentile‘s assumption that he thus has before his eyes the whole of ―the Mosaic Law,‖ this qualification is of permanent interest.

By the time the end of Deuteronomy is reached the moral commandments have been nullified in this way, for the purpose of setting up, in the guise of a religion, the grandiose political idea of a people especially sent into the world to destroy and ―possess‖ other peoples and to rule the earth. The idea of destruction is essential to Deuteronomy. If it be taken away no Deuteronomy, or Mosaic Law, remains.

This concept of destruction as an article of faith is unique, and where it occurs in political thought (for instance, in the Communist philosophy) may also derive originally from the teaching of Deuteronomy, for there is no other discoverable source.

Deuteronomy is above all a complete political programme: the story of the planet, created by Jehovah for this ―special people,‖ is to be completed by their triumph and the ruination of all others. The rewards offered to the faithful are exclusively material: slaughter, slaves, women, booty, territory, empire. The only condition laid down for these rewards is observance of ―the statutes and judgments,‖ which primarily command the destruction of others. The only guilt defined lies is non-observance of these laws. Intolerance is specified as observance; tolerance as non-observance, and therefore as guilt. The punishments prescribed are ...

―The Lord spake unto me, saying … This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.‖ In token of this, the fate of two nations is at once shown. The King of Sihon and the King of Bashan ―came out against us, he and all his people,‖ whereon they were ―utterly destroyed, the men, and the women, and the little ones,‖ only the cattle being spared and ―the spoil‖ being taken ―for a prey unto ourselves.‖ (The insistence on utter destruction is a recurrent and significant feature of these illustrative anecdotes).

(This made Christianity the primary object of the command to ―utterly destroy the places …,‖ and the dynamiting of Russian cathedrals, the opening of ―anti-God museums,‖ the canonization of Judas and other acts of early Bolshevist governments, which were to nine-tenths comprized of Eastern Jews, were evidently deeds of ―observance‖ under this ―statute‖ of Deuteronomy).

The ideas of the inquisition of heretics and of the informer, which the West has used in its retrogressive periods and repudiated in its enlightened ones, also find their original source (unless any can locate an earlier one) in Deuteronomy. Lest any such heretic should call in question the Law of destruction, summarized in the preceding paragraphs, Deuteronomy next provides that ―if there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams … (he) shall be put to death‖; the crucifixion of Jesus (and the deaths of numerous expostulants against literal Judaism) fall under this ―statute.‖

The denunciation of kinsfolk who incur suspicion of heresy is required. This is the terrorist device introduced in Russia by the Bolshevists in 1917 and copied in Germany by the National Socialists in 1933. The Christian world at the time professed horror at these barbarbous innovations, but the method is plainly laid down in Deuteronomy, which requires that any who say, ―Let us go and serve other ...

see Dr. John Goldstein‘s account both of the symbolic rite and of a recent attempt to exact the literal penalty, which during the centuries was often inflicted in closed Jewish communities where the law of ―the stranger‖ could not reach.

The case of a near city is different; the law of utter destruction (against which Saul transgressed) then rules.

Deir Yasin,

They saw that literal fulfillment of the Law of 62l BC was the order of the day in l948 AD, and that the might of the West was behind this fulfillment of the Law of ―utter destruction.‖)

Deuteronomy ends with the long-drawn-out, rolling, thunderous curseor-blessing theme. Moses, about to die, once more exhorts ―the people‖ to choose between blessings and cursings, and these are enumerated.

The blessings are exclusively material: prosperity through the increase of kith, crop and kine; the defeat of enemies; and world dominion. ―The Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth … The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself … And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee … thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath …‖

Literal Judaism is ultimately based on terror and fear

Such was the life and the blessing which the Judahites, gathered in the Temple in 621 BC, were exhorted in the name of Jehovah and Moses to choose by their tribal chieftain Josiah, the mouthpiece of the priesthood. The purpose and meaning of existence, under this ―Mosaic Law,‖ was the destruction and enslavement of others for the sake of plunder and power. Israel might from that moment have counted itself happy to have been pronounced dead and to have been excluded from such a world to come. The Israelites had mingled in the living bloodstream of mankind; on its banks the Judahites were left stranded in the power of a fanatical priesthood which commanded them, on pain of ―all these curses,‖ to destroy.

To the terror inspired by ―all these curses‖ the Levites added also an allurement. If ―the people‖ should ―return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments …,‖ then ―all these curses‖ would be transferred to their ―enemies‖ (not because these had sinned, but simply to swell the measure of the blessing conferred on the rehabilitated Judahites!)

―And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other … and among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest…‖

The Judaist attitude towards other mankind, creation, and the universe in general, is better understood when these and related passages have been pondered, and especially the constant plaint that Jews are ―persecuted‖ everywhere, which in one tone or another runs through nearly all Jewish literature. To any who accept this book as The Law, the mere existence of others is in fact persecution; Deuteronomy plainly implies that. The most nationalist Jew and the most enlightened Jew often agree in one thing: they cannot truly consider the world and its affairs from any but a Jewish angle, and from that angle ―the stranger‖ seems insignificant. Thinking makes it so, and this is the legacy of twenty-five centuries of Jewish thinking; even those Jews who see the heresy or fallacy cannot always divest themselves entirely of the incubus on their minds and spirits.

West. Thus we live in the century of the Levitical fallacy.

In ―the Mosaic Law‖ the destructive idea took shape, which was to threaten Christian civilization and the West, both then undreamed of. During the Christian era a council of theologians made the decision that the Old Testament and the New should be bound in one book, without any differentiation, as if they were stem and blossom, instead of immovable object and irresistible force. The encyclopaedia before me as I write states laconically that the Christian churches accept the Old Testament as being of ―equal divine authority‖ with the New.

This unqualified acceptance covers the entire content of the Old Testament and may be the original source of much confusion in the Christian churches and much distraction among the masses that seek Christianity, for the dogma requires belief in opposite things at the same time. How can the same God, by commandment to Moses, have enjoined men to love their neighbours and ―utterly to destroy‖ their neighbours? What relationship can there be between the universal, loving God of the Christian revelation and the cursing deity of Deuteronomy?

In Deuteronomy Judaism was born, yet this would have been a stillbirth, and Deuteronomy might never again have been heard of, if that question had rested only with the Levites and their captive Judahites. They were not numerous, and a nation a hundred times as many could never have hoped to enforce this barbarous creed on the world by force of its own muscle. There was only one way in which ―the Mosaic Law‖ could gain life and potency and become a disturbing influence in the life of other peoples during the centuries to follow. This was if some powerful ―stranger‖ (among all those strangers yet to be accursed), some mighty king of those ―heathen‖ yet to be destroyed, should support it with arms and treasure.

Mr. Maurice Samuel) who wrote: ―… we Jews, the destroyers, will remain the destroyer forever … nothing that the Gentiles will do will meet our needs and demands.‖

At first sight this seems mocking, venomous, shameless. The diligent student of the controversy of Zionism discovers that it is more in the nature of a cry of hopelessness, such as the ―Mosaic Law‖ must wring from any man who feels he cannot escape its remorseless doctrine of destruction. Chapter

The Babylonian episode was decisive in its consequences, both for the petty tribe of Judah at the time and for the Western world today. During this period the Levites achieved things which were permanently to affect the life of peoples. They added four Books to Deuteronomy and thus set up a Law of racio-religious intolerance wh...

In any case, what truly happened in Babylon seems to have been greatly different from the picture of a mass-captivity, later followed by a mass-return, which has been handed down by the Levitical scriptures.

No mass-exodus of captives from Jerusalem to Babylon can have occurred, because the mass of the Judahite people, from which a Jewish nation later emerged, was already self-distributed far and wide about the known world (that is, around the Mediterranean, in lands west and east of Judah), having gone wherever conditions for commerce were most favourable.

The benevolent behaviour of the Babylonian conquerors towards their Judahite prisoners was the exact opposite of that enjoined on the Judahites, in the reverse circumstances, by the Second Law which had been read to them just before their defeat: ―Save nothing alive that breatheth …‖ Dr. Kastein says the captives ―enjoyed complete freedom‖ of residence, worship, occupation and self- administration. This liberality allowed the Levites to make captives of people who thus were largely free; under priestly insistence they were constrained to settle in closed communities, and in this way the ghetto and Levite power were born. The Talmudic ruling of the Christian era, which decreed the excommunication of Jews if without permission they sold ―neighbourproperty‖ to ―strangers,‖ comes down from that first experiment in selfsegregation, in Babylon.

Only the Torah (in the sense of the five books) was completed. The Law was not then and never can be completed, given the existence of the ―secret Torah‖ recorded by the Talmud (which itself was but the later continuation of the Torah), and the priestly claim to divine right of interpretation. In fact, ―the Law‖ was constantly changed, often to close some loophole which might have allowed ―the stranger‖ to enjoy a right devolving only on ―a neighbour.‖ Some examples of this continuing process of amendment have already been given, and others follow in this chapter. The effect was usually to make hatred of or contempt for ―the stranger‖ an integral part of ―the Law‖ through the provision of discriminatory penalties or immunities.

The priesthood claimed that the Torah governed every act of daily life, down to the most trivial. Any objection that Moses could not have received from Jehovah on the mountain detailed instructions covering every conceivable action performed by man, was met with the dogma that the priesthood, like relay runners, handed on from generation to generation ―the oral tradition‖ of Jehovah‘s revelation to Moses, and infinite power of reinterpretation. However, such objections were rare, as the Law prescribed the death penalty for doubters.

The puzzle is to guess why the Levites allowed these glimpses of a loving God of all men to remain; as they invalidated the New Law and could have been removed. A tenable theory might be that the earlier tradition was too well known to the tribespeople to be merely expunged, so that it had to be retained and cancelled out by allegorical incident and amendment.

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The lesson of these parables, respect for the priesthood, is driven home immediately after this anecdote by the enumeration, in words attributed to the Lord, of the Levite‘s perquisites: ―All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the first fruits of them which they shall offer unto the Lord, them have I given thee.‖ Presumably because the older tradition imposed some restraint in the writing of history, Genesis and Exodus are relatively restrained. The fanatical note, first loudly sounded in Deuteronomy, then becomes ever louder in Leviticus and Numbers, until at the end a concluding parable depicts a racio-religious massacre as an act of the highest piety in ―observance,‖ singled out for reward by God! These last two books, like Deuteronomy, are supposed to have been left by Moses and to relate his communions with Jehovah. In their cases, no claim was made that ―a manuscript hoary with the dust of ages‖ had been discovered; they were just produced.

―Of the children of the stranger that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another with rigour.‖

This was a political move of genius. The claim to the firstborn evidently had become a source of grave embarrassment to them, but they could not possibly surrender the first article of a literal Law which knew no latitude whatever in ―observance‖; to do so would have been itself a capital transgression. By one more reinterpretation of the Law they made themselves proxies for the firstborn, and thus staked a permanent claim on the gratitude of the people without any risk to themselves: