THE ISRAELI-AMERICAN KILLING MACHINE

Cross the Jordan River, God commanded Joshua, and take the land of Canaan that I gave to the Israelites. Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel, Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it too you, just as I spoke to Moses. (Joshua 1:2-3)

So without the slightest pause (such are the stories of faith) Joshua issued the order to attack. Thus theCanaanite civilization and their religion were destroyed, uprooted, enslaved and otherwise disappeared from the land. As we are seeing, what was done according to God's name in the Bible is a wrenching, repetitive, bloody story. The Israelites wrought destruction wherever they went, a vengeful, angry divinity aiding and abetting them. Oddly, God seems to be not merely the Israelite's inspiration but their commander-in-chief, issuing orders, brooking no disobedience, causing mayhem and slaughter in his name. Joshua's land-grab campaign for God intensified the killing. And God does not mince words. Kill your own people if need be, he advised Joshua.

Anyone who rebels against your command and does not obey your words in all that you command him, shall be put to death: only be strong and courageous. (Joshua 1:18)

But in Genesis, this same God created man and gave him reason, the ability to determine right from wrong. How soon this idea became quaint. Do as I say, says God, or off with your head! Could it be? God a tyrannical, cold-blooded, murderer? God, the supreme terrorist? Nightmarish material, indeed, but what must one conclude? What must one believe? Indeed all the territorial accomplishments of the Old Testament were predicated on violence. The crime? Murder. The seizure of the land of Canaan was the consequence of blindly obeying an order. All was accomplished by slaughter, a murder spree, indeed a genocide. And these deeds remain bedrock examples of the principles of faith sanctified by two major religions, who harken to the "faith of our fathers," striving to conquer all the way.

Faith of our fathers, we will strive/To win all nations unto thee; (Lyrics to "Faith of Our Fathers," a traditional Christian hymn.)

Let us journey briefly and quickly along the bloody road past the main sites of the Israelite slaughter of the Canaanites, the Old Testament campaign of terror.
 
Sihon – "We defeated him with his sons and all his people […] we captured all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, women and children of every city. We left no survivor" (Deut 2:33-34).
 
Bashon – "We utterly destroyed them […] the men, women and children of every city" (Deut 3:6).
 
Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite – "You shall utterly destroy them […] You shall strike all the men with the edge of the sword […] the women and the children and all that is in the city you shall take as booty. You shall not leave alive anything that breathes" (Deut 20:13-17).
 
Jericho – "And they utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword" (Joshua 6:21).
 
Ai – "They slew them until no one was left. […] Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever; a desolation to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening" (Joshua 8:28-29).
 
Gibeon - (where Joshua stopped the sun "in the middle of the sky") "He slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon [….] and the Lord threw large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died" (Joshua 10:11-13).
 
Makkedah – "Joshua and the sons of Israel finished slaying them with a great slaughter. [….] He utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it. He left no survivor (Joshua 10: 20, 28).
 
In case more casual Bible readers have become shocked, awed, or bored with the unremitting violence of the Israelites at the behest of their God, the following paragraph neatly summarizes the whole bloody mess:

Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel had commanded. (Joshua 10:40)

And just what was the extent of "all the land" of the so-called Promised Land? Well, in a word, it was vast. The covenant extended from the desert and Lebanon, north and east into modern day Turkey (the land of the Hittites), to the Euphrates, then made an about face and marched westward toward the setting sun and the sea.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the riverEuphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory. (Joshua 1:4)

The notion of the "setting sun" is unsettling to say the least.
 
After Joshua died the cry from the Israelites for a successor went straight up to God: "Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites?" they wondered. And the Lord said, 'Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand." (Judges 1:1-2)
 
And so the cudgel was passed to another biblical hero, another killer in God's name, in a war that never seems to end. . "And Judah went up, and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands: and they defeated ten thousand men at Bezek." (Judges 1:4), cutting off the "thumbs and big toes" of Adonibezek, the Canaanite king (Judges 1:6).
 
We see writ large in the Bible the results of God's imperialistic frenzy on behalf of the Israelites. One might well ask: My God, what has God done? Tragically, he has provided a rationale for genocidal subjugation, that's what.

The connection is in plain sight and undeniable. The Israel of old—God-given, violent, self-righteous, biblically driven—thousands of years later serves as a convenient and comfortable myth to found a new promised land, a new wilderness, a "new" Canaan in America. It even had "new" Canaanites, the quickly demonized American Indians. And so began the dispossession and destruction of its many and culturally varied tribes. And it is same deeply rooted, violent myth that propels the Israelis—the latter day Israelites—and their American gangster partner to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza, as mythic Samson did in the very same Gaza, thousands of years ago.
 
What mythic, black-minded evil festers in the roots of these governments. And in the roots of religion.
 
Cem Ryan, PH.D.
6 January 2009
Istanbul, Turkey
http://forreasonsunknown-cem.blogspot.com/
 
(1) Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II, The Folio Society, London, 1984. Page101.
 
(2) Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics of Memory. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. Page 72.
 
(3) "God told me to strike Al Qaeda and I struck, and then he instructed me to strike Saddam, which I did." So said George W. Bush as reported by the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz.
Schell, Orville. Cited in Why the Press Failed, Aug. 25, 2004
http://www.irib.com/worldservice/englishRADIO/political/us%20media.htm
 
All biblical quotations are from The New American Standard Bible, The Lockman Foundation, Thomas Nelson, publisher.
 
Artwork: The Destruction of the Amorites by Gustave Doré, 1866.

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