Interview Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro - The Palestine Pod

One year ago, The Palestine Pod published this interview with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro. He argues that Zionism is rooted in anti-Semitism. We reposted it with Dutch subtitles! Read the transcript here:

The Palestine Pod is an initiative of Palestinian-American lawyer Lara E and Jewish-American comedian Mikey B, see their website: https://www.palestinepod.com/

Media Mondo, August 13, 2024: https://media-mondo.com/en/videos-en/interview-rabbi-yaakov-shapiro-the-palestine-pod/

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro: Zionism itself was created as a substitute, for Judaism, a replacement for Judaism and a way to negate Judaism. A Jew is not a race. There are Jews of all races. There are black Jews and white Jews.Brown Jews. A Jew is not an ethnicity. There are Jews of all sorts of ethnicities. It makes no sense to say that the Ethiopian Jews and the Yemenite Jews are of the same ethnicity as the German and Russian Jews. It also makes no sense to say that you can convert to an ethnicity, even though you can convert to Judaism. King David came from an ethnic Moabite family. Ruth converted to Judaism. And King David is her great great grandson. You can’t convert to an ethnicity. In addition by Jewish law if your father is not Jewish and your mother is Jewish, you are 100% Jewish. That doesn't follow the DNA rules of ethnicity. Ethnicity depends on your ancestry and your culture and things like that, but Judaism does not.

There are actual, very precise rules and guidelines as to what constitutes a Jew and what does not. And this has been upheld for thousands of years.

Jews are also not a nationality. Jews have had no national characteristics meaning we've had no common land, language or culture for thousands of years. The Jews had no flag. Jews had no national anthem Jews didn't even have a national symbol. The Star of David wasn't a national symbol of Jews. It was... It's a kabbalistic symbol. It represents certain concepts in Judaism but it's not the symbol of our religion. And it has no holiness in it. You're allowed to throw it on the floor or in the garbage or something like that. It's not considered a Jewish holy object or a Jewish holy symbol.

The definition of a Jew is it's a religion. But there are non-religious Jews. That's true. And the reason for that is because every religion has its rules. And the rule of Judaism says that when God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, whoever the Torah at that point required to fulfill the law of God, the 613 commandments, that by definition means you were a Jew. If you weren't obligated by the revelation to fulfill the 613 commandments, you're not a Jew, you're a Gentile. Gentiles are obligated to fulfill seven commandments. Jews 613. Whoever is obligated to fulfill the 613 is considered a Jew, whether they believe that or not. Now they are Jews in good standing, Jews in bad standing. There are traitorous Jews, there are treacherous Jews. But a Jew who was born, he is a Jew if he is obligated to fulfill the 613 commandments. So if you really want to be precise, being a Jew in the most accurate way to describe is: it is a job description given by God. God said, you are deputized into this religion. You are obligated to fulfill these commandments whether you do them or not. The obligation the job description, defines you as a Jew. Now, there are all sorts of legal questions that we have, regarding very precise, very, very precise laws as to what's considered a convert. You can convert into Judaism. You can cannot convert out of Judaism.

Now, the Zionists didn't want this definition of a Jew. The Zionists I give you a little quick history of how Zionism came into existence. They looked at Jews the same way the anti-Semites did. These were assimilated Jews, nonreligious Jews who looked at Jews as disgusting, immoral, weak, ugly, cowardly and all the types of stereotypes that you find amongst the anti-Semites you find in the original, early Zionist writings. Their first solution was to assimilate.

Theodore Hertzel, who was one of these people, really didn't like Jews. He had an idea to convert all Jews to Christianity. He wrote about it in his diary. There was this fantasy he had where all the Jews are going to line up one Sunday afternoon. I believe it was Sunday, if I remember right. They go to church and be baptized and convert. Except Herzl himself, he is going to be the last Jew and then there won't be any more anti-Semitism. And not only that, but Jews will forget that they're Jews. They won't be Jews anymore and they will live happily ever after.

Antisemitism was attributed to the faults of the Jews. Besides the anti-Semites own inadequacies. They figured that if you change the Jews, the anti-Semites won't hate them anymore. So basically, the Zionist plan was to change... to end the anti-Semitism by changing Semitism, as far as Jews are concerned, by eliminating that. The problem with the original plan, assimilation is that it didn't work. In the late 1800s there were pogroms primarily in Russia, which showed the Zionists, or the assimilated Jews actually that...assimilation... Assimilated Jews are still Jews and they're still hated.

But now that's where the identity crisis comes in. The subtitle of my book is Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft. The Zionists didn't understand this. They were thinking: Why do people hate us if we are just like the Gentiles? We're just regular Russians. Why do they look at us as Jews? That's a very good question. I once asked an anti-Semite: 'How do you decide who's a Jew?' He says, 'well, whoever identifies as a Jew is Jewish.' The Zionists had said to themselves: ‘Hey, we don’t want to be Jews, but the Gentiles won't let us be Gentiles. So what are we?’ They were… That was the identity crisis. And many scholars have used that phrase in various contexts. It was that identity crisis.

So they came up with what I call identity theft. We're going to change the definition of Jew. Nationalism was just starting in those days. This was the 1800s. It was the Balkan people and others. The nation state started being formed in those days. And they said: ‘hey, nationalism worked for so many people, let it work for the Jews as well. So we're going to change the definition of Jew to a nationality.’ Until the Zionists, nobody looked at the Jews as a nationality. So the plan was to change the definition of a Jew to a nationality. And the idea was that once the Jews changed their...definition, the way they look at themselves the world will change the way they look at the Jews as well. The Jews will also (by changing the way they look at themselves) change their personalities, change their ideology change the way they act, the way they behave and change their aspirations and their values. Whereas previously Jews were, as the Bible describes it, ... [speaks Hebrew], which means a people who are enjoined by God to fulfill this religion. Think Shaolin temples that type of thing. Except instead of a mountain top they were in ghettos.

And the Jews themselves, about a thousand years ago were the ones that suggested they live in ghettos. They wanted to be separate, socially and culturally separate from the rest of society. Loyal to the countries that they live. Absolutely. But culturally and socially separate. Because we have our own laws we have our own lifestyle. There were assimilated Jews that didn't like that. And when they had a chance to break out of the ghetto, they did. Thinking, as I mentioned, that assimilation is going to end the anti-Semitism and they're going to be like everybody else. When they saw that didn't work then they tried nationalism. Nationalism is another name for Zionism Jewish nationalism, that's all Zionism is. But the thing to know about Zionism is that whereas the Kurds, for example, look at themselves as a nationality and they're trying to find a state, right? The Jews never did.

The Zionists had to convince the Jews that you are not what you think you are. You are not the... You're not a people who are enjoined by God to fulfill this religion, these religious laws. You are a nation. You need a language. You need a flag. You need a country. Because Jews didn't share a language for 2000 years and more... for thousands of years. For thousands of years we hadn't spoken Hebrew. In biblical times they did, but that wasn't the national language of the Jewish people. Meaning that's not what united us into being a people. The only thing that united us into being a people is our Torah, our faith. It was so well known that... this quote that we are only a people because of our faith. It's over a thousand years old. And it was like the meme of Jewish identity. Even Theodore Hertzel mentions it in his in his diary. Everybody knew that the Zionists had to change that. And because Jews had no flag they had no common language culture, land. The Zionists had to provide them with it. The Zionist set out to synthesize a new nationality.

If you want to change your identity in a witness protection program or something you can get the government to give you a whole new identity and that'll work. But there's a lot of resources and, time and effort spent to create such a... There's another way to do it that's easier. Kill somebody that's around your age, steal his papers, steal his birth certificate, steal his license and steal his identity and your him. That's what the Zionist did to the Jews collectively. We're going to erase Jewish identity. We're going to take their history, changed it a bit. We're going to take their, identity. We're going to take their self-image. We're going to take their... We're going to take Jewishness and we're going to make it into Zionism. We're going to get the Jews a flag. There was a Zionist flag before there was a state of Israel. We're going to get the Jews a language. There was a Zionist language modern Hebrew was created by the Zionists before there was a state of Israel because they wanted to supply the Jews with national characteristics, national symptoms, national equipment. And the last... the hardest part was the country.

They stole Jewish history. They revised all of Jewish history. They had this nonsense that Jews for thousands of years were looking for national self-determination, which is not true. We were looking for messianic renewal of the world. They stripped... emptied Judaism of religious content left the husk of whatever they could fit into their nationalism. And then, they redid history, redid ideology and just started creating cultural centers and schools and an entirely new... It was a social engineering project.

But one thing they were unable to steal. And that's the definition of a Jew. Considering what the definition of a Jew is, it depends on Torah law. Whoever the Torah says is obligated in the commandments is a Jew. So now how are the Zionists going to define a Jew? You see, we have these precise laws. If your father's Jewish and your mother's not, you're not Jewish. If your mother's Jewish and your father is not, you are Jewish. If you convert you’re Jewish. And conversion means to accept these 613 commandments. And once you convert to Judaism you cannot convert out of Judaism. So how are they going to define Jew? So they didn't really bother because they can't. It's like I wrote in my book. It's like trying to figure out what two plus two is without recognizing the number four. Four doesn't exist. Now let's figure out two plus two. It was impossible. They couldn't do it. Jews aren't a race. Although Jobotinsky said Jews are a race. It didn't make any sense.

Jews are not a tribe. We have no head of a tribe. There's no infrastructure of a tribe. Whoever heard of this tribe? We actually consist of 12 tribes in biblical times. And now most people don't even know which tribes they come from. Although it's mostly two of them. But we're not a tribe.

We're not a nationality. We don't fit any of those things. Here's a question if Jews are anything but a religion can you have Christian Jews? Can a Jew practice Christianity? If a Jew is an ethnicity? So why can't he practice Christianity? Why can't we have Muslim Jews? Now actually the Zionists, the early Zionists, debated this and tried to... They were banging their heads against the wall, trying to figure out a solution to this dilemma. How are we going to define Jew? And there was a great disagreement between them whether or not you actually could have Muslim Jews or Christian Jews. Israel Engel said that when Jews get a state so the Holy Sepulcher will be guarded by Jews that are Christians and the Omar Mosque by Jews who are Muslims. Others said ‘no, we don't like that.’ But they never really answered the question. Until they couldn't kick the can down the road anymore.

The problem is they wrote a law of return. Which means that Jews have a right to come to Israel and become citizens. Okay, now it's a legal category: Jew. Now you have to legally define it. Are you going to follow the religious definition? Well, you're not a religious country. You're not following the religion. You don't. You don't... In fact, the Zionists... They refused even to mention the word ‘God’ in the Declaration of Independence. The Knesset got together and decided basically that, well, if you're born Jewish, you're Jewish. Well, according to whose definition that still hasn't been exactly decided to this day. But... if you're born Jewish, you're Jewish.

They did have a Chief Rabbinate and they kind of left the status quo that we're going to follow the religious definition. But if you practice another religion like Christianity. This is today's Israeli law then you're not entitled to the law of return. Or if you're born a Jew and you're Jews for Jesus or you practice Islam. You, let's say, converted to Islam, but you were born Jewish, you're not considered a Jew. But if you were born Jewish and you're an atheist, you are a Jew.

Lara E: Zionists... Don't believe in God but they believe he gave them a land sort of thing?

Shapiro: Yeah, there are people that say that, exactly! So, now here's the problem. You see, without... Judaism, what value is the Holy Land? The Holy Land is the Holy Land. That's what it is to us. A holy land. It's not a national homeland. And the borders of the Holy Land are not exactly the borders of Israel. The southern town Elat is not part of our Holy Land. And southern Lebanon somewhere south of Beirut is the Holy Land.

They couldn't even decide whether they wanted the Holy Land or somewhere else. You know, they had the Uganda Plan. And they had other things. And Theodore Herzl who was the mastermind behind Zionism he said ‘no, listen, guys, we want the Holy Land.’ Because, remember this is like identity theft. He didn't use these words. I'm paraphrasing, of course. He said for marketing purposes we need to get the Jews to identify with our movement. So we're going to use Jewish symbols, phrases that are familiar, concepts that are precious. And we're just going to twist them a bit. Kind of...

Lara E.: Yeah, you know what's interesting, that... On this specific topic... You refer to one of the Zionists in your book who actually recommended the land of Palestine over other lands for the reason that Jews could change their socioeconomic status there. You say, for example:

'Jews who immigrated to America tended to remain in the same types of jobs that they had in Europe. Jews in Russia were not involved in farming or agriculture for example. If the Jews would collectively move to Palestine, they could develop it into a comprehensive social and economic community where Jews could normalize not only their lifestyles but also their occupations.'

So there was this notion that it was also not only for religious reasons but there was this idea that Palestine would make sense from an economic perspective.

Shapiro: It wasn't for religious reasons at all. They wanted the Jews to get together and start a new economy wherever it was. You know, Herzl wanted... Actually the Orthodox Jews... There was a small amount of Orthodox Jews. Very misguided. Who thought, mistakenly, that they could kind of exploit the Zionists, that the Zionists will help find a place where the Jews can go. Where there won't be any antisemitism. And as far as ideology and Jewish identity the rabbis will take care of that.

The Zionist presented themselves to many Jews as simply wanting a practical solution to anti-Semitism. That was propaganda. And the rabbis actually said: ‘we don't need the Holy Land, let's take Uganda.’ Because... Rabbi Reinhard was their leader. (That was his name.) He said... ‘Because if we're just looking for a safe place, why do we have to have the Holy Land?’ And Herzl, who was anti-religious... He was... he didn't like religious Jews. He said: ‘no, we need the Holy Land.’ Because marketing purposes. We want the Jews to feel a sense of being Jewish but not as a religion, as a nationality. We want them to have a sense of… this is a familiar place, the place they've always longed for, but not as a messianic renewal of the world, as a national homeland. You see, artificial Jewish flavoring and artificial Jewish coloring. That's what they did.

So it's like taking, I don't know... An apricot flavored jelly belly and trying to get nutrition from it and serving it to these people that eat apricots and say... ‘Look, we got this new apricot for you.’ It was... it was bait! It was a... Generations and generations of... It was brainwashing.

And different Zionists had different ideas. Ben-Gurion said ‘the Jews don't have a definition.’ And Herzl, when they asked Herzl (it was a British committee) what Jewish nationalism is, he said: ‘well, you know what a nation is. A nation is a recognizable, cohesive group of people held together by a common enemy.’ And they asked Herzl: ‘who's the common enemy to the Jews?’ And he said: ‘the anti-Semites’, meaning... And he wrote in his book The Jewish State that... ‘We are forced to be a nation. Distress (meaning anti-Semitism) binds us together.’ According to Herzl, whoever the anti-Semites hate they're Jewish.

So remember I told you, I asked an anti-Semite once... ‘Who's... Who do you hate?’ And he says, ‘well, whoever identifies as a Jew.’ So now you go over to Herzl and he said: ‘okay, no problem. Why do you identify as a Jew? That's because these anti-Semites hate me.’ They don't even know what it is to be Jewish. They can't define it because there is... And their plan was and it still is, of trying to make the Jews forget all of these questions that I'm asking and identify as Israeli nationals. I'm not Israeli. I'm not Palestinian. I'm an American who, by religion, practices Judaism. I have no more connection with it than my neighbor on this side who's Christian my neighbor on that side who’s actually Muslim.

If you really want to solve the problem...People ask, why do their... why are there those that oppose Israel's existence as opposed to the existence of, let's say, Russia? The reason why nobody opposes the existence of Russia is because Russia's existence is not the cause of the problem. Hitler was the biggest monster in the history of the world. But nobody's going to say... ‘Well, let's oppose the existence of Germany.’ Because the existence of Germany is not the problem. A history is full of bad actors, bad leaders and you don't have to negate the identity of their country to solve the problems that they cause. But here's the thing, Israel, in order for the problem in Israel to be solved, Israel has to change its identity. The problem is, you cannot have a Jewish country, a Jewish state, the way they define a Jewish state and also be a democracy. And if they want to retain it as a Jewish state, that's the cause of the problem. So the problem is that Israel calls itself the Jewish state.

Israel is different than all other countries in the world. All other countries in the world are the countries of their citizens meaning nationality and citizenship is the same. Either it's the same immediately or eventually. Israel is the only country in the world that claims that it is not the country of its citizens, it's the country of the Jews. This is the point that causes the problem. There is no country in the world that claims that it's the country of people who are not its citizens. Never were its citizens, don't claim to be its citizens, don't plan on being its citizens.

That means two things. Thing number one: if you live in Israel and you're not Jewish, although you may have civil rights to vote and things like that. Israel is not your country. Meaning you don't have national self-determination rights in Israel. However, if you're somebody like me who lives outside of Israel, is not Israeli, I don't have a right to vote. I have no civil rights in Israel, Israel is my country. Netanyahu claims he's my prime minister. Israel claims to be my state. Israel is the only country like this. Nowhere else. You know this nonsense about Anti-Zionism being anti-Semitism? The reason why they invented, they concocted this thing, Benjamin Netanyahu writes this in his book and Israel has it on its website, it's an equation: ‘Japan is to the Japanese what France's to the French what Israel is to the Jews.’ And here's the second half of the formula: ‘And just as you cannot be against the existence of France and say, I still want the French people to exist, you cannot be against the existence of Japan and still say, I want the Japanese people to exist. You cannot say, by the same token, I am against the existence of Israel, and I want the Jewish people to exist.’ You see, it's all this identity theft.

You want to know what my solution is? My solution is negate Zionism instead of all the energy and resources being put into discussing... One state solution/ two state solution. Those discussions go nowhere. We need to sever the connection between Israel and Jews. That connection is called Zionism.

Mikey B: Can you talk about how Zionism is actually Christian? And it was prophesized by Christians to Jews for the longest time to like a very tepid reaction for like hundreds of years. And you could not find a Jewish Zionist for the longest time.

Lara E.: They say you can't be a Jew without being a Zionist. That's what they say. How did that how did that change?

Shapiro: That's identity Zionism. You see, the Christians, we call them evangelicals today in America, we know that there are millions of these evangelicals and they believe that the Jews are going to return to the Holy Land and that's going to pave the way for the coming of their Messiah again. And there are different opinions amongst the Christians. The Jews will either be killed, they'll convert or some other option. Those are the two main lines, killed or converted. So these...

Mikey B: That sounds like Herzl's plan, come on.

Shapiro: Well, actually a Reverend William Hechler, approached Herzl after he saw Herzl's book. In 1896… I think he had a prophecy or he had some kind of permutations of biblical words that said 1896 the Christian Messiah's going to come. And that was approximately when Hertzel wrote his book. And he came to Herzl that he's a fulfillment of the prophecy. And he was very well connected with royalty and heads of state. And he helped Herzl get connected.

The Christians, the late 1500s, early 1600s there was this Christian movement. Only Protestants, not the Catholics, they're not involved in this, which is why America and UK there are much more Christian Zionists and not France and Italy or Greece, right? Because it's not a Catholic thing. It's a Protestant thing. Anyway. So they they had this idea. The Jews, of course, rejected it. Because, you know, we have a different Messiah than they do, a different religion than they do. The Jews also rejected Zionism because we have a different religion than they do. We do have a Messiah and they don't.

Zionists figured, guys like Herzl... They're going to use the Christian Zionists to get a state. They're going to join forces with them for a common cause. Let's get the Jews a state. And they... they did. They worked hard at it together. Lord Balfour, was one of them. And the Balfour Declaration. Meantime, Zionists were also using the religious Jews. Telling them you're religious aspiration to live in the Holy Land at least. To live in the Holy Land. ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, you know. They're trying to change their mindset. Without telling them that this is from the Christians, you know.

So they're using the Christians. They're using the Jews. The religious Jewish Zionists said: ‘let's use the Zionists.’  These religious Jews made a terrible, horrible mistake then. But they said: ‘let's use the Zionists to get us a place free of anti-Semitism. And we're not going to allow them to give us any ideology or religion. We believe they just want... that Jews shouldn't be killed, that there shouldn't be any more pogroms. Let's find a place.’

You know, everybody was using everybody else and think: ‘how could we further advance Zionism? How could we change the story? How could we better the story? How could we progress? How could we get more followers?’ And one of the things they did was, they wanted to make Jews appear as if they are organically connected to the Holy Land but not from a religious perspective, not from a spiritual perspective, not from a God-centric perspective. Rather from a national perspective. So many of them came from Russia, from Poland. And they spoke Yiddish, most of them. Actually, I have Jews, friends from Syria. They speak Arabic. So they started by changing the language that the Jews... They wanted the Jews to speak the Hebrew. No more Yiddish. And Yiddish is a dialect of German. They changed the Hebrew accent to make it more Middle Eastern.

The whole history is a fake. Their identity is a fake and it's my identity that they stole. This is it, you know! Zionism is anti-Semitic. Zionism is anti-Jewish. And the solution? We have to get rid of Zionism.
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Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro is author of the book The Empty Wagon: Zionism's Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft