Zionism turns your brain to mush

Just say no

It’s a busy week this week. Really, Rosh haShanah should be one day, which would make it less busy, but we can’t even figure out remedial kindergarten stuff like how big an olive is, so there’s barely any point in even mentioning it. So, in order to get anything out this week, I need to do some low-effort posting, and nothing is more low effort than dunking on rightoid Zionists. If you think that’s low and unbecoming, then maybe you should explain how to run a successful Substack without posting AI erotica lit, or, like, doing actual original research that I don’t have time for. Lah-dee-dah, you must be very proud. Anyway, here’s what I’m dunking on:

The Palestinians Never Welcomed Anyone

Uri set himself the task of showing that Rashida Tlaib is an idiot. That’s kind of like setting yourself the task of taking a dump without getting it all over your legs, but there is almost no mental task so easy that Zionist brain cancer can’t make impossible. The claim that Uri attempts to refute is that the Palestinians welcomed Jews seeking a safe haven from the Holocaust. Obviously, that would be an obscenely moronic thing to say, but Tlaib didn’t say it. She said a safe haven was created at the expense of the Palestinians, which is, well, completely true, except the bit about the safe haven being created.

Let’s skip that bit though. No doubt there are some Palestinoids who are dumb enough to make this argument, so let’s say Uri is refuting them. How does he do?

Mandatory Palestine was founded by the British in 1920. The first attack on Jews took place in 1920. The words with which the Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine "welcomed" the Jews were "Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!"

Arab nationalist Khalil al-Sakakini witnessed this warm welcome in Jerusalem and later wrote:

"The people began to run about and stones were thrown at the Jews. The shops were closed and there were screams... All shouted, “Muhammad's religion was born with the sword.”

Dozens more murderous attacks took place in that decade. Some of the most famous ones include:

• March 1, 1920, 9 Jews murdered in Tel Hai

• April 4, 1920, 5 Jews murdered, over 200 wounded in Jerusalem

• May 1, 1921, 47 Jews murdered, 140 wounded in Jaffa

• November 2, 1921, 5 Jews murdered in Jerusalem

• 24 August, 1929, 67 Jews murdered, 58 injured in Hebron

• 29 August, 1929, 18 Jews murdered, 80 wounded in Safed

OK, that’s a pretty good refutation of a literally insane argument. We can call it a day. Except, if you are Zionist you can’t, because your guilty conscience won’t let you. Any reasonable person looking at this data will conclude, at least, the following two things. (1) Arab nationalists and Islamists incited the local population to repeatedly engage in revolting and indefensible acts of violence against the Jewish population, with little or no discrimination between new arrivals and those who had been there for generations. (2) Zionism really pissed the Arabs off.

Observing that Zionism really pissed off the Arabs is ground zero for understanding the history of the region. It’s not an exaggeration to say you can’t understand anything at all about the conflict without grasping that. The result was the extinction of ancient centres of Jewish culture and learning in Fez, Cairo, Sana’a, Aleppo, Baghdad, Djerba and, yes, Hebron. I think, in principle at least, you can understand that and still be a committed Zionist, but, because Zionism is an ideology for dumb people, in practice it doesn’t work that way. Thus we get this:

But you know what? Perhaps Zionism is to blame. After all, no one likes Jews who protest being spat and pelted with stones. Spoilsports!

The first Zionist congress took place in 1897. A pogrom against Jews in Safed took place in 1834. How prescient of Tlaib’s wise ancestors to strike against Zionism more than 60 years before it started!

But wait! There was also a pogrom in Safed in 1660, and in 1517... Come to think of it, didn’t the first Muslim massacre of Jews took place in 627 when Muhammad massacred the Banu Qurayza in a heroic battle in which 2 Muslims and 900 Jews were killed, clearly the numbers of a pitched battle…

Can you use Google? If so, congratulations, you have more than what it takes to be a prominent Zionoid blogger. A pogrom took place against Jews in 1834 Safed; that much is true. Who did it?

Safed had long been inhabited by Musta'arabi Jews. It became a kabbalistic centre from the 1540s onwards when students attracted by the teachings of sages such as Moses ben Jacob Cordovero settled there.[12] By the 1830s around 4000 Jews were living in the town, comprising at least half the population.[13] Throughout their history, the Jews of Safed, though supported by the Sublime Porte, had been the target of oppressive exactions by corrupt local officials. In 1628, the Druze seized the city and, holding it for several years, despoiled the local community, and the Jewish population declined as Safed Jews moved to Hebron and Jerusalem.[14][15] The 1831 annexation of Palestine to the Egyptian Ottoman governorate by Muhammad Ali rendered life relatively more secure than had been the case under the Ottomans.[16] In 1833, however, at the approach of Ibrahim Pasha, the Jewish quarter of Safed was plundered again by the Druze, although the inhabitants managed to escape to the suburbs.[17]

A year later, in 1834, it was announced that new taxation laws would be imposed, and conscription was introduced, drafting fellahin into the Egyptian army, who were also disarmed by local notables. The news was greeted by widespread anger. The Druze of the Galilee themselves, profiting from a weakness of control over their area, rose in revolt in the spring[7] and were joined by a mass uprising by the fellahin, who resented local Jewish collaboration with the Egyptians.[18][19] Safed had been severely damaged by the 1834 Jerusalem earthquake in May of that year, and following the uprising, attacks broke out on the weaker members of Palestinian towns, namely the Jews and Christians.[20][21] It was in this setting that the plunder at Safed was unleashed, causing many Jews to seek refuge among friendly Arabs in the neighbouring town of Ein Zeitim.[22] One account, retold by several Safed Jews to the 25-year-old Alexander William Kinglake, who visited in 1835,[23] blamed the incident on the intolerant rantings of a local Muslim cleric named Muhammad Damoor. The account stated that at the beginning of 1834, Damoor publicly prophesied that on June 15, the "true believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold and their silver and their jewels.

So basically, it was Druze and Muslim peasants attacking Jews and Christians who were loyal to the Egyptian regime. The revolt was put down harshly:

The most respectable Mahomedans of Zafed and its environs were arrested as the authors of the outrage, and some of them were afterwards publicly executed, and whatever could be found of the stolen property of the Jews was restored. Every Jew was believed, when saying that he recognised this or that Arab among the robbers. The person so accused was instantly arrested, and punished with blows till he at last confessed and gave up his booty. Even many of the richest and most respectable of the Arabs were arrested, loaded with chains, and punished, upon the mere assertion of a very poor and common Jew. The word of a Jew was regarded as equal to the command of the highest authority, and severe punishment was at once resorted to, without any previous investigation, without any grounds or proofs. In this manner much of the stolen property was discovered; since many, in order not to be exposed to the violence of the Druses, delivered up everything of their own accord. The Jews were now required, by order of the Pacha, through the intervention of the consuls, to make out a correct list of all they had lost, of whatever they missed, and to indicate the true value of the same, and to hand it in to Abraim Pacha through means of the European consuls.

Based! However, four years later, the Druze kicked off again and attacked the Jewish population. This is a bit of a running theme. Uri mentions another pogrom committed by ‘Tlaib’s ancestors’ in 1660. You guessed it: Druze. He also mentions the 1517 massacre. Finally, if we go back 500 years, we can find a massace that wasn’t committed by Druze; it was Mamluks.

If we wanted to learn this history in order to understand, to be more knowledgeable about the world, we would conclude that Jews in the Land of Israel have traditionally lived under the protection of cosmopolitan Islamic rulers, and this protection proved inadequate at times of stress. Overall, Jews in the holy land had a pretty decent time by global standards, and the relative smallness of the Jewish community there wasn’t a function of persecution.¹ They had problems with crummy peasants because everyone has problems with crummy peasants. They also had particular running problem with Druze. This isn’t very surprising: foundational Druze texts contain as much anti-Jewish invective as either Christian or Muslim ones and the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, believed by Druze to be the final incarnation of God in human form [?!], was, as well as being just generally a mentalist, a fanatical persecutor of Jews.

And yet, today, things between the Jews and the Druze are pretty swell. Their ancestors (not Tlaib’s) may well have been, as Uri describes, ‘violent thugs’, but things change, and, when political circumstances change, you don’t care about a massacre 400 years ago anymore. Indeed, you care about it so little that it only exists to blame on someone else you presently are in conflict with. Why do Druze and Jews nowadays get along? Because Jews put some effort into wooing them at a time when Israel was able to actually implement strategic policies without constantly deferring to the baboon veto. The message is the precise opposite of the rightoid Zionist story of endless victimhood, and innate and incurable Palestinian wickedness. But to see that, you’d need to be minimally informed, and Zionist advocacy is all about making you less informed so you can cheer on your team doing dumb, self-destructive things forever, or, to be more precise, until your team self-destructs.

And that’s a wrap for today. כתיבה וחתימה טובה. If you think it’s not the right time of year for being mean spirited like this, then I say כל אדם שאין בו דעה אסור לרחם עליו. Don’t blame me, it’s a gemara!

1. What it was a function of shall, God willing, be a subject of a future post.