Despite the tenor of my current social life, where a persistent topic of conversation–among family, fellow churchgoers, and even co-workers–is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, I am not much interested in geopolitics. I find most political topics boring because of their general disconnect from the immediately personal. I am far more interested in people and personalities than institutions or systems. So when a friend lent me the book Against Our Bettery Judgment by Alison Weir, I groaned realizing I’d need to tuck into the topic. Conspiracy end first, no less.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, my own personal views will doubtlessly elicit accusations of wishy-washy-ness and a failure to take up a position that reckons sufficiently with the complex realities of conflict. So be it: my oversimplified stance is that I am on the side of life and against killing. It seems to me that both “sides” are guilty of atrocities and lying. Historically, there are very few instances, if any, of clear cut “good” and “bad” sides. I am not stupid enough to think this position is defensible, but I’ll just have to be ok with that, especially as it concerns a geopolitical issue that would take a lifetime to get adequately into my head. I have other things I’d rather do. And that’s why I groan when confronted with a book like this. I will never be able to do it justice. The best I can do is be ignorantly surprised.

But I might not even be qualified to do that. The first part of Weir’s book (whose subtitle is “The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel”) concerns the inception of the strangely overlapping interests between Zionism and high-profile members of the U.S. government. My read is that I’m supposed to be scandalized by these Zionist double-agents exploiting positions of power to promote their agenda. But I am not scandalized. Politics is the quintessential arena for deceit, backstabbings, payoffs, greased palms, narrative control, and media manipulation. For me, politics shares the same mental category as true crime, professional wrestling, sports, and critical theory: at best these things are base and masturbatory entertainments, and at worst grand distractions from living one’s own life.

So Weir’s is not “my kind of book.” But that doesn’t mean I can’t read it and come away with some things. First, some comments on the printed book itself. As a book, it feels a bit unpolished. It’s self-published, which isn’t a grave sin, just something to note. There are some minor text formatting errors. But my biggest irritation is that the book is only 93 pages long, but there are around 100 pages containing 373 endnotes. I am never fond of endnotes, because I have to flip back and forth constantly between two sections of the book. If you’re putting several paragraphs of text in an endnote, especially if that text is actually interesting and relevant to the chapter referencing it, and even more especially if your book is only 93 pages long, then just include the paragraphs in the book chapter instead of the endnotes. This seems like something a good editor would have recommended for revision. Maybe even in a second edition. But Weir’s book seems to only have the one edition (my copy is from 2014), so I guess there are no plans to change the endnote weighting anytime soon. None of this is to condemn the book totally, however.

Since I am so ignorant of the book’s general topic, I have very little critical commentary to offer, so instead I’ll just provide a list of facts that surprised me about Zionism and the formation of Israel.

• Globally, most Jews did not support Zionism. Support increased gradually as economic incentives became tied to the Zionist project.
• There were a ridiculous number of Zionist “groups” in the U.S. and Europe. Those groups seem to have had the prolonged effect of creating a unified body of American Jews. President Truman’s election success was secured under pressure from Zionist groups offering to sway the vote in his favor by leveraging Jewish votes.
• The positioning of Jews in positions of power (politics, education, law) was deliberate and intended as a means to garner broader Zionist sympathies.
• By the 1910s many Zionists had already decided, as shown by internal documents, to promote their agendas in secrecy, obscuring their real aims.
• Many U.S. ambassadors and near-east governmental advisors strongly advicated against U.S. support for the formation of an Israeli state in Palestine. Some of these men even predicted that the current situation would occur. These advisors were regularly terminated from their positions and replaced by pro-Zionist agents.
• The initial Israeli military movements in Palestine were swift and brutal, and were not met with any significant resistance. Many of the initial targets were civilian spaces like villages and churches. Massacres of women and children occurred.
• An unofficial Zionist military group called Lehi was a prominent perpetrator of violence in the region, even bombing the King David Hotel and killing a number of Jews. The leader of this group boasted that he had brought the possibility of terrorism to the whole world. He committed numerous acts of terrorism, and later became Prime Minister of Israel.
• The primary problem facing the Zionists, especially early on, was getting boots on the ground in Palestine. They knew they would succeed by numbers. But again, many Jews were not interested in Zionism, and many were actively opposed to it. Even during WWII, surveyed European Jews overwhelmingly reported they’d rather return “home” or go to the U.S. than go to Palestine. As a result, Zionist groups had to devise creative ways of getting large numbers of Jews into Palestine. Among their tactics were:
  • Capturing/abducting Jewish children that had been rescued, often by Christian families, and sending them to Zionist Orphanages where they could be groomed for the project.
  • Offering money to hesitant Jews to flee to Palestine.
  • Leveraging the afforementioned Zionist “groups” to create a conscription system. This conscription took effect in numerous European countries, and operated by humiliating or socially damaging Jews who resisted the command to go to Palestine.
• In America, numerous Evangelical Christian groups were parasitized by Zionist groups. Appeals to local churches for charity were effective, as were pro-Zionist bulletins and newspaper articles published by Zionists under the names of local Evangelical leaders.
• The Scofield Bible was essentially a pro-Zionist, propagandistic reimagining of the Bible created by an odd duck who inexplicably rose to prominence after its publication.
• The Israeli occupation and initial military operations impacted the Palestinian refugees immediately and dramatically. 400,000 Palestinians were displaced, many of whom died as a result. Neighboring Arab countries attempted to provide aid to these refugees, but those countries were poor and ill-equipped to provide much assistance. Assistance from Israel was, as expected, non-existent.
• As early as the 1920s, the media narrative concerning Zionism had been controlled by Zionists. Thoroughly. No rival views were to be permitted in the newspapers or in books. In the event that an anti-Zionist perspective emerged, that author would be systematically slandered as an antisemite.
• On that note, I was surprised to discover from sources other than Weir, that 17 countries currently have laws prohibiting the denial of the Jewish Holocaust narrative. There have, in fact, been a number of arrests throughout the decades of people who simply questioned specific details of the narrative. These people were of course labeled antisemites and officially cancelled. Not to imply that I am interested in denying the Holocaust, but I am relieved to live in a country without such absurd laws that punish the mere asking of questions.

In conclusion, I think it was probably unconventional to begin my reading on this topic with this particular book as opposed to a more generalized and popular one (Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults is making the rounds lately). But it was probably more fun to read because of its focus on such a narrow slice of the issue: how the U.S. got roped into the formation and indefinite financial support of Israel. I’m still not interested in geopolitics, but reading Weir at least gave names and faces to some of the historical figures responsible for our current plight.