And no, there are not just two types of people in Israel/Gaza

Eric Lee

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Apr 5, 2024

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To define terms: Zionists are politicized Jews; Islamists are politicized Muslims. I think Israel should be dissociated, should cease to exist — and 49 Muslim countries too — along with another 145 countries for good measure. Death to the fascist political insects who prey upon the blood of the people. Or not.

“It [peace] had set a truce to the bloodshed, but it had done so only to open a more subtle and ultimately more destructive phase in the traditional struggle of the sovereign states. The existence of independent sovereign states IS war…, and only an elaborate mis-education blinded the world to this elementary fact.” — H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, 1933

For 75k years, peace has been the interval between ever worse bloodshed. We modern humans, sovereign individuals who would seek to live in sovereign communities all, have been elaborately mis-educated to be mis-taken about everything. The condition of being mis-educated political animals is non-viable.

Okay, but what percentage of Muslims, Christians, and Jews are Zionists?

Of the Jewish population aged 20 and over, 44% of Jews self-identify as secular, 21% as traditional but not very observant, 12% as traditional and observant, 12% as religious, and 11% as ultra-Orthodox.

According to a poll by the NGO Hiddush published in September 2019, 58% of Jewish citizens do not affiliate with any religious stream, 18% are “Zionist Orthodox,” 12% are “ultra-Orthodox” (including 2% “Zionist ultra-Orthodox”), 7% “Reform,” and 6% “Conservative.”

I couldn’t find a Palestinian or Hindu source, but today it looks like that in Israel, Jews are 73.6%, ethnic Arabs are 21.1%, with non-Jewish, non-Arab making up 5.7%. If 20% of Jewish citizens are Zionists, then 15% of all Israelis are Zionists who are forcing the democratic government of Israel to pretend to be trying to destroy the Hamas leadership/autocratic party (for some reason) as a cover for genocide. I wonder how many Israelis solders know they are there to kill civilians? Or maybe I don’t know that that is why they are there (maybe you don’t either).

So, what percentage of Palestinians are Zionist? I’m guessing there are some, but let’s say <1%. What percentage are Muslim? Per Wikipedia:

Today, Islam is a prominent religion in both Gaza and the West Bank. Most of the population in the State of Palestine are Muslims (85% in the West Bank and 99% in the Gaza Strip)…. , non-denominational Muslims constitute 15% of the Palestinian Muslim population.

And the 1% in Gaza are Christians. There is a zero tolerance policy for Jews being in Gaza, much less living there. More Palestinians (21% who have full voting rights, more than the 14% in 2015 graphic) live in Israel than Zionists (15% who also have voting rights). I’m a Jew. I want to live in Gaza. I could pass for a Christian, but could not, would not even under penalty of death.

What percentage of Palestinians are Islamists? One 2003 source noted 42% were, up form only 15% in 1996, but that was then, this is now. Hamas is a radical Sunni Islamist group. It rules as an autocracy, has since 2007. If you are one of the 1% Christian population, you wouldn’t be believed if you said you want to live in an Islamist state under Sharia Law, but I’d never bother asking Pew to take a poll of the 99%. About 80% of schools are Islamic. Only the rich can send their children to private schools to maybe not be schooled in Islam.

There is one difference between Zionists and Islamists. Zionist want to live in a country only having Jews in it (to feel safe — secular Jews just want a country they can, as a majority, feel safe from the government in). If you want to know what Islamists want… ask them. If I told you, I’d mark myself as an Islamophobe who wants to kill brown babies and would have to be enslaved (for my benefit so I’d know how it feels) when the revolution comes.

But mentioning facts should be allowed. Some 27 countries (including most in the Middle East-North Africa region) officially enshrine Islam as their state religion. And Muslims are the majority in 49 countries. There is one Jewish state and one country where Jews are a majority.

As early as 605 BCE, Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted unto death. Antisemitism was also practiced by the governments of many different empires (e.g. Roman empire) and the adherents of many different religions (e.g. Christianity), and it was also widespread in many different regions of the world (e.g. Muslim Empires where infidels who paid jizyah could prosper to pay more). Jews were commonly used as scapegoats for tragedies and disasters such as in the Black Death Persecutions, the 1066 Granada Massacre, the Massacre of 1391 in Spain, the many Pogroms in the Russian Empire, and the tenets of Nazism prior to and during World War II, which led to The Holocaust and the murder of more Jews than denialists think.

To dial out a few years from the bleeding edge of the news, it is not all about Zionists provoking Islamists to behave badly (e.g. Oct 7). Over a 42 year period, per one study, Islamist attacks (e.g. Oct 7) have occurred all over the world. With all due admission of undercounting, at least 48,035 Islamist attacks took place worldwide in the 42 year period and caused the deaths of at least 210,138 people. And, drum roll, the majority of Islamist attacks (89.5%) were in Muslim countries and the victims were mainly Muslims (incidental, e.g. in bombings, or of the ‘wrong’ kind).

In 2014, six jihadis from several countries attacked a school in Pakistan and murdered 145 people, 132 of whom were children. They burned one teacher alive in front of her students and then killed all the children they could. They didn’t take any hostages. They had no list of demands. They intended only to die to achieve martyrdom, and they did.

By all accounts, the six were good people. They just truly believed that the Creator of the Universe wanted them to kill unbelievers (kāfirs). The children of unbelievers, not yet having been turned into kāfirs, went to Paradise, so to kill them was to prevent them from going to Hell.

You kāfirs just don’t get it. Human life on this planet is only a tiny, meaningless fragment of existence. Our real destination is the Hereafter. We don’t believe it exists, we know it does. Death is not the end of life, but the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this one. Paradise is for those of pure hearts and all children have pure hearts, have not sinned yet.… They had not yet been corrupted by their kāfir parents. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise where they will be loved more than you can imagine. They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. Allah Almighty says Himself in Surah Al-Imran [3:169–170] that they are not dead. You will never understand this. If your faith is pure, you will not mourn them, but celebrate their birth into Paradise. [I couldn’t make this up; I did edit this account for brevity.]

The six did not have their homeland occupied by Jews, nor were their women raped by Jewish jihadists before being killed at climax.

Kāfirs just don’t get it.

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The Conflict in the Levant, Now and a Little While Ago

“ This whole thing [in the Levant or pick any other region] was bad from the start.”

Which makes me wonder about the start. If there was a misstep, maybe we could stop and try a different step. So, start from now and page back in a region that, before nation states, was called:

By adaptive dispersal, humans first arrived in the Levant about 2 million years ago. About 100 kya (thousand years ago) our subspecies dispersed into the Levant as migrants from Africa to displace Neanderthal who moved north to cooler regions they were better adapted to. But the region cooled and Neanderthal moved back 90 kya and stayed until 60 kya when things favored the subtropical apes who moved back into the Levant, but coexisted as the millennia passed along a common moving line. They were normal animals.

Things were going pretty well, considering, until an expansionist form of H.s. sapiens (us) blew into town to “displace” all other forms of hominin on their way throughout Eurasia and beyond to do the same worldwide (not to mention 176 species of megafauna they talked into going extinct or millions of lesser species). They started having their way in the Levant about 52 kya, but their expansionistic way began in Africa about 75 kya because it is written… on all the Y chromosomes of all modern men, which would make 75–76 kya the distal start per archaeogenetic data.

But back to 0 kya (I looked into this Oct. last year for some reason, but don’t remember why). A political entity, established in Gaza in 1973 as a religious charity (associated with the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood), arose in 1987, as part of the First Intifada. Hamas grew in numbers and power, and took control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in a coup d’etat following a civil war in 2007. Since then, it has run Gaza as a de facto autocratic and one-party state. Many/some “Palestinians” do not identify with Hamas or their “Palestinian state” just as many/some Jews do not identify with Zionism.

Look beyond the details to see the same story of expansionist humans contending. For the start time, keep going down the list to 37.

1. Hamas rules the Gaza Strip (2007-present).
2. Before Hamas the Fatah party ran Gaza 2005–2007.
3. Before Fatah the area came under Israeli military occupation following the 1967 Six-Day War and they administered the territory until 2005 when Fatah, rival party to Hamas, attempted to manage the area as a Palestinian state of, by, and for Palestinians (no Jews allowed).
4. Before the Israeli military occupation (Egypt lost the Six-Day War), the area was ruled by the United Arab Republic (UAR), a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 until 1971 and administered by an Egyptian military governor since 1959.
5. Before UAR the area was claimed by the All-Palestine Government, established by the Arab League in 1948. The All-Palestine Government was managed under the military authority of Egypt, functioning as a puppet state, i.e. no “Palestinians” were asked to run the show by the Arab League.
6. Before the Egyptian All-Palestine Government’s puppet rule, the modern state of Israel arose to the north and east of the area that was occupied by the United Kingdom (1918–1948) as decreed by the League of Nations after WWI (somebody had to administer the area), the rule was by “the British mandate.” which was not a Palestinian state (note that there was never a Palestinian state before 2005).
7. Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922).
8. Before the Ottoman Empire there was the Islamic Mamluk Sultanate, an Islamic state that ruled Egypt, Syria, and parts of Anatolia, Upper Mesopotamia, and the Hejaz from 1250 to 1517. The Mamluks were a class of slave warriors who seized power in Egypt in 1250.
9. Before the Islamic Mamluk Sultanate there was the Ayyubid dynasty established by Saladin in 1171.
10. Before The Ayyubid Sultanate, Godfrey of Bouillon, a Christian and a pre-eminent leader of the First Crusade, conquered the area in 1099 on behalf of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.
11. Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid Caliphate that also ruled much of North Africa from 909 to 1171 CE.
12. Before the Fatimid Caliphate there was the Byzantine Empire (395–1453 CE).
13. Before the Byzantine Empire there was the Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE).
14. Before the Roman Empire there was the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE).
15. Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid Empire (312–64 BCE).
16. Before the Seleucid Empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon (336–323 BCE).
17. Before the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian Empire (550–330 BC).
18. Before the Achaemenid Empire there was the Babylonian Empire (550–330 BCE).
19. Before the Babylonian Empire there was the Kingdom of Judah (930 BCE–c. 587 BCE).
20. Before the Kingdom of Judah there was the Kingdom of Israel aka the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel (1047 BC to 930 BC).
21. Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was Ramesses III of Egypt who built a monument after driving out the Peoples of the Sea (c. 1194 BC) .
22. Before Ramesses III of Egypt was the Late Bronze Age collapse Sea Peoples who occupied the area (c. 1206–1150 BCE).
23. Before the Sea Peoples the region operated as a colony of the New Kingdom of Egypt as a source of slave labor (16th–11th centuries BCE) except during the New Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, lasting 405 years, 1069 BCE — 664 BCE.
24. Before the New Kingdom of Egypt was an Egyptian-ruled colony the Middle Kingdom (2050–1710 BCE) used as a source of slave labor except for the Middle Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, lasting 100 years, 1650 BCE — 1550 BCE.
25. Before the Middle Kingdom the area was used as a source of slave labor by the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BCE) except for the Old Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, lasting 126 years, 2181–2055 BCE.
26. Before the Old Kingdom of Egypt were the Akkadians (2500–500 BCE) and assorted Canaanite kingdoms, a semitic people whom the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians enslaved.
27. Before the Akkadians were the Early Bronze Age (3300–2000 BCE); “Old Syrians”.
28. Before the Old Syrians was the Kish civilization or Kish tradition, or the early East Semitic era starting in the early 4th millennium BCE ending when the Akkadians took the region (the Levant).
29. Before the Kish was the Ghassulian culture of the region, the first Chalcolithic culture of the Levant 5600 BCE. People pre-history are known only through archaeology sites and so whether they ended because they exceeded carrying capacity or they were conquered may be unknown as is what name they called themselves.
30. Before the Ghassulians were the Harifian hunter-gatherer cultures (which lasted from 8500 to 7500 BCE)
31. Before the Harifians were Isnan and Helwan hunter-gatherer cultures of Egypt (which lasted from 9000 to 4500 BCE).
32. Before the Isnans and Helwans were the Natufian culture (12,500–9,500 BCE) who founded the first sedentary settlements, supporting themselves from fishing and the harvest of wild grains prior to transitioning to low intensity agriculture.
33. During the Natufian period, pastoralists from the southern region of the Fertile Crescent passed through the Levant with goats on a back to Africa return of the expansionist form of humans about 11,000 years ago. Some late Natufians adopted goats and grain agriculture.
34. Before the Natufians were the Kebaran culture (18,000 to 10,500 BCE) associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog.
35. Before the Kebarans were the Halfan culture of Egypt (c. 24,000 — c. 17,000 BCE).
36. Before the Halfans were the Levanto-Aurignacian Ahmarian culture, lasting from 39,000 to 24,000 BCE, who spread (rapidly expanded) widely out the the Levant.
37. Before the Levanto-Aurignacian Ahmarians were the the Boker Tachtit Upper Paleolithic culture, from 52,000 to 50,000 BCE, as out of Africa migrants whose culture was that of aggressive expansionists (omniscient conquerors, aka modern humans).
38. Before the Boker Tachtit Upper Paleolithic culture were the Neanderthal Levalo-Mousterian culture who occupied a cooling Levant 60,000 BCE who were exterminated as a subspecies by c. 42,000 BCE.
39. Before the Mousterians were the first out of Africa K-strategist Homo sapiens sapiens who displaced Neanderthals 90,000 BCE to 60,000 BCE.
40. Before H.s. sapiens left Africa 100 kya as migrants was another subspecies of Homo sapiens, H.s. neanderthalensis whom modern expansionist humans typically fail to view as human. Between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago there was gene and meme flows between Neanderthal and African populations of H. sapiens. For over a hundred thousand years the two subspecies coexisted in the Levant without genocidal contending…. Future humans could too, but not as the aggressive expansionist form of humans that 99.999% of modern humans are.
41. Before H.s. neanderthalensis was Homo sapiens, aka Homo sapiens heidelbergensis whom most modern humans fail to view as the species they are a subspecies of together with H.s. denisova and an unnamed West African subspecies. Heidelberg Man was the first H. sapiens who evolved from the East African form of Homo erectus ergaster about 1 million years ago who occupied the Levant on their way to occupying Eurasia and becoming Neanderthal and Denisova subspecies while those in East Africa evolved into H.s. sapiens about 375k years ago.
42. Before H. sapiens (Heidelberg Man) in the Levant was H. erectus ergaster who had spread from East Africa 1.75 million years ago.
43. Before H. erectus ergaster was Homo erectus who as a K-strategist left Africa and spread widely, including the Levant, about 2 million years ago.
44. Before Homo erectus there were no campfires and no humans in the Levant. But there were plants and other animals, more than since expansionist human domesticants with livestock came to the area to contend after the Natufians were made to go away by competing agrarian cultures, goat cultures, later cattle cultures/fossil fueled cultures, and their history of aggressive contending, taking, and killing.
45. Before humans and vertebrates, the Levant (sometime before 650 mya during the Cryogenian period, there was a Snowball Earth event lasting 15 million years) was covered in ice and there was peace among the sponges and jelly-like creatures in the sea (and eubacteria and archaeons).

SUBNOTE TO FILE 11/8/2024

Confessions of an Islamistophobe: As a thought experiment/conjecture I imagined being told that my new neighbor could be a Jew or Muslim (i.e. a Semite). I got to pick one.

As I’m not antisemitic, I would have no basis to choose. I could (would) guess Jews would (Jew being often an ethnic identity) be more likely to be secular (e.g. an atheist) than a Muslim (one who self-identifies as ‘Muslim’ is likely to be thinking of a religious distinction than ethnic).

And given the value Jewish culture places on ‘learning’, a Jewish neighbor would be more likely than an average human to have more formal education. But there are plenty of secular citizens with formal education, so a Muslim neighbor could be a flip of the coin better, so I would refuse to play the game.

But if told my new neighbor could be a Zionist or an Islamist, what I know about their respective ideology would provide a basis for having more concerns for one than the other. A full-on Zionist and proud of it neighbor would be no basis for concern, i.e. they would be no more likely to kill me than a KKK member, even if I was black.

But Islamist ideology is an existential threat to kafirs like me, especially an atheist, Quran quoting one who fails to see Muhammad as al-Insān al-Kāmil. Muhammad would not make my Top 10 Polymaths list. But if I was easily distracted and tasked to come up with a Top 10 Psychopaths list, Stalin would have to be considered. I would not want my Islamist neighbor to know what my assessment of Muhammad is. Telling a Zionist neighbor what my assessment of Abraham, if asked (or not), would cause me no concern. I might even name my dog Isaac at risk of being an asshole neighbor, but I doubt my son would be killed.