Бога нет / There Is No God (2023)

Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f1.4 (1970)
Film: Cinestill BWXX (Kodak 5222) @ ISO 200
Kjemi: Xtol (stock / 8 min. @ 21°C)

- Here follows an interview with well-known Israeli anti-occupation, peace- and human rights activist Yossi Gurvitz, who sadly passed away in January 2023. In this interview you will be presented with some unpleasant facts about Judaism and what is actually going on in the head of Israel´s extremist religious zionists.

This foreboding interview was done in 2012, and you should take note about one important book mentioned: The genocidal King´s Torah, published by extremist settler rabbi Yitzhak Shapira (b. 1966) in 2009. Shapira has 12 children and lives in the illegal settlement of Yitzhar, just south of Nablus, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.

Yitzhar is a veritable religious zionist extremist hub from where Yitzhak Shapira these days are peddling his latest books on Hamas, and especially targeting and exploiting gullible American Christian Zionists for influence and money. (<— Please watch this sick livestream with Shapira from USA December 27, 2023)

Apparently, Yitzhak Shapira is not extreme enough for the US State Department´s «visa restriction policy targeting individuals believed to have been involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank, including through committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities. Immediate family members of such persons also may be subject to these restrictions.» [Antony Blinken: Announcement of Visa Restriction Policy - December 5, 2023]

Yossi Gurvitz: When Israel is Mighty (2012)

When Israel is Mighty
an interview with Yossi Gurvitz

Now, we all know what rabbis say is the origin of Judaism: Moshe passed the Torah down to the elders, the elders passed the Torah down to the prophets, etc., all the way down to the Talmud, and there were no changes. The central motif of the Jewish understanding of history is that there were no changes [in the religion]. In other words, what the rabbis are saying now are merely minor refinements of what the rabbis had said during the time of the ‘Elders’ - the time of the Mishnah and the Talmud. Now first of all, the problem with this version of history is that it is completely baseless. And second of all, that it has a few historical problems, and these historical problems continue to this day, due to the fact that Judaism as a religion has been frozen in time for the last 1800 years. Generally speaking, Rabbinical Judaism, as it appears in the Talmud - unlike what is generally taught in secular schools - the source of Judaism is not the Bible. The source of Judaism is the Talmud. The people who wrote the Talmud are the ones who decided what books would be included in the Biblical canon. What they decided wouldn´t go in - didn´t go in. So for example, while the Catholic Church included the Books of the Maccabees in its version of the canon, Judaism did not preserve them, and in fact only the Greek version of them was preserved. Whether there were ever Hebrew or Aramaic versions of them is an interesting question, but only Christianity preserved them. The Book of Judith. The Book of Tobias. Many other books, mostly dealing with the Jews of the Diaspora didn´t make it into the Jewish Biblical canon, and were only preserved by Christianity.

Now, the Judaism that preceded Rabbinical Judaism was pretty much erased from history. In other words, there´s not enough information to know what happened then. We know there were Sadducees, there were Pharisees - the Pharisees are the Rabbinical Jews - there were Essenes - we don´t know anything about them for certain, and the reason we don´t know anything about them for certain is that when their enemies were victorious, the Pharisees established more than 10 religious holidays to celebrate their victories over the Sadducees, they simply erased them from history. So you have to eke a fragment [of information] out of a fragment [of information], so you can say, «Maybe it was like this» or «Maybe it was like that» - it´s impossible to know what really happened. What we do know is this: From very early on, Rabbinical Judaism is a Judaism that hates humans. It defines only Jews as humans - only Jews who believe in the religion as humans. Okay, let´s get this exactly right: It defines only Jews who believe in the religion and are men - as full humans. And everyone else is some level of ‘other’, that must be pushed aside, or, in extreme cases, destroyed. Rabbinical Jewish law does not prohibit - okay, that´s not accurate - Rabbinical Jewish law prohibits the killing of a non-Jew, but it does not punish a person for doing so. In other words, if you kill a Jew, even a Jewish woman, even the slave of a Jew - and here it is important to note that Orthodox Judaism has never abolished slavery - then there´s a penalty you have to pay. It could come to execution, or it could be a fine. They didn´t have jails. But if you kill a non-Jew then you´re guilty, but there is no penalty. God will punish you. And that is - how shall I put it? - A bit problematic. When you say something is a crime, but there´s no punishment for committing it, then it´s not really a crime. That´s the Talmud. When you come to the writers of later exegesis, especially the Shulchan Aruch (1565), by that point, he is already saying that there are situations where you can kill a non-Jew with impunity. Of course, it´s written in the 16th century, after the expulsion [of all Jews] from Spain [in 1492 C.E.], so he has to write what he wants to say in coded language. So he calls them ‘idolaters’. But just so you know, there weren´t any [pagans] left in that part of the world [by that point], not in Europe, and not in the Muslim world. So he calls them ‘idolaters’ or other such terms, but everyone knows who he´s talking about [non-Jews]. The worst case, in my opinion, is the case of Maimonides (1138-1204), who decrees, first of all, he decrees that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a 3-year-old girl. That age of consent is - problematic. And second of all, he decrees that if a Jew rapes a three-year-old non-Jewish girl, then she must me executed. Her, not him - because she tempted him to sin. And for this reason, you have to treat her like an animal that puts obstacles in a person´s way, and he quotes some verse about a bull or something like that.

And the rabbis know that these parts of the religion that are misanthropic, that are discriminatory to non-Jews - pose a problem for them. Because if they try to implement them , there are some rules that are very unpleasant, like that three-year-old girl we were just talking about; if they try to implement them - there will be a pogrom. So to avoid that situation, the Talmud defines two different states of reality. There´s one called ‘Darkei Shalom’ [Peaceful Ways]. In other words, «This is the actual religious law, this is how you are supposed to act. However, since it would cause a huge mess, and people will die, so due to ‘peaceful ways’, you don´t act that way». Now, until what point does the ‘peaceful ways’ rule still apply? Just as long as the other situation does not exist, which is «When Israel is Mighty». That´s when there is a Jewish regime. It is independent, and it is merciless, it can do what it likes. Under those circumstances - it´s all over, you go back to the letter of the law. No more ‘peaceful ways’, no more nothing. Now, when you think about Jewish history, lots of people talk about the Hasmonean Wars (67-63 BC), which was pretty much one of the only times that Jews wielded weapons, and they think about what the Hasmoneans did to the Hellenized Jews [who assimilated Greek culture]. Which was to make them extinct, to destroy them. A small genocide. And I remind people of this frequently, every time Hanukkah rolls around. But they didn´t stop there. They embarked on a campaign of looting and conquest, and at the beginning, during their first 20 years, wherever they arrived, they would destroy the local temples. It was prohibited for a place that was under Jewish rule to have a pagan temple. That´s what we´re talking about.

They also forced the Edomites to convert to Judaism on pain of death. It was a forced conversion. Something we learn the [Spanish] Inquisition did later on. They took people and told them: «Either you´re dead, or you´re converting to Judaism». And things only got worse from there. Now, when religious zionists look at reality, they say: «We´ve got a state. We´ve got weapons. We´ve got a Jewish army. This hasn´t happened for 2,000 years. What this means is that God wants us to bring about the Messiah, that God wants us to build the Temple.» They skip over all of the conditions that are imposed by the Talmud on what a Messiah must be, and they go back to Maimonides. And Maimonides says, «There is no difference between our time and the time of the Messiah, other than the subordination to kingdoms.» In other words, the only difference between the time of Maimonides - he died in 1204 - and the time of the Messiah, is who is subordinate to whom. Are the Jews subordinate to ‘kingdoms’, to other nations? Or can they subordinate other nations? And that is how Maimonides begins his Book of Kings. He explains what the rules are for a king, what a king can do. It emerges from the belief that, yes, there can be a king. You don´t have to first have a temple. You don´t need God to come down from the sky and point at someone and say, «That´s the Messiah». You can have a king, and if he´s victorious, then he´ll also be the Messiah. And then you look at what religious zionists are doing about this. They want a Messiah. They want him now.

There must be cleansings. Religious law prohibits contact with non-Jews. Of course, the Kosher laws prohibit you from eating with them. Other laws forbid you from treating them fairly. You are forbidden to return a lost item to a non-Jew - except in order to ‘keep the peace’. There is no prohibition on stealing from a non-Jew - except in order to ‘keep the peace’. You can´t say «Hello» to them - unless there is no alternative. And so on and so forth. There are all kinds of prohibitions that are entirely psychotic, that are based on a religion of vengeance. Religious zionists have a serious problem with the fact that there are any non-Jews here. The Land of Israel is supposed to be only for Jews. So, ironically, they would manage to get along with the Muslims, more or less, if we weren´t involved in a military conflict with them. Because according to Judaism, Muslims are not idolaters. Muslims believe in one God. They don´t have idols, they don´t have statues, they don´t have anything like that. So ironically, during the Medieval Era, Jews got along better with Muslims than with Christians. But what can you do? We conquered a territory populated mainly by Muslims, and the Muslims are fighting us - so those defenses fall away.

And look, now they are starting to talk about genocide. You have the [book] ‘Torat Hamelech’ [The King´s Torah], which tells that you can kill children if there is a reason to believe that one day they could cause harm. Now, if you killed someone´s entire family and left only him alive, he will indeed have a reason to cause harm. If you stole his lands, turned him into a refugee, tossed him to Jordan or Lebanon - he will indeed have a reason to cause harm. Many people said that the book´s arguments are not sound according to religious law, and so on and so forth, but no-one really tackled it head-on.

And it´s no wonder that it became a best-seller. Because in general, what religious zionists actually want is for the Land of Israel to be for Jews only. Now the situation for the Christians, on the other hand, will be really bad. [According to Judaism], they are idolaters, and you have to kill them, even if they do not resist Jewish rule. In Jerusalem, religious seminary students have a despicable habit: They urinate or defecate on churches. If you go there and talk to the church staff, you´ll hear it from every church. Spitting on clergymen in the street is something that happens regularly. If the priest has the gall to hit the person back, to slap him or something similar, then he is deported, quietly. They cancel his residence permit in the country. If you want to justify a pogrom, all you have to do is say the words «missionary threat». And from that perspective, Christianity, which is the historical arch enemy of Judaism, is going to get a serious beating once the religious zionists are in power. The Christian Fundamentalists who send them money apparently don´t understand what they´re dealing with. But you know, it´s really a case of ‘a pox on both your houses’.

Taken in: Norway / Trøndelag / Ila (show map)

Taken on: November 1, 2023

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