Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

NEW: The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation: Chosenness (Part 1)

Ancient History, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Ethics, GAZA, Hebrew Testament, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Justice, Literature, Middle East, Palestinians, Political Philosophy

Leave a reply

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

NEW ESSAY IS “The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation: Chosenness (Part 1).” It is a feature essay on The Unz Review (where readers can comment and debate) and has appeared on LewRockwell.com, anti-state, anti-war, pro-market. 

https://www.unz.com/imercer/the-judaism-zionism-bifurcation-chosenness-part-1/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/05/ilana-mercer/the-judaism-zionism-bifurcation-chosenness/

Excerpt: 

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 …

… READ THE REST.  “The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation: Chosenness (Part 1)” is on The Unz Review (where readers can comment and debate) and LewRockwell.com .

Forthcoming: “The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation (Part 2): Tikkun Olam: Fixing The World, But For What, For Whom?

X: Follow to help defeat Elon’s algorithm: https://x.com/IlanaMercer
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilana-mercer-378a671b0/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ILANAMERCERAuthor/
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/ILANAMERCER
Subscribe: https://www.ilanamercer.com/mailing-list/

NEWS UPDATE (5/14): Sodom & Gomorrah Media Vs. God: How The Almighty Would NOT Approach The Modern Serial-Killer State

America, GAZA, Individual Rights, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Natural Law, Religion

2 Replies

NEW COLUMN AND VIDEO: “Sodom & Gomorrah Media Vs. God: How The Almighty Would NOT Approach The Modern Serial-Killer State.” Now on The Unz Review and Lewrockwell.com, anti-war, anti-state, pro-market.

Excerpt:

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: ….

...THE REST. WATCH AND READ NEW COLUMN, “Sodom & Gomorrah Media Vs. God: How The Almighty Would NOT Approach The Modern Serial-Killer State,” are now on The Unz Review and Lewrockwell.com, anti-war, anti-state, pro-market.

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”:

https://x.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/2048733536954593418

The perpetrators-did this many thousand times over:

https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/2048931324652646426

UPDATE (5/14):  As I pointed out in “Trump Goes Amalek on Iran: Israelization of The US Military; Gazafication of Iran & Lebanon” in March, the Gazafication of Lebanon is underway.

“Israeli Attacks Are Breaking Lebanon’s Ability to Feed Itself: Israeli strikes are destroying farms, crops and food systems across Lebanon as hunger rapidly worsens.”

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.”

(https://www.wired.me/story/israeli-attacks-are-breaking-lebanons-ability-to-feed-itself)

Trump Goes Amalek on Iran: Israelization of The US Military; Gazafication of Iran & Lebanon

America, Ancient History, Argument, Bush, Donald Trump, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Law, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, War

Leave a reply

NEW ESSAY IS “Trump Goes Amalek on Iran: Israelization of The US Military; Gazafication of Iran & Lebanon.” It can currently be read on The Unz Review, home to dissidents from day one, and on LewRockwell.com, antiwar, anti-state, pro-market.

In it you’ll encounter Oafs Wittkoaff and Kushner, sons Odai and Qusai, Big Daddy Beelzebub and his favorite, serial-killer state, even an ugly war-gaming American makes an appearance. Never forget though that in reality, the Axis of Resistance is battling The Axis of Epstein for us all.

To Israel’s unbridled barbarism, America has responded by joining in. Trump has naturalized the idea of conquest, ethnic cleansing; genocide and mass murder. ~ilana

The Axis of Epstein wants to destroy the Axis of Resistance. ~ilana 

Excerpts:

Decent, moral people will root for Iran to hold the line against a Satanic confederacy, Israel in the lead, seeking the fragmentation and Gazafication of Iran and Lebanon.

To that end, President Donald Trump had convened “hucksters and shysters” to head his diplomatic corps to the Middle East and beyond, Iran included. In the commission of the greatest Sins known to Man, the “populist” president had recruited billionaires to his White House, who also happen to be Israel-first fixers and assets. Like their boss, both Trump’s point “men” are regarded as “Israeli assets,” as “one Gulf diplomat with knowledge of the talks” told The Guardian, on March 17.

This, the president, to whom Bibi Netanyahu’s word is law, did with a purpose, the outcome of which is in evidence:

The final and full Israelization of the American military, and the attempted Gazafication of Iran and Lebanon. The “Gaza doctrine applied to a new front,” concludes Jonathan Whittall, a humanitarian and fellow South African. “And the American state is in compliance, providing firepower and striving to finally and fully Israelize the American military.”

The crime of aggression is “the supreme international crime” in international customary law. Why so? Because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” The aggression is not only “a crime against the state that is attacked,” but it is “a crime against individuals who are killed or harmed as a result of war.”

Think “accumulated evil” when you look at Trump, a “second-rate gangster who strove to be Bibi Netanyahu” and has finally and fully arrived.

Without half trying, Trump has made us all confederates in Israel’s crimes. The Israel-US criminal regimes are in contravention of the laws of war, and the Charter of the United Nations—Articles Two and 51, in particular—by which “armed force” shall not be deployed against “the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State.”

For reasons obvious, the twinned Trump-Netanyahu regimes are also an affront to God’s law, the Ten Commandments—according to which you must not covet or murder—and the natural justice, subsumed within which is the libertarian law. The latter pivots on the universal injunction against unprovoked aggression, not on the “national interest fiat standard.” 

Most of all, this obtains “regardless of a declaration of war”! In other words, the murderous parliamentary procedures and protocols of Israel or the US do not usurp eternal codes of morality and ethics. Codified or uncodified, all laws that govern the comity between the community of nations and uphold individual rights have been trashed by the US-Israel coalition of evil.

By rights, Iran then is not only expected to defend its people—but to defend them against any “State [that] allows its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another State, to be used by that other State [USA] for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third State [Iran].” By the letter of the law, Iran is fighting fair when it targets the Persian Gulf states, from which attacks on the Iranian people are staged.

These eternal universal laws have been sundered by two rogue, nuclear powers, whose nuclear proliferation is undeclared and unsupervised. Obscenely, the US and Israel have justified their attack on a third state [Iran] that has no nukes and has not initiated war in centuries, by invoking nuclear control and non-proliferation, comments Craig Mokhiber.

This is enough to make one gag.

Trump’s team of choice gave tone to all negotiation proceedings. The Three Amigos—Trump and his Israel-first fixers—have recruited America into their unbridled barbarism. In progress is a system of plunder developed by this coterie. Don’t, however, let the sweep of destruction they leave in their wake fool you. Trump and his loyalists are amassing fortunes. So too are sons Odai and Qusai making money hand over fist.

The one oaf sent abroad to “represent,” Steve Witkoff, is an old pal of the president. A real estate developer and investor, the man knows less than nothing about most things, the world of stocks and bonds excepted.

As we know, Trump is economical with the truth. Like him, Witkoaff has told lies right and left. About the long-suffering, patient, genial Iranian negotiators—a class act if ever there was one—he piled up a heap of lies to a receptive media: …

…  Predictions, classifications, derivations, etiologies: Man has always performed these mental operations. However, the war gaming going on under the guise of military scholarship is both repulsive and dangerous, given the “place of massive impunity” that has been carved out for Netanyahu and his complicit countrymen. As I see it, the gaiety someone like Robert Pape affects, while huffily flogging his war-on-Iran predictions, comes under the “Ugly American” category. …

The use of tactical nuclear weapons must be decried with the lash of logic, not logistics, and in clear moral language. Protest, rather than prattle to show how much you know or how predictive your war gaming is. …

Protest and pray. In Iran, the Axis of Epstein, whose combined age is 327 years, is trying to destroy a civilization 6000 to 8000 years old. Pray they fail. …

… READ THE REST. NEW ESSAY IS “Trump Goes Amalek on Iran: Israelization of The US Military; Gazafication of Iran & Lebanon.” Read it now on The Unz Review and on LewRockwell.com.

UPDATED (3/28): PROGRESSIVE METAL VERSION of the great “BOOM BOOM TEL AVIV” anthem. Really well done. Bravo NadaNita.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVW8sHMDEU&t=5s 

UPDATE: 4/2/026: A note I wrote on #LinkedIn, whose algorithms are deceptive:

Since the #Genocide in #Gaza commenced; the only “connections” offered up to me have been pro-Israel. Today’s offering among many other such “candidates”: director of a Zionist outfit, and someone at the Israel-adoring Blaze.

This is what LinkedIn’s AI Idiocracy comes up with, given this work?

https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/gaza/

LinkedIn might be construed to be preventing persons inclined to my views from being employed by myself. Not enabling, but preventing.

Quiz: What are the terms used in law and economics for organizations that misrepresent their mission statement? LinkedIn’s is: “… create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. … by building a platform that helps professionals build skills, connect, and discover opportunities…”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/gaza/

UPDATE (4/11/026):

The great patriot Scott Ritter made mention recently of the indelible, undisturbed ignorance that grips the American mind. In this tradition is the ahistoric libel about #Iran and #terrorism. So here, READ, ‘educate yourself,’ as Candace Owens likes to say:

IRAN: ‘Everything You Need To Know But Were Too Afraid Of The Israel Lobby To Ask,’ by ilana mercer, 7/1/025:

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/07/iran-everything-you-need-to-know-but-were-too-afraid-of-the-israel-lobby-to-ask/

Israel torched a 1600 year old Byzantine-era Church of Saint George in Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

https://x.com/susanabulhawa/status/2042413468670644448

ESSAY & VIDEO: Introducing Mossad Farsi, The Motto And The Methods (Comment HERE!)

Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Morality, Neoconservatism, Palestinians, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

3 Replies

NEW ESSAY is “Introducing Mossad Farsi, The [Hebrew] Motto And The Methods.” It is currently featured on The Unz Review, home to dissidents from day one. Now on IlanaMercer.com

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2026/01/introducing-mossad-farsi-the-hebrew-motto-and-the-methods-video/

Those involved in these foreign-policy drives honestly believe that to be American or Israeli is the existential Gold Standard. Lowly humanity is a pilgrim en route to the Promised Land, whether they know it or not —sometimes by hook or crook. Ultimately, the lives of all the Others being roused to revolt are just not worth much until they “arrive.” ~ilana

(It’s useful to have someone who has a facility with higher Hebrew, especially when the Hebrew motto is hidden or embedded in graphics.)

Excerpt:

“… According to the twinned belief-systems of Jewish supremacy and American exceptionalism; all ‘good,’ ‘happy’ human beings are either those who are like Americans or like Israelis, or en route to becoming clones of the one or the other.

Those involved in these foreign-policy drives honestly believe that to be American or Israeli is the existential Gold Standard. Lowly humanity is a pilgrim en route to the Promised Land, whether they know it or not —sometimes by hook or crook. Ultimately, the lives of all the Others being roused to revolt are just not worth much until they “arrive.”

As to their deep involvement in inciting regime-change riots in Iran: News tidbits to that effect have come to us directly via the Israelis themselves.

By now you know that Israel is “amoral,” it acts outside the laws of both man and God. By now you know that bursts of pride accompany Israeli barbarity. As is often the case, Israelis and their media openly report their crimes. And they are especially proud to be inciting regime-change in Iran. On the ground.

Take the X account titled “Mossad Farsi.” So nauseatingly audacious in content is it, that I doubted its authenticity.

In sickeningly sugared tweets, “Official Mossad in Farsi” and its bots (the programmed, online Artificial Intelligence responders or Israel’s paid lickspittles) profess the love Israelis have for the largely pro-Palestinian Iranians.

These are the same Israelis, still mid-murder in Gaza and the West bank, who were posting and celebrating imagery of murdered Palestinians with the flesh hanging on their bones in ribbons. That amoral Israel is now “loving on” the Iranians, a people who have generally resisted for Palestine.

Filled with love, “Mossad Farsi” has been loud and proud about its role in attempting to break the Islamic Republic. Here is the Mossad Farsi tweet that got world attention. Dated December 29,  it reads as follows: “Let’s come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally, we are with you in the field as well.” …

Speaking in unison, Israeli media—Channel 14,  i24, Israel Hayom, and others, no doubt—confirmed the authenticity and impetus of this account. In identically scripted messages, all outlets announced that a “Mossad X account in Farsi urges Iranians to protest as unrest sweeps the country.”

The criminal Svengali Bibi tips the nose toward Iran (allegedly), in a December 29 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, and Trump runs. “Fetch,” says Netanyahu to a pack of dreadful American curs, and they fetch. …

… READ THE COMPLETE ESSAY. “Introducing Mossad Farsi, The Motto And The Methods.” It is features on The Unz Review. And now on IlanaMercer.com

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2026/01/introducing-mossad-farsi-the-hebrew-motto-and-the-methods-video/

UPDATED (January 24, 2026): “Introducing Mossad Farsi, The [Hebrew] Motto And The Methods”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASIYTLBZodk