“JD Vance, VP in the Trump regime, is a political production, not a real person, a production of the worst pedigree. Vance is a creation of a tech billionaire PAC, a ‘tech-aligned super political action committee’—people whose death-industries move humanity further away from community, from the locality; from honest industry, real knowledge and production and into a consumer, bubble-driven technocracy, anchored in illiteracy, gambling, speculation, buying and selling intangible derivative products….”
Having, attached yourself to the Palestine solidarity movement as an ultra-orthodox Jew; I’m not yet lavish in my praise for you. What excites suspicion is that your conduct, vis-à-vis Palestinian possessions, could be tied to the religious edicts surrounding the coming of messiah. Although the question of messiah’s arrival is more than likely immaterial—the question of ethics is not. ~ilana
Charity ought to be about fellow-feeling, not factional preferences. ~ilana
Contra classical natural law theory, my own religious order, Judaism in its popular rendering has always appeared to me quite sectarian. The faith to which I was born frequently seemed a we-only litany, more about Jews and for Jews than about the world, or for the good of the world.
For “a spectacular sense of otherness and unity” (Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, p. 262), only the Mormons, tethered to their territory of Utah, equal Jews, with whom Mormons also strongly identify.
Myself, I came alive ideologically when I reached the New World, in the mid-1990s. It was as though a new world of ideas heretofore unknown had unfurled to quench the soul and the intellect. Alas, it did not come from Judaism, to which I was born.
I discovered the very American libertarian non-aggression axiom, which flows, at least in my opinion, from Thomist Catholic philosophy, Just War theory, and the Stoic doctrine of natural law, whose first “interpreter and transmitter” was Cicero,[1] to be followed by Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Roman Church.
As plain as plain is the idea of charity. It’s a religion surety, I had surmised, that benevolence is meant to improve society, not the State; and to do so through personal, not political, acts in the community. Charity ought to be about fellow-feeling, not factional preferences. As instructed in Leviticus 19:18, “You should love your neighbor as you do yourself.”
Consider the concept of Tikkun Olam, the Jewish obligation to repair the world. Perhaps willfully—and to comport with my natural-law bias—I had always interpreted Tikkun Olam as a sublimely modest Jewish obligation.
Developed by the scholars and sages of a dispersed people, Tikkun Olam, I had hoped, was intended as a humble thing—as the duty of the Jewish individual to help, bit-by-bit, to bring about a better world in unassuming, day-to-day righteous acts. In his community and beyond.
In the best sense of that much-abused term “Orthodox” is a reader of ours, “a Torah observant Orthodox Jewish man,” and an attorney at law. JBS, Esq. speaks of Jewish “Chosenness” as follows:
As you are likely aware, Judaism is an ancient religion based upon God’s revelation of Himself to Hebrews at Mt. Sinai. Zionism is a recent [19th Century] political movement associated with Judaism but is not Judaism. Most Jewish people conflate and blur the distinction.The ‘Chosen People’ concept is misunderstood by most Jews. God ‘chose’ the Jewish people to receive, accept, keep and fulfill His Torah and teach it to the world, to be a ‘light unto the nations.’ That is all being ‘chosen’ ought to mean, not a Jewish ego trip.
As to Jewish entitlement to the land of Israel: fulfillment of their Godly duties is required. I think Zionists believe otherwise; that military capture is sufficient. God twice banished Hebrews from the land for their failures and sins. Many Orthodox Jews (myself included) believe that Jewish entitlement to the land of Israel will require the appearance of Mashiach, the Jewish messiah. I don’t know much about that. (May, 2026)
Although there is a certain degree of comic protest about my next question; I ask it not to be a Smart Alec:
Does what our laudable reader say mean that, come Mashiach, real or imagined, ultra-orthodox Jews could be given religious license to rob Palestinian homesteaders? That, you see, is unclear. With respect to the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Jewry; although the question of messiah’s arrival is more than likely immaterial—the question of ethics is not.
In particular, the question of situational ethics and ethical relativism.
Having, attached yourself to the Palestine solidarity movement as an ultra-orthodox Jew; I’m not yet lavish in my praise for you. What excites suspicion is that your conduct, vis-à-vis Palestinian possessions, could be tied to the religious edicts surrounding the coming of messiah. History, more significantly, is replete with people who followed a false messiah. There is even a concept for this eventuality in Hebrew lore (mashiach sheker).
These days, my own humble perspective on the daily practice of piety is a mirage in the desert.
Certainly, my modest, morally universal interpretation of Tikkun Olam is not the one adopted by Jews who are “chosen”; namely favored, esteemed and elevated by gentiles and by institutional Jewry.
Starting with the barefaced Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, …
Is Zionism not, to some extent, an excrescence of Judaism? Why the near-religious divide between Zionism and Judaism? And, am I permitted at all even to ask? ~ilana
Pro-Palestine commentators and activists, Jews and non-Jews, are religious about maintaining a bifurcation—a divide—between Judaism and Zionism. Advocates of this duality portray Judaism as humanistic, universal and pastoral, and Zionism as its opposite. In the commingled rumble of commentary over Zionism; Arab commentators have been conditioned, by necessity, to internalize the split and the exact fissure-lines, as though mouthing these were a protective amulet, a matter of survival; theirs, ours. It is, in a sense.
Why this near-religious bifurcation between Zionism and Judaism? Is Zionism, to some extent, not an excrescence of Judaism?
Biblical Chosenness is certainly a facet of Judaism. Does it relate not at all to the Jewish supremacy that animates Jewish-Israeli expression and express action? Are these not connected? If so, should the question posed, then, really be a Jewish-Israeli question? Or, perhaps a Judaism Question is more apropos?
And, am I permitted at all to even ask?
Composer of some of the best, most exquisite English prose, with insight to match, was novelist Anita Brookner. Through her Jewish protagonist in the novel Making Things Better (2002, p 22), Ms. Brookner writes that the gentleman’s Jewish “ancestral religion,” which he did not practice, “seemed to him an affair of prohibitions, of righteous exclusiveness for which he could see no justification.”
Miss Brookner, a rare gem and a genius, was a secular, unaffiliated Jew like myself. “Although resolutely secular in outlook,” Ms. Brookner also conveyed what I have long-since felt. It is that “the mystery of the Holy Spirit,” expressed in good will, gratitude and graciousness, seems absent from the encounters we Jewish outsiders, lonely people, have had within our “ancestral religion.” (Loneliness is the theme that threads Brookner’s novels.)
Like Brookner, I do not speak ex cathedra of the vexation that is Jewishness. It is indubitably a delicate matter. And, although knowledgeable, I am not an “expert.” However, to deny that eddying around the Jewish child is a sense of, or talk of, Jewish specialness—this would be dishonest. Whether you choose to imbibe “Chosenness” or not—I chose not to—as a Jew, you are likely to have been raised hearing about “Chosenness.”
The supremacy fallacy, it would thus seem, issues surely not strictly from “Zionism,” but from “Chosenness.”
The Chosen-People belief is as old as the Hebrew Bible itself. It is thus in the “Chosen People’s” philosophical marrow. For what—pray tell?—are foundational, early teachings like Deuteronomy 14:2, if not a declaration of Jewish superiority for posterity?
For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.
Alongside all the commentators and broadcasters who insist on upholding the division between Judaism and Zionism; I, too, very much hope that Zionism is not an instantiation or an extension, on some elemental level, of Judaism. I really do.
There are certainly universal elements in the Hebrew Testament. Deuteronomy, an early book, showcases an advanced concept of Jewish Social Justice, and is replete with instructions to …
First, The modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, Israel, has done crimes many times more wicked than the crimes for which God erased the biblical sin city by that name. Second, a merciful God did not send Abraham over to ask the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah to weigh in. ‘Tell me, oh degenerates of Sodom and Gomorrah, what your opinion is about your own mass butchery, mass thievery, mass looting, and raping.’ Oh no! ~ilana
THE BIBLE has great significance to religiously-minded conservative Americans.
Ben Shapiro, a stupid and sickening influencer, once referred to the Hebrew Bible as the Torah. It’s Tanach, dummy.
The Tanach has three sections: Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim, for a total of about 37 books.
To me, the Hebrew Tanach is a great literary work. I know it in the Hebrew, through secular study as a school girl. It’s a literary accomplishment that sports a lot of shit-hot writing.
A story worth considering is Sodom and Gomorrah, and, in particular, how The Almighty approached Sodom and Gomorrah, the Sin City of antiquity.
The all-knowing Almighty possessed full-knowledge of the evidence for Sodom and Gomorrah’s utter debauchery and murderous decadence.
In front of Him, The Almighty had the totality of the crimes. The cumulative evidence was spread before him.
What did He do?
Did He dispatch a group of wise men to further “investigate” the Sodom and Gomorrah Sin City, a place where crime was law?
Did He solicit the perspective and opinion of the City’s top criminals about their crimes?
No. He had in evidence His infinite knowledge, much like an AI archive.
In other words, did the Almighty do what the complicit, narrative-shaping, collaborator, Western corporate media do, at this stage of Israel’s crime spree?
Of course not.
Take UK’s Channel 4 collaborators, and all western media, for that matter.
“Oh, Almighty Israel, give us your side of The Story,” these media persist in pleading with the Serial-Killer State.
“Give us your take on your latest mass butchery, thievery, looting, and raping. We’re listening, Oh Almighty Israel.”
What is wrong with the Sodom and Gomorrah media!
Even “Democracy Now!”, decent dissident journalists, even they insult reality, this way. Still! They reported, on April the 23rd, that Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil “was killed by an Israeli strike.”
WTF. And what dross!
Like hundreds of Gaza’s journalists before her, Amal Khalil was first targeted by the serial-killer thugs. Next, she was threatened by the serial-killers, who warned her that her head would be separated from her body, if she didn’t quit reporting on their crimes.
Finally, Ms. Khalil was martyred in a triple-tap hit:
Double-tap or triple tap attacks are all terms from the genocidal entity’s lexicon of crime and cowardice:
First, they hit the target, almost always civilian, a journalist in this instance. They follow up with a strike on survivors and rescuers. For good measure, they repeat the “feat.”
The biblical Sodom and Gomorrah was a city whose crimes, the least of which were carnal, did not come close to those of the modern Serial-Killer State.
By bringing up the Sin City of antiquity analogy, you have not heard me advocate that The Almighty’s solution to Sodom and Gomorrah be applied to the modern-day Serial-Killer State.
What you hear me point out, rather, are three things: ….
May 5, 2026: UpScrolled is way worthier than the cesspool of censorship created by house-trained billionaire Israelite Elon Musk, or the overlord of Facefuck (who once banned my high-brow site’s hyperlinks for close on a decade).
Small, but meaningful, UpScrolledis a welcoming environment—no shadow-banning, no throttling, no cutting back on the few Followers pro-#Resistance intellectuals and activists manage to muster on X.
And, no hashtags that go nowhere but are funneled into the equivalent of a digital leper colony.
For older folks like me, who do not like using their mobile phones for anything more than personal contacts—you can use UpScrolled on your desktop with the aid of an Android emulator.
Join good people and me:
@ILANA_MERCER @PulaRJS @bisan__bisan, @guychristensen_ Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
From X:
The US merely ‘boards’ them. This is how consent is manufactured in real time”:
The South is being ethnically cleansed of the brave resisting population, predominantly Shia. And the media stands by. By now you will easily believe it, but there is but one foreign correspondent documenting genocide in Southern Lebanon.
More than 56,264 hectares of agricultural land have already been affected across approximately 285 towns in the south, Bekaa and Baalbek-Hermel regions, representing nearly 22.5% of Lebanon’s total agricultural areas … According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), during the November 2025 to the March 2026 period, around 874,000 people in Lebanon – or 17% of the analysed population – were already facing “Crisis” or “Emergency” levels of acute food insecurity. The report now estimates that 1.24 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity between April and August this year.
Lebanon is now classified under IPC Phase 3, or “Crisis” – meaning many families can no longer consistently afford basic food and are being forced to skip meals, cut portions or take on debt.
… For decades, Lebanon focused more on banking, trade and tourism than building domestic food production. But the country still relies heavily on the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon for local food production, including wheat, potatoes, leafy vegetables, olives and fruits. The Bekaa Valley alone supports around 42% of Lebanon’s agricultural production.
…with 95% of [banana growth] affected, citrus orchards at 97%, olive groves at 91%, in addition to major damages to fruit trees, protected agriculture and smallholder farming systems.
The livestock and fisheries sectors have also suffered major losses. The ministry estimates that around 1.8 million cows, goats, sheep, poultry and other animals have died, alongside the destruction of 29,121 beehives and losses exceeding 2,030 tons of fish production.
…According to the ministry’s Rapid Needs Assessment, 23,611 farmers have already registered damages. In southern Lebanon, 77.9% of farmers have been displaced, while only 22.1% remain in their towns.
…’Production across the entire zone, from livestock to beekeeping, has come to a halt in the zone south of the Litani, even north of it,’ he says. ‘Farmers cannot reach their lands due to the constant threat.”
