A few days ago, Israel went and bombed an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. In doing so, they ended up killing senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Our focus here, however, is not Iran but, rather, how Israel feels so confident and secure about casually going around, bombing all of its neighbors—not just Syria but also, for example, Lebanon.

Of course, Israel attempts to justify these attacks as supposed security measures, i.e, that they’re merely targeting Iran and its proxy militias such as Hezbollah. At Muslim Skeptic, we have ourselves highlighted some of the crimes they have perpetrated against Sunnis, including the extremely sinister role played by the late General Qassem Soleimani.

But all of this goes way beyond just Iran or Hezbollah. In fact, it takes us back to the roots of Jewish supremacism as found in Talmud and the aim for territorial expansionism, extending far beyond anything encompassed by Israel’s current wars.

It’s All Greater Israel

On Sefaria, the leading website for accessing the primary and secondary literary sources of Judaism, we read the following, in relation to the issue of “Syria”:

Because it was conquered by King David and temporarily belonged to the Jewish commonwealth, Syria is treated by the Jewish sources as a middle ground that is neither as holy as the land of Israel nor completely outside of it either.

Such an appropriation of Syria and beyond finds its roots within the Torah, as we read in Deuteronomy 11:22-25, in a statement ascribed to Prophet Musa (peace be upon him):

If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him—then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.

The practical consequence of the above is that the rabbis started to believe that all of these lands belonged, in fact, to the Jews. This in turn led to them even applying Jewish law (Halakha) within these territories.

For example, renting houses and fields to non-Jews is prohibited in Syria. This is because, as we read in the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 21a), it is perceived to be part of Greater Israel:

According to Rabbi Meir, there, with regard to selling houses and fields in Syria to gentiles, the prohibition is not merely a decree intended to prevent the violation of the decree with regard to Eretz Yisrael. Rather, Rabbi Meir holds that the conquest of an individual is called a conquest. Once Syria was conquered by King David, who is considered an individual in this regard, the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael applied to it.

In a commentary on this passage from the Talmud, contemporary American rabbi Joshua Kulp writes:

The Talmud raises a problem, that renting a field to a non-Jew is prohibited even in Syria, even though this is a decree made on a decree. The resolution is that this mishnah considers Syria to be part of Israel even though it was only conquered by an individual (David).

Returning again to the passage from Deuteronomy, we read in a commentary by influential medieval Jewish scholar rabbi Moses ben Nahman (also known as Nachmanides or “Ramban”):

In the opinion of our Rabbis they constitute two assurances: [First,] that whatever place in the land of Shinar and the land of Assyria and elsewhere they want to conquer, shall be theirs; and that all the commandments are applicable there, because they all are [part of] the Land of Israel [as Scripture says], from the wilderness and Lebanon etc. even unto the Back Sea shall be your border, meaning that you are obligated to conquer it and to extirpate the peoples from it, just as he said here, and ye shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and to uproot the idols and their appurtenance, as he mentioned above.

Rabbis thus seem to be under the impression that all of these lands belong to them… but exactly which modern nation-states are threatened by Talmudic expansionism and Jewish supremacism?

In one of his most underrated books, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (1983), Noam Chomsky—linguist and geopolitical analyst and himself of Jewish descent—says that Greater Israel is a threat to pretty much the entirety of the Middle East, including even Türkiye.

We read, for example, on p.153, regarding Syria:

In earlier years, the Rabbinate had cited biblical authority to justify expulsion of the Arabs (a “foreign element”) from the land, or simply their destruction, and religious law was invoked to justify killing of civilians in a war or raid. After the 1973 war, the highly-respected Lubavitcher Rabbi (New York) deplored the failure to conquer Damascus. He also warned against abandoning any of the conquered territories, condemning those “who for the sake of miserable money and honors, and especially in order to be well-regarded by the big Goy [Gentile] in Washington, are ready to threaten the security of the Holy Land by giving up territories against the opinions of military experts,” which is “against the Jewish Religion…”

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Then, on pp.153–154, about Lebanon and Egypt:

The chief Rabbis also gave their endorsement to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, declaring that it conformed to the Halachic (religious) law and that participation in the war “in all its aspects” is a religious duty. The military Rabbinate meanwhile distributed a document to soldiers containing a map of Lebanon with the names of cities replaced by alleged Hebrew names taken from the Bible, along with the explanation that much of Lebanon belonged to the Hebrew tribe of Asher. They also provided a strategic analysis of the Lebanon war under the heading “Joshua son of Nun to the clearing of the nests of the enemies in Lebanon,” referring to the biblical account of the conquest of the Land of Canaan—the phrase “clearing the nests of terrorists” is now a standard way of referring to operations against Palestinian vermin.

 

[…]

 

We must follow the doctrines of Joshua, he explains, referring to the genocidal texts that appear in the book of Joshua and elsewhere. “The biblical commandment is to conquer the land of Israel in its detailed borders, to take possession of it and to settle it.” It is “forbidden” to “abandon it to strangers” (Gentiles). “There is no place in this land for the people of Israel and for other nations alongside it. The practical meaning of [the commandment to] possess the land is the expulsion of the peoples who live in it” and who try to prevent the Jews of the world from “settling in our land.” It is “a holy war, commanded in the Bible,” and it must be fought against Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians “or any other people in the world” who seek to block the divine commandment.

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It is worth noting that these are the very same individuals who are constantly moaning—far more than anyone else—about the dhimmi status, which is certainly more enviable than being made the victims of outright genocide.

Finally, on p.155, we even have a reference to Türkiye:

In Israel, one does not take pronouncements of Gush Emunim lightly. Their influence has been considerable, and they have regularly created policy (with state support) by their actions in the occupied territories. This statement therefore caused some consternation. One of the founders of the movement, Yehuda Ben-Meir, sharply denounced it, stating that “according to Gush Emunim, we must conquer not only Syria and Turkey but with the blood of our children we must become the guardian of the entire world.”

You can thus see that, within the traditional Jewish imagination, based on the Torah and the commentaries of the rabbis, there exists a propensity to believe that it’s not just Palestine or even Syria that somehow belongs to them but, in fact, the whole of the Middle East. As such, launching deadly strikes in these countries is effectively just a way for them to clean out their own backyard.

This not only explains their sense of impunity but also the way they triumphantly gloat about the destruction of these places. For instance, we find in a contemporary commentary pertaining to the Book of Amos, which includes a passage about the destruction of Gaza:

No sooner is YHWH finished with Damascus that he turns to Gaza!

 

Did the narrator who added the superscription not even read the darned prophecies? It says These are the words of Amos regarding Israel!

 

Well, Damascus and Gaza are just the beginning. In fact, the whole first section of Amos’s oracles is a collection of proclamations about the wickedness of Israel’s neighbors, and how they will be punished accordingly.

 

[…]

 

The rhetorical effect here is stunning.

 

Every place surrounding Israel gets nailed.

 

Imagine the effect this would have on his listeners.

And apparently, it’s the Arabs who are hateful and unable to co-exist in peace and harmony simply because they refuse to just all keel over and die.

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