Religion Was Invented When the First Con Man Met the First Fool

The Women of Midian Led Captive by the Hebrews, watercolour by James Tissot, at the Jewish Museum, New York

Why do Muslims hate Jews?

The answer is quite simple. The two cultures are too much alike, the one being an offshoot of the other. Murderous siblings squabbling over their late father's estate.

Muslims and Jews worship the same deity, the so-called God of Abraham. They observe the same dietary laws (no BBQ pork, thank you very much), and their more conservative brethren display the same retrograde attitudes toward women. What meat they are permitted to eat must be either Halal or Kosher, which are essentially the same thing. Despite a large number of women commanders and foot soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), Judaism is a patriarchal, male-dominated religion whose mainstream has become more liberal and Western-aligned than its conservative sects who are virtually indistinguishable from their Arab-Muslim confreres. When it comes to a need for cannon fodder (or suicide bombers), women will do quite nicely, thank you very much. And anyway, nobody wants to stay home and wash diapers.

That Arabs could be anti-Semitic is practically an oxymoron. Arabs are a semitic people. Ask your average culture warrior about the difference between Semitic and Zionist. Thanks to a conflict over real estate that has degenerated into a narrative of pure, unmitigated hatred, few individuals can enunciate any difference, a spurious exercise that's best left to academics. In the minds of many young persons, threatening Jewish students on college campuses while bombing synagogues will somehow lead to world peace.

Perhaps the best reason for Arabs, and Muslims in general, to hate Jews is the fact that Muslim societies around the world have remained static for centuries while expatriot Jewish populations have not only successfully adapted to host countries outside Palestine, but made enormous contributions to those societies and Western culture in general. Judaism's mandate is not to convert the whole world to its belief system. Islam, on the other hand, is predicated on Muhammed's entreaty to his followers to convert the entire world by the sword, subjecting all humankind to Islam's arcane values and a justice system frozen in the Middle Ages. Hardly a formula for prosperity and progress, especially in the modern era.

Arabs and Jews are alike in more ways than anyone would ever guess, that is, if pre-Roman era Jewish history were taken into account. A previous blog post entitled "The Sexualization of Islam," introduces a new book (publishers please take note) treating the history of Arab domination of the slave trade and the kidnapping of thousands of white European women into sex slavery over many centuries. Because Muhammed borrowed heavily from the Hebrew Bible to fashion himself as its latest and greatest prophet, his Quran, hadiths, and safirs (the Muslim holy books) justify slave taking and sexual slavery with its roots in Jewish history.

Left: A Slave For Sale by José Jimenez Aranda, 1897, public domain image. Right: ISIS slave auction, 2016. Image source: Ekurd Daily

What the Quran, Hebrew scripture, historians, Western artworks, and literature all tell us is that sexual slavery and the general abuse of women has been central to life in North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Levant, and the Middle East, pretty much throughout recorded history. Mohammed did not invent it. Male Israelites and those of other local civilizations enjoyed the pleasures of the harem although calling it by a different name. When a man keeps several legal wives and a few sex slaves in his household, what would you call it?

Americans call it polygamy and, while the practice is illegal in all 50 states, it goes unprosecuted since all female cohabitants additional to the first legal wife are considered wives only in the context of religious beliefs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Constitution. Unlike Islam, sex acts performed by consenting adults of any gender go unpunished in the USA, but the underlying principle is the same. If a man wants a harem, he can have one.

In the Harem by José Gallegos (1859-1917)

Unlike Islam which came later, the ancient Israelites did not wage distant or large-scale wars, hence captured slaves did not make up a significant part of their holdings, most of whom were enslaved domestic servants and sex slaves purchased in the bazaars. Nonetheless, the taking of sex slaves in battle is advocated in Numbers 31 wherein Moses instructs his soldiers to kill all women who had ever had sex with a man, but to keep the women and girls who were still virgins as sex slaves for themselves. 

Moreover, Deuteronomy 21:10–14 not only condones sexual violence against defenseless women captives but endorses sexual slavery and genocidal rape of non-Hebrews. Like the Quran prohibits the enslavement of (free) Muslim women while excluding all non-Muslims, the Bible is the defacto progenitor for this precept that Mohammed lifted intact from Hebrew scripture.

The Hebrew words amah (אָמָה) and shifhah (שִׁפְחָה) denote female slaves used as sexual objects. Leviticus 18-26 expands on the prohibitions alluded to by Christianity’s Nineth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife) while explicitly allowing participation in the sex slave trade.

“Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.” (Leviticus 25:44)

Screengrab via Google search

It all started back at the ranch. Well, actually, it started where the October 7, 2023 massacre occurred, though not at a music festival.

Take the story of Avram for example (Genesis 12:10-20). The State of Israel’s somewhat sketchy claim to the territory it currently occupies is rooted in the story of Avram, a clever fellow who pimped his attractive wife, Sarai, to Egypt’s Pharoah in return for payment in “silver and gold, sheep and cattle, servants and maids (i.e., sex slaves), she-asses and camels.” Avram owned some 318 slaves and pitched his nomad’s tent on the west side of the Jordan River after being handed title to the current location of the Jewish State (The Place of Shekham) through a covenant with God.

Or so says the Bible.

Meanwhile, the much-abused and childless Sarai (better known as Sarah) presented Avram with Hagar, her Egyptian maid servant, as a sexual surrogate with whom her husband, despite his hundreds of slaves, set his mind on begetting and begatting. Their son, Yishmael (Ismael), became father of the Arabs.

Yep. Father of the Arabs.

So, who is this Avram, anyway? He’s Abraham of the Abrahamic tradition.

Like Mohammad who follows in the Abrahamic tradition, and Adolf Hitler who played a major role in a conflict that continues to play out in the Middle East today, Avram/Abraham was a powerful madman. His nephew was Lot of Sodom and Gomorrah fame, an incestuous fellow much celebrated in Western art.

The Biblical tale of Lot and his daughters. Anonymous 17th century artist.

So, here are two theocracies almost identical in their customs and with a common backstory, who worship the same deity, and whose holy books are intertwined.

If the British colonial administration had settled, say, Buddhists – people whose religion and traditions had nothing whatever in common with that of the Arabs – in the land of Palestine after the Holocaust instead of Zionists, the current unrest in the Middle East may never have developed. Before 1947, there was less reason for Arabs and Jews to fear one another, nor was there any historical basis for the hatred that drives today’s conflict, despite the pograms incited by Arabs during the British occupation. It had to be manufactured, although a pedophilic warlord with delusions of grandeur jumpstarted the whole cycle of intergenerational hatred starting in the seventh century.

Note that the term "Palestinian," based on the ancient Roman label "Palestina," did not exist before PLO leader Yassir Arafat invented it in the late 20th century. One needn't dig too deeply to discover that Zionist treatment of native Muslims - a genocidal policy of extermination carried out under the noses of the British Mandate authorities who did nothing to halt the bloodletting - has led to an intergenerational spiral of unending vengeance.

Few supporters of the Jewish State today would praise or justify the policies of the Irgun or the Lehi - better known as the Stern Gang - whose leaders in the late 1940s went on to become key politicians in the newly-minted Jewish State. By its own proud admission, the group referred to itself as terrorists who carried out terrorist attacks. Their strategic intent was for the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from the territory held by the future Jewish state.

In 1940, with the British Isles under bombardment by Hitler's Luftwaffe, German-occupied Paris under the Gestapo's heel, and European Jewry transported by the tens of thousands to extermination camps, the Stern Gang split with Irgun in order to continue fighting the Allies throughout World War II, seeking an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Borrowing from Wikipedia: "Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance."

How's that for wishful thinking? Something like the intersectional feminist alliance with Islamic fundamentalism in the era of woke? From an article in the newspaper He Khazit (The Front):

"Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: 'Ye shall blot them out to the last man.'"

Compare to:

“Oh, Prophet, carry out Jihád (struggle) against the disbelievers and hypocrites, and be strict with them. And their abode is Jahannam (Hell), and it is an evil terminus.” Quran 9:73

“Oh, you who believe, fight those disbelievers who are near you, and let them find severity in you. Know well that Allah is with the God-fearing.” Quran 9:123

Taking Aim by Adolf Schreyer, 1828-1899)

Taking the Jewish and Muslim holy books at face value, today's conflict in the Middle East is little more noble than a struggle over who has the best imaginary friend.

"God gave this land to me."

"NO! He gave it to ME! And anyway, where y'all been for the past 2,000 years? Suckin' up to to them infidels, that's where!"

In the immortal words of American satirist Mark Twain: “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”

Nobody understands the American satirist's message better than CEOs of the weapons manufacturing industry whose revenues depend on world conflict. Now that America's $2.2 trillion involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq has wound down, and Ukraine is fast becoming old news, where will the next proxy war erupt? Of course, there's always that old standby, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that nobody, despite all the horror, hypocritical rhetoric, and woke idiocy (Queers for Palestine?), wants to end.

Because few remember or understand the root causes of this conflict between two very similar, ancient peoples, what is left is pure unmitigated hatred. Muslims and Jews have become opposite poles of a malicious magnet that strongly attract but when reversed violently repel. The laws of physics disallow any compromise. Only by setting religion aside can the two cultures ever coexist.

This is, in fact, what Spaniards decided to do after 40 years of a Francoist (fascist) dictatorship, what historians call "The Black Years." The current national policy upheld by the major political parties is called "Olvido," or "forgetting." Not everyone has been content with this approach to history, but nobody wants to revisit the horrors of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). As the older generation succumbs to attrition, younger citizens have broken with the culture of revenge, unlike the Jews and Palestinians who continue to educate generation after generation in a curriculum of hatred in which young people stand to receive little or no benefit.

Remember the American folktale about the long-running feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys? No? Well, anyway, it’s that kind of conflict.

The Path Forward

In practically every media interview with various stakeholders in the conflict, the same question is posed over and over again. What would YOU do if you were the Israeli president on October 7, 2023?

The answer that nobody dares to mouth is that they could do nothing other than what Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF are doing now, that is, ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank. Kill enough of the population and make a wasteland of the area so that its occupants will leave. No more so-called Palestinians, no more Hamas. A purely Jewish state from the river to the sea.

There are several reasons for this strategy, not the least of which is that both theocracies (Judaism and Islam) are unwilling to disavow fratricide and commit to sharing the same house together, despite partaking of the same religious and cultural traditions and sharing a fair amount of DNA. Nonetheless, the stakeholders have enjoyed at least four viable options over the 70-plus years of conflict.

Option One is to institute a true secular democracy in which religious freedom is guaranteed and all persons enjoy equal rights in society. This option is unacceptable to Jews because, with seven million mostly uneducated Muslims reproducing at the rate 3.307 per woman on one side and seven million Jews with a lower reproduction rate 2.89 per woman and dropping, Muslim voters will dominate the legisture within a single generation.

Source: database.earth

Option One is unacceptable to Palestinian Muslims because the annihilation of world Jewry is written into the constitution of Hamas and other fundamentalist groups. They chose Hamas over the Palestinian Authority (PLO) that favoured coexistence under a two state solution. Basically, none of the players want a secular democratic state.

Option Two is the much belaboured "Two State Solution." Call it failure by design.

Option Three is apartheid or, to be honest, the status quo before October 7, 2023. Israel is a state in which full rights of citizenship are only enjoyed by citizens subscribing to the Hebrew religion. Muslims, Christians, and other sects have been subjected to conditions roughly analogous to those experienced by Blacks in formerly White South Africa, a society that has curiously disappeared from the world stage. Gaza has been nothing more than an open air prison for its inhabitants.

Option Four is ethnic cleansing. This Israel's current post-October 7 strategy vis-a-vis Hamas. Should Hamas miraculously lay down its arms, surrender the hostages, and turn over the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to Israeli authorities to be dealt with as common criminals, it would not change the Netanyahu government's strategy in any significant way. The clock as run out on the Palestinians.

So, what is the outcome to be? Clearly, there is a return to the1940s strategy of the Lehi (Stern Gang), although this time the outcome may not be as predicted.

While Palestinians struggle to flee the territory to wherever will take them, which seems to be nowhere, Israeli Jews too are leaving the country en masse. Some 500,000 have left Israel more or less permanently since the onslaught began, moving on to establish new lives in Western Europe and the USA. Perhaps it's a lesson learned from the Holocaust. Those who fled Germany in the ramp up to the Holocaust survived, while those who stubbornly stayed perished.

Meanwhile, the rest have settled in to make money on the opportunity. Never mind the arms traders and a $350 million floating wharf the Biden government is constructing to somehow get humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Gazans, social media influencers have found ways to profit from the suffering.

Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency

In a viral video supposedly pertaining to the fate of a couple of Israeli hostages, the social media influencer proclaimed:

“Raz and Ohad have 3 beautiful daughters who did/do everything they can to bring back their dad/ remaining hostages, and take care of their mom,” Tucker wrote in the caption to the video, uploaded on Thursday. “@freskincare is not only an incredible, clean, and Israeli skincare brand, but it is Raz’s favorite.” (Source)

Like the title of this essay suggests: "When the first con man met the first fool...