The Melian Dialogue & Zionism

By Leo Gura - October 30, 2024

The following is one of my favorite political quotes. It comes from the classic Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, known as the Melian Dialogue. It is a dialogue that took place between the Athenians and the people of Melos — a small island state that the Athenians were about to conquer.

The Athenians told the Melian people this:

“For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses — either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Persians, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us — and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lakedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

I thought about this quote in the context of researching and contemplating the issue of Israel and Palestine. I love the Athenian’s honesty and truthfulness. No bullshit. No fantasy. No propaganda. No self-righteous rationalizations. No demonization of their enemy. No social constructions. No gaslighting. The Athenians may have been bloodthristy conquerors but at least they were honest about it.

What a stark contrast to the bullshit spun by Israel. See, if Israel were honest it would say something like the Athenians: “We will ethnically cleanse you Arabs because we are strong and you are weak, and that is the way of the world. You have no choice in the matter. We will build our homes on the graves of your children.” But Israelis are too dishonest to say that. They have to invent stories and fantasies about how they are the good guys, how they are the victims, how God promised them the land, how they deserve it, how the land was empty, how the land was theirs, how evil the Palestinians are, “terrorism”, etc. It’s all bullshit. Just excuses to take land by force. That’s all the Israel-Palestine conflict is. It is a devilish scheme to steal land by divide-and-conquering its occupants. This is crystal clear from the historical record.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. The founding fathers of Israel were more honest than today’s propagandized Zionists. They understood exactly what the Athenians understood: That might makes right.

Here is one of their honest quotes:

“Let us not hurl blame at the murderers. Why should we complain of their hatred for us? Eight years they’ve sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and seen with their own eyes how we have made our homeland of the soil of the villages where they and their fore-bearers once dwelt. Not from the Arabs of Gaza must we demand the blood of [the dead] but from ourselves.

A generation of settlement are we, and without the steel helmet and the maw of the cannon we shall not plant a tree, nor build a house. Our children shall not have lives to live if we do not dig shelters; and without the barbed wire fence and the machine gun, we shall not pave a path nor drill for water.”

— Moshe Dayan, Israeli Chief of the IDF, 1956

The founders of Israel understood full well that Israel is a bald-faced racist ethnic cleansing project. But today’s Zionists lie to themselves about it because they could not live with themselves if they acknowledged the truth. The difference between today’s Zionists and the original Zionists is that the originals knew they were genocidal, whereas today’s are too self-propagandized with liberal fantasies. If you’re going to do a genocide, as least don’t lie about it. But of course you cannot do a genocide these days without lying about it. In the times of the ancient Greeks you could do a genocide honestly, with integrity. How far we’ve come!

This is the power of what Zizek calls Ideology. When you are under the influence of ideology you don’t know it. A Zionist is completely unaware of his own ideology. Ideology runs the mind like a virus, but it is experienced as you, as your essence. That’s the deceptive power of viruses. A virus doesn’t feel foreign, it feels like it’s a part of you — because it has woven itself into you at a molecular level.

I want you to see that the cost of the Israeli project was not just the lives of countless Palestinians, but the selling of the Israeli soul to the devil. A precondition for the existence of Israel was a bargain that the Israelis had to sign with the Devil. The Devil would give them Israel, but at the cost of having their entire population brainwashed with fantasy and self-propaganda, disconnected from truth. The Zionists chose Israel over truth. Or, in other words, they chose survival over God. Which is to say, they sold their soul to the Devil for land. So here we are.

God damn! This is such a powerful lesson. Stop playing games and learn the lesson.

There is much debate about whether it’s genocide or not genocide. But I don’t see anyone making the obvious distinction that you can have two kinds of genocide: direct and indirect, explicit and implicit. While everyone is busy arguing over explicit genocide, they miss the obvious possibility of implicit genocide. It’s obvious that as the whole world develops, explicit genocide becomes politically and morally untenable, instead transmogrifying into indirect genocide. Genocide is protean, it can take many forms, it is intelligent, it is sneaky, it is self-deceptive — because God is at work. When God does a genocide, he’s artful about it. One acquainted with God can see this a mile away, while everyone else is duped. Don’t ask, Is it genocide? Ask, what is the most sneakiest, most intelligent, most artful way to do a genocide? Now you’re on the right track!

Biased? Taking sides? No. This is objectivity. This is the work of seeing through self-deception. Objectivity does not favor your preferences nor your identity. I have no preference for Palestinians over Jews. I have a preference for deconstructing illusions. People are happy with the notion of deconstructing illusions in the abstract, but when the method eventually reaches their favorite illusions, their identity — the stuff they were sure couldn’t be questioned — they scream bloody murder.

Such is the business of illusion-busting.

Don’t you see? The whole illusion here is that it’s difficult for Jews to seem themselves as evil, precisely because much evil was done to them in the past. After all, how could a Jew be evil? That’s outrageous! That’s racist! But one doesn’t preclude the other. That’s the illusion! You can both have evil done to you and be evil yourself. That’s mostly how evil spreads. The Devil doesn’t just dish out evil, he also suffers it. The illusion is that evil is a one-way street.

Important Note: Not all Jews or Israelis are guilty of this. There are plenty who recognize and fight the evils of the Israeli government — although a politically feeble minority. Nothing I said here is inherently about race. My point is not that Jews are somehow uniquely bad, but the opposite: there is nothing special about Jews. The dynamics of devilry and evil are not unique to any race or group. These are existential dynamics of Mind. All that Israeli’s need to do to stop being evil is stop settlements, stop taking land, stop doing divide-and-conquer, stop lying. So this is nothing essentialist about Jews. This is purely a matter of how Israelis choose to behave. Taking land is your choice. It comes with consequences. If the consequences are ugly, stop doing it. That is all. Nothing personal. Nothing racist.

Shalom, if you dare.

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