What is Judaism — a religion, or a race?

11 October 2024, by Eric Zuesse

Unlike most if not all other religions, Judaism’s “laws,” which it claims come from “God,” include ones which make it be both a religion and a race. 

A religion is defined by its belief. By contrast, a race is a physical biological category. To define a religion by a biological category is like to define a race by an ideological category — it’s not merely false; it is stupid (poor thinking), as well. But many people do it, heedless to logic (which is basic to any science).

Since Judaism — like all religions — is a religion, what does it believe? To determine this, one must refer to its basis, which for Judaism is the Torah, the first five books of the Christian Bible. Everything else than the Torah — including the rest of the Christian Old Testament, and also including the Talmud by Jewish clerics — is not religious Scripture, from “God,” but religious commentary upon it, from mere humans, and therefore is, for Jews, not from God, but from men who expressed their interpretations of “God’s Word.”

Before a religion has formed, it’s just a group of people, and it becomes a religion only at the time when its allegedly holy and inerrant Scripture becomes canonized by its believers as BEING their Scripture (which, in this case, occurred at some time no later than 164 BCE). Prior to that time (whenever it was), these people might have been tribe(s) or even a nationality, but they had not YET become a religion. They became a religion ONLY when the defining BELIEFS of the group (such as monotheism) became officially stated in, and by, its canonized, allegedly unchangeable (because from an unchangeable God), Scripture. Before their Scripture became canonized, the Jewish religion did not exist as-such.

Zionists are Jews who define Judaism not ONLY by its Scripture, but also by its tribal, actually pre-Judaic, supposedly racial characteristics, from when they were ONLY a group of tribes, who constituted “God’s Chosen People,” so that Zionism is a racialized religion: they define their religion so as to exclude any individuals who aren’t BOTH believers in the Torah, plus descendants of believers in the Torah. ONLY by being a descendant of Jews can a Jew believe that Israel is “my” land. Even many Orthodox rabbis don’t like to talk about this fact, but the Library Journal review of the 1990 book Your People, My People: Finding Acceptance and Fulfillment as a Jew by Choice, noted that this book indicated that “Unlike many religions, Judaism has always discouraged converts, and the obstacles facing a prospective convert are manifold.” And even individuals who nonetheless succeed in proving to a rabbi that they believe in the Torah, are looking forward to raising their children to be Jews. In this way, the faith is intrinsically racist. The only opportunity it allows for the faith’s expansion, since proselytization (or evangelization) into Judaism is discouraged within Judaism (and even some Jews have pointed this fact out), is (Genesis 1:28) “Be fruitful and multiply.” Liberal Jews might refuse to accept that reality, but it (the joint religious and racial character of Judaism) cannot logically be denied — not if one accepts the Torah as being the Word of God.

In this Scripture are, for examples, the following, which all Jews must believe to be history, not myth, or else they cannot BE Jews, but are instead non-Jews, even if their parents had all been Jews:

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Genesis 15:18
"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates."

Deuteronomy 2:16 2:17
"You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. 2:17 You must completely destroy them the Hethite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite as the Lord your God has commanded you."

Joshua 6:21
"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

Samuel 1 15:3
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (Christian Standard Bible)

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For every Jew, those are commands of God, not of any human. Even the Christian Hitler, as a believer in both the Old Testament and the New, believed this, and in his private notes to himself in 1919, just before he entered politics, he referred to the “Bible — Monumental History of Mankind” — in other words, as being (not only in the New Testament but the Old Testament — the entire Bible) “History” instead of myth. Such individuals interpret whatever national constitution exists in their country only insofar as that constitution is consistent with the “Laws of God” in the Bible (and so they will diminish anything that is not consistent with their Scripture).

A great investigative video journalist, Corey Gil-Shuster, went into the West Bank and asked “Jewish Settlers: Why do you steal Palestinian land?”, and most of them said it’s to get back “our land” “given to us by God,” which Palestinians “stole from us,” but a few others, who didn’t seem to care about the morality of the matter anyway, said that all Palestinians whose property was transferred to Jewish settlers had voluntarily sold it to Jews — none of it was “stolen.” An excellent investigative news video report, “Seizing the West Bank: Extremist settlers in power - BBC World Service Documentaries”, showed clearly that violent theft of West Bank land by Jews is, as a matter of policy, supported by Israel’s Government and Army — the BBC actually filmed this being done. So: all of the Jewish settlers there were giving only lies as ‘justification’ for what their Government is doing. If they actually believed those lies, they were thieves who were also fools; if they didn’t, then they were thieves who were also liars. In any case, they were Zionists — racist Jews — regardless whether fools or liars. Both their religion and their race are basic in their thinking.

Some people think that they are Jews, and have both parents who likewise did, but who reject the idea that their “God” ordered Jews to exterminate Palestinians (Arabs in Palestine, many of whom descended from the very same peoples whom the Torah had ordered to be exterminated). These are non-Zionist Jews, but are they really Jews? They reject key laws of Judaism (i.e., from the Torah). Even if they attend synagogues, are they actually Jews? Perhaps their synagogue endorses Zionism, but they themselves don’t endorse Zionism. Are they Jews merely because they pick-and-choose which of God’s commandments to accept? Or is that merely the synagogue’s cheating about how many Jews there actually are, so as to make their numbers seem larger than is actually the case?

Although rabbis (teachers of the Jewish faith) view the Torah to be a work of history instead of a work of myth (not reliable to cite by historians as being credit-worthy evidence for its allegations), historians (as opposed to teachers of Judaism) have disproven much that is in the Torah (as I have disproven much that is in the New Testament), and therefore base their historical reconstructions upon other, more credit-worthy, items of evidence. Consequently, Zionists (supporters of the existing state of Israel) are relying upon the historicity of what is by now well established to be a myth — and an extremely partisan one, as well — and so their “historical” ‘justifications’ are exceedingly shaky, at best, and not worthy to be taken seriously by the International Criminal Court (or any other), except as constituting evidence of what Zionists really believe to be true. In point of fact, on October 9th of 2024, a highly skilled investigative team presented their video news report, “The Killings They Tweeted | An Airwars Investigation”, displaying their findings to the International Criminal Court confirming the allegations by South Africa that the Israeli Government’s operation in Gaza is not targeted to eliminate Hamas as Israel alleges, but is instead genocidal, intentionally targeted to eliminate the 2.3 million Gazans.

All of this is not merely an Israeli operation, but it is an American operation, because almost all of the weapons for it, and much of the support to Israel’s economy — $18 billions in total donated to Israel’s Government from U.S. taxpayers during this year alone — is crucial to the carrying-out of all this theft and genocide. The International Criminal Court will not succeed unless it expands its own targets, to include Joe Biden. But no one expects any better to come forth from Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Both the Israeli Government and the American Government have been lying to the public denying that what is being done to the Gazans is genocide, and no justification has been given by either Government for the numerous statements by Israel’s top officials saying that God gave all this land to “the Jews,” and even citing specific verses in the Torah as authorizing the elimination of Gaza’s residents.

Whether or not the existing International Criminal Court will have any real legitimacy will be determined by what it decides in this already overwhelmingly documented-by-events case — the first large genocide since the one that Hitler and his supporting Christians in Europe perpetrated (based upon the entire Bible) against Jews in Europe during WW2. The land-thefts in the West Bank are in addition to the genocide in Gaza. The horror of the U.S. empire — including its Israeli colony — won’t much longer be able to be ignored by the rest of the world.

Israel was created not only by Zionists but by U.S. President Harry Truman, and both he and they were inspired by the Torah — the first five books of the Christian Bible — to do this. The common myth that the British Government did it is a lie; they were actually against it.

There is a lot of ‘history’ that’s actually not. Scholars have botched it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.