" ... a tiny Jewish elite,... has hijacked the idea of God and turned it to their own aggrandizement ... (and) terrorized its own people to enforce their sense of separateness ... garnering wealth and power in the process."
For most of my life I did not understand the expression “the Jewish question.” Nobody ever talked about “the Catholic question” or “the Presbyterian question” or “the Mormon question” or “the Buddhist question” or “the Muslim question.” Yet there have been extensive debates, beginning in the 19th century, of “the Jewish question.”
I always assumed the people who used this expression were so prejudiced against Jews they speciously considered them a problem that needed solving. Hitler’s “final solution to the Jewish question,” I was taught, represented a culmination of such baseless, mindless prejudice and hatred.
But after learning more about history—and especially after reading and re-reading Laurent Guyénot’s new book From Yahweh to Zion—I have come to realize that there are many legitimate “Jewish questions,” not just one. Some important questions include: Is Judaism/Jewishness a religion or an ethnicity?
What is the Jews’ relationship to God, and to Jesus and the prophets? What accounts for the Jews’ ability to maintain tribal cohesion over more than 2500 years? Why have Jewish communities so often been at odds with their non-Jewish neighbors? Why have Jews been over-represented—in many non-Jewish societies throughout history—in positions of wealth and power?
Why does this over-representation seem to be increasing today? Why is this issue off-limits for discussion in polite company (including the mainstream media and the academy)? Is Jewish tribal cohesion an important factor in the Deep State? And what role does the creation and endless expansion of Israel play in all of this?
These are important questions for anyone who wants to understand world history and current events. Yet as John Cobb, one of the world’s leading Christian theologians, says in his blurb for From Yahweh to Zion: “…we know that there is rather tight censorship with respect to what may be said about these matters without ad hominem response. The fact of Gentile crimes against Jews throughout history is used to justify this censorship, much, but not all, of which is self-imposed. In my view, through their role in this censorship, Jews are paving the way for the rise of anti-Jewish feeling and perhaps much worse.”
From Yahweh to Zion was conceived in the ominous shadow of such censorship. The book is a critical examination of “Jewish questions” that doesn’t shy away from the most controversial topics—notably such Deep State issues as alleged Zionist orchestration of 20th century world wars, the JFK assassination, and 9/11. (Dr. Guyenot agrees with Michael Collins Piper’s thesis that Israel was a prime player in the Kennedy assassinations.) There was no way such a book could ever be issued by a major publisher. It will almost certainly be denounced by Bnai Brith, the ADL, Political Research Associates, and/or other contemporary censors and heresy-hunting inquisitors.
As Dr. Cobb suggests, such denunciation and censorship is counterproductive, at least if its purpose is to stem the tide of anti-Jewish bigotry. More and more people are asking the censors the obvious question: Why won’t you engage in rational debate with people who raise these issues? If they are wrong, why not just refute them? Why do you endlessly insult them and try to shut them up? What have you got to hide?
Dr. Guyenot’s thesis, in a nutshell, is that a tiny Jewish elite, representing a very small fraction of Jews, has hijacked the idea of God and turned it to their own aggrandizement. Over two and a half millennia, this elite has terrorized its own people to enforce their sense of separateness from other groups, garnering wealth and power in the process.
Today, much of the Jewish population neither believes in God nor practices most of the prescribed Jewish rituals. But the terrorizing of Jewish people by their own leadership, the enforced sense of separation from other communities, and the amassing of wealth and power by the Jewish elite whose prime weapon is the adaptation of millennia-old brainwashing processes to today’s secular setting, all continue—with Israel replacing Yahweh as a central focus of worship.
Dr. Guyenot suggests that ordinary Jewish people, perhaps even more than non-Jews, are the biggest victims of their own elite. His book is an invitation to Jews to become aware of the bars of their mental prison, and then step outside into the light.
Gilad Atzmon might agree that the only escape from the Jewish mental ghetto is to stop identifying “as a Jew.” But other free-thinking people who happen to have been born Jewish, including Jeremy Rothe-Kushell, Marc Ellis, and Douglash Rushkoff, might disagree. All three embrace prophetic/iconoclastic readings of Judaism that challenge elites and seek truth and justice.
So who is right? Instead of censorship and slander, let’s have a reasoned dialogue and draw our own conclusions.
See the author's recent interview with Patrick Little: Patrick Little running for Senate to represent USA not Israel