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This is an interesting article by my old friend Daniel, which I missed when it was published. But these days I would say he's having trouble accepting the lopsidedness of what's going on between Zionist Israel and Palestine: a Massacre of the Innocents funded by the US for its own reasons. And keep in mind that Netanyahu and the Likud Party years before October 7 funded Hamas to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Why? To drive a wedge between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas thereby removing any possibility of a solution to the problem. And what is the problem: these two peoples inhabit one land and that land itself must be seen as sacred, it must take precedence over any supposed ownership going back thousands of years (a true hallucination despite any "evidence" of piles of stones). Otherwise mutual assured destruction is the only outcome. I'm not sure Daniel sees this, and also not sure he accepts that Palestinians with their culture and as fellow humans, have just as much right to that land as Jews. Also, by no means are all Jews Zionists! Zionism is an artificial creation made for purposes of creating a nation-state -- in other words, a political power structure. Before the British took over after WW I, Jews, Moslems, and Christians in the Ottoman Empire got along well, Jews in Arab countries spoke Arabic, not Hebrew, etc. This lack of depth of field doesn't see clearly the genocide being inflicted at present upon Palestinians in Gaza. A genocide coming from what is a literally insane rage to bring about on the ground the belief that Jews are "the chosen people." For me, all monotheisms are the real naqba that was visited on the human race. We either return to a sane connection to nature (i.e., in this case where the Holy Land is sacred for all) or we're patriarchal and capitalist toast.

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Okay, sure, but let's not force everyone to choose between black and white. It's very easy for me to condemn the actions of the IDF from where I live in Mexico. AFAIK, there's zero Jews anywhere close to where I live. Daniel lives in New York City. I imagine that he will face more social consequences for speaking out on this issue that I will, therefore it's arguably braver. Plus, do you know feel the emotion in what he's writing? Within Judaism there's a strong cultural bias towards solidarity with other Jews, and it's taboo to break it - people who do are accused of being "self-hating Jews"... What Daniel is doing is opening up space for a much-needed cultural conversation to take place.

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Crow, I didn't add that I myself am Jewish, through and through, bar-mitzva-ed etc. What Jews are going through in NYC or anywhere else is multi-faceted and cannot be reduced to "solidarity with other Jews" if that means swallowing whole what Zionism represents. There are plenty of Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, who reject Zionism. I have been in communication with Daniel about this topic, sending him to videos of people like Gabor Mate and scholars like Avi Shlaim -- both of whom lost family during the Holocaust -- and he's loosened up somewhat. But at the beginning I felt he had a knee-jerk defense of Israel at odds with the situation on the ground. He would quote population figures to "prove" Israel would be overrun by Arabs as if they bred like rabbits. Also how the Palestinians "elected" Hamas which was set up to a large degree by Netanyahu and his funding in a cynical move to frustrate any Palestinian unity. Not to dispute Hamas is awful and murderous. But Palestinians have been virtually imprisoned and worse for decades in Gaza and their land stolen (against international law) in the West Bank. I'm tired of hearing how Jews "feel" as if that's more important than the fact that we are all humans and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. "Self-hating Jews" is another knee-jerk response which joins the rest of the Jew hating and Arab hating knee-jerk responses. One needs is to understand that many Palestinians do not support Hamas though they are filled with rage at the way they've been treated for decades. That's the starting point in this discussion, not Israelis falling back on their "chosen people" syndrome which boils down to one Jewish life lost means a thousand Palestinian lives lost in response. I close by asking you to watch this interview: "American nurse who got out of Gaza describes the desperation she saw." It's worth its weight in gold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7iWgCk14U

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Interesting! Would you consider writing something for Nevermore about the needs for Jews to engage in some serious soul-searching about Zionism and Jewish involvement in unethical businesses like child sex-trafficking and blackmail rings?

I feel that both Zionism and ordinary Jewish culture emphasize solidarity between Jews. This has a lot to due with their success in politics and business, and isn't necessarily a bad thing.

But if ordinary Jews feel pressured by that solidarity to defend people like Leslie Wexner, that means that something is seriously out of wack, and that a reckoning needs to happen.

If you're on the side of the Sacklers, Maxwells, and Epsteins of the world, you're on the wrong side of history.

If good Jews don't distance themselves from evil Jews, they can't really be surprised that antisemitism is on the rise.

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Crow, Did you read the email I just sent you and Rozali at the nevermore_media@riseup.net address? It has my poem "The Jewish Poem" which I asked you to consider posting on Nevermore. As I said, Rozali months ago asked me to contribute whatever I want but I couldn't figure out how to do that. This poem is a definitely challenging presentation of the Goddess and shamanic origins of Judaism. It meets head-on the patriarchy we all face. Re: your question about me writing something about Jews facing other awful Jews like Wexner, Epstein, etc., that's not who I am. And it would get nowhere because anyone who feels like those figures somehow "represent" Judaism would dismiss what I had to say. Bigotry is bigotry no matter what the target. I feel like it's up to anyone with a functioning brain to figure out that Jews are like all other humans -- the good, the bad, the ugly and the super-ugly. Hey, Bill Gates ain't Jewish! He (and Fauci and endless others in the Covid Roll of Shame) may not be Jewish but they're pure evil. Let me add that Daniel Pinchbeck grew up on cossetted West End Ave in NYC surrounded by cultured Jews and if he trembles at someone calling him a Jew-hating Jew I can only remind him of what Lenny Bruce said: "If anyone called me that, I'd knock him on his ass." Whereas for me, I grew up in Tennessee a long time ago. I was the only Jewish kid in a school of 1000 and got hit with anti-Semitism regularly. Challenged, called names, fights picked, you name it. Around Easter one year the kid sitting in front of me suddenly turned around in the middle of class and started screaming, "The Jews killed Jesus!" And the teacher did nothing. That had nothing to do with the Sacklers or whatever banksters, it comes from an ingrained anti-Semitism starting with the first Christians and an all-too-human demonization of The Other. In fact, focusing on the Rothschilds etc. misses the point, as Whitney Webb pointed out. But my experience in the South didn't stop me from running from any and all forms of monotheism as soon as I had that functioning brain. So please consider posting "The Jewish Poem" from this anarchist who is also a devotee of the Goddess. It's a killer poem best read in its entirety, I would say...

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Would you care to post it here? That would save me the trouble of chasing it down.

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I can't send the Word doc to this thread, doesn't work, only way to send the actual Word doc is as an email...Anyway, you now have the text of The Jewish Poem sent to Nevermore, format/introduce it as you wish. Michael

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This wasn't working...first it turned into one run on text removing the space between stanzas, then it stopped the poem part way through. So I just emailed it to you at Nevermore with the poem as text in body of email. Not sure how else to do it.

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All Jews are NOT zionists as all

globalists are NOT Jewish

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It's hard for me to share Crow's praise of Pinchbeck's philosophy as I keep coming up against his kneejerk "Leftist" assumptions regarding, in particular, climate change (in another article, https://substack.com/home/post/p-135346736), and in this post, his attacks on "The Right," which he cites as important context for the views on Jewishness. Not to say there can't be common ground issues, and I have no problem with the bulk of this article. But while I myself don't identify with Right or Left, I see a kind of red flag in his fundamentalist-Left rhetoric:

"There is always the possibility that rising hate-speech and hate-crimes will lead to more systemic, even state-supported, forms of violence and repression. We see hints that things might move in such a direction. QANON, for example, with its projection of a global NWO order conspiracy based on pedophilia and Satanism, has an anti-Semitic taint, invoking The Protocols of Zion. Elon Musk is promoting QANON – encouraging White Nationalists and the Far Right – on Twitter: “Follow the white rabbit” references the QANON narrative. QANON’s claims were revealed as delusional when Trump left office. Musk seems to want to revive flagging interest in QANON as this article explores.

"White Supremacism is on the rise, with armed militias readying themselves for insurrection across the US. Many Republicans actively agitate against Democratic elections process and Constitutional safeguards. The Right calls for “total war” against liberalism and “the Left” (which, for them, means Biden and Pelosi, who I would call neoliberal moderates). They seek to drive the country toward authoritarianism, despotism, as the only means for maintaining an Anglo-European ethno-state despite rapidly changing demographics."

No doubt many critiques of the Left suffer from the same kind of silo-thinking, with language full of assumptions that are mere caricatures of a more nuanced reality. I would hope for better from our "leading philosophers" than a parade of tired Trump Derangement Syndrome cliches about hate-speech, hate-crimes, QANON, global NWO conspiracy theories, white nationalism, the Far Right, armed militias, insurrection, Democratic elections process, authoritarianism...

Granted, Crow points out that Pinchbeck "is not primarily a political writer," but it's disappointing that the political context he chooses for this post is so shallow and reflexive.

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Tend to agree with you Nowick. There were so many little things that rubbed me up the wrong way. Furthermore, we could get into the questions of language, definitions and identity, but I won't. It's a bloody irrational, infuriating mess that renders talking about any of this near impossible. By design, I suppose. Thanks, postmodernist discourse.

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I'm curious what you have to say. Speak your mind! I've made it my thing to speak my mind whether it pisses people off or not, but at this point in the age of Kali-Yuga there are vast numbers of people who are pissed off by obvious truths. At a certain point one either has to be willing to offend people or go along

This is the reason that Canada has gone so deep in. It's due to the politeness of the culture. Canadians are much less keen on offending people than Americans are.

If mature people do censor themselves, it presents a bigger problem than most people are aware, because children adolescents won't necessarily catch on that everyone knows some truth that no one is willing to say out loud - they may well start to believe something that is totally insane because that's what they think everyone believes.

Human beings are giant copycats. It's a fact. If we want younger people to think critically then we've got to give them examples of us doing it.

Given that I'm not a parent, I find it weird that I'm the one playing the role of Maude Flanders saying "Won't someone please think of the children?" but someone's got to do it.

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I understand but I'm exhausted and in no mood for the fight. Even the mention of Gilad Atzmon is enough to rile people up but that's who should be read by the curious. Appreciate you, as the kids used to say.

Alright, briefly: To sum it up: nobody knows what Jewish means. Do they? I don't. Unless I choose to use the original definition. Moreover, the attempts to define it in most ways leads to absurdities. This, of course, is very antisemitic, whatever the hell that means.

Atzmon was one of the first to carve open identity politics. He should ne widely read.

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Good point! You'll love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0WQPt8Lp6A.

Robert Anton Wilson offers five answers to the question: "What is a Jew?" in reference to James Joyce's Ulysses.

This is absolutely brilliant...

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There we go. (EDIT: Atzmon makes a different argument). Similarly, the word "fascist" is practically unusable thanks to its misuse as a catchall pejorative. This needs to stop. It lets fascism ("formal fascism" this is now called, or "the corporate state") off the hook by applying the term to absolutely everything that is objectionable, for which there are always plenty of other more appropriate terms. Drives me nuts. Discourse is impossible.

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I'm not actually familiar with Atzmon, could you recommend a place to start? The name's come up a few times lately...

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THE JEWISH POEM

Can we find our way back

I mean all the way back

before a jealous G-d

before Abraham and Sarah

wandered off from Sumer

before ancient Sumer itself

gave birth to patriarchy

scourge of the planet

ushering in the end times

before David and Solomon

before priests and kings

before Jewish exceptionalism

but not before

the original Shekinah

divine feminine presence

body of light, body of bliss

incarnation of the Goddess

when we Jews were

a tribe like any other

Tribes speaking and singing

wearing rainbow IDs

of skin and meat and bone

hunters and gatherers

shakers and trance dancers

Jews no different

moving with the seasons

year after year, circling

around, starting over

owning next to nothing

burning our self-images

in great bonfires determined

by configuration of the stars

burning fixations and regrets

burning bruised egos

burning lingering grudges

burning effigies of hate

sending it all up in flames

egalitarian and free

at home in telepathy

and celebration, at ease

in our animal bodies

Before Torah and Talmud

before Mishnah and Midrash

before moldy dictatorial texts

before thou shalt not, before

all the rules and regulations

the obsession with purity

before the terrible swift sword

before the commandment

to massacre in cold blood

every last tribe around us

with whom we shared

what we called Canaan

Before the Promised Land

before patriarchal decay

before fear and trembling

before we were tossed

from the Garden in shame

before the Garden itself

before we got hoodwinked

into forsaking wilderness

fleeing from the Goddess

to whom we had always

willingly surrendered

outside of clock time

outside of history

From the Mediterranean Sea

to the Bay of Bengal

and beyond, the Goddess

radiating her power

her sexual arousal

taking preference over

all else, men gladly

performing yoga-tattva

down on their knees

worshipping her sex

which in full-on trance

her legs spread wide

she displayed for all to see

holding back nothing

and the non-stop hunger

of men made perfect sense

then, and everyone was

satisfied, everyone complete

This is what we lost

when Big Boy appeared

men shielding themselves

from women who became

no more than servants

no more than baby factories

as we sealed the lid shut

over ecstasy until Christians

and Moslems outdid us

carpet-bombing sexuality

replacing her presence

with nuclear-tipped rockets

sacrificing everything

we held dear, love and

sanity and well-being

at the altar of patriarchy

So say it again, we Jews

a tribe like any other

born from undulations

of the feminine landscape

we traveled across for

untold thousands of years

supplicants in sacred groves

our ceremonies shamanic

glorying in our physicality

luscious, at ease, conversing

with spirits, eating truth-

telling psychoactive plants

fucking in the bushes

big smiles on our faces

any day of the week

any month of the year

No guilt, no fear

of Yahweh’s searchlight

swinging down from above

keeping an eye on us

a monstrous fiction

concocted by an upstart

priestly caste solely for

control and corruption

signaling the end

of the old ways

signaling the beginning

of fanatical suspicion

of the bad news

known as Almighty G-d

And in short order

there we were

scurrying along below Him

no longer making way

for the Goddess in our

midst, no longer greeting

our brothers and sisters

the plants and animals

no longer our divine selves

but bowing and scraping

before a G-d perpetually

jealous of His own creation

while we surrendered our

moxie in an endless attempt

to placate and please Him

our paternalistic G-d

our angry G-d

approving this and smiting that

full of ascetic fury, a fury

identical to the barren, unforgiving

desert from whence He came

In that regard we were

no different from the desert

religions that came after us

no different from Christianity

no different from Islam

all born from the sand

from punishing heat and

a vacant sky delivering nothing

monotheisms outlawing pleasure

disowning the here and now

carving up eternity into

house lots and freeways

promising only the possibility

of a reward in faraway heaven

once we’re dead and gone

-- Michael Brownstein

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I’ve been soul searching & just like here in America .. the Israeli Government has sold out the people

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amen to that. I find it mindblowing that Israelis, upon experiencing "Israel's 9/11" seem to immediately line up to repeat the same mistakes that the U.S. made after the original 9/11.

Look at the U.S. now versus 2000. It's gone down the toilet, and a lot of that has to do the hysterical, idiotic war fever precipitated by 9/11, which, by the way, everyone with a brain now knows was a false flag attack.

I hope that Israelis (and non-Israeli Jews) start a peace movement and a truth movement now!!! Obeying the Israeli government and letting them define the narrative about will lead to a disaster both for Israelis and for the world.

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The night of event I was freaking … & my cousin said think 9/11. I got so mad at her but I now believe she’s on better point

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Nov 9, 2023
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Agreed! What did you think of the article?

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Nov 9, 2023
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I agree!

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