“ISRA-HELL” AND PALESTINE AS THE NEW RELIGION

The good-versus-evil motif is a product of disordered theology. Palestinianism is a religious cult for the unchurched.

EVERY SATURDAY, I CRAFT A SPECIAL, EXTRA-MAGNIFICENT PAID-SUBSCRIBERS-ONLY POST. THIS IS IT.

ALSO … IF YOU ARE IN VICTORIA, I WILL BE SPEAKING AT THE RALLY FOR ISRAEL TOMORROW (SUNDAY, SEPT. 8) AT 2 PM AT THE BC LEGISLATURE.

There is it is again. The sophomoric term “IsraHELL.” Anti-Israel activists use this adolescent term to imply that Israel is the embodiment of evil. Get it? Israel? Hell? Isra-Hell. So astute.

As immature as this is, there’s something deeper at play. Those who use this stupid phrase do not even know they are illuminating the depths of their own disorder.

Antisemites have long depicted Jews as the embodiment of evil, often as the literal devil. We see this routinely in the imagery used in the current Palestine craze, in which Jews (erm, I mean Israelis) are depicted as blood-drinking, fanged vampires.

“Israhell” is the same idea. Just as Jews have been considered the embodiment of evil for generations of Christians and Muslims, today Israel is the embodiment of evil for a generation of post-religious progressive atheists and agnostics. What a coincidence is that?

Put mildly, if you think Israel is the embodiment of evil in a world with no shortage of malevolence, you have a deeply disordered perspective. More to the point, if, by equating Israel with evil, you imply that the Palestinian forces like Hamas are on the side of good, then you really need a morality transplant.

As I touched on last Easter, the anti-Zionist movement is performing a sort of secular crucifixion. Everything we perceive as sinful is dumped on Israel (“colonialism,” “apartheid,” “white shoes after Labour Day”) and then the vessel is crucified.

In recent decades, Canadians (among many others) have experienced massive declines in religious observance. I’m an agnostic, a part of this trend, and I don’t have a problem with that on its face. People should believe (or not believe) whatever they want.

What I do have a problem with is what amounts to a collective mental disorder, a product of post-religious discombobulation passing itself off as political discourse.

What has happened (I’m not a psychiatrist but I’m pretty sure!) is that these ever-so-clever post-religious activists believe they have dispensed with the backward accoutrements of theology. While they go about their lives pretending to be unreservedly freed of the booga-booga of religious indoctrination, they unwittingly demonstrate those very things, which seep out in the form of perverted unintended consequences.

They think they can just declare that they don’t believe in God and all that gobbledygook anymore. But then they assign to Israelis and Palestinians pretty much the exact projections our grandparents assigned to God and the devil.

Oh and, just for good measure, the Jew is the devil. Same as it ever was.

Then they call Israel “Israhell.”

It is so unbelievably obvious it is laughable that the perpetrators can’t see it in themselves.

In the absence of religion, people still need. We need assurances. We need routine, ritual, stability, guidance and many more things that religion provided for generations but which we abruptly abandoned. We need certainties in a world we have created of no moral certainties.

We have so distorted our moral compass that those who perpetrated the beheadings, rapes, immolations and mass murders of October 7 are the good guys and the victims are the bad guys.

I want to be clear here: You don’t need to be religious to understand the difference between right and wrong. But it helps to have someone tell you that you are on the right or wrong path. An atheist of strong character and morality can choose right over wrong. Those without that strength of character might seek out moral guidance and stumble upon a congregation speaking in tongues (“Intifada! Revolution!”) and decide that Hamas is the Jim Jones whose sacramental Kool-Aid they want to drink.