Larry Johnson Takes On The Sickness Of Zionism

I’m referring to LJ’s most recent blog:

Why Most of the World’s Population Don’t Have a Clue About Zionism

which was prompted by his interview with an Indian national:

Larry Johnson: U.S. Empire Is Overreaching — And Losing Everywhere

LJ is coming from a very different direction than I am, although I agree with much of what he’s saying. From my point of view, LJ paints all Christians with the same brush:

While I am sure that university educated people in Asia have some superficial familiarity with Jewish/Christian eschatology, most are not steeped in the details and do not understand how emotionally charged the issue is if someone, me in this case, dares to challenge the narrative that the Jews are God’s chosen people and have a divine right to inhabit the portion of the Levant known as Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

…

Most Christians and religious Jews accept the Old Testament/Torah as the divine word of God, even though it was written by Jewish scholars in the 6th Century BCE. I don’t. Turning to Perplexity AI again, I asked: When was the Torah written:

The Torah—the foundational text of Judaism, comprising the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)—was written over a long period, and its exact date of composition is a subject of both religious tradition and scholarly debate.

Traditional Jewish View

• Traditional belief: The Torah was written by Moses around the 13th century BCE (approximately 1200–1300 BCE), during the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Scholarly (Academic) View

• Modern scholarship: Most historians and biblical scholars believe the Torah was composed and compiled over several centuries.

• Estimated timeline:

• Earliest sources: Some material may date back to the 10th–9th centuries BCE.

• Main composition and compilation: Most scholars suggest the Torah reached its near-final form between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE (c. 700–400 BCE), during and after the Babylonian Exile.

• Final editing: The text was likely finalized in the 5th century BCE.

This was a book compiled by Jewish scholars primarily during their captivity in Babylon, under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar II. It is a story told initially, drawing on oral traditions, by Jewish scholars who assembled a narrative that put Judaism at the center of their religious world.

While I agree in general with what LJ is saying here about the dating of the Israelite scriptures, I can’t accept the idea that “most Christians” accept the Israelite scriptures in the way that American Evangelical Protestants do—I won’t pretend to know what the views of “religious Jews” are. Admittedly, Protestant fundamentalism is gaining ground outside the US, but I believe it’s not representative of Christian belief in a general sense—American experience is not representative in this regard. My own views can be gleaned from the earlier years of Meaning in History, which I began with the explicit aim of exploring what “divine revelation” actually means: Admin: The Earlier Meaning in History. Without going into depth, my understanding of Jesus is that he deliberately and systematically deconstructed the delusion of ethnic chosenness:

• Beginning with his words in the synagogue at Nazareth (Lk 4);

• His explanation of the story of Namaan the Syrian and of Elijah and the Canaanite woman;

• His ventures into Gentile areas (where pigs were raised);

• His word about raising children of Abraham from stones;

• His word deconstructing the idea of the Messiah as a son of David.

In his blog, LJ presents a few examples of the typical ignorant comments he received as a result of his interview with Jyotishman. They reminded me of the comments that Bishop Strickland received at his substack, as a result of Strickland’s post which, in my view, is more representative of Christian belief:

Gaza - A Slow Martyrdom

A Statement from Bishop Joseph E. Strickland

June 30, 2025

“They have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved” (Psalm 81:5).

As the world has turned its gaze toward war between Israel and Iran, I must raise my voice for those the world chooses not to see: the starving, the displaced, the humiliated poor of Gaza and the West Bank.

In Gaza, a slow martyrdom unfolds each day. Not in silence—but still unheard. Mothers cradle starving children. Bread is made from bean powder and soaked pasta. A kilo of flour costs more than a day’s wages. Men are shot for standing in line. Women are trampled beneath aid trucks. And still, they come—because hunger does not negotiate.

Yet even the hunger has been weaponized.

Aid has become a trap. Under the banner of the U.S.–Israeli–backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the hungry are funneled into fenced aid zones that resemble execution pits more than relief centers. Armed gangs, sniper fire, and psychological warfare greet them. One man likened the experience to the dystopian television show Squid Game—a spectacle of suffering where death is filmed and dignity erased. Soldiers watch behind screens. Food is no longer a gift—it is a gauntlet.

This is not aid. This is cruelty dressed as compassion. And the world says little—because Gaza’s suffering has become too constant to trend.

Meanwhile, the bulldozers of injustice continue in the West Bank. The people of Ras Ain al-Ouja, a Palestinian Bedouin village near Jericho, face erasure from their land. Their crops are burned. Their water was stolen. Their livestock was seized by settlers. Children live in fear. Families who have lived on the land for generations are pushed out to make room for annexation masked as “grazing rights.”

I speak today not from politics but from faith. I am a bishop of the Catholic Church, a shepherd of souls. And as a shepherd, I say clearly: No just cause can be built on the bones of the innocent.

Let me be equally clear:

• The starvation of a people is evil.

• The manipulation of aid for domination is evil.

• The forced removal of families from their ancestral homes is evil.

To my brother bishops: Where are our voices?

To world leaders: Do not dare call this “complicated.”

To the faithful: Now is the time for prayer, for fasting, for action, for truth spoken in love.

The Church has never taught that silence in the face of evil is a virtue. In the words of Pope Pius XII:

“The blood of innocent people cries out to heaven, especially when shed in silence.”

—Pope Pius XII, Address to Belgian Pilgrims, September 1946

And in the words of our Lord:

“Whatsoever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for Me” (Matt. 25:45).

If we ignore Gaza, if we forget Ras Ain al-Ouja, we are not merely indifferent—we are complicit.

This is not merely a local issue half a world away. This is not only a humanitarian crisis. This is a spiritual war against the image of God in the poor. And the Church must not cower and remain silent.

Let us remember the words of Pope St. Pius X:

“All the strength of Satan’s reign is due to the easy-going weakness of Catholics.”

—Pope St. Pius X, Discourse to the Union of Catholic Women, Dec. 18, 1903

To the people of Gaza: You are not forgotten.

To the families of Ras Ain al-Ouja: Your cry has reached the heavens.

To all who suffer under oppression: The Good Shepherd sees you, and His justice will not sleep forever.

I urge Catholics everywhere to offer reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced again in the suffering of the least of these. And I urge the Church universal to reclaim her voice—prophetic, bold, and faithful to the Gospel of peace and justice.

“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, both are abominable before God” (Proverbs 17:15).

Let us not be abominable. Let us be faithful.

In Christ our Eucharistic King,

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland

Bishop Emeritus

In the second half of the blog LJ gets into what may be seen as controversial territory, citing the views of Paul Wexler:

Here’s another twist. Tel Aviv University linguist, Paul Wexler, has written two books that offer an alternative narrative: i.e., The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews and The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity.

Using linguistic analysis, Wexler concludes that neither of the main branches of modern Judaism can claim they are the descendants from the Jewish tribes of biblical times. Rather, they descend from disparate populations that converted during a vigorous proselytizing campaign traditional Judaism undertook around the Mediterranean to counter the rise of Christianity. That sort of worked for a while until Islam swamped them both across MENA and, finally, even Spain.

Of the Ashkenazim, who make up the vast bulk of today’s Jewry and led the Jewish takeover of Palestine, he writes:

“… contemporary Judaism is best defined not as the continuation of the Judaism which served as an antecedent of Christianity and Islam, but as a newly Judaized variant of European (mainly Slavic) paganism and Christianity…most of the features of Old Palestinian Judaism and Semitic Hebrew to be found in Ashkenazic ‘Judaism’ and Medieval Ashkenazic/Modern Israeli ‘Hebrew’ were latter borrowings rather than original inheritance.”

Martin Cohen (Jewish Institute of Religion, NYC) wrote in the American Historical Review (Feb. 1999):

“Wexler’s insights…may possibly startle some readers but in my opinion, they are soundly and irrefutably presented”.

The upshot of Wexler’s and others’ work, including reams of genetic studies, is that there was no Diaspora. The Jews of Palestine, for the most part, stayed where they were, mixing with others as empires rose and fell and eventually converted to Islam. Today’s Palestinians may be the best candidate population of any size to claim an ethnic heritage from the biblical Israelites.

Don’t get mad at me for suggesting that the narrative spun among the Christian West about the righteousness of the Zionist cause may be a fraud. Just putting it out there for you to discuss. Let the battle begin.

I haven’t read Wexler’s books, so I won’t pass judgment—beyond stating that the bolded sections above, in my understanding, go beyond the evidence. Again, I refer readers to my archives, linked above. In general terms, I would argue that using linguistic evidence as evidence of ethnic identity is problematic.

Now, LJ does cite genetic evidence and suggests that modern Palestinians “may be the best candidate population of any size to claim an ethnic heritage from the biblical Israelites.” In this regard, I believe I can improve upon Wexler—as far as I can judge what his views are (follow the link at his name for criticism). Back in 2023 I wrote a long substack on exactly this subject:

DNA Proxy Wars, Palestine Front

Naturally, I highly recommend following the link and reading it all, but the concluding portion should whet your appetite for the full substack as well as provide a fair summary:

The chart is the bottom line. However, Khan adds value by digging down into the data. Thus:

Running this method on the Middle Eastern and Jewish populations in my data exposes patterns that will not surprise those familiar with the most recent population genetic work on these populations. Sephardim (those Jews with origins in Spain), Moroccan Jews (whose ancestry is again mostly Sephardic), Italian Jews and Ashkenazi Jews are all on the same branch as the two non-Jewish Italian populations, indicating low genetic distances and high relatedness. This is expected; the best current models imply that European Jews, Sephardim (originally from Spain) and Ashkenazim, have a lot of ancestry from an ancient Italian population. As my friend Taylor Capito likes to say, Italians don’t look like Jews, Jews look like Italians. Also, unsurprisingly, some regional Jewish groups are very genetically similar to their nearby non-Jewish neighbors. The Syrian Jewish samples resemble many Middle Eastern groups. The Jews of Kurdistan look very similar to Iranians. The Jews from Yemen, in southern Arabia, are on a branch with Saudis.

There are also notable patterns for non-Jews. Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese Muslims share a branch, set apart from Lebanese Christians, Lebanese Druze and Palestinians. The Druze are a sect with origins in Islam but they have been endogamous since the 12th century AD. Palestinians land closer to Egyptians than to the Lebanese groups, supporting the common conjecture that many Palestinians (like the late Yasser Arafat) have recent Egyptian ancestry.

But it gets even more interesting—for people like me, anyway—and the reference to the Druze and the practice of endogamy is a hint. The Arab invasion of the 7th century led to assimilation of many Levantine groups into the Ummah, but certain groups retained their identity, especially by the practice of endogamy. In that way these groups preserved a DNA profile that corresponds more closely to the ancient profile. Khan goes there, and the results confirm common sense:

Megiddo_MBLA ancestry is the ancestry of ancient Levantines, so in the end, modern Palestinians retain a greater fraction of Hebrew-like ancestry.

Drilling down even further, independent researchers, including myself, who have collated and compared private and public datasets despite political sensitivities find that Lebanese Christians, Palestinian Christians and the Jewish-adjacent sect of Samaritans exhibit the smallest genetic distances to Bronze and Iron Age Canaanite samples. The 7th-century AD Islamic conquest reduced these groups to dhimmi status and made them endogamous populations, freezing their genetic profile about 1,300 years ago.

Private analysis of Palestinian Christians and Samaritans comparing them to Palestinian Muslims shows more Arabian-like ancestry and less Iranian-like ancestry in the non-Muslim Palestinian minorities, who, like Lebanese Christians also do not show much cosmopolitan ancestry from Africa and Asia (I double-checked this myself with the genotype of Richard Hanania, who is half Palestinian Christian and half Jordanian Christian, and all this is true in his case). So, with Muslim Palestinian populations, you have migration from elsewhere enriching them for more Iranian-like and African ancestry atop the primary Levantine genetic stock shared with their Christian and Samaritan neighbors.

So, who are the actual indigenous people of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza? If by this you mean those populations with the deepest and most substantial genetic roots in a geographical region, then that would be Palestinian Christians and Samaritans. …

There’s a bit of irony in that result. If you recall, the Bible portrays the Samaritans as a sort of mongrel population. So we end up with the spectacle, not really so surprising, of a substantially European demographic group, driven by a non-reality based ideology, invading a territory and attempting to cleanse it of its millenia old population.