Netanyahu and his far-right Zionist zealots, and those who repeatedly vote them into power, have betrayed every principle of liberal democracy, decency, human rights and international law. Perhaps from ashes of the Gaza genocide an alternative Judaism will emerge.
In an interview for Middle East Eye in August 2025, the Israeli historian, public intellectual and popular science writer Yuval Noah Harari warned of a “spiritual catastrophe” for Judaism. He attributed this to Israel’s acts of ethnic cleansing, the dismantling of democracy and the emergence of a new brand of modern Judaism based on Jewish supremacy.
Harari observes, in typical broad-brush strokes, how ancient Hebrew texts, many of which are riddled with accounts of barbaric brutality and bloody vengeance, had over 2,000 years been reinterpreted by rabbinical scholars and Jewish philosophers to create a more tolerant and liberal Judaism. For Harari, Israel’s political and military actions over the past few decades have taken Judaism back 2,000 years. ….more
