Orthodox Jewish rabbi explains why Judaism and Zionism are incompatible

(LifeSiteNews) — In this Part 4, and more to come, we will continue to extensively document that numerous, especially Orthodox religious Jews, condemn Zionist Israel, its horrific treatment of Palestinians and other non-Jews in the region, and why they call Zionism a heretical, “antisemitic,” “racist-supremacist” ideology.

We, as Christians, know that the Messiah has already come, and His name is Jesus Christ. However, we are called to respect and hope and pray for the conversion of the Jews from whom our saviour was born. We have quoted many anti-Zionist Jews and non-Jewish commentators warning that the more extreme Zionists in control of today’s Israel present a threat to Jews who counter the Zionist worldview, many non-Jews, and to world peace.

However, I should caution that not all Zionist Jews are the same, with some being of much greater concern than others. There is a growing subset in Israel that is alarmed by where they see Israel going, its rapidly and increasingly violent nature, and the genocidal war against children, mothers, and other non-combative Palestinians that violates human rights and Jewish religious law.

I am certain many readers will be astonished to read and see the evidence to follow and wonder why they have not heard any of this before.

That has been my personal experience and that of many LifeSiteNews staff as well. At first, what our research discovered seemed extreme and hardly believable. That is because Westerners have consistently been told a radically different narrative for several decades. For most readers, that would be for their entire life.

Much to our surprise, in addition to what Catholic and other Christian religious leaders in the Middle East have told us, Jewish sources have provided the most astonishing contradictory narratives, facts, and history related to the current conflict.

LifeSiteNews experienced unprecedented challenges in response to our accurate COVID and Ukraine war reporting. On the Israel/Palestine conflict, Israel’s unique religious associations seem to have been the major factor leading to more extensive, disbelieving, condemning criticisms and rejection of the mountain of evidence provided in our articles than we have ever experienced on any issue.

In effect, all the critics have been condemning not LifeSiteNews journalists, but rather the large number of varied persons and irrefutable video evidence from other sources whom we have quoted and included in our reports. Most significant, the critics have even been intolerant and have given no credibility to the Christian sources, and especially the many Jewish sources, used for our reports.

With all the above in mind, from here on in this series we will provide an even more extensive compilation of statements and other evidence from a substantial range of Jews who have been a major source of our confidence in LifeSiteNews’s many articles on this highly emotional issue.

More from Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro

In Part 3, I presented one relatively brief video-recorded talk, Is Jerusalem the Capital of the Jews? by the prominent Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro, along with the full text of that talk, but there are many more.

Following is a second, quite different one, 20,000 Jews denounce Zionism, that I have selected that provides additional information on Zionism. The fact that the talk was given in 2017 does not make it any less relevant today.

As you can see from the lead photo for this article, there are thousands of Jews whom Rabbi Shapiro addressed in that arena. There are numerous rabbis among them. They are representative of a much larger number of orthodox religious Jews in the world who most Americans who rely on mainstream media likely do not even know exist. As the rabbi explains, they are the Jewish world that Zionists despise. Shapiro relates what they all believe, and their applause acknowledges their appreciation.

I strongly encourage you to watch the video and/or read the text excerpts from the talk. I suspect you are not aware of most, if not any, of this. It is quite instructive and reveals the shocking contrast between Israeli Zionism and the views held by many Jews. You will never understand why there is such huge controversy over Israel unless you understand its contrast to many Jews’ own understanding of Judaism, which does not advocate for war, a state of the Jews, forced conscription, terrorism and other violence, oppression of non-Jews, and much more.

Here is a summary of the introductory text on the original video page:

On June 11, 2017, a massive protest took place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. Tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews gathered to protest the Israeli government’s laws relating to the drafting of yeshiva students into their army. In this passionate speech, given in front of thousands of our brethren, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro outlines some of the reasons why serving in the IDF is incompatible with Judaism and Jewish values. This articulate rabbi denounces the anti-semitism inherent in Zionism from its inception.

The Israeli army is not a normal army, with the objective of protecting its citizens. Rather, the IDF is an indoctrination camp which seeks to turn the Jew into a Zionist. The Rabbi’s speech ends with constructive advice for the Israeli government: repeal all the draft laws and leave us be or build more jails because Orthodox Jews will gladly go to jail rather than join the IDF.

Selected extracts from the full text

Nota bene: The rabbi’s reference to “the homeland” is not the state of Israel. It is rather fidelity to the Torah, the spiritual foundation of Judaism.

We’re assembled here this afternoon because the homeland of the Jewish people is under attack. The homeland of the Jewish people is currently attacked by vile enemies who would see it destroyed.

And we’re here this evening to speak up for the defense of the homeland and to protect it from those who seek its destruction. The homeland of the Jewish people is the Torah Hakdoshah.

We had no aspirations to be great warriors with Nobel Prizes or gold medals. We were proud to be pious, scholarly and moral.

There were those who were ashamed. They loved the lifestyle of the anti-Semites. They envied their power, their ruthlessness, their tanks and their planes. They were ashamed that a Jew is a Torah scholar and not a soldier.

They looked at the Jew the same way the anti-Semite did. Ugly, despicable, weak and shameful. They looked at the Jew the same way if we could imagine the way a gorilla would look at a Jew. Pale, weak and worthless.

They were Jewish versions of the anti-Semites. Their solution was Zionism. Its goal, to destroy all that makes the Jews in their eyes so weak, so despised. To destroy all that makes the Jewish people so Jewish.

They diagnosed what they called the Jewish problem, and they decided that the source of the problem is Judaism, the religion itself. If only we could get rid of Judaism and be more like our persecutors, our lives would be so much better. Jewishness was a destructive doctrine that needed to be eradicated.

And the Zionists did their best to eradicate it. They wanted to repeal and replace Judaism, to replace religion with nationalism, to replace the Talmud with tanks, and to change the people of the book to the people of the bomb.

So they obtained a state, and they declared this state to be the nation-state of the Jewish people. They made an army, and they decided that this army is what defends the Jewish people.

But the Jewish people have no state. We have no national language, and there is no army of the Jews.

What they created is a statehood, but it doesn’t possess any aspect of Jewishness or Judaism in any form or matter. The truth is that the state of Israel has as much to do with Judaism and Jewish identity as China or Korea does.

They should stop calling themselves Israel and stop calling themselves a Jewish state because those are lies. They can call themselves whatever they want, but they are not Israel, and they are not the state of the Jews…

For over a hundred years, this assault on our identity has raged, and the Zionists have used many ways and means to repeal and replace Judaism. But the strongest weapon throughout the years that they’ve used was indoctrination, propaganda. And the strongest tool of propaganda is their army.

The Israeli army is not merely a military organization. Israel set up its military to be an indoctrination camp for Zionist ideology. Israel’s army is a church of Zionism.

Ben-Gurion called the Zionist army a “melting pot.” He said it was designed to “clean, refine, and purify” the Jews of their “foreign garbage.”

Imagine if the Belgian army, for example, were to teach its soldiers about Christianity or Islam, and tell them what your priests taught you about Christianity, what your imams taught you about Islam is all wrong.

But when you want to hurt the Torah, we draw a red line in the sand. And if need be, we draw that red line with our own blood.

And to the State of Israel, I have advice. You have two paths in front of you. You can either rescind all the laws, the loopholes, the terms, and that shtick you have that forces the Jews to go through your indoctrination camps. Your second option is to build more jails, because you’re going to need them.

They hated Jewishness and they hated Jews. Zionism is the opposite of Judaism

This is the third, last, and longest but most instructive item involving Rabbi Shapiro for which I will present substantial text excerpts. These crucial comments were made during a significantly longer interview than were each of the previous two talks.

In this case, it is better to read the text than watch the video because of the back-and-forth banter with the hosts that interrupts the rabbi’s teaching.

Although this is from one Jewish Orthodox rabbi, he validly represents what many hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews believe on these issues and much that most such Jews believed for thousands of years. Most of this was not addressed in the previous talk excerpts. Here, you will learn even more critical aspects of how Judaism, as understood by many Orthodox Jews, relates to Zionism and the terrible things going on in Israel that violate many Jewish beliefs.

Understanding is required to sort truth from propaganda and to eventually achieve the saving of many innocent human lives and desperately needed peace.

What Rabbi Shapiro says here explains a great deal about the massive demonstrations and apparent coming civil war within Israel between Zionist factions. It also explains why so many thousands of anti-Zionist Jews, including thousands of rabbis and other Orthodox Jews, have been taking part in ongoing, massive anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses and elsewhere in the United States and in other nations.

On the college campuses, it is said that one-third of the demonstrators are anti-Zionist Jews, but you would never know that from television coverage that deliberately avoids showing the obviously large number of Orthodox Jews participating in the demonstrations. The news media also regularly focus only on the angry, violent Zionist Jews opposing the demonstrators to make it appear that all those opposing Israel’s actions against Palestinians are violent, leftist radicals.

The reality, as we have been told by Orthodox and other non-Zionist Jewish participants, is that U.S. Zionists are constantly provoking the usually peaceful demonstrators to respond to them for the cameras. The public does not know the difference between the legitimate demonstrators and the incredibly vicious Zionists who appear to look like leftist American radicals.

Rabbi Shapiro is very blunt in this interview about the many grave differences between Israeli Zionism and what he says Jews are called to believe and live. He makes it crystal clear that criticizing Israel cannot be considered to be antisemitic. Those who condemn LifeSiteNews reports on Israel should listen to or hear this rabbi who is telling the world why all Jews should be very critical of Zionist Israel. It is a fraudulent, exploitive version of Judaism, according to Shapiro.

Selected excerpts from the interview

[Emphases added]

The Zionist plan was to change the definition of a Jew to a nationality. They stripped Judaism of religious content, left the husk of whatever they could fit into their nationalism. Zionism is its own religion. Artificial Jewish flavoring started creating cultural centers and schools and brainwashing. Zionists had to convince the Jews that you are not what you think you are.

Zionism itself was created as a substitute for Judaism, a replacement for Judaism, and a way to negate Judaism. Jews had no flag. Jews had no national anthem. Jews didn’t even have a national symbol. The Star of David wasn’t a national symbol of Jews. It was a Kabbalistic symbol…

All the types of stereotypes that you find amongst the anti-Semites you find in the original early Zionist writings. Theodor Herzl (The founder of Zionism),was one of these people who really didn’t like Jews.

Nationalism is another name for Zionism, Jewish nationalism. That’s all Zionism is.… The Zionists had to convince the Jews that you are not what you think you are. You are not a people who are enjoined by God to fulfill this religion, these religious laws.

The only thing that united us into being a people is our Torah, our faith.… Everybody knew that the Zionists had to change that … They stole Jewish history. They revised all of Jewish history … They stripped, emptied Judaism of religious content, left the husk of whatever they could fit into their nationalism … it was a social engineering project.

… the borders of the Holy Land are not exactly the borders of Israel. The southern town, Eilat, is not part of our Holy Land. And southern Lebanon, somewhere south of Beirut, is the Holy Land. The occupation is kind of confused about the concept of borders, right? They’re not the best to ask about that.

They (Zionists) couldn’t even decide whether they wanted the Holy Land or somewhere else. They had the Uganda plan, they had other things. And Theodor Herzl, who was the mastermind behind Zionism, he said, “No, listen, guys, we want the Holy Land because remember, this is like identity theft.”

He didn’t use these words. I’m paraphrasing, of course. He said, “For marketing purposes, we need to get the Jews to identify with our movement. So, we’re going to use Jewish symbols, phrases that are familiar, concepts that are precious, and we’re just going to twist them a bit.”

It wasn’t for religious reasons … They wanted the Jews to get together and start a new economy wherever it was … the Orthodox Jews, there was a small amount of Orthodox Jews, very misguided, who thought, mistakenly, that they could kind of exploit the Zionists, that the Zionists will help find a place where the Jews can go where there won’t be any anti-Semitism. As far as ideology and Jewish identity, the rabbis will take care of that.

The Zionists presented themselves to many Jews as simply wanting a practical solution to anti-Semitism. That was propaganda. And the rabbis actually said, “We don’t need the Holy Land. Let’s take Uganda,” because Rabbi Reines was their leader, that was his name, he said, “Because if we’re just looking for a safe place, why do we have to have the Holy Land?”

And Herzl, who was anti-religious, he didn’t like religious Jews. He said, “No, we need the Holy Land because of marketing purposes. We want the Jews to feel a sense of being Jewish, but not as a religion, as a nationality. We want them to have a sense of this is a familiar place, the place they’ve always longed for, but not as a messianic renewal of the world, as a national homeland.” You see, artificial Jewish flavoring and artificial Jewish coloring, that’s what they did.

Ben-Gurion said the Jews don’t have a definition. And Herzl, when they asked Herzl, it was a British committee, what Jewish nationalism is, he said, “Well, you know what a nation is. A nation is a recognizable, cohesive group of people held together by a common enemy.” And they asked Herzl, “Who’s the common enemy to the Jews?” And he said, “The antisemites.” Meaning? – and he wrote in his book, The Jewish State – that we are forced to be a nation. Distress, meaning antisemitism, binds us together.

Israel is the only country in the world that claims that it is not the country of its citizens. It’s the country of the Jews. This is the point that causes the problem. There is no country in the world that claims that it’s the country of people who are not its citizens, never were its citizens, don’t claim to be its citizens, don’t plan on being its citizens.

Netanyahu claims he’s my prime minister. Israel claims to be my state. Israel is the only country like this. Nowhere else. Jonathan Pollard, after he got out of jail and he moved to Israel, he said regarding dual loyalty that all Jews, yes, he would advise

Americans to spy on America for Israel because Jews are loyal to Israel. You see, this is what they want. They want that Jews should identify as Israelis, but Israel is the only such country. And that’s the cause of the problem. You know, this nonsense about anti-Zionism being anti-Semitism that they say.

Palestinians, they tell me like, just give me my lands back. I don’t care what a Jew is or what’s going on. Just give me my lands back. That’s all I want. All I want is my lands. Which is fair, right? It’s fair. That’s a super fair critique from Palestinians, I feel.

Palestinians. They’re people and they’re a country. But there’s another thing over here that’s the problem. It’s an ideology. It’s called Zionism. That ideology needs to be attacked and negated. My solution is negate Zionism.

Instead of all the energy and resources being put into discussing one state solution, two state solution, those discussions go nowhere … We need to sever the connection between Israel and Jews. And that connection in English is called, that glue … is called Zionism.

Christians, we call them evangelicals today in America. We know that there are millions of these evangelicals, and they believe that the Jews are going to return to the Holy Lands and that’s going to pave the way for the coming of their Messiah again. And there are different opinions amongst the Christians. The Jews will either be killed; they’ll convert or some other option. Those are the two main lines, killed or converted. So, these … That sounds like Herzl’s plan, huh?

… a Reverend William Hechler approached Herzl after he saw Herzl’s book in 1890. I think he had a prophecy, or he had some kind of permutations of biblical words that said in 1896 the Christian Messiah is going to come. And that was approximately when Herzl wrote his book. And he came to Herzl that he’s a fulfillment of the prophecy. And he was a very well connected with royalty and heads of state. And he helped Herzl get connected.

There was this Christian movement, only Protestants, not the Catholics, they’re not involved in this, which is why America and the U.K. have much more Christian Zionists and not France and Italy or Greece, right? Because it’s not a Catholic thing. It’s a Protestant thing. Anyway, so they had this idea.

The Jews of course rejected it because, you know, we have a different Messiah than they do, a different religion than they do. The Jews also rejected Zionism because we have a different religion than they do. We do have a Messiah, and they don’t.

Zionists figured guys like Herzl, they’re going to use the Christian Zionists to get a state. They’re going to join forces with them for a common cause. Let’s get the Jews a state. And they did. They worked hard at it together.

Lord Balfour was one of them and the Balfour Declaration. Meantime, Zionists were also using the religious Jews, telling them your religious aspiration to live in the Holy Land, “next year in Jerusalem,” you know, they’re trying to change their mindset. No, without telling them that this is from the Christians, and so they’re using the Christians. They’re using the Jews, the religious Jews … the religious Jewish Zionists said, “let’s use the Zionists.”

These religious Jews made a terrible, horrible mistake then, but they said, let’s use the Zionists to get us a place free of antisemitism. And we’re not going to allow them to give us any ideology or religion. We believe they just want that a Jew shouldn’t be killed. There shouldn’t be any more pogroms. Let’s find a place, you know, everybody was using everybody else. And now we have the mess that we have today where they can’t even define what a Jew is.

It’s a spiritually sensitive land. And Jews were there when we had King David, when we had prophets, when we had a much higher level of fulfillment of Judaism than we do today. And then came the idol worshipers. And God said, as it says in the Bible, if you worship idols, God is going to kick you out of the land.

What if the people there set up an apartheid state and spray it down with skunk water? Would you say that is acting in God’s light? Anything that’s against the Jewish religion, anything, stealing, killing, breaking the Sabbath, eating non-kosher food.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a classic example of … somebody who the land vomits out, as the scripture says. And the land, when a guy like Netanyahu or the Zionists are in the lands, the Holy Land screams in agony. We can’t hear it because we don’t have spiritual enough ears. The land screams in agony every moment that these people are violating Jewish law.

Judaism is much deeper and much more profound and involved than most of the people who are busy with the debate about Zionism will tell you, because for the most part, it’s a political debate.

Palestinians have a right, historical right, all these kinds of things. In Jerusalem, it used to be that, yes, look, there was a golden age of Jews in Muslim lands. There were certain times and places where it was better for Jews, certain times that it was less good.

If you fulfill the seven commandments, you’re closer to God than Theodore Herzl ever was. I’m telling you as a rabbi, a law-abiding average Muslim that doesn’t worship idols, doesn’t kill, doesn’t steal, and fulfills the seven commandments is closer to God than a heretic, anti-God, anti-Jewish guy like Theodore Herzl.

Judaism not an ethnicity. It’s a relationship with God. It’s being deputized into God’s work.

And as you surely know, even before 1948, there were six months of a civil war that took place there. The Arab countries, the neighboring Arab countries could not invade then because it was under the auspices of England, and you’d be starting up with the U.K. And as soon as the mandate ended, then there was the war. But to make a war and have people die for land is just the most ridiculous thing according to Judaism.

But for people to get up and pick up guns and even, you know, the 1967 war, there were Jews that say it was worth it because we got the wall. The wall is holy. Yes, fine. But human beings are much more holy than a wall.… they sacrificed men, women, and children, their own people, even for a wall. What, are you crazy? You know, according to Jewish law, except for three capital sins, we commit the sin rather than put somebody’s life in danger.

The entire Zionist ideology from beginning to end is so antithetical to Judaism. And this is why the Zionists made Zionism, because they knew that Jews didn’t like wars. We would rather run than fight. Jews don’t want anybody to die. If there’s somebody’s chasing us, we’ll run. Does that make me a coward? No, it doesn’t. I’m sorry.

The Bible is full of wars all over the place. Right. But the sites of the wars are not significant to us. They’re not important to us. We don’t name our children after warriors. We never aspired to be warriors. This made the Zionists sick. You know, I once spoke to a Christian minister, and I mentioned this to him. He was talking about the wars and King David. And I said, King David wrote the Psalms. Nowhere in King David’s Psalms will you hear the type of talk that you would hear from other king: I’m going to kill my enemies, I’m going to be the strongest guy; never.

He talks about “God save me from my enemies. God, you do this for me.” And then he says, “One thing I ask of God, it’s only this that I’m going to ask. I want to sit in the house of Lord, all my life. To bask in the splendor of God and to consistently visit God’s domain.” That’s all we wanted to do. And that drove the Zionists crazy.

So they said, we’re going to change all of you, all of us. We’re going to steal your identity. We’re going to tell the world our wars are your wars. Our country is your country. We are the state of the Jews. Our wars are the wars of the Jews. We’re fighting for you. Our prime minister is the prime minister of the Jews. And that is why Zionism is so antithetical, so, so the opposite of Judaism.

We see images and videos coming out of Palestine of settlers literally kicking Palestinians out of their homes. They’re dressed in some sort of Jewish appearing clothing. They present as being very religious Jews. The settlers are like in the olden days, in the days of the Bible, where you had religious Jews who worshiped the Baal idol.

Settlers have many behaviors of Orthodox Jews, but they’re also idol worshipers. They got their ideology like pagan idol worship and German vitalism. And this is where Rabbi Cook got his stuff from, nationalism. And it’s a whole big mix of all sorts of pagan, non-Jewish, nationalist philosophies. And all they did was put a yarmulke on all of it and grow their long payers and say, okay, now we have a new type of Judaism. Absolutely disavow them.

In the next part, excerpts from talks and interviews with other rabbis will be presented. They will cover aspects not addressed or addressed differently than the excerpts from just a few of Rabbi Shapiro’s numerous additional online talks and interviews.

Following the other rabbi’s published comments related to Israel, statements from many other religious and non-religious Jews will be presented, always with links to the original sources.

Zionists label all such outspoken Jews as being “self-hating, antisemitic” Jews, but as you will recognize from the comments and who the persons are, such harsh labelling is irrational. And how can we who quote them and are guided by their instructive comments be reasonably condemned as hateful antisemites for doing that?