Israel, Machiavelli, Lucifer & Jesus

[Alexis Jacobi]

Let’s get right down to it people. Right to the “core of complicity”.

Israel is a universal problem which presents to us a set of problems that I encapsulate with the symbol “Lucifer” and the symbol “Jesus”.

In the Gospel story Satan flies Jesus up to a position outside and over the world and reveals to him:

“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

To live life is, to one degree or another, to give in, to compromise morally, to become complicit in what I suggest we can only see as the “Machiavellian Project”.

Israel — by that I mean the core picture, the diagram, the insuperable problem, the terrifying play between “light” and “dark” that is so very evident when we actually see into it — is really our problem.

Examining the darkest aspect of Jewish or Israeli theology — the metaphysics of Zionism at the religious center — we see that to get, to own, to lay claim to what “God” had promised, is to become, to embody, to embrace, and to live through a Luciferian perceptual philosophy. One says “I am a Son of Light” and God has blessed me. But one digs down into the very bedrock of materialism and the exigencies of power and control.

To the degree that one openly states the truth of what one does, to the degree that one understands it and empowers oneself in what one does, is the exact degree that one joins “Lucifer” in the Machiavellian Project.

Yet note that unless one is talking in realpolitik terms to a Luciferian associate, one is obligated, in sincere cynicism, to deny Luciferian connection and in fact describe oneself as a Son of Light in a metaphysical battle against the Sons of Darkness.

Thus one’s complicity is transformed into an imperative, and the imperative into an enduring project.

If you say:

“Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

You can only make this real by a tangible renunciation of your own material condition, yet the paradox — the realization that life is a trap — is the knowledge that you cannot in truth escape. You are born into complicity.

Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

For us — I will continue to play within this Gospel metaphor — to be ministered by angels is what is available to us in the privacy of our internal awareness and being. The love of higher ideals, of beauty, which can only be reached or even known by a purified, renounced soul.

[mickthinks]

Huh?

[Gary Childress]

Huh?

What one reads in depth tends to become the foundation for one's intellectual orientation. I'm glad I stayed away from the Bible.

[FlashDangerpants]

For us — I will continue to play within this Gospel metaphor — to be ministered by angels is what is available to us in the privacy of our internal awareness and being. The love of higher ideals, of beauty, which can only be reached or even known by a purified, renounced soul.

FFS, you are too pretentious to even Nazi properly.

[Alexis Jacobi]

FFS, you are too pretentious to even Nazi properly.

I like that you made to nazi into a verb. Because that is exactly what I am getting at. The Israeli project, in the Machiavellian sense, is largely similar to the Nazi project. Especially now because it seems that the gloves have come off.

From the start, if one cares to examine the issue, and as revealed in the Tanach itself, the conquest of Canaan was a sort of ur-Nazism. Establish a divine command, be it *selection* or the gift of a land or region to your offspring, and then wipe out everyone who stands in your way.

That is the Original Paradigm that was justified metaphysically. The reconquest is a reenactment. And it has led to a severe and possibly impossible impasse. There is no way for this to end well.

You really should think these things through Flash. Don't just hover over superficialities. The fact that you seem only to see surfaces, and through a narrative-structure that you did not arrive at yourself but was provided to you, is a philosophically failing in my view.

If pretension keeps me from nazying properly, can you outline what nazying properly should be?

And what specifically in what I wrote signaled Nazi sympathy?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Huh?

Is that a question?

[Gary Childress]

Huh?

Is that a question?

Here's something better you can type on.

[Alexiev]

Huh?

Is that a question?

Here's something better you can type on.

I didn't read the article because the headline was so ridiculous. "Unprecedented"? Haven't the journalists heard of Hiroshima, Dresden, Tokyo and dozens of other examples of civilian suffering.

[Gary Childress]

Is that a question?

Here's something better you can type on.

I didn't read the article because the headline was so ridiculous. "Unprecedented"? Haven't the journalists heard of Hiroshima, Dresden, Tokyo and dozens of other examples of civilian suffering.

If it will help other victims who died before I was even born to not sign the petition, then, by all means, don't sign. Maybe they'll come up with a petition that calls for more "restraints" on humans later that you can sign on to.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What is not being understood here, and what I am trying to point out and talk about, is what we can sanely refer to as the Machiavellian Program or incentive. My reference point is Leo Strauss and I am referring to the Straussians aka the Neoconservatives who have, for 30 years, been determining US policy vis-a-vis Israel.

According to Strauss the Israelis embody a defined metaphysical notion of the Jewish right to that land, and those who are genuinely realpolitik in their orientation and action understand that mythology is mythology, but what truly matters is the life of a people, and in respect to the Jewish mythology it is only the Jews who are relevant here. That is to say -- and here I will refer to hot-headed Flash -- that the Israelis are right now nazying the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians there. Put any spin on it that you like. Use one term or any other but the fact is that the objective here is annihilation.

This was how Israel was originally conquered. And it was God Himself that commanded it. That is the underlying, determining metaphysic.

The mythology and the metaphysics that supports this sense that *we have a right to do this* is what I suggest we examine. And though I think that the point I made was not received, we are post-Christians but still living in the shadow if you will, of a metaphysical imperative that is Christian. That metaphysic is established through a pole: either you renounce *all those glittering kingdoms* and attend to your soul, or you take up Satan on his offer and deeply dive into materialism, power, control and all the strategies and actions this will demand.

I have expressed this but no one here seems to get it. Israelis, and Jews, say Am Yisrael Chai which translated to 'Jews Will Live' or 'Long Live the Jews'. It is more than something merely said. It expresses a relationship to existence. Jews define LIFE as having supreme value and that means life here and now. And Israel has been built through the quest for life, for Jewish life, for Jewish expansion and growth. And that does not include the foreigner. And this is why, as all know, the Israelis are expanding, without shame really, and with a sense of privilege and ownership into the West Bank hilltops. If you don't know this your should know it: there was never any intention of 'sharing the land' and a two-state *solution* is no solution.

So again, we turn back to Machiavellian truths, and what power decides. Jews have something that Gentiles do not have, or they have something in greater abundance: the sense of metaphysical and historical mission.

If you do not understand these elements, you cannot understand what is happening in Israel now.

Curiously, and for most who write here, you still operate within (the shadow of) a Christian morality in respect to the *World* -- Satan's Kingdom. That ethic is everpresent in all conversations that occur here -- even in the mouths of those who say they are atheists and who do not *believe in* objective morality.

[commonsense]

Depending on how far you go back in history, you could say that the Jews occupied all of what is now Israel, including Gaza, and the West Bank; or, if you stop at another point in history, you could as well make the case that all of it was occupied by Arabs.

So the case can be made that either the Israelis or Hamas has a right to claim the territory.

But the case cannot be made that Hamas’ brutality was justified in its October 7 attack.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Depending on how far you go back in history, you could say that the Jews occupied all of what is now Israel, including Gaza, and the West Bank; or, if you stop at another point in history, you could as well make the case that all of it was occupied by Arabs.

So the case can be made that either the Israelis or Hamas has a right to claim the territory.

But the case cannot be made that Hamas’ brutality was justified in its October 7 attack.

Yes, in fact you could *make the case*. Brutality and violence are means to an end.

Israel was achieved -- born if you wish -- through a brutal and extremely violent conquest of the region. That violence was condoned by "God". Indeed to have carried out that violence is considered in Orthodoxy as a mitzvah.

In Machievellian terms we are not concerned about real rights we are only concerned about what you can convince people their rights are or aren't. The notion of *right* is metaphysical and cultural.

But stripped of the metaphysical pre-supposition we have no rights. None.

Jews have a right to Israel because "God" bequeather it to them. Beginning of story. End of story.

Thus any level of brutality is in fact justified in order to reclaim and retain Israel -- indeed to expand it even more. Listen to the Rabbis and you will understand how they explain this and justify it.

Hamas and the Palestinians make claim to the land. And in order to reclaim what is theirs a similar violence is completely par-for-the-course. In Machiavellian terms it requires no spin or justification.

On one obvious level Hamas' attack was a brilliant and bold military operation. But you must note that I am looking at it through Machiavellian terms.

[Impenitent]

Jews have a right to Israel because "God" bequeather it to them. Beginning of story. End of story.

just like the pilgrims had a right to america?

the entire history of the planet is one group killing another group and taking their land/stuff...

history never repeats...

-Imp

[promethean75]

Exactamundo. So nobody gets to say 'we had it first' and then in the same breath say 'and u have no right to take it!'

Whoever has the power to take it, takes it.

U can solve this however by by a quick anthropology lesson (which will rid u of any racist or nationalist sentiments u might have unless you're an idiot) and the abolishment of borders.

But I've probably already said too much. U are not ready, young philosophers.

[Alexis Jacobi]

just like the pilgrims had a right to america?

the entire history of the planet is one group killing another group and taking their land/stuff...

This is exactly what I am talking about. And if what you say is true the wise, the knowledgable, the deciders, the managers of men, understand that it all hinges on the integrity and unity of a given people, and their capacity to take & hold things. In this case Israel.

The underlings, those who can't think things through and lack nerve, are provided with Stories and Myths that, when believed, when internalized as truth, give them the power of conviction. The wise know the truth though, and in this sense they are Machiavellians of the bona fide sort.

Curiously, the *right* of the Pilgrims is less in their personal assault on some land there, and more in what was brought into existence by their initial act. America. An unprecedented manifestation of civilization. Everything that it is, and everything that successive generations, who had nothing to do with the initial violence, created.

Comparatively, a primitive hunter-gatherer people did nothing that is exceptional. But even that doesn't really matter. Pizarro conquered the Incan nation with the most incredible Machiavellian op known to the history of the Americas. But the Incan civilization was not a minor one.

All I am trying to do is to situate what is now happening in Israel into reallpolitikal terms.