Commentary: Zionism is the exact opposite of spirituality!

by Caitlin Johnstone

June 21, 2024 - It takes a profound cruelty to support raining tens of thousands of tons of military explosives onto a giant concentration camp full of children. It takes outright malignant narcissism to expect everyone to accept this, and to act wounded and indignant when they don’t.

Zionism is the exact opposite of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious”. It is religion stripped bare of all spirituality until it’s nothing but a shitty political ideology that’s ultimately really about land, Western imperialism, and geostrategic control.

People feel called to religion because there’s something in all of us that tells us this world isn’t quite what it seems, like there’s some wondrous mystery lurking just below the surface (really what they’re experiencing is an uncomfortable dissonance with the delusion of egoic consciousness and an impulse to try and awaken from it, but that’s a story for another time). They look to their religion to tell them how to have a living spirituality that gives them what they’re craving, and, if they are involved in certain Christian or Jewish sects, they are told that they can obtain what they long for by getting passionately engaged on issues regarding the military and geopolitical objectives of a small country on the other side of the planet.

It’s actually kind of sad if you think about it. People have this impulse calling them beyond themselves to a much higher and deeper purpose, and that impulse is harnessed and used to herd them into support for some of the worst things on Earth. They come looking for transcendence and a personal relationship with the most holy, and they are given a stupid, crazy political ideology that tells them to support very mundane human depravities like apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Authentic spirituality takes you out of your head and anchors you firmly in reality, guiding you into a sincere investigation of what is really going on with this mysterious experience called life, and never allowing you to accept answers that come from learned knowledge or your tired, boring thought loops. It’s about finding truth that is so true that it is obvious even before you think any thoughts about it. Things like Zionism lead people in the exact opposite direction: into indoctrinated beliefs, propaganda, deception and abuse.

Saying “anti-Zionism is anti-semitism” over and over again while Zionists are butchering children by the thousands is an excellent way to get people to stop caring about anti-semitism.

According to Israeli media, an upcoming IDF report found that “many” casualties on October 7 were caused not by Hamas but by IDF fire. I was told that this is an antisemitic blood libel Holocaust denialist conspiracy theory, but I guess we’re past that now.

This obvious genocide is not what it looks like. Don’t believe your lying eyes or your lying ears or your lying mind or your lying heart.

A just and virtuous nation would not need to be artificially propped up by constant mass media propaganda, aggressive lobbying in foreign governments, nonstop online information ops, astonishing levels of foreign military backing, and continuous terrorist pig thug cops and military violence.

For example, why do you constantly criticize Israel without talking about Sudan? Don’t you have any thoughts on the terrible things that are happening there?

Sure, I have thoughts on Sudan. I think it’s very interesting that empire simps want me to talk about Sudan instead of the crimes in Gaza that are being actively facilitated by the empire I under which live. I think it’s very revealing that these same empire simps never want to talk about how the UAE  -  effectively a member state of their beloved empire  -  is backing the RSF in Sudan; and I think this “what about Sudan” schtick that empire simps and Israel apologists have been doing sounds a whole lot like “Stop criticizing the crimes of Israel; criticize Africa instead.”

If people fully understood what’s being stolen from them under capitalism, we’d have instant Revolution. Tech innovations could be used to free humanity from the need to work, and create paradise on earth; instead, they’re being used to turn billionaires into trillionaires while everyone else lives a life of toil.

Gaza, in addition to everything else it’s been these last eight months, has provided the Left with an opportunity to reassess itself and its priorities, and to feel just how powerful it can be when it lays aside all the sectarian feuding and petty quibbling and social media spats in order to focus on something that’s more important than any of us. We can change the world if we can all get over ourselves and shove hard toward the highest interest.