A biblical distortion of history to justify genocide

We are being asked to live in an Israeli hard right fantasy where war criminals are the victims and 70,000 dead Palestinians is a small price to pay for malign ambition.

PREFACE | PART ONE | PART TWO

This was originally two posts, but I’ve edited it into one because it made no sense to split it; I hope you’ll agree.

I thought it might be a good way to begin PART THREE with an opportunity to address the issue of claims that there is no such place as Palestine, a longstanding Zionist primary propaganda talking point. I could spend time regurgitating information from a number of sources to debunk this nonsense that reminds me of the selective use by Republicans of ‘originalism’ when it comes to the US Constitution and the Bible. A tactic they often use when they want to ‘interpret’ meaning to fit their political narrative, much the same as Netanyahu likes to interpret the Torah. The common thread with right-wing ideology is religious instrumentalisation, using religion as the magic sauce to distort the truth to provide credibility for the lies. It’s prevalent in MAGA just as it is in hard right Israeli politics.

The Israeli justification for slaughter and persecution of the Palestinians is a calculated and deliberate biblical distortion of historical fact. I was born into a Roman Catholic family to parents who were devout in their faith. I went to church every Sunday, and even at a young age, I felt no connection to the repetitive indoctrination that has for centuries acted as a mechanism to control populations around the world; it’s not for nothing that religion is often referred to as the opium of the masses. More ‘righteous’ wars have been fought in service of religion than have not. As children, we have a natural instinct to please our parents; I even became an altar boy. I went to Sunday School and joined the church choir. I was introduced to the premise of propaganda: repeating the same unverifiable stories over and over until they are accepted by too many as fact.

Being the rebellious creature I am, once I had the independence to choose for myself if I wanted to continue the charade, I ran for the hills and never looked back. This was a decision reaffirmed by the revelations of an epidemic of child sexual abuse by priests and those in charge of church-run orphanages across the world. I decided instead that I would build a values framework on the good things I learned from my time studying the bible, centred around Matthew 25: 31-40:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

I would add, however, that while organised religion is not for me, I do understand how important it is for so many people. It certainly remained important to my parents, and I respected that, as I do those for whom their faith is an integral part of who they are. I also feel a great sense of empathy as right-wing politics has so successfully taken faith hostage for political gain. The historical power of religion to influence the thoughts of its congregation was never lost on the likes of Adolf Hitler and, more recently, of course, Trump and his cynical adoption of Christian Nationalism for his own personal gain.

The thing about religious zealots is they aren’t satisfied with their faith being for them; they are obsessed with imposing it on others, and this is particularly pervasive when it comes to Christian nationalism, because it’s a political construct that adopts faith teaching as a propaganda tool. I could spend this whole piece on the insidious nature of this bastardised faith captive indoctrination, but that’s for another day. Needless to say, it’s this corrupted faith narrative that has driven the crusade-level persecution of the Palestinians.

Faith-driven narratives weaponise centuries of entrenched religious indoctrination that dictate we NEVER challenge the word of God for fear of eternal damnation. You may think this is nonsense, but I guarantee that, in many people’s subconscious, they are resistant to challenging cynical faith narratives, even if these bastardised teachings have been reinterpreted and crafted for political purposes; especially if you belong to a culture that has been persecuted for millennia. There is no question that victimhood has been weaponised time and again to justify crimes against humanity. It’s a moral abomination that MUST be called out.

Already today I have had a comment that stated:

Actually the Jews have a 3,500 history in the holy land starting with King David.

My response:

Indigenous people in America have an equally long history in a nation that has now exiled them to lands where they have no drinking water.

I’m afraid it’s a lazy and frankly abhorrent argument in support of a misguided justification for genocide. I’m tired of listening to it and the invocation of the holocaust and the ludicrous ‘self-defence’ argument to justify the actions of a longstanding apartheid state.

This does not make me an antisemite; it makes me someone prepared to call bullshit on the narrative of a regime out of control.

I bear no malice to the Jewish community, although it does cause me to question how they could sanction the behaviour of their government.

It’s not for me to judge you or your community; that's between you, them, and their God. I have called out this behaviour for DECADES. Mine is not fair weather criticism; it’s a consistent questioning of values.

It is sadly indicative of the deeply embedded narrative that it is the God-given right of the Jews to own the land they did in biblical times. On that basis, I’m looking forward to the next Native American government in the hope that they will not do unto Americans what was done unto them. You don’t get handed a nation state because the Torah says so; that’s not how it works.

This leads me nicely to where I was going with this episode and the need to understand there was no Israel until Zionists from Europe self-declared it on May 14th 1948. To be very clear, it was IMPOSED on the region, not created through dialogue with the population that lived on the land and were subsequently ethnically cleansed by the criminal act of expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians. NONE of it would have been possible without the support of the US and Great Britain. An event which led to the murder of around 15,000 Palestinians, many of them murdered by Zionist militia that was to become the IDF. Numerous massacres took place in villages like Deir Yassin, Tantura, and Dawaymeh. For context, these were often led by men who would later become senior leaders in the newly declared Israeli government. Just as in Gaza and Lebanon today, they laid waste to villages that had been in the ownership of Palestinians for generations. NONE of it would have been possible without the aid and support of the US and Great Britain, who were as complicit then in war crimes as they are today.

It really is time to stop sugarcoating these atrocities and understand that the behaviour we are witnessing today in Gaza and the occupied territories is absolutely nothing new; they are in the DNA of a nation where humanity and moral decency have long left the building. This is a nation that saw six million of their fellow Jews exterminated at the hands of the Nazis in Germany in the 1940’s. They rightly claim that this was an act of genocide. Indeed, it was what led to the formation of the United Nations and the Treaty of Rome, which established the International Criminal Court in 1998. An organisation designed to hold those guilty of such barbaric acts to account on the world stage.

How interesting it is that the Israeli government does not recognise either the rulings of said criminal court, nor the Resolutions of the United Nations, claiming their occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal. How odd it is that we constantly hear invocation of the Holocaust to justify the commission of war crimes against the Palestinians. A Holocaust, might I add, which actually saw the murder of over 11 million people, including Russian prisoners of war, Slavs, Poles, Romani people, along with political prisoners and the disabled. The additional 5 million victims, it appears, have been erased from the Israeli narrative because it seems they want exclusive rights to victimhood when it comes to justification of their own crimes against humanity.

The critical point is that it was not a genocide exclusively perpetrated on the Jews as Israeli propaganda would have you believe. Indeed, the person who commented above would inform you as he did me:

To be factual there is no genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Genocide is the deliberate murder of an entire people or race.

The United States treatment of the indigenous tribes in the 19th century comes close to that.

The settlers in the West Bank can be very violent even against Jews who don’t share their ambitions but is not a genocide but the appropriation of land on a so-called religious and biblical basis.

Most Israelis don’t support them.

By his own argument, the author whom I have not named, because I don’t want people targeting him as I am often targeted by SOME members of the Jewish community. However, rest assured, these are direct quotes. He’s effectively saying Hitler did not perpetrate a genocide on the Jews, given he didn’t kill them all; it’s a nonsense assertion. It seems he contends that murdering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians is acceptable because it’s only a fraction of the population. Was it their benevolence that allowed the rest to live in an uninhabitable wasteland? Netanyahu’s himself has publicly stated:

"you must remember what Amalek has done to you,"

Referring to Amalek—an enemy commanded in scripture to be totally destroyed. Yoav Gallant, former Defence Minister (a man who, along with Netanyahu, is the subject of arrest warrants issued by the ICC for war crimes), stated:

"we are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,"

This is all part of a systemic attempt by a number of government ministers and members of the Knesset to dehumanise Palestinians in order to justify murder.

As reported by NBC:

Amichai Eliyahu (Heritage Minister): Suggested in a radio interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was "one of the possibilities"

I could go on and on and on, but this goes to the very heart of the definition of genocide, ‘intent’. The uncomfortable truth is that if they could, it’s clear that certain segments of the government absolutely WOULD kill them all. I’m afraid one can draw no other conclusion. Palestinians are portrayed as subhuman by senior government officials, to be stamped on, persecuted and abused at every opportunity. What’s more, the IDF have been found to be systematically targeting Palestinian children along with hospitals, schools, and reproductive services clinics; neonatal units WERE discovered with dead babies who had been left to perish after hospitals had been forced to evacuate; there is no end to the level of deprivation carried out by the alleged ‘most moral army on earth’.

Often the Israeli assertion is that you can’t be guilty of murder if you drop some leaflets telling people to leave the area. So it’s fine providing you inform them you are going to murder them unless they leave, prior to your attack? In what world does that provide absolution for war crimes? This behaviour is nothing new; it is absolutely endemic in segments of Israeli society. It is simply not true to state “most Israelis do not support it”; there is a big difference between the diaspora and those living in Israel, although the attitudes persist throughout to some degree; you only have to listen to AIPAC politicians bought and paid for by the Israeli government to understand that. In Israel itself, over 70% support the IDF's actions.

In a report in Haaretz by Shay Hazkani and Tamir Sorek, in 2025 (which I’m happy to supply the link to, but is behind a paywall if you are not, like me, a subscriber), they note that in a poll commissioned by Pennsylvania State University, the results showed:

82 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Gaza's residents, while 56 percent favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. These figures mark a sharp rise from a 2003 survey, in which support for such expulsions stood at 45 percent and 31 percent, respectively

Does this suggest to you that “most Israelis do not support it”? I would respectfully disagree. The report goes on to note:

Religious interpretations play a key role in shaping these views. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants." Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek's memory remains relevant today.

Here are two interesting graphs that appear in the report too:

While it would be wrong to suggest that all Jews support the actions of their government, and indeed there are many organisations within Israel that support a two-state solution and the right to Palestinian self-determination, it is incorrect to suggest they are in the majority; the evidence simply does not support it. It should also be noted that this survey was sent to Israelis living in Israel.

There has long been a principle in place that states ‘Kill one of us, and we will kill many of you’. Between 2008 and October 7 2023, historical data shows that roughly 5,600 Palestinians have been killed compared to about 250 Israeli deaths, yielding a consistent kill ratio of roughly 22-to-1. This excludes times of significant military incursions in which the might of the military, supported by the most powerful nation on earth, takes off the gloves and teaches the Palestinians a lesson.

If we go back further in history:

• First Intifada (1987–1993) - Between 180 and 200 Israelis were killed. In response, 1962 Palestinians were killed.

• Second Intifada (2000–2005) - 1,010 Israelis were killed, and 3,354 Palestinians lost their lives.

• Gaza War (2008) - 13 Israelis were killed, and in response, the IDF killed around 1200 Palestinians.

• Gaza War (2014) - 73 Israelis were killed, while the IDF killed around 2,200 Palestinians

• Gaza War (2023) - An estimated 1200 Israelis, and latest numbers indicate that Palestinian deaths now exceed 70,000

If you are looking for a potted history of the conflict, I highly recommend reading this very informative piece from The Wachenheim Centre for Peace and Security, which was last updated on August 3rd 2026.

In the next episode, we’ll look at the obsession with the Biblical right to Israel as it was in the United Monarchy (c. 1020–930 BCE), when the lands were ruled by Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, establishing Jerusalem as the political and spiritual centre. Yes, that’s how far back the Israeli government wants to go to make Israel great again. It should be noted that the last period of sovereign Jewish rule prior to the self-declaration of an Israeli state, thousands of years later, was the Hasmonean Dynasty (140–37 BCE), which followed the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire. It’s tantamount to Italy demanding they be handed back the Roman Empire.

It really is time to put Netanyahu and his thugs’ biblical wet dream where it belongs: into the bad joke book of history and to call out the clowns who have been complicit in their war crimes.

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