As the dusting off of Israel's E1 Plan emphasises, the intended fate of Palestinians in the West Bank is ultimately no different from the fate of Palestinians in Gaza – unless we act
Israel's supposed claim to the land of Palestine is traced back to Jacob (also known as Israel) in the Book of Genesis.
But how many of us have actually read Genesis 25-27, the story of Esau and Jacob, the twin sons of Isaac, himself the son of Abraham who was the recipient of God's promise?
A short synopsis:
As the first born of the twins, Esau was the rightful inheritor of God's promise to Abraham.
Esau was impulsive, but loyal, upright, honest and forgiving.
Jacob was cunning, deceitful and self-seeking.
In the womb, Jacob tries to "steal a march" over Esau, grabbing him by the heel. (This is a reference to Genesis 3:15 "You (the serpent or Satan) shall bruise his (the Son of Man's) heel".
As a young man Jacob takes advantage of Esau's hunger at the end of a long day to blackmail him out of his inheritance. (This is the tale which gives us the expression "Selling one's birthright for a mess of pottage")
As their father Isaac becomes old and infirm with impaired vision, Esau obediently answers his father's request to go out and find venison for a meal. While Esau is doing his father's bidding, Jacob with the help of his mother Rebekah, sets out to deceive his father Isaac in order to receive Isaac's blessing, misrepresenting Jacob's meal of goat meat as Esau's meal of venison and pretending himself to be his brother Esau. Thus Jacob receives the blessing that Isaac had intended for Esau.
In short, Israel's claim to the inheritance of Abraham is based on blackmail, fraud, treachery and deceit.
But fortunately that is not the end of it. Isaac goes on to bless the real Esau, promising that he would be liberated from Jacob's rule:
"But when you grow restless,
you will throw his yoke
from off your neck.”
So the State of Israel can draw no legitimacy from the Bible. Quite the opposite.
Jacob is Israel, and in Jewish tradition Esau is variously taken to represent the Christians or the Edomites who include the Amalekites, who Benjamin Netanyahu has identified with the Palestinians and has promised to completely eliminate from the world - men, women, children and all their animals.
So Jacob is up to his old tricks. But for any religious believer there is the small problem of Isaac's final blessing upon Esau. The blessing which when fulfilled will see the descendants of Esau fully liberated from the corrupt tyranny of the State of Israel.
By educating yourself my friend and staying informed. And then by translating your knowledge into activism and doing whatever possible within your capacity to speak out and demand an end to ties with this illegal and criminal state that is Israel.
I read Jonathan Cook's posts so I am educated and informed. The next step is speaking out. I have done that in various ways. I use my real name here which shows that I stand by what I say. In my community I do the same. Nine out of ten people in my community see the genocide for what it is. (That is not a randomly selected number. I have door knocked to gauge opinion over the issue). I have a gut feeling that four out of five people in the country at large are appalled and horrified by the on-going genocide. But the New Zealand government in Wellington is in thrall to the US and Israel. Any "demands" we make of it will be ignored. So what next? Maybe I should not even need to ask that question.
Colonial settlement land grab will prevail unless the indigenous folks in Israel's surround put them in their place.if they don"t than they get (dis)placed.
MSM..."would like you to digest the news from the West Bank and the news from Gaza as though they are happening in entirely different universes. As though what Israel does to Palestinians in Ramallah is unconnected to what it does to Palestinians in Gaza city."
Which is exactly how the media have been presenting the news to us for decades. Like reports on homeless people so bothersome to nice neighborhood dwellers. Might that have something to do with a trickle up econ system? Like items on wars, like say, in Ukraine. Are there, perhaps, reasons other than just evil Russians? Or Palestinian history; not only the stuff we weren't told about 1948, but way back to WWI when the winning Euro empires carved up the Ottoman Middle East to suit themselves. The Arabs and other locals weren't consulted; they're still unheard.
We've become used to "news" presented as isolated factoids. Much like frogs in water slowly heated, they aren't disturbed until it's too late. Let's hope thoughtful alt. media can break through the noise of infotainment and right wing propaganda. We the unimportant without power need to see we have common cause with others like us world-wide. And for that we need accurate info.
Let us hope that the formation of BRICS countries which is growing ever bigger will shift the paradigm towards a more cooperative type of WORLD, hoping for d-dollarisation and hoping for much greater trading between these countries to leave the West out in the cold. That's probably the only way that this thing will come to some kind of an end, 50 years down the line?
PS to my comment earlier re the Franz Kobler book.
Someone once said, "Israel is about much more than itself." Quite a remark, the more you think about it. It might even make a question on an exam paper for some university course in international politics or the like.
If it's true that "Israel is about much more than itself", how is it so, in what way(s)? Why? How do we think about it? In the largely Christian west is it because of history? Is it even just "Sunday School"?
And is it "about more than itself" in the Arab world? In the specifically Muslim world?
Once again, the massacre of Palestinians still goes on in savagery way whith the vicious indifference of western countries, mainly France, Uk, Italia, US, Belgium, Germany, et cetera. Why meeting such people that make massacre of babies, children and adultes in free way do not brother at all? Why meeting those vicious monsters? In fact the are the same that in second wolrd war, they were playing as if nothing were happened and worse, they did participate by denoucing their neighbors or murdered them on their own to steal their goods and properties as much as they could. So why meeting such people as their silence give a free pass to massacre and steal Palestinans and belongs rightly to them? No reason in fact, i have found none.
Many years ago a friend alerted me to Franz Kobler's little book, "The Vision Was There. A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine" London, 1956. Back then if lucky you could find a copy online at a reasonable price, tho' I doubt if you can now -- I'm told it's long out of print although there's a copy of the complete text (link below and I suggest you ignore the title and content of the outfit publishing the text -- insofar as I've checked it, I think their copy is faithful to the original).
Kobler ( 1882 - 1965) was a lawyer, pacifist, historian and writer.
The original book is just 128 pages. I think the history should be much more widely known, making it clear as it does that Zionism was initially a very Christian thing, and particularly an English and Eurocentric one. (There are, so I read, some 90 million +/- Christian Zionists in the USA but the theoretical backing for their support is actually highly antisemitic in its implications, as I'm sure many here will know: see, e.g., Armageddon, "The Rapture", the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, the alternative being eternal damnation in the pit of Hell.)
So the guilty part played by England with its Balfour Declaration wasn't the start of what became the horror.
Kobler's account begins from the end of the 16th century and the last decades of Elizabethan England in theology and literature, continues with the development of the Restoration Movement, Lord Shaftesbury, then to the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon whose army invaded Palestine and on victory, Napoleon 'issued a Proclamation to "the rightful heirs of Palestine", offering [this much-promised land! -- BR] to "the Jewish nation [sic], their ancestral land ..."
On into the 19th century, Robert Browning, George Eliot et al ... Disraeli ... Laurence Oliphant ... "The vision was there ..." Whose vision, and at what terrible human cost?
Fascinating book as background to the depressing tragedy we've been witnessing.
Thanks for this. I read something somewhere about European Christian Zionism in the 16th century but it's very vague in my mind. I will check this out. But I can't believe there are as many as 90 million Christians in the US I hope not anyway!
Many thanks Kathryn. Yes, it's alarming. I don't know how reliable this site is (it just came up on a quick google): "Estimating the number of Christian Zionists worldwide can be challenging due to the lack of an official definition of the term. However, scholars estimate that there are between 10 million and 20 million Christian Zionists worldwide, with the majority residing in the United States."
"In fact, this plan has been around since the 1990s ...".
Its around a lot longer...it goes back to the original British imperial p£antation modelled on U£ster.
I$ra€£ is the Nato corporate cart€£$ stooge, sta£KKKing hor$€ and decoy duck to misdirect from the City of £ondon/Wa££ $tr€€€t oi£igarch$ and their messianic KKKri$tian Zionists.
The Jews were set up as scapegoat, just as they were told the Auschwitz trains were 'relocating' them to greener pastures. Ye o£de Brits orchestrate more than just their Great Game 'concert of Europe'.
Perhaps you could advise us guilty complicitors on what is possible, what can & should we do? I attend protest rallies & complain to the BBC & other MSM organisations every day. I have just joined Jeremy Corbyn's Party & write letters of support to George Galloway. I am 76 years old, I sing protest songs in a band & if I was 40 years younger I would consider particpating in Direct Action or even forming the Gaza equivalent of the International Brigade. Please advise.
Israel's supposed claim to the land of Palestine is traced back to Jacob (also known as Israel) in the Book of Genesis.
But how many of us have actually read Genesis 25-27, the story of Esau and Jacob, the twin sons of Isaac, himself the son of Abraham who was the recipient of God's promise?
A short synopsis:
As the first born of the twins, Esau was the rightful inheritor of God's promise to Abraham.
Esau was impulsive, but loyal, upright, honest and forgiving.
Jacob was cunning, deceitful and self-seeking.
In the womb, Jacob tries to "steal a march" over Esau, grabbing him by the heel. (This is a reference to Genesis 3:15 "You (the serpent or Satan) shall bruise his (the Son of Man's) heel".
As a young man Jacob takes advantage of Esau's hunger at the end of a long day to blackmail him out of his inheritance. (This is the tale which gives us the expression "Selling one's birthright for a mess of pottage")
As their father Isaac becomes old and infirm with impaired vision, Esau obediently answers his father's request to go out and find venison for a meal. While Esau is doing his father's bidding, Jacob with the help of his mother Rebekah, sets out to deceive his father Isaac in order to receive Isaac's blessing, misrepresenting Jacob's meal of goat meat as Esau's meal of venison and pretending himself to be his brother Esau. Thus Jacob receives the blessing that Isaac had intended for Esau.
In short, Israel's claim to the inheritance of Abraham is based on blackmail, fraud, treachery and deceit.
But fortunately that is not the end of it. Isaac goes on to bless the real Esau, promising that he would be liberated from Jacob's rule:
"But when you grow restless,
you will throw his yoke
from off your neck.”
So the State of Israel can draw no legitimacy from the Bible. Quite the opposite.
Jacob is Israel, and in Jewish tradition Esau is variously taken to represent the Christians or the Edomites who include the Amalekites, who Benjamin Netanyahu has identified with the Palestinians and has promised to completely eliminate from the world - men, women, children and all their animals.
So Jacob is up to his old tricks. But for any religious believer there is the small problem of Isaac's final blessing upon Esau. The blessing which when fulfilled will see the descendants of Esau fully liberated from the corrupt tyranny of the State of Israel.
😡😡😡😡😡
CBC’s complicity:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-171418083
Thanks Jonathan 👏👏👏
The West isn’t just “complacent”. There is a global system profiting off of fear, occupation, war.
How do you propose that we act?
By educating yourself my friend and staying informed. And then by translating your knowledge into activism and doing whatever possible within your capacity to speak out and demand an end to ties with this illegal and criminal state that is Israel.
I read Jonathan Cook's posts so I am educated and informed. The next step is speaking out. I have done that in various ways. I use my real name here which shows that I stand by what I say. In my community I do the same. Nine out of ten people in my community see the genocide for what it is. (That is not a randomly selected number. I have door knocked to gauge opinion over the issue). I have a gut feeling that four out of five people in the country at large are appalled and horrified by the on-going genocide. But the New Zealand government in Wellington is in thrall to the US and Israel. Any "demands" we make of it will be ignored. So what next? Maybe I should not even need to ask that question.
Colonial settlement land grab will prevail unless the indigenous folks in Israel's surround put them in their place.if they don"t than they get (dis)placed.
Wake up
MSM..."would like you to digest the news from the West Bank and the news from Gaza as though they are happening in entirely different universes. As though what Israel does to Palestinians in Ramallah is unconnected to what it does to Palestinians in Gaza city."
Which is exactly how the media have been presenting the news to us for decades. Like reports on homeless people so bothersome to nice neighborhood dwellers. Might that have something to do with a trickle up econ system? Like items on wars, like say, in Ukraine. Are there, perhaps, reasons other than just evil Russians? Or Palestinian history; not only the stuff we weren't told about 1948, but way back to WWI when the winning Euro empires carved up the Ottoman Middle East to suit themselves. The Arabs and other locals weren't consulted; they're still unheard.
We've become used to "news" presented as isolated factoids. Much like frogs in water slowly heated, they aren't disturbed until it's too late. Let's hope thoughtful alt. media can break through the noise of infotainment and right wing propaganda. We the unimportant without power need to see we have common cause with others like us world-wide. And for that we need accurate info.
Let us hope that the formation of BRICS countries which is growing ever bigger will shift the paradigm towards a more cooperative type of WORLD, hoping for d-dollarisation and hoping for much greater trading between these countries to leave the West out in the cold. That's probably the only way that this thing will come to some kind of an end, 50 years down the line?
https://harriseeingred.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/tomorrowisanotherday.mp3
Thank You Jonathan
PS to my comment earlier re the Franz Kobler book.
Someone once said, "Israel is about much more than itself." Quite a remark, the more you think about it. It might even make a question on an exam paper for some university course in international politics or the like.
If it's true that "Israel is about much more than itself", how is it so, in what way(s)? Why? How do we think about it? In the largely Christian west is it because of history? Is it even just "Sunday School"?
And is it "about more than itself" in the Arab world? In the specifically Muslim world?
Once again, the massacre of Palestinians still goes on in savagery way whith the vicious indifference of western countries, mainly France, Uk, Italia, US, Belgium, Germany, et cetera. Why meeting such people that make massacre of babies, children and adultes in free way do not brother at all? Why meeting those vicious monsters? In fact the are the same that in second wolrd war, they were playing as if nothing were happened and worse, they did participate by denoucing their neighbors or murdered them on their own to steal their goods and properties as much as they could. So why meeting such people as their silence give a free pass to massacre and steal Palestinans and belongs rightly to them? No reason in fact, i have found none.
Many years ago a friend alerted me to Franz Kobler's little book, "The Vision Was There. A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine" London, 1956. Back then if lucky you could find a copy online at a reasonable price, tho' I doubt if you can now -- I'm told it's long out of print although there's a copy of the complete text (link below and I suggest you ignore the title and content of the outfit publishing the text -- insofar as I've checked it, I think their copy is faithful to the original).
Kobler ( 1882 - 1965) was a lawyer, pacifist, historian and writer.
The original book is just 128 pages. I think the history should be much more widely known, making it clear as it does that Zionism was initially a very Christian thing, and particularly an English and Eurocentric one. (There are, so I read, some 90 million +/- Christian Zionists in the USA but the theoretical backing for their support is actually highly antisemitic in its implications, as I'm sure many here will know: see, e.g., Armageddon, "The Rapture", the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, the alternative being eternal damnation in the pit of Hell.)
So the guilty part played by England with its Balfour Declaration wasn't the start of what became the horror.
Kobler's account begins from the end of the 16th century and the last decades of Elizabethan England in theology and literature, continues with the development of the Restoration Movement, Lord Shaftesbury, then to the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon whose army invaded Palestine and on victory, Napoleon 'issued a Proclamation to "the rightful heirs of Palestine", offering [this much-promised land! -- BR] to "the Jewish nation [sic], their ancestral land ..."
On into the 19th century, Robert Browning, George Eliot et al ... Disraeli ... Laurence Oliphant ... "The vision was there ..." Whose vision, and at what terrible human cost?
Fascinating book as background to the depressing tragedy we've been witnessing.
Here's the text
https://www.britam.org/vision/Kobler.pdf
Thanks for this. I read something somewhere about European Christian Zionism in the 16th century but it's very vague in my mind. I will check this out. But I can't believe there are as many as 90 million Christians in the US I hope not anyway!
Many thanks Kathryn. Yes, it's alarming. I don't know how reliable this site is (it just came up on a quick google): "Estimating the number of Christian Zionists worldwide can be challenging due to the lack of an official definition of the term. However, scholars estimate that there are between 10 million and 20 million Christian Zionists worldwide, with the majority residing in the United States."
https://christianeducatorsacademy.com/how-many-christian-zionists-are-there-shocking-facts-revealed/#Demographic_Statistics_and_Regional_Breakdowns
There's more on the site about what Christian Zionism is (tho' I've not read it all myself yet).
"In fact, this plan has been around since the 1990s ...".
Its around a lot longer...it goes back to the original British imperial p£antation modelled on U£ster.
I$ra€£ is the Nato corporate cart€£$ stooge, sta£KKKing hor$€ and decoy duck to misdirect from the City of £ondon/Wa££ $tr€€€t oi£igarch$ and their messianic KKKri$tian Zionists.
The Jews were set up as scapegoat, just as they were told the Auschwitz trains were 'relocating' them to greener pastures. Ye o£de Brits orchestrate more than just their Great Game 'concert of Europe'.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399430/balfours-shadow/&ved=2ahUKEwjz2qujhY2PAxVFUUEAHSGhCF8QFnoECFQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0NZuI0c4BDe-H8nTNIqj5n
Perhaps you could advise us guilty complicitors on what is possible, what can & should we do? I attend protest rallies & complain to the BBC & other MSM organisations every day. I have just joined Jeremy Corbyn's Party & write letters of support to George Galloway. I am 76 years old, I sing protest songs in a band & if I was 40 years younger I would consider particpating in Direct Action or even forming the Gaza equivalent of the International Brigade. Please advise.
"Ultimately it led to Hamas’ break-out on 7 October 2007, and Israel’s genocidal response."
I believe you meant 7 October 2023.