Well Well Well

Virginia Guiffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl was published worldwide this week, and although I’m yet to read it, the news which it has broken is travelling like wildfire. When YouTube deleted my account for posting this comment some weeks ago now:

Trump is covering up a lot more than just a sex scandal.
Exhibit A: Donald Trumps’s tangled web of intrigue with the FBI and the KGB goes all the way back to the 1980s. Appointing Patel was just the last step in getting the FBI in his pocket, which began with replacing Comey with Barr.
Exhibit B: corruption was rife at the MCC where Epstein was held after his arrest. He died around 3am, guards found him at 6:33am, and the FBI turned up at 1:30pm and sent the contents of his cell to the laundry to destroy all incriminating evidence.
Exhibit C: Virginia Giuffre told us she was filmed with powerful men for Epstein to use for blackmail
Exhibit D: David Schoen tells us Epstein did not commit suicide, but that he was closely involved with Ehud Barak

I had assumed that it was my having drawn attention to the allegation that Donald Trump had been laundering money for the Russian mafia in the 1980s which triggered the algorithm to identify me as someone to be silenced. In saying Trump was “covering up much more than just a sex scandal” I meant not to belittle the significance of sexual crime in any way (see my old blog post on Australia’s appalling rape statistics, for example), but rather to indicate a suspicion that the Epstein files were being suppressed in order to conceal crimes of a financial nature as well as to cover up the sex trafficking that it is generally assumed they are all about: something like money laundering, bribery, graft, black market arms trading, that sort of thing. Lord knows the “pussy grabbing” Trump hardly cares about sex scandals, and is simply shameless when it comes to matters of sexual morality, although of course paedophilia is a whole other matter, being not just immoral but also actually illegal. But still, it’s hard to imagine Trump caring enough about anything other than money to account for the weird contortions he has gone in to over the Epstein files. And so, as I pointed out, since I am an electronic nobody without social-media “influence” to speak of, the very fact that the YouTube AI would bother deleting me meant that somehow I must have put my finger on something of some real significance in making this comment. As such I assumed that it must be some kind of hidden grand larceny involving Trump and Epstein and billions of dollars.

Little did I realise that it was Exhibit D which was the real problem.

What Virginia Guiffre tells us “a foreign Prime Minister” did to her is sickening. I am not naïve enough not to realize that sadistic sexual practices exist in this world of ours, and that sick individuals who derive pleasure from such torture are probably more common than most people would like to admit. But to have it brought out into the open that the Prime Minister of a country which considers itself in some sense a religious paragon is shocking on a whole other level. This email from the Epstein files so far released (to which I haven’t noticed anyone else referring) indicates the kind of level of humor that the relationship between Ehud Barak and Jeffery Epstein was on:

From: ehbarak___________________________
Sent: 2/12/2017 4:30:33 PM
To: Epstein Jeffrey [jeevacation@gmail.com]
Subject: Adam Pashut shared a link: Where God had sex with Maria: Israel joins trend with welcome video for Trump
Where God had sex with Maria: Israel joins trend with welcome video for Trump from Ran Harnevo’s Tweet
Download the Twitter app
Sent from my iPhone
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 033578

I suppose it is actually unusual for someone to have read the whole of the Old Testament, even amongst people who have had a religious upbringing. But in my youth I did read it, not just once, but over and over (since it was the only literature in our house), and so I know very well that the theme of Israel’s failure to live up to their own God’s commandments is in fact its most pervasive theme. Time after time, from Moses onwards, the nation of Israel proves a bitter disappointment to God. From the delivery of the ten commandments to Moses in Exodus chapter 20 onwards, those commandments are broken and disobeyed by Israel over and over in every way conceivable. The question put to the Tribe of Benjamin in Judges chapter 20 echoes out again and again: “What wickedness is this that has taken place among you?” and over and again the answer is the same: ”the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brethren, the people of Israel.” The prophetic lamentations of Isiah reverberate down through the story of Israel, with a profound relevance today:

Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
sons who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.

When you spread forth your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Their God keeps giving them this same message over and over again:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
defend the fatherless,
plead for the widow.

Zion shall be redeemed by justice,
and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together,
and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.

But over and again, Israel turns its back on the Almighty and commits the most horrendous of injustices. And yet their God’s hope springs eternal:

It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

There can be no doubt for anyone who has made serious study of the Bible (believer or not) that their God has always given Israel but one mission in the world: to show the world by example what it means to be righteous -- what peace is, what mercy is, what justice is, what love is. But Israel keeps failing in this mission and forgetting that although God has chosen them to be exemplary, all humans are God’s children and equally beloved by the Almighty:

For Jerusalem has stumbled,
and Judah has fallen;
because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord,
defying his glorious presence.
Their partiality witnesses against them;
they proclaim their sin like Sodom,
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
For they have brought evil upon themselves.
Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them,
for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him,
for what his hands have done shall be done to him.

And so Israel stands judged by their God, by the one God, who is everybody’s God:

The Lord has taken his place to contend,
he stands to judge his people.
The Lord enters into judgment
with the elders and princes of his people:
“It is you who have devoured the vineyard,
the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor?”
says the Lord God of hosts.
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight!
Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,
and the writers who keep writing oppression,
to turn aside the needy from justice
and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil,
and that they may make the fatherless their prey!

God repeatedly tells Israel what He wants them to be, and what it is He has chosen them to bring into the world:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall feed;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

Yet today, instead of obeying this divine message of their God, Ehud Barak re-lived the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Benjamin Netanyahu fashions himself as a modern day Saul, dredging up the woeful episode of the Amalekites with an appalling incomprehension, dressing up his depravity in a false cloak of righteousness, as have the sacrilegious over and over again throughout Israel’s checkered history as recorded in the Bible.

Who actually was Amalek? In Genesis chapter 36 it is recorded:

These are the descendants of Esau the father of the E′domites in the hill country of Se′ir. These are the names of Esau’s sons: Eli′phaz the son of Adah the wife of Esau, Reu′el the son of Bas′emath the wife of Esau. The sons of Eli′phaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, and Kenaz. (Timna was a concubine of Eli′phaz, Esau’s son; she bore Am′alek to Eli′phaz.) These are the sons of Adah, Esau’s wife.

This obscure grandson of Esau, child of Eliphaz and Timna, mentioned only parenthetically, becomes patriarch of a tribe inhabiting the Sinai desert, who Moses happens to encounter as he leads the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt in search of the promised land. A battle ensues, and the Israelites defeat the Amalekites, slaying every last member of the tribe, and then continue on their way in search of the promised land.

The battle is described in somewhat magical terms in Exodus chapter 17:

Then came Am′alek and fought with Israel at Reph′idim. And Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out, fight with Am′alek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Am′alek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Am′alek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua mowed down Am′alek and his people with the edge of the sword. And the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Am′alek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord is my banner, saying, “A hand upon the banner of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Am′alek from generation to generation.”

Like so many things to do with Moses, this episode is shot through with mythological symbolism and seems largely allegorical in meaning. In any case, this battle predates God’s covenant with Israel, and His handing down of the commandments to Moses on the stone tablets in the burning bush and so can in no way be said to over-ride the commandments contained therein, or any of the subsequent history in which God attempts over and again to teach the Israelites that God is love, not hatred. To use this story as a pretext for attacking the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is an act of mendacious deception twisting scripture to attempt to justify sins of murderous greed, ruthless depravity, and covetous dispossession of the land, homes and livelihoods of Israel’s Palestinian neighbours in Gaza and the West Bank, deeds so iniquitous that they rival the very worst of all the many episodes of Israel’s innumerable rebellions against God, each and every one an abomination in the sight of the Lord, always resulting in nothing but misery and humiliation for Israel.

Just as Trump, Hegseth and the rest of his gang dress up their ruthless, venal undertakings with a fake Christian religiosity which utterly betrays the heart and soul of Christianity, likewise Netanyahu and his Likud cronies dress up their covetous avarice with a mere façade of fake Judaism. These hypocrites are the enemies of true religion much more than are atheists (who are at least honest), for their hypocrisy substitutes an ersatz religiosity for the real thing, which is worse than having no religiosity at all. But therein also lies the hope. If they can be held to account for their lip service, the religion they exploit without genuine faith contains all the resources necessary to bring about their undoing.

This video is brilliant, and sums up everything I am trying to say here: