In May I published The Pariah of Pot: The Rise and Fall of Marc Emery. It was not a nostalgia piece. It was a record of a man I knew for thirty years, and of the public statements he has made since he left cannabis activism behind and built a following on racial contempt.

The same week I launched a petition asking the Sunshine Coast RCMP and the BC Hate Crimes Unit to determine whether those statements meet the threshold for investigation under section 319 of the Criminal Code — wilful promotion of hatred, and public incitement of hatred against identifiable groups. The petition is here:

Investigate Marc Emery for alleged Hate Speech

As of today it has 2,030 verified signatures.

That is not a lynch mob. It is more than two thousand people asking police to do the one thing they are supposed to do with a documented allegation: look at it, decide, and say what they decided.

They have not.

What I asked police to look at

I did not ask the RCMP to ban immigration debate. I asked them to look at specific public posts, with dates and links.

Among them:

• “Any indigenous band that blocks railroads or any infrastructure should be dealt with by truncheons cracking their skulls within 24 hours. When you seize railroads you are going to war. Time to finish the job our ancestors didn’t.” (22 November 2025)

• Repeated calls to “Bring back Jim Crow,” including the claim that lynching would make “black Americans… way better behaved.”

• “Black Americans are seeds of the devil. They can’t be around civilized humans.”

• “Sikh/Indian Scammer culture strikes again… 25 lashes. Then DEPORT!”

• Collective descriptions of Muslim and South Asian men as “rapey,” “invaders,” and men “obsessed with raping White women.”

Section 319 is a high bar. Attorney General consent is required for many of these prosecutions. I said that in the original article. I said it to police. The request was never “arrest him because I dislike his politics.” The request was: is this the line, or isn’t it?

On 9 June 2026, Emery himself boosted the petition on X. “An old friend who today doesn’t like my politics has a petition to have me investigated… I would love to challenge 319… so please sign the petition.” He treated a criminal-code complaint as a fundraising and branding opportunity. That is his right. It is also a reason the file should not have been allowed to rot in a detachment inbox.

What the RCMP actually did

On 16 May 2026 I emailed BC Hate Crimes and Sechelt RCMP.

On 21 May, Constable David Stengert of the BC Hate Crime Unit wrote back. He was polite. He also said the unit “do[es] not accept complaints from the public,” and asked where I lived so he could send me to the police of jurisdiction.

I told him the same day: I live in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Emery lives in Sechelt, British Columbia. I resent the compilation.

Then, silence.

Six weeks later I had to prod Nova Scotia members. On 24 June, Ann Robertson of the RCMP wrote that Supervisor Corporal Michael MacDonald had reviewed the file and reassigned it to Constable Jacob Anderson of Shelburne Detachment. I “should hear back either today or tomorrow.”

I did not.

Anderson emailed on 28 June with a wrong digit in my phone number. I corrected it and agreed to meet the next day. The meeting did not happen. On 1 July he cited a “priority file” and said another officer might take the statement. On 6 July I asked whether I was wasting everyone’s time. On the morning of 8 July I told Robertson I still had no statement. That evening I finally gave one — to an officer whose name was never confirmed to me in writing. I was not given a file number.

That was 8 July 2026.

I wrote again on 2 August, 7 August, and 17 August. Robertson said she had “passed this on” to Anderson and MacDonald. Neither contacted me. I have heard nothing since 17 August.

Four months from first email to this sentence. Nearly two months of silence after a formal statement. No file number. No disposition. No word on whether Sechelt or BC Hate Crimes ever opened a support file.

If this is how a documented s. 319 report is treated when the complainant will not go away, I do not need to guess what happens to reports that arrive once and stop.

This week I filed a public complaint with the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP about that conduct. The Commission does not decide whether Emery’s posts are criminal. It reviews whether members did their jobs.

Why the stall matters

Police-reported hate crime in Canada is not a vibe. It is a data series.

Statistics Canada recorded 4,882 police-reported hate crimes in 2024 — a sixth straight annual increase, and more than double the 2018 count (+169%). The 2025 total was 4,708. The rate is still nearly three times what it was in 2016. Race- or ethnicity-motivated incidents rose for years in a row. In 2025, hate crimes targeting South Asian people jumped 49%, concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia — the same communities Emery has spent two years branding a “scammer culture.”

The RCMP’s own hate-crime briefing notes that the post-2016 climb coincided with “inflammatory rhetoric directed toward immigrant, racialized, and religious minority groups,” and that official counts understate the problem because most incidents are never reported.

None of that makes every ugly post a crime. It does make “we’ll get back to you” for four months an institutional failure. Specialized hate-crime units exist so that files like this are not left to whoever happens to be on days in a small-town detachment, then dropped when that member draws a priority call.

Emery is not a random account with twelve followers. He has tens of thousands on X, hundreds of thousands on Facebook, and a talent — I watched him use it for decades — for turning a grievance into a movement. He has said he supports the Dominion Society of Canada (he calls himself member #420) and Second Sons, and he campaigns for remigration: mass removal of people he does not consider part of a White Canada.

That is the context in which “finish the job our ancestors didn’t” is not a joke among friends. It is a public instruction, attached to an identifiable group, circulated to a large audience, while the author walks streets looking for votes.

What he has posted since the complaint

The file went quiet. He did not.

On 3 September 2026, after a Vancouver manslaughter verdict against Inderdeep Singh Gosal in the 2023 killing of Paul Schmidt, Emery wrote: “How many White citizens in Canada have died from this gratuitous & completely unnecessary migration from the violent Third World?” The same day, on a story about adulterated food imports from India: “And people get upset when I say India is a scammer culture.”

On 29 August: “All the shooters in Ontario are black. Take a look at the Top 50 Most Wanted Shooters and not a white guy in the bunch.”

On 24 August, quoting a post about sexual assaults in Spain: “Rapes accelerate wherever Muslim men concentrate. Rape of White girls & women is encouraged in the Qu’ran.”

On 16 July: “And they say White genocide is not real… Black American youth must be segregated from civilized people.” In the same stretch he called Black men in crime videos “jungle pack animals.”

On 6 August, campaigning for local office, he wrote that the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is “a national holiday based on the most grotesque lies and fabrications,” and that his “‘indigenous’ neighbours were vicious slavers.”

On 24 August: “I support Second Sons of Canada, Remigration, Dominion Society (I am member #420).”

This is not a man who moderated after a police file was opened. This is a man who treated the petition as content and kept publishing the same catalogue — segregation, collective sexual threat, “scammer culture,” conquest unfinished — while collecting nomination papers.

He is on the ballot

On 2 September 2026, Emery filed candidate nomination papers at Sechelt District Hall. The municipal election is 17 October 2026. He has been door-knocking since early August. His posted platform includes ending land acknowledgements, opposing what he calls “pandering to the indigenous,” and stopping “the flood of foreign workers” on the Sunshine Coast.

His partner, Lara Yates, is still in a B.C. Supreme Court fight with School District 46 over her heckling of a land acknowledgement at Chatelech Secondary and the school’s subsequent ban. That case is a free-expression dispute. It is also the political vehicle he has used to keep the anti-Indigenous line in local media.

I will say this as clearly as I can: running for council is legal. Opposing land acknowledgements is legal. Criticizing immigration policy is legal. Calling for skulls to be cracked, for Jim Crow to return, for an ethnic group to be treated as a rape army or a scammer caste, and then asking that group’s neighbours to put you on municipal council, is why a police service with a hate-crime mandate exists.

Sechelt voters can do what they want on 17 October. They should not have to do it in the dark about whether the national police force ever even finished reading the file.

What I am asking now

Sign the petition if you have not:
Investigate Marc Emery for alleged Hate Speech

Share the original record of Emery’s racism:
The Pariah of Pot

And understand the police complaint for what it is. I am not asking the RCMP to win my argument with a man I used to organize with. I am asking them to apply the statute they already have, or to put in writing that they will not.

A specialized unit that cannot take a public report. A local detachment that takes two months to record a statement. A statement that produces no file number and no answer. That is not neutrality. That is neglect dressed up as process.

Hate crime numbers in this country climbed for six years and remain near historic highs. South Asian-targeted incidents are rising in the two provinces where Emery’s “scammer culture” line gets the most local traction. He is recruiting for explicitly racial organizations and running for office in the community where he lives.

If that does not merit a completed assessment under section 319, the RCMP should say so, with reasons, over a signature. What they should not do is wait for the complainant to get tired.

I didn’t.

Jesus in Hell: Gittin 57a, Toledot Yeshu, and the Afterlife of a Line

In the Babylonian Talmud, a spirit identified as Jesus the Nazarene is raised from the dead and asked what he suffers in the next world. He answers: boiling excrement. The reason given is that anyone who mocks the words of the Sages is sentenced to that punishment. That is the text. Later Jewish parody literature reused the same proverb to explain what happened to his corpse. Medieval Christians then used both corpora as courtroom exhibits against Jewish people contributing greatly to antisemitism.

The Talmud remains central to Orthodox Judaism, where it is treated as a binding source of halakha (Jewish law) and is intensively studied. It is also important in Conservative Judaism, though with more flexibility in interpretation and practice. In Reform, Reconstructionist, and other liberal streams, it is generally not treated as legally authoritative. It is still studied as a major historical, ethical, and cultural text, but ritual and legal rulings drawn from it are often optional.Across denominations it continues to shape Jewish thought, language, and debate even when its specific rulings are not followed.

The Talmudic story

The passage sits in tractate Gittin 56b–57a, inside a longer narrative about the destruction of Jerusalem. Onkelos—cast as Titus’s nephew, later a convert—raises three spirits by necromancy and asks each the same questions: who is honored in that world, should he join Israel, and what is that man’s punishment (a euphemism for the spirit’s own fate).

Titus is burned daily and his ashes scattered over the seven seas. Balaam is cooked in boiling semen for leading Israel into Moabite fornication. Then comes Jesus.

Gittin 56b–57a (William Davidson / Steinsaltz English, as printed on Sefaria):

Onkelos bar Kalonikos, the son of Titus’s sister, wanted to convert to Judaism. He went and raised Titus from the grave through necromancy, and said to him: Who is most important in that world where you are now?

Titus said to him: The Jewish people.

Onkelos asked him: Should I then attach myself to them here in this world?

Titus said to him: Their commandments are numerous, and you will not be able to fulfill them. It is best that you do as follows: Go out and battle against them in that world, and you will become the chief, as it is written: “Her adversaries have become the chief” (Lamentations 1:5), which means: Anyone who distresses Israel will become the chief.

Onkelos said to him: What is the punishment of that man in the next world?

Titus said to him: That which he decreed against himself… Every day his ashes are gathered, and they judge him, and they burn him, and they scatter him over the seven seas.

Onkelos then went and raised Balaam from the grave through necromancy… Balaam said to him: He is cooked in boiling semen, as he caused Israel to engage in licentious behavior with the daughters of Moab.

Onkelos then went and raised Jesus the Nazarene from the grave through necromancy. Onkelos said to him: Who is most important in that world where you are now?

Jesus said to him: The Jewish people.

Onkelos asked him: Should I then attach myself to them in this world?

Jesus said to him: Their welfare you shall seek, their misfortune you shall not seek, for anyone who touches them is regarded as if he were touching the apple of his eye (Zechariah 2:12).

Onkelos said to him: What is the punishment of that man in the next world?

Jesus said to him: He is punished with boiling excrement. As the Master said: Anyone who mocks the words of the Sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement. And this was his sin, as he mocked the words of the Sages.

The Gemara comments: Come and see the difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the nations of the world. As Balaam, who was a prophet, wished Israel harm, whereas Jesus the Nazarene, who was a Jewish sinner, sought their well-being.

The name is not identical in every witness. Vatican 130 has Yeshu ha-Notzri (“Yeshu the Nazarene”). Vatican 140 and Munich 95 have Yeshu. Early printed editions under Christian censorship often replaced the name with “the sinners of Israel.” Modern editions such as Steinsaltz restore “Jesus the Nazarene.”

The punishment line itself is stable. The text’s own explanation is mockery of the Sages. The same penalty appears independently in Eruvin 21b as a general rule.

Traditional dating assigns compilation of the Babylonian Talmud to Rav Ashi (d. c. 427) and Ravina (often Ravina II, d. c. 499/500), “the end of hora’ah.” Modern work treats the Bavli as layered: Amoraic discussion mainly in the 3rd–5th centuries; anonymous editorial and many narrative units later. Final redaction is usually placed in the 6th century, sometimes into the early 7th. Sefaria dates Gittin roughly 450–550 CE.

Peter Schäfer’s Jesus in the Talmud reads the Bavli’s Jesus material as a late Babylonian counter-gospel: the rabbis knew the New Testament story and inverted it. Resurrection becomes eternal punishment. That reading treats Gittin 57a as aimed at the Christian Jesus. Other philologists have argued that some “Yeshu” stories are composite or chronologically mismatched. The Gittin manuscript that says ha-Notzri is the strongest internal marker that this unit was read as the Nazarene.

Toledot Yeshu: the anti-gospel

Toledot Yeshu (“Life Story / Generations of Yeshu”) is not part of the Talmud. It is an anonymous Jewish parody of Jesus’ life: illegitimate birth, stolen Ineffable Name, sorcery, a flying duel with Judas, hanging, then an empty gallows that disciples call an ascension. Oral roots may go back to late antiquity; written versions survive from Aramaic Genizah fragments of the 9th–10th century through Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish copies into the early modern period. The recensions contradict one another.

Toledot Yeshu tells Jesus’ life as a farce of the Gospels. Miriam is seduced or raped—often by a neighbor named Pandera—so Yeshu is a bastard, not born of a virgin. He learns Torah, then steals the Ineffable Name from the Temple and uses it as sorcery: clay birds come alive, a millstone floats, the lame walk. He gathers disciples and claims to be Messiah and Son of God. The sages hunt him. In many versions Judas learns the same Name; the two fly; Judas soils Yeshu so the Name fails and he falls—sometimes into a privy. Arrested, he is beaten, given vinegar, crowned with thorns. Trees refuse to bear him because he hexed them, so he is hanged on a cabbage stalk, then taken down before night because of Deuteronomy 21:23. Yehudah the gardener hides the body in a water channel (later recensions: a sewer or a cellar of chamber pots, “to fulfill” the saying that mockers of the Sages are judged in boiling excrement). Disciples find the gallows empty and cry that he rose. Yehudah drags the corpse through the market to prove he is dead. That is the story: miracles as theft and magic, the empty tomb as a dumped body, resurrection as a lie.

The Gittin proverb about Jesus being laid to rest in excrement is absent from the early burial story. It is added later to explain where the body went.

Older burial: the water channel

In the earliest “Pilate” / Early Oriental group, Yeshu is taken down before nightfall because of Deuteronomy 21:23 and hidden in a water channel, aqueduct, or irrigation trough in the garden of Yehudah the gardener. Disciples find the gallows empty and announce that he has gone to heaven. Yehudah then produces the corpse.

Cambridge T-S Misc. 35.87 (9th–10th c.), in the Meerson–Schäfer translation:

They took him down from the cross and buried him in the water channel in the garden of Rabbi Yehudah the gardener. When those people whom he had deceived came and did not find him on the cross… “He has in fact gone to heaven!”

Then:

Rabbi Yehudah the gardener went and took him away from his grave and tied a rope to his legs and dragged him through all the markets of Tiberias… “this is the punishment of Yeshu bar Pandera, the wicked.”

That is a parody of the empty tomb. Bishop Agobard of Lyon already knew a Jewish tale of burial beside an aqueduct in the 9th century.

Later burial: the sewer

Some later Hebrew recensions replace the aqueduct with a sewer, cesspool, or latrine. The Holy Sepulcher becomes a toilet. Federico Dal Bo quotes one Hebrew line:

When evening had come, Yehudah took the body of Yeshu from the tree and put him in his garden in a sewer in order to fulfil the words of the sages, “everyone mocking the words of the sages is sentenced to boiling excrement.”

Gittin 57a is pasted onto the burial. Afterlife punishment becomes an earthly dump for the corpse.

Huldreich, Leiden 1705

Johann Jacob Huldreich printed a unique Hebrew text with Latin as Historia Jeschuae Nazareni. His manuscript is lost. The recension is late—often dated to the 15th/16th century—because it mixes old Toledot pieces with German and Slavic motifs.

Here Judas buries the body in a cellar of chamber pots and excrement and cites the rule on purpose: whoever mocks the words of the Sages is judged in boiling excrement (nidon ba-tzo’ah rotaḥat). That is Gittin 57a / Eruvin 21b used as a burial warrant. Judas also curses Yeshu. When followers preach resurrection, the corpse is said to remain in a filthy cistern in Jerusalem.

Related early-modern reports add a flying contest in which Judas urinates on Yeshu so the Name fails, and Yeshu falls into a privy. Ashkenazi Christmas-Eve folklore (Nittel Nacht) later imagined the hanged Yeshu haunting outhouses. That is folk extension, not Talmud.

None of this is a historical report of Jesus’ burial. It is a parody of resurrection: the body did not rise; it was hidden, then dragged out; in the crudest versions it was hidden in filth so the empty tomb looks like a latrine.

How the lines entered medieval politics

In 1239–1240 the convert Nicholas Donin charged that the Talmud blasphemed Jesus and Mary. Gittin 57a and Sanhedrin 43a (the execution of Yeshu) were among the proof-texts. At the Paris disputation, rabbis had to answer those lines. Pope Gregory IX ordered confiscation. In 1242, carts of Talmud volumes were burned in Paris. The Latin Extractiones de Talmud then circulated the same passages as a dossier of insults to Christ.

After that, the quotes had a legal life. Preachers and inquisitors treated “the Talmud says Jesus boils in filth” as proof of obstinate blasphemy, and used it to justify censorship, forced sermons, expulsions, and further burnings. In the 15th–16th centuries, converts were still asked whether their books put Jesus in a pot of feces. Toledot Yeshu was more useful still: an open parody of the Gospels. Christians printed it—Wagenseil in 1681, Huldreich in 1705—as evidence of Jewish hatred, not as folklore.

The medieval frame flattened genre. A few narrative lines were treated as the doctrine of “the Jews’ book.” Manuscript variants dropped out of the brief. That frame outlived the Middle Ages and fed later anti-Talmud literature.

Side note. Some modern commentators have asked whether the sponge of sour wine lifted to Jesus on a reed (Mark 15:36; Matthew 27:48) or hyssop (John 19:29) was the Roman xylospongium—the sponge-on-a-stick used in public latrines and rinsed in vinegar or brine. The idea first appears as an aside in modern writing on Roman toilets, was aired in popular essays by 2012, and was argued at length in a 2023 article as a final humiliation: the face treated like a backside. It is not in the Gospels’ own wording, not in the Church Fathers, and not in any Jewish source. The Talmud never mentions a sponge at the execution. Toledot Yeshu sometimes copies the Gospel vinegar and crown of thorns, but puts the filth in other places—urine in the flying contest, the corpse in a channel or sewer. The boiling-excrement line in Gittin 57a is an afterlife sentence for mocking the Sages.

Bibliography

Talmud (primary)

• Gittin 56b–57a (Sefaria, Hebrew + William Davidson / Steinsaltz English)

• Gittin 56b, Onkelos and Titus

• Eruvin 21b (the boiling-excrement rule)

• Sanhedrin 43a (execution of Yeshu)

• Tzoah Rotachat

• Yeshu (manuscript variants)

• Jesus in the Talmud

Dating, redaction, manuscripts

• Sefaria, Gittin (c. 450–550 CE header)

• Talmud (Rav Ashi, Ravina, 6th-century redaction)

• Instone-Brewer, “Jesus of Nazareth’s Trial in the Uncensored Talmud” (Munich 95, Vatican readings)

• “Nazarene” in Gittin 57a and Vatican 130

Jesus in the Bavli (scholarship)

• Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007)

• Schäfer, Internet Archive

• Thierry Murcia on Gittin 56b–57a

• Federico Dal Bo, “Jesus’s Punishment in Hell in the Latin Talmud”

Toledot Yeshu

• Toledot Yeshu (overview)

• Meerson and Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus (Mohr Siebeck, 2014)

• TheTorah.com, “Nittel Nacht” (Huldreich; flying contest; outhouse folklore)

• TheTorah.com, “Behind the Mockery” (execution, cabbage stalk, empty tomb parody)

• Hillel Newman, “The Death of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu Literature”

• Gideon Bohak on Yehudah the gardener and the water-channel burial

• Joseph Gebhardt-Klein, English of Huldreich’s Hebrew

• Library of Congress, Toledot Yeshu manuscript

• Miriam Goldstein, Judeo-Arabic Helene narrative (Mohr Siebeck, 2023)

Paris 1240 and Christian use

• Dal Bo, Jesus in the Latin Talmud (Brill, 2024), ch. 4

• Ulisse Cecini on the Extractiones de Talmud

• Sara Offenberg on the Paris trial and “excrement that seethes”

• Disputation of Paris

Side note: Passion sponge and the xylospongium

• Mark 15:36

• Matthew 27:48

• John 19:29

• Xylospongium / tersorium

• Seneca, Moral Letters 70.20 (gladiator and the sponge-stick)

• “Mussel-shells, corncobs and the Sears catalogue,” New Humanist (20 Dec. 2012)

• Benjamin J. Rusch, “The Sponge-Stick: Scatological Undertones to Christ’s Humiliation at the Crucifixion” (2023 PDF)

• Rusch on Academia.edu

• Holy Sponge (relic tradition; not a latrine reading)

Pete Hegseth spent a year driving traditional reporters out of the Pentagon. Then he started hiring the people who already agreed with him.

That is the simplest version of what The Washington Post reported on Sunday: the Defense Department has placed conservative military veterans with large online followings into civilian government jobs, refused to say what those jobs are, and watched those same people keep posting as if they were still just opinionated retirees on X. The goal, sources told the paper, was to “amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration.”

The department that claims to run “the most transparent Defense Department ever” will not say whether the new hires draw a salary, what they do all day, or how long they will stay.

That is not a comms strategy. It is a shell game.

The accident that blew the cover

The first name to surface was not a retired colonel. It was Jennica Pounds, the Utah data analyst who posts as DataRepublican to nearly a million followers.

In late August she erupted on X. A senior State Department official, Sarah Rogers, had offered her documents about alleged Biden-era censorship. Pounds decided it was a trap.

“It’s not okay when the Deep State sets you up to commit a crime,” she wrote in a thread she later deleted. “I have never been more angry in my life.”

Rogers’s actual message was almost comically mundane: “I wanted to give you the option of ‘breaking’ the story as sort of a gift.” The markings Pounds treated as classified were FOIA redactions. Rogers offered to publish the files herself.

While that fight burned, an opposing account noted the obvious: Pounds worked for the Pentagon. The department confirmed it only after the fact.

“Ms. Pounds serves at the Department of War as a Special Government Employee and is no longer a credentialed journalist at the Pentagon,” the Pentagon said. Her press pass expired in June. She started the government job in July. She had not told her audience.

Pounds’s explanation was a slogan, not a job description.

“I began working as a Special Government Employee for the Department of War in July, to serve the country in a more hands-on way.” She added that she no longer attends briefings “as a journalist.” She referred further questions to deputy press secretary Joel Valdez. The department declined to say what she actually does.

Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Foundation put the ethical problem in one sentence: failing to disclose the government job “blurs the line between journalism and government PR.”

Pounds had already used the account to jab at Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a Hegseth rival, without mentioning she was on the department’s books. That is not “hands-on service.” That is an undisclosed conflict wearing a patriotic caption.

Then the colonels appeared

Pounds was the leak. The Post story was the pattern.

Pentagon records reviewed by the paper showed official “.civ” email addresses—civilian employees, not contractors—assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary for personnel and readiness:

• Rob Maness, retired Air Force colonel, more than 135,000 followers on X. Unsuccessful Louisiana Senate candidate. Last month he called for the removal of “disloyal” Pentagon employees.

• Kurt Schlichter, retired Army colonel, nearly 620,000 followers. Townhall columnist. Records listed him as a “highly qualified expert.”

• Thomas Anderson, retired Army colonel who writes as Cynical Publius, more than 323,000 followers. Listed earlier this year; gone from the directory by late last week. He declined to comment. Maness and Schlichter did not respond. Tata did not respond. Valdez declined to discuss pay, duties, or duration.

Special government employees are capped at 130 days in a 365-day window. Highly qualified experts can work full- or part-time, with or without pay. Either way, the public is not told which box these men occupy or what policy they touch.

They are not obscure. They spent years building audiences by fighting culture-war battles in uniform’s afterlife. Hegseth’s Pentagon then gave them government email and put them in the office that oversees the force. Their feeds did not suddenly become official. They just stopped being independent.

Will Sommer of The Bulwark wrote the line the building will hate: “The defense secretary’s MAGA influencer allies aren’t merely cheering him on—some work for him.”

Two operations, one theory of the press

This is not the same as Hegseth’s earlier stunt: replacing the walkout press corps with Loomer, O’Keefe, LindellTV, Tim Pool, and Turning Point kids who signed the new rules. That was ugly and transparent. You could see who sat in Dan Lamothe’s old chair.

The new arrangement is worse because it pretends not to exist. The first group wears a badge that says “press” while acting like fans. The second group wears no badge at all while drawing government status and posting like civilians.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger called the Pounds revelation the “scandal of the century,” then asked the only question that matters:

“How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican party … are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?”

Jim Stewartson was cruder and closer: “This is just a roundabout way to use taxpayer money to pay for psyops against taxpayers.” Former astronaut Terry Virts noted the grim joke that “both the DoD AND Russia are hiring right-wing influencers.” Jonah Goldberg settled for “Gross.”

Kinzinger later widened the frame to active-duty poster Lt. Col. Adam D’Ortona, who has more than 100,000 followers and spends an “extraordinary amount of time wading into partisan politics online.” Officers already have rules. The question is who enforces them when the secretary likes the content.

What the silence is for

If these were ordinary advisory gigs—retention, recruiting, family programs—the department could say so in a sentence. Tata’s shop owns those files. A one-line press note would kill half the story.

They will not write the sentence. That is the tell.

Hegseth’s Pentagon already treats scrutiny as disloyalty. The new hires arrive pre-loaded with audiences trained to treat scrutiny the same way. Put them on the inside, keep the titles vague, and the attack lines look organic. Followers never see the .civ address. Critics get called “deep state.” The secretary gets a cheap amplifier that does not have to sit through a real briefing.

Pounds thought she was being framed for treason by a colleague in the same administration. She was, in fact, a government employee who had not told her own audience she worked for the government. That farce is the policy.

The American military does not belong to a cable-news faction. Paying, housing, or quietly commissioning people whose public product is factional combat is not “warrior ethos.” It is the department talking to itself through sock puppets and calling the echo a mandate.

Until Valdez or Hegseth names the jobs, the pay, and the rules those accounts must follow, the honest description is the one the Post already printed. The Pentagon hired MAGA influencers. It hid the paperwork. It let them keep posting. And it still will not say what the taxpayers bought.

Bibliography

1. Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp, “Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles,” The Washington Post, August 30, 2026.

2. Will Sommer, “Pete Hegseth Is Building a Pentagon Troll Army,” The Bulwark, August 27, 2026.

3. “Pentagon job of pro-Trump influencer sparks scrutiny,” The Hill, August 27, 2026.

4. Jennifer Bowers Bahney, “The Pentagon Secretly Hires Conservative Influencers To Amplify Pete Hegseth’s Agenda,” Mediaite, August 30, 2026.

5. “Hegseth Secretly Hires MAGA Influencers…,” IBTimes UK, August 28, 2026.

6. “MAGA Influencer Revealed to Be Working for the Pentagon,” The Daily Beast, August 25, 2026.

7. “MAGA ‘journalist’ quietly went from covering the Pentagon to working for it,” Raw Story, August 24, 2026.

8. Erik De La Garza, “Trump Pentagon secretly amassing ‘troll army’…,” Raw Story, August 27, 2026.

9. Robert Davis, “Outrage after MAGA influencers secretly hired at the Pentagon,” Raw Story, August 30, 2026.

10. “Hegseth’s Pentagon Secretly Employed a MAGA Influencer Who Was Attacking His Critics,” The UnPopulist, August 27, 2026.

11. Lara Spirit, “Meet the influencers running the Pentagon press corps,” The Times, December 4, 2025.

12. Adam Kinzinger, “Hegseth’s War on the Press,” adamkinzinger.com, December 5, 2025.

13. “Senate confirms controversial retired Army general as Pentagon personnel chief,” Stars and Stripes, July 15, 2025.

Oil is not a metaphor in Venezuela. It is the national biography. It paid for the modernity that arrived and the ruin that followed. It is what grandmothers mean when they say the country is rich and the people are poor. When Donald Trump announced, late on a Friday in August 2026, that the United States had secured majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude “at no cost to the American taxpayer,” he was not describing a commercial partnership. He was describing a prize. The prize was dressed as a deal with an appointed successor whom Washington itself installed after a commando raid. The costume does not change the theft.

This is the Venezuelan view, and it is not complicated. A foreign power invented a drug emergency that Venezuela does not produce, killed people in international waters without trial, abducted a sitting president on charges that do not match the overdose crisis used to sell the war, refused to permit a free election, kept the old machine in office under a new signature, and then took the oil. The same president has said out loud, about another country, that his “favorite thing is to take the oil.” He is not hiding the doctrine. The only people asked to pretend otherwise are the ones standing on the reserves.

The pretext that would not survive a map

The White House sold the January 3 raid as humanitarian self-defense. Maduro, the story went, was “flooding America with deadly fentanyl.” Parents of overdose victims were paraded as proof. The problem is geographic and chemical. Fentanyl consumed in the United States is manufactured overwhelmingly in Mexico from precursor chemicals sourced in China. U.S. government reports, the DEA, the State Department, the Congressional Research Service, UNODC, and independent researchers have said so for years. Venezuela is not in that supply chain. Fact-checkers recorded the mismatch in the week of the raid. The administration did not correct it. It needed a poison Americans already feared.

What Venezuela actually moves, when it moves drugs at all, is a modest share of Colombian cocaine, much of it toward Europe, not the Midwestern morgue. The indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York as the helicopters left Caracas is a cocaine and “narco-terrorism” instrument, a 2020 case warmed over and superseding on the day of the kidnapping. It is not a fentanyl case because there is no fentanyl case. A war of choice was hung on a molecule Venezuela does not ship.

Even the cocaine story is thinner than the rhetoric. Regional specialists have long described Venezuela as a secondary transit state, not a kingpin economy on the scale advertised. U.S. intelligence itself undercut the claim that Maduro commanded Tren de Aragua as an invading army. None of that mattered. The point of a pretext is not to be true. The point is to be loud enough that the oil can be discussed afterward as a bonus rather than as the point.

Murder at sea, posted like a trophy

Before the raid on Caracas there was the sea. From September 2, 2025, U.S. forces began exploding small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific under the banner of Operation Southern Spear. Officials posted the videos. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, UN experts, and the Washington Office on Latin America called the strikes what they are under the law that still pretends to bind great powers: extrajudicial killings. WOLA’s July 2026 tally: 67 boats, 63 attack events, 221 people reported killed, including survivors finished in a follow-up strike. By late August the running military count had passed 210. The dead were labeled “narco-terrorists.” Most were never named. Some families in coastal Venezuela, Trinidad, and Colombia said the people on those decks were fishermen and poor crew paid a few dollars to run a boat.

There was no imminent armed attack on the United States. There was no trial. There was a secret legal memo and a president who announced that cartels were enemy combatants because he had determined they were. That is not law. That is a license. It is also the rehearsal. Once a government has practiced killing strangers on the water without having to prove a case, kidnapping a president in his capital is only a change of venue.

The charges, the dock, and the hole where a people should be

Nicolás Maduro is not a sympathetic defendant and it is not my intention to make him one. He presided over a predatory state, a stolen 2024 count, prisons, and a wrecked oil industry. That is a Venezuelan indictment, written in Venezuelan graves and empty refrigerators. It is not a warrant for the United States to appoint itself police, judge, and concessionaire.

The New York charges — narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, weapons counts — are U.S. domestic instruments used to launder a cross-border abduction. Maduro pleaded not guilty and called himself the constitutional president of his country. His trial is set for June 2027. Whether a Manhattan jury someday convicts him is irrelevant to the constitutional fact that Venezuelans did not extradite him, did not try him, and did not vote on what came next. Head-of-state seizure by a rival power is not “law enforcement.” It is regime change with a docket number.

The hypocrisy is archival. In the same season, Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president convicted in a U.S. court of drug trafficking. One Latin American president is a trophy. Another is a favor. The constant is not narcotics. The constant is usefulness.

An appointed country

Hours after the raid, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal — the same court that blessed Maduro’s fiction in 2024 — declared a “temporary absence” and parked the presidency on Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president Washington had already decided it could work with. The armed forces saluted. Trump praised her. María Corina Machado, the opposition figure who had actually won the popular argument in 2024, was dismissed by the U.S. president as “a very nice woman” who lacked “respect.” The democratic transition, such as it is, is chaired on the government side by Jorge Rodríguez, the interim president’s brother. Machado was kept off the table.

Eight months later there has been no presidential election. Trump has said Venezuela is not ready. After the June earthquakes the National Assembly announced it did not have “headspace” for a vote. The 180-day interim clock ran out in early July with Rodríguez still in the palace. Washington says it wants free elections the way a landlord says he wants a responsible tenant: later, on his terms, after the lease on the subsoil is signed.

This is not liberation. It is a protectorate with a local manager. The manager’s job is to keep the streets quiet enough for the concession.

The earthquake, the cameras, and the ledger

On June 24, 2026, twin earthquakes tore through north-central Venezuela. Official tallies climbed past 1,700 dead; other counts ran higher. Tens of thousands were missing in the first days. La Guaira and Caracas neighborhoods came down on the people who lived in them.

The United States sent search-and-rescue teams, a naval ship, and a pledge that grew in press releases from $150 million toward $300 million. Marco Rubio called it big, fast, and effective. State Department officials, having gutted USAID, congratulated themselves on speed. Survivors described something else: slow official rescue, blocked roads, civilian brigades carrying water because the state that can sign a 65-billion-barrel paper cannot clear rubble. Opposition leader Machado was initially blocked from returning to help. Anger landed on Rodríguez and, by extension, on the foreign patron who put her there.

Place the numbers next to each other and the morality play collapses. Hundreds of millions in emergency theater. One hundred billion dangled as investment in exchange for a fifth of the nation’s proven oil. A century-scale concession. Aid is what an occupying logic spends to photograph itself. Oil is what it came for. Venezuelans who buried family in June were told in August that their inheritance had been placed under majority U.S. control for their own reconstruction. That is not compassion. That is a receipt.

“I like to take the oil”

No one has to infer the doctrine. Trump has been saying it since the 1980s: take the oil, keep the installation, let the natives live on what you leave. In March 2026 he told the Financial Times that his “favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran,” that “stupid people” at home asked why, and that Kharg Island could be seized. He posted that with a little more time the United States could “TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” He complained that Americans wanted the Iran war to end before he could keep the fields. Venezuela was the working model he cited. The August announcement in Caracas is not an exception. It is the product line.

The Venezuelan structure is now public enough to name. A U.S.-backed joint venture. Seventeen fields. About 65 billion barrels — a fifth of the world’s largest proven reserve. Majority U.S. “effective output,” described as 55 percent through equity and oil at cost. Concessions spoken of in 100-year and 25-year breaths, depending on which microphone is on. Oil earmarked for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the U.S. military. Rubio promises $100 billion in private capital. Rodríguez promises $209 billion in taxes and $19 a barrel and “sovereignty.” Trump promises cheaper American gasoline and “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY.”

Sovereignty that must be announced on state television after the fields have been signed away is already gone. Rafael Ramírez, the old Chavista oil minister now in exile, called it the greatest looting in the country’s history and a new U.S. colonialism. He is not wrong about the looting even if he is implicated in the earlier looting. Hardline colectivos marched in Caracas with “Yankees out” signs. Opposition figures who spent years begging Washington to notice Venezuela called the same paper a land grab “at gunpoint.” When both the people who loved Chávez and the people who fought him use the word piracy, the word has earned its keep.

Harvard’s Ricardo Hausmann put the legal point without romance: Rodríguez has no legitimacy to bind the nation to this. Venezuelans will not respect it. Serious companies know it may not last. That is not a comfort. It is a warning that the concession is a political instrument first and a petroleum contract second — durable only so long as U.S. force and a local client remain aligned.

What the opposition sees, and what it is not allowed to decide

The Venezuelan opposition is not a single choir. Some voices, exhausted by Chavismo, will accept almost any foreign lever if it someday yields a vote. Others, including people who risked their lives against Maduro, look at August 2026 and see the opposite of the country they wanted: the same surnames in the ministries, the same courts, no Machado, no election calendar, and the subsoil under a foreign flag. One unnamed opposition figure told the Guardian the United States on display was not the Marshall Plan. It was “rapacious” and “mafioso.” Francisco Rodríguez warned the National Assembly that handing the oil to Washington under occupation violates the constitution.

That is the Venezuelan opposition’s bind. It asked the world to break a dictatorship and received a receivership. It asked for elections and received a client. It asked for reconstruction and received a joint venture whose first beneficiary is the U.S. taxpayer Trump keeps naming in the same sentence as Venezuelan “prosperity.” The opposition is told to be grateful that Maduro is in Brooklyn. Gratitude is the etiquette of the looted.

The name for this

Imperialism is not a mood. It is a method. Invent a threat. Kill beyond the law. Decapitate the local authority. Appoint a manager. Postpone the vote. Extract the resource. Call the extraction a partnership. Photograph the aid. Repeat the method on the next map — Iran, if the “stupid people” at home can be worn down.

Venezuela has seen the method before, in the concession era that nationalization was supposed to end. The language has been updated. The appetite has not. Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” is Monroe with the quiet parts in all caps. China is the rival to be expelled from the hemisphere; Venezuelan oil is the inventory; Venezuelan votes are a scheduling problem.

A people can hate a dictator and still refuse to be a well. That refusal is the Venezuelan view. It does not require affection for Maduro, faith in Rodríguez, or naiveté about PDVSA’s thieves. It requires only the ordinary idea that the ground under a country belongs to the living who stand on it — not to the distant president who likes to take the oil.

Bibliography

1. Poynter / PolitiFact — White House fentanyl claim vs. the evidence

2. NYT — Fact-check of Trump’s justifications for the Venezuela operation

3. NYT live — raid coverage and “run Venezuela”

4. LA Times — experts question the “narco-terrorist” frame

5. NYT — indictment is cocaine; Venezuela’s role is modest

6. Lawfare — superseding SDNY indictment

7. CBS New York — trial set for June 2027

8. WOLA — “Killing Spree” report on boat strikes

9. NYT tracker of U.S. boat strikes

10. Amnesty International USA — sea killings

11. Reuters — August Caribbean strike; cumulative toll

12. Just Security — strike timeline

13. Next Venezuelan presidential election / Rodríguez installation

14. Politico — Trump controlling the “transition”

15. El País — talks under Washington’s supervision

16. MercoPress — interim mandate and delayed elections

17. Guardian — quakes and the hollowed-out aid machine

18. Reuters — survivors decry slow aid

19. NYT — chaotic rescue after the quakes

20. FT — “take the oil in Iran”

21. NBC — preference to take Iranian oil

22. Al Jazeera — “TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE”

23. Washington Examiner — Iran “like with Venezuela”

24. NYT — U.S. deal for Venezuelan reserves

25. NYT — “A New Form of U.S. Colonialism”

26. FT — deal denounced by both Venezuelan sides

27. Guardian — opposition on a predatory stake

28. Al Jazeera — Rodríguez’s “sovereignty” claim

29. BNN Bloomberg — “sweeping U.S. grab”

30. Semafor — drug fight vs. the Hernández pardon

Nearly six months into the United States’ war with Iran and a year into deadly strikes on alleged drug boats, a growing number of American service members are saying the orders they receive cross a line they cannot accept. They describe being asked to support attacks they believe violate international humanitarian law—the core rules meant to protect civilians even in war. Some have begun the long, uncertain process of seeking discharge as conscientious objectors. Their accounts, reported anonymously to protect them while applications remain pending, paint a picture of moral injury inside an all-volunteer force that once told itself it fought only when necessary and lawfully.

The numbers are striking. Organizations that help troops navigate conscientious objector applications report caseloads far above historical norms. The Center on Conscience and War has seen applications rise roughly sixfold since Operation Epic Fury began in late February 2026—already about 140 cases compared with a typical annual total near 50, the highest rate in a quarter-century. Many of these applicants are not junior enlisted personnel testing the system; they include mid-career service members with more than a decade of experience, officers up to the rank of major, and graduates of the service academies. The GI Rights Hotline at Quaker House has logged hundreds of inquiries in single months since the Iran campaign started, far above its previous baseline. These are people who once believed in the mission and now fear the moral and legal cost of continuing.

One service member ordered to support operations against Iran described the targeting of bridges and other infrastructure that appeared primarily civilian. Under the Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law, attacks must distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects. Dual-use targets—those serving both military and civilian purposes—can be lawful if the expected military advantage outweighs the anticipated civilian harm and feasible precautions are taken. The service member was told the bridges were dual-use. That explanation did not satisfy them. “There’s no way that you could interpret the international laws as saying that you’re allowed to strike civilian bridges,” the service member said, “but in reality, if the president wants to blow up bridges, the lawyers will find a way to say that it is OK to do it, and nobody anywhere up or down the chain of command ever stops and says no.” Concerns raised up the chain produced no meaningful change.

A separate campaign, Operation Southern Spear, has targeted small vessels the administration labels “narco-terrorist.” Strikes on dozens of boats have killed more than 210 people. One service member who loaded munitions onto aircraft in the Caribbean described watching planes return empty and never knowing with certainty who had been hit or whether civilians had been among the dead. “You can tell yourself what you want at night and say they were all precision strikes,” the service member said, “but there’s at least one innocent person that I feel like I indirectly hurt.” In traditional law-enforcement interdiction, the Coast Guard interdicts and boards. Treating the drug trade as a military target list raises profound questions about the legal authority to use lethal force outside an armed conflict and the quality of intelligence required before missiles fly.

These accounts sit inside a larger legal controversy. International law experts, including more than one hundred who signed an open letter, have argued that the initiation of hostilities against Iran violated the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force absent self-defense against an armed attack or Security Council authorization. Once an international armed conflict exists, the law of armed conflict still binds all parties. Statements by senior officials—threats to obliterate power plants, declarations of “no quarter”—have drawn sharp criticism because they appear to encourage or signal disregard for fundamental rules. Direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks, and the deliberate refusal to accept surrender are prohibited. Dual-use targeting is not automatically illegal, but it demands rigorous application of distinction, proportionality, and precautions. When those requirements are treated as obstacles rather than constraints, the risk of unlawful harm rises.

Service members are not required to be passive. U.S. military law and the Department of Defense Law of War Manual recognize a duty to refuse manifestly unlawful orders. Obedience to superior orders is not a defense to war crimes. Conscientious objection offers a formal path out for those whose deepest convictions now forbid participation. The process is deliberately rigorous: written statements, interviews with the chain of command, a chaplain, and a mental-health evaluator, followed by review at higher levels. It can take many months. That so many experienced troops are choosing this route suggests the crisis of conscience is real and widespread.

The Pentagon has not publicly addressed the rise in applications or the specific concerns raised by these service members. Official statements continue to describe the Iran campaign as necessary to neutralize threats and the boat strikes as lawful actions against designated terrorist organizations. Yet the gap between those assertions and the lived experience of people ordered to execute the missions is widening. When troops who volunteered to serve begin to conclude that the orders themselves violate the laws they were trained to uphold, the institution faces a problem that recruiting numbers and operational tempo cannot paper over.

War always tests the boundary between military necessity and legal restraint. The accounts emerging from this conflict suggest that boundary is under severe strain—and that some of those asked to cross it are refusing. Their decision does not resolve the strategic questions surrounding Iran or the drug trade. It does, however, force a public reckoning with whether the United States is still prepared to fight according to the rules of law it claims to defend.

Should Canada Accept American Conscientious Objectors as it did with the Vietnam War?

That reckoning will not stay inside American borders. A half-century ago, Canada became a refuge for tens of thousands of Americans who could not, in conscience, fight in Vietnam. Ottawa never sent combat troops to that war. After an early period of hesitation, immigration officers were told not to ask about military status. Pierre Trudeau later said Canada should be “a refuge from militarism.” The people who crossed the border were not abstractions. They were young men—and later their families—who believed the alternative was to take part in something they could not live with. Many stayed. Canada became home.

The parallel is not exact, and the costs of repeating it would be real. There is no draft now. These applicants volunteered. Many have already served for years. Canadian refugee law has usually treated the United States as a democracy able to protect its own, and Iraq-era deserters who sought asylum here mostly failed. The Safe Third Country Agreement does not bar U.S. citizens, but the legal bar remains high. And unlike 1969, the relationship between Ottawa and Washington is already raw: tariffs, talk of annexation, a Canadian prime minister saying the country has been “attacked.”

Yet Canada’s own history of restraint is part of the moral landscape these service members are now looking toward. Canada refused combat in Vietnam. Jean Chrétien kept Canada out of the 2003 invasion of Iraq when Washington and London pressed hardest. This year Prime Minister Mark Carney has said Canada is not a party to Operation Epic Fury, will not join the U.S.–Israeli offensive, and that the campaign appears inconsistent with international law. That is not neutrality as indifference. It is a long pattern of declining to fight wars Ottawa does not believe are lawful or necessary—while still living next door to the country that is fighting them.

The people now seeking conscientious-objector discharges are describing the same fear that sent earlier generations north: that they will be ordered to do things they believe violate the laws meant to protect civilians, and that no one in the chain of command will say no. Some watched planes return empty from strikes on small boats and could not be sure who had died. Others were told civilian bridges were lawful dual-use targets and could not accept the explanation. They are not asking Canada to settle the strategic argument over Iran or the drug trade. They are asking whether there is still a place that will treat a crisis of conscience as something other than desertion.

Welcoming them would be an act of solidarity with people who volunteered to serve and then concluded they could not continue without becoming complicit. It would also be a pointed assertion of the independence Canada has claimed in Vietnam, in Iraq, and again in 2026. Refusing them would be quieter and less likely to provoke further punishment from a wounded and angry Washington. Either choice will say something about whether Canada still believes, as it once said it did, that a neighbouring democracy can be a refuge when the rules of war are treated as optional. The men and women now filling out those applications are waiting to learn which Canada they are looking at.

Hypertext Bibliography

• Troops fighting against Iran and drug smugglers say they’re being asked to violate international law — Primary MS NOW investigation, 26 August 2026.

• Pete Hegseth Faces Record Number of Military Conscientious Objectors — Daily Beast summary of the same reporting.

• Conscientious Objectors Trying to Flee Military Skyrocket Under Trump — New Republic coverage.

• Over 100 International Law Experts Warn: U.S. Strikes on Iran Violate UN Charter and May Be War Crimes — Just Security open letter by legal scholars.

• Questions and Answers: US, Israel, Iran, and the Laws of War — Human Rights Watch legal primer.

• Iran war: International law experts allege violations in Iran war — BBC News report on expert concerns.

• Operation Epic Fury and the International Law on the Use of Force — Carnegie Endowment analysis.

• U.S. service members have sought legal advice about deadly boat strikes — Reporting on legal questions surrounding Southern Spear.

Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli settler and physician from Kiryat Arba, murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded more than 100 others on February 25, 1994. Armed with an assault rifle and dressed in military uniform, he walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron— simultaneous with Purim and Ramadan—and opened fire on Muslims at prayer. Survivors beat him to death at the scene. The massacre was deliberate, targeted, and carried out in a holy site during prayer. Goldstein was an active member of the radical Kach movement founded by Meir Kahane, an organization later banned as a terrorist group.

Far from being universally repudiated, Goldstein has been celebrated as a hero and martyr by significant currents of Israel’s far-right and settler movements. His grave in Meir Kahane Memorial Park at the entrance to Kiryat Arba was transformed into a pilgrimage site. Admirers erected a shrine around the tomb, inscribed it with language calling him holy, and gathered to pray, kiss the stone, light candles, sing, and dance. Admirers inscribed the tombstone with reverential language stating that he “gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land.” In the years after the massacre, hundreds visited to pray, kiss the stone, light candles, sing, and dance. Some dressed as Goldstein or celebrated the anniversary of the attack around Purim. A shrine-like prayer area was eventually built around the grave.

Although the Israeli army demolished the shrine structures in 1999 under a law against monuments to terrorists, the grave continues to draw visitors. Radical settlers and Kahanist supporters still treat it as a place of reverence; calls for larger pilgrimages surface regularly in extremist circles.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister and leader of Otzma Yehudit, embodied this admiration for years. As a young Kach activist he appeared on camera in 1995 dressed as Goldstein for Purim and declared him “my hero.” For a long period he displayed a framed portrait of the mass murderer in his living room in Kiryat Arba. He removed the picture only in 2020, under political pressure, to improve his party’s chances of joining broader right-wing coalitions. Ben-Gvir has never issued a full, unambiguous repudiation of his earlier idolization. He has spoken near imagery glorifying Goldstein and Kahane, and his political current remains the direct ideological heir to the same Kahanist worldview that produced Goldstein.

Itmar Ben-Gvir LARPs as Goldstein. In the video, Ben-Gvir is in costume as Goldstein, wears a sign roughly translating to “Blessed is the man who opens fire,” and says “He is my hero.”

Other high-profile figures and rabbis on the Israeli right have similarly elevated Goldstein. Settler leaders and certain religious authorities have described him as a righteous man or framed the massacre as defensive or preemptive. Polls have recorded measurable support: roughly one in ten Israeli Jews has called him a national hero, with higher figures among right-wing voters. In extremist settler communities the language of “saint” and “hero of Israel” has persisted for decades. Children have been named after him; songs praising the shooting have been sung in public; and memorial imagery continues to circulate.

This is not residual private nostalgia. It is an active, public form of political and religious veneration that treats the deliberate murder of Palestinian civilians at prayer as an act of national or sacred virtue. The fact that a man who gunned down worshippers in a mosque is still honored at his gravesite, kept on living-room walls by future cabinet ministers, and defended by segments of the Israeli right reveals the depth of the extremism that has been normalized in parts of Israeli political culture. Goldstein’s memory is not buried. It is cultivated.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did it again. Just hours before a midnight deadline that would have averted a new wave of 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods, he helped scuttle a tentative Canada-U.S. trade agreement by demanding last-minute changes that Ottawa called unfair and unreliable.

Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled Canadian negotiators out of Washington late Friday, August 21, 2026, accusing the American side of rewriting terms that both governments had been fine-tuning for days. The United States, through Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, blamed Canada for new demands and walk-backs. The result: the tariffs took effect Saturday, Canada pledged to match them dollar-for-dollar, and North America’s most important trading relationship took another hit.

Sources familiar with the talks told CBC News that Lutnick was unhappy with the deal on the table. He particularly objected to cutting existing auto tariffs from 25 percent to 15 percent, arguing it would undermine the push to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Lutnick, a longtime Trump associate who oversees the trade team, has spent months publicly criticizing Canada’s approach and calling the existing North American deal a “bad” one that needed to be reworked.

This is not Lutnick’s first late-stage intervention in U.S.-Canada infrastructure and trade. Earlier this year he played a similar role with the Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Canada paid the entire $6.4 billion cost of the new Detroit-Windsor crossing, which was designed to ease congestion at one of the continent’s busiest trade corridors. Under the original 2012 agreement, Canada would collect tolls until it recouped its investment, then share revenue with Michigan. The bridge was finished and a ribbon-cutting was scheduled for June 2026. Invitations went out.

Lutnick stepped in at the last moment and delayed the opening. He pressed for a larger U.S. share of the tolls. The move followed a meeting he held with Matthew Moroun, the billionaire owner of the competing Ambassador Bridge, who had recently donated $1 million to a Trump-aligned PAC. Trump then publicly threatened to block the new span. After weeks of delay, Canada agreed to give the United States 50 percent of net revenues for 15 years plus a say in setting tolls. Lutnick later called the outcome “the Art of the Deal in action.”

The pattern is consistent: wait until the other side has invested time, money, and political capital, then demand a better cut.

The same approach shows up in Lutnick’s other dealings. His former firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—now run by his sons Brandon and Kyle—has a deep, profitable relationship with Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer. Cantor manages the bulk of Tether’s enormous U.S. Treasury holdings and collects tens of millions in fees. It also holds a convertible stake in Tether. Around the time Lutnick transferred his Cantor ownership to family trusts to meet ethics rules, one of those trusts received an undisclosed loan from Tether. Lutnick had previously vouched for Tether’s reserves and helped shape U.S. crypto legislation in ways that benefited the company. Democratic senators have asked whether the loan and the long-standing ties create undue influence.

A parallel controversy involves tariff refunds. After Lutnick championed Trump’s broad “Liberation Day” tariffs, a secondary market sprang up in which investors bought importers’ rights to possible refunds at 20–30 cents on the dollar, betting courts would later strike the duties down. The Supreme Court did exactly that in February 2026. Reporting based on internal documents said Cantor Fitzgerald was pitching and exploring these trades, claimed capacity for hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, and referenced at least one completed deal. If the firm or related entities bought cheap claims that later paid out in full, the return would have been three to five times the money invested. Cantor has denied executing any such transactions, saying salespeople looked at brokering deals but none were completed. House Democrats have demanded records, citing an appearance of conflict given Lutnick’s central role in the very policy his family’s firm was reportedly betting against.

These episodes sit alongside the last-minute trade and bridge interventions. In each case the public official sets or delays policy while family business interests stand to gain.

The deeper context makes the latest collapse even more striking. The only reason these frantic talks were happening at all is that the Trump administration spent 2025 and 2026 violating the very trade agreement Trump signed in his first term.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA/CUSMA) was Trump’s own rewrite of NAFTA. It was supposed to provide predictable, tariff-free access for most qualifying goods. Instead, the second Trump administration imposed Section 232 tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, and autos, then added new 50 percent duties under an obscure 1930s law that apply even to goods that meet USMCA rules of origin. Officials have openly treated the existing pact as insufficient and used tariff threats as leverage to force a rewrite. Canada’s retaliatory measures and provincial alcohol bans were responses to those U.S. actions, not the original cause.

Lutnick has been a vocal champion of this approach. He has dismissed Canada’s negotiating strategy, questioned the value of the existing deal, and repeatedly signaled that the United States should extract more concessions because it is the larger market.

The result is a cycle of last-minute brinkmanship that damages businesses and workers on both sides of the border. Canadian auto plants, steel mills, and exporters face higher costs and uncertainty. American companies that rely on integrated North American supply chains lose predictability. Communities that depend on cross-border traffic, like those around the Gordie Howe Bridge, watch infrastructure they paid for get held hostage.

Lutnick’s interventions follow a familiar script: insert himself late, demand better terms for the United States, and treat signed agreements and completed projects as opening bids rather than finished deals. When the other side walks away, the tariffs go into effect and both countries pay the price.

Canada has now suspended talks and recalled its team. The new 50 percent tariffs are in force. The bridge eventually opened after Canada conceded more revenue. The underlying problem remains: an administration that treats its own prior agreements as optional and uses last-hour pressure as standard operating procedure.

Canada will now match the new U.S. tariffs dollar-for-dollar on the targeted goods and roll out extra support for affected workers and businesses in the coming days, building on nearly $25 billion already spent. That response is understandable, but it also highlights an inconvenient reality for Washington: the United States remains heavily dependent on Canadian energy, potash, aluminum, and other resources that keep American farms, factories, and power grids running. Canada supplies the bulk of U.S. crude oil imports, nearly all of its natural gas imports, and most of its potash fertilizer. Those goods were largely spared from the latest 50 percent tariffs for a reason. Last-minute deal-killing may feel like leverage in the moment, but it does not change the fact that the two economies are still tightly bound.

Extreme religious rhetoric from fringe leaders across the three Abrahamic faiths has long acted as accelerant in the Middle East’s conflicts, transforming political and territorial disputes into existential, divinely mandated struggles. Radical Islamist preachers and groups have framed violence against Jews and Israelis as sacred duty; certain strains of Christian Zionism have treated modern Israeli expansion as the literal fulfillment of biblical prophecy that must be advanced at any cost; and a minority of hardline Jewish rabbis have invoked ancient wartime commandments to justify maximalist approaches to land, civilians, and enemies. These parallel absolutisms feed one another, hardening positions, dehumanizing opponents, and making compromise appear as betrayal of God. In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, such rhetoric has helped normalize collective punishment and total-victory language on multiple sides, intensifying a fire that already consumes the region and now risks wider destabilization through radicalization, refugee flows, and global polarization.

Here is a consolidated overview of controversial statements by Jewish rabbis (primarily Israeli Orthodox/religious-Zionist or associated figures) from 2016–2026 on the treatment of foreigners/non-Jews, Jewish domination/superiority, slavery, rape of enemies/captives, treatment of prisoners, killing of women and children, and taking/conquering land. These are drawn from contemporaneous reporting, videos, and lectures. They often invoke selective readings of biblical wartime laws (e.g., Amalek, Deuteronomy “not a soul remain alive,” yefat to’ar/beautiful captive).

Slavery / genetic inferiority / domination over non-Jews (foreigners)

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel (head of Bnei David pre-military academy in the Eli settlement; state-linked religious-military education). Recordings published 2019 (lectures of uncertain exact date, recirculated through 2026):

“The gentiles will want to be our slaves. Being a slave to a Jew is the best. They’re glad to be slaves, they want to be slaves… Instead of just walking the streets and being stupid and violent and harming each other, once they’re slaves, their lives can begin to take shape… All around us, we are surrounded by peoples with genetic problems… Yes, we’re racists. We believe in racism… The Jews are a more successful race.”

Rabbi Giora Redler (same Bnei David academy): In the same published recordings, he discussed Hitler in a Holocaust lecture: “Let’s just start with whether Hitler was right or not… He was the most correct person there ever was, and was correct in every word he said… he was just on the wrong side.” (Context framed pluralism/secularism as the greater threat.)

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef (Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel): March 2018 sermon: referred to a Black person born to white parents as a “monkey” in the context of a ritual blessing (“if… a monkey son came forth from them…”). May 2017: compared “immodest” secular women to animals (“A woman is not an animal…”). 2016 (later clarified as theoretical): non-Jews “should not live in the Land of Israel” except to serve Jews.

Rape / wartime sexual access to non-Jewish / enemy women

Rabbi Eyal Karim (later IDF Chief Rabbi; comments ~2002–2003, major controversy 2016 during nomination): In an online response to a theoretical question on biblical wartime rules, he stated that intercourse with a non-Jewish (“Gentile”) woman was permitted in wartime under certain conditions “out of consideration for the soldiers’ difficulties” and for collective success/morale—widely reported as appearing to permit rape of “attractive Gentile women against their will.” He and the IDF clarified repeatedly that this was theoretical discussion of ancient texts only, that rape is forbidden in every instance for modern soldiers, and that he never intended practical permission.

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (Chief Rabbi of Safed/Tzfat; member of Chief Rabbinate Council; father of minister Amichai Eliyahu): 2002 article on Kipa (recirculated in later reporting): Argued against “preaching morality” to soldiers mid-war regarding a beautiful (non-Jewish) woman so as not to weaken fighting spirit; interpreted biblical captive-woman passage in ways critics described as excusing wartime rape.

Rabbi Meir Mazuz (prominent Sephardi Haredi rabbi, close to Netanyahu circles; died April 2025): September 2024 video blessing a masked soldier linked to the Sde Teiman Palestinian detainee sexual-abuse case: Said the soldier would be found “completely innocent,” framed alleged acts as “beat[ing] the enemy,” and responded to the possibility the rape allegation was true with: “And if it were true? Don’t we have the right to act this way?” Mazuz also blamed COVID-19 and Meron disaster on homosexuality.

Killing women, children, civilians; treatment of prisoners; Amalek framing; land conquest

Rabbi Eliyahu Mali (head of Shirat Moshe Hesder Yeshiva in Jaffa; combines Torah study with IDF service): March 2024 conference lecture on civilians in Gaza:

“In our mitzvah [holy] war, in our situation in Gaza, according to what the law says, ‘Not every soul shall live,’ and the logic of this is very clear: if you do not kill them, they will kill you… not only… the young man… pointing a weapon at you, but also the future generation (the children of Gaza), and those who produce the future generation [women]… Today he is a baby, tomorrow he is a boy, tomorrow he’s a warrior… There are no innocent people… I told my son [a soldier], kill everything that moves.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (American-born Chabad-affiliated; dean of Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar settlement; Kabbalist, known for prior controversies): Late 2023 (post-Oct 7) pamphlet and talks: Gaza/Hamas possess “Amalek-like features” demanding “total annihilation, not sifting” (no distinction of innocent/guilty); “Anyone who hates Israel… is considered Amalek… the accepted name for Amalek today is really Hamas.”

Rabbi Ophir Wallas (Bnei David Military Mechina): 2018 lecture video:

“In conquering the Land [of Israel] according to Nachmanides and Rashi [*], who say that the wars of today are also mitzvah wars for conquering the Land, I am beholden to nothing. This isn’t the law of the persecutor [**], right? What law are we dealing with? The laws of a mitzvah war, a war of occupying the Land. Even if I don’t conquer Gaza right now, [conquering it] is part of my ability to settle the Land of Israel, so it is also a part of the mitzvah of conquering the Land. And therefore it follows, there’s no other way; like, we’d have to kill them all. Because this is the difference between the Law of the Persecutor and mitzvah wars. […] A mitzvah war of conquering the Land, which is not limited to saving the people of Israel from their enemies, according to some of the Rishonim [***] I could, on the face of it and by the essential law, destroy, kill and cause to perish [****] all of them. I will not do so, because if I were to do so, and reject international treaties, then the State of Israel shall parish, unless we shall witness a miracle of miracles – and one must not trust in a miracle. And that’s the only reason I won’t do it.”

Rabbi Manis Friedman (b. 1946) is a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, speaker, and author based in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is dean of Bais Chana Women’s Institute of Jewish Studies, was a translator for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and is known for popular talks on Jewish thought, relationships, and family life. He wrote Doesn’t Anyone Blush Anymore? (1990) and has a large following as a lecturer; Bob Dylan studied with him in Minnesota. He wrote the following words, they appeared under his name in Moment Magazine’s May/June 2009 “Ask the Rabbis” feature answering “How should Jews treat their Arab neighbors?”:

“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)."
"The first Israeli prime minister who declares that he will follow the Old Testament will finally bring peace to the Middle East. First, the Arabs will stop using children as shields. Second, they will stop taking hostages knowing that we will not be intimidated. Third, with their holy sites destroyed, they will stop believing that G-d is on their side. Result: no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war. Zero tolerance for stone throwing, for rockets, for kidnapping will mean that the state has achieved sovereignty. Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (ongoing into 2026): November 2023 (backing son’s nuclear remark on Gaza): “There’s now much discussion on what to do with Gaza. To erase them? … Drop an atom [bomb] on them? It’s an option.” July 2026 (after terror attack): Called for “great revenge” and “the gates of hell must be opened upon them—upon that despicable village of murderers.” Earlier calls for hunting released Palestinians and harsh prisoner treatment recirculated.

Rabbinical Judge Avraham Zarbiv (2026): Ruled to have violated ethical guidelines for calls to “flatten the Gaza Strip” and public boasts about destruction and deaths (“We have crushed them. There are tens of thousands of dead… The dogs and the cats ate them…”). Zarbiv has been celebrated as a hero for his efforts, as noted in the 2026 Guardian article ‘Rabbi who boasts of bulldozing Palestinian homes will light torch for Israel’s national day: Human rights campaigners say honour for Avraham Zarbiv endorses ethnic cleansing and war crimes’

Circulating 2026 videos attributed to Rabbi Tzur (linked to Bnei David-type circles): Invoked Torah rules on Amalek/Gaza requiring no mercy and killing men, women, children, and nursing infants. Rabbi Tzur explains that the Jewish King Saul was ordered to show no mercy to the Amalek:

“The operational meaning is death for men, women, children and babies,” he says.
He goes on to explain the rationale: by “allowing the existence of evil to remain in the world… In the end, you hurt good people.”

Common phrasing in the circulating 2025–2026 clips and reports (English renderings of the Hebrew lecture):

“When you go to war against Amalek (the Palestinians), it is not like against any other nation: the Torah tells us that we should not have pity on them, which means that women, men, children and newborns must be killed.”

Rabbi David Yosef (Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel / Rishon LeZion): August 20, 2026 visit to the Gush Katif Museum in Jerusalem (marking 21 years since the burning of synagogues during the 2005 disengagement):

“They have never been a people and they have no rights. The rights are ours. … this mob that is not a people, that they call themselves a Palestinian people but they are not a people.”

He also stated: “Gaza is the Land of Israel, Gaza is ours, Nablus is ours, Jenin is ours, all of them are ours.”

Rabbi Dov Lior (chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba; spoke at Givat Oz V’Gaon event): October 2014: “We must strive to clean the entire country” of Arabs; “There was no peace and there will never be peace… because there is no one to make peace with… This is their character, they are for war.”

Hyperlinked bibliography of key sources

• Times of Israel on Kashtiel/Redler (2019 recordings): https://www.timesofisrael.com/embracing-racism-rabbis-at-pre-army-yeshiva-laud-hitler-urge-enslaving-arabs/

• Ynet / coverage of Karim (2016): https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4827240,00.html and related Times of Israel/AP reports.

• Electronic Intifada on Eliyahu (2017, covering 2002): https://electronicintifada.net/content/rabbi-who-urged-gaza-genocide-excused-rape-soldiers/21566

• New Arab / viral video coverage of Mali (March 2024): https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-rabbi-says-gaza-women-children-should-all-be-killed

• Israel National News / Arutz Sheva on Ginsburgh (Dec 2023): https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381454

• Times of Israel on Eliyahu nuclear option (Nov 2023): https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-backs-remark-by-his-son-a-far-right-minister-that-nuking-gaza-is-an-option/

• New Arab on Mazuz (Sept 2024): https://www.newarab.com/news/rabbi-blesses-soldier-accused-raping-palestinian-prisoner

• Haaretz on Zarbiv (Feb 2026): https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-02-12/ty-article/.premium/flatten-gaza-israeli-rabbinical-judge-violated-ethical-guidelines-for-extremist-remarks/0000019c-4d8b-d447-a59d-6fdbceb30000

• Israelquotes.com compilations (ongoing, includes Mali and others):

https://israelquotes.com/

• UN documents and secondary academic reporting (e.g., on Amalek rhetoric and Mali, 2024–2025): various S/2024–2025 series and journal articles.

Anyone who read my own origin story, in Surfing the Apocalypse: Trump, Marijuana and My 36 Year Struggle with Apocalypticmania, knows that love of surfing and fear of an Apocalypse have been competing interests in my own life. My mind was recently blown away by the Gleefully told Genocidal fall of Western civilization from the “Surfing Rabbi” Yom Tov Glasser.

In certain strands of Chassidic and Kabbalistic thought within Orthodox Judaism, themes of redemption often intertwine with ideas of historical reckoning. Drawing on sources like the Zohar and midrashic traditions, these teachings identify Edom (linked to Esau and later associated with Rome and Western/Christian civilization) as the power that destroyed the Second Temple and persecuted the Jewish people across centuries. In this framework, the eventual downfall of those nations is portrayed not merely as political shift but as divine justice that clears the way for the full elevation of Israel, the revelation of God’s glory, and the messianic era. While mainstream Orthodox discourse usually keeps such ideas in the realm of prayer, longing, and general end-times hope, some teachers present them more vividly and contemporarily, framing current events as steps toward that cosmic rebalancing…. ie Apocalypticmania!!!

Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser, widely known as the “Surfing Rabbi,” occupies a distinctive niche in contemporary Orthodox circles. A California-born former professional surfer who became a baal teshuva (a Jewish person from a secular or non-Orthodox background who adopts a traditional, Orthodox religious lifestyle) and received ordination connected to Aish HaTorah, he has taught for decades at Aish’s World Center in Jerusalem’s Old City while living in the Pinsk-Karlin Chassidic community in Meah Shearim.

It is important to distinguish Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser’s particular orientation from the institutions and broader streams often associated with him. Although he received ordination connected to Aish HaTorah (an outreach-focused offshoot of the strictly Litvish yeshiva Ohr Somayach, which was founded for baalei teshuvah and prioritizes Talmud and Halakha while treating Kabbalah as esoteric and largely off-limits), Glaser later aligned himself with the Pinsk-Karlin Hasidic community. In the Litvish (Lithuanian-Haredi) worldview that shapes Aish and Ohr Somayach, Kabbalah remains sealed “Torat HaSod,” subordinated to Halakha, and is almost never invoked in public teaching; Hasidic traditions, by contrast, frequently give Kabbalah primacy and infuse everyday practice and eschatological rhetoric with it. Glaser’s vivid, Kabbalistically charged portrayals of Edom’s downfall and his relatively open remarks on cannabis therefore reflect Hasidic rather than Litvish priorities, and do not represent the institutional stance of Aish HaTorah. Likewise, his theological emphasis on divine vengeance alone—rather than human political or military activism—aligns more closely with classical Haredi passivity (rooted in the Three Oaths) than with Zionist self-reliance; the Karlin dynasty itself has historically kept a distance from Israeli party politics. These distinctions matter: the apocalyptic language Glaser employs is real within certain Hasidic and Kabbalistic circles, yet it cannot be read as the official voice of Aish, of Litvish Orthodoxy, or of Zionism.

Aish HaTorah (now often simply called Aish), the institution where Glaser has long taught, is one of the most prominent Orthodox Jewish outreach organizations worldwide. Founded in 1974 in Jerusalem by Rabbi Noah Weinberg, it operates a major campus in the Old City, dozens of branches across multiple continents, and a large digital presence that includes Aish.com and extensive social-media channels. In recent years it has reported millions of daily video views, millions of followers, and tens of thousands of annual participants in its in-person programs, positioning itself as a leading force in making traditional Jewish wisdom accessible to unaffiliated and English-speaking Jews. That someone who has made such controversial statements as Yom Tov Glaser, should be allowed to teach at their organization, suggests there are some extreme views reaching the students there.

Rabbi Glaser is recognized for his energetic, accessible style that blends Kabbalah, personal transformation, storytelling, and music, reaching audiences through seminars such as the Possible You, international lectures, and online videos. Born and raised in Hollywood/West Los Angeles, California, he spent about 12 years as a professional surfer (traveling internationally), along with mountain biking and music, before moving to Israel in 1991.

Within certain Chassidic and outreach-oriented communities in Israel and abroad he is regarded as a charismatic teacher with a loyal following, though his more apocalyptic public remarks have drawn wider attention and controversy beyond those circles.

Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser, on the Fall of Western Civilization and the World Dominance of the jewish people sounds like a mad reading from a proponent of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion!

“Do you know that when I hear the nations of the world being nice to Israel — like America still sending arms, or Germany sending arms, or I hear America’s stopping to send so much arms, or England’s no longer going to send arms — all I hear the whole time is: as long as they’re sending arms then they’ll be blessed and then we don’t get to have God’s name be great. Because if you bless the Jews now you’re going to get more brachah [blessing], and now we don’t get to get God’s name great. Why? Because the most powerful nations in the world have to go down to their knees. That’s what happened to Egypt. That’s what’s going to happen to America. That’s what’s going to happen to Germany. That’s what’s going to happen to France. It’s what’s going to happen to London, England. It’s going to happen to Poland. It’s what’s going to happen to Russia. That’s what’s going to happen in China. That’s what’s going to happen to North Korea and South Korea. That’s what’s going to happen in Japan… They’re all going to go down to their knees…But as long as they keep helping us they’ll get a brachah and they’re not going to go down to their knees — they’re going to get a little more time…They’re all going to go down to their knees, and especially the Western ones. The Zohar says that they’re going to go down hard for how they treated us over the last 2,000 years — for the destruction of the Second Temple and how they treated us. Hashem’s going to take them down hard. He’s going to humiliate them… on the world stage. Western countries — Esav, Edom…”

In another leaked clip he states:

“The evil Edomites, the evil Westerners are going to get attacked by a far off country, now i think the farthest off country that could attack would be China...Edom Falls, The Western Countries lose this war, their sovereignty is going to be gone, they will no longer be a super power, Gods going to come and save china or whoever it is, and wipe out the christian countries, why? because the destroyed the second temple haha... While you are all rooting for the West, you forget they have a major debt to pay, that is they destroyed the Beit HaMikdash HaSheni (בֵּית־הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הַשֵּׁנִי) Second Temple” He then laughs and says of china, “they don’t even know where it is”.

He Carries on with “And not only for the punishment of the Second temple, hegoes on about Western Countries will pay for the holocaust and pogroms and for persecuting the Jews, gleefully relishing in the Destruction of the West:

“Meaning they are coing to get killed in the end, because God is going to go on the side of probably China, wipe out the Whole West. Why? Because they destroyed the Second Temple, which is still a debt for them to pay and because of the persecution… This is going to be God’s Vengeance…. God’s sacrifice, God’s slaughter… Go comes to the aid of china, wipes out all the western countries, America, everyone is going down, then God’s glory well be seen in the whole world, not just the Jewish people”.

Facebook Video of Glaser’s speech

Considering what I have written in Apocalypticmania part 8, Apocalyptic Manifestations: Israel, Mid East War and the push of Dispensationalism, and Part 9, Zeitgeist Apocalypse: Trump as the Antichrist, MAGA as Heresy, and America as Babylon, Rabbi Glasers words track with many of the concerns I have raised about Israel, in regards to prophetic interpretation. As a European and American Jew, who has taken on the Orthodox garb, and preaches he fall of Western Civilization, one could be reminded of the warning from Revelation 3:9 about the “ synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars”. His public teaching treats the Third Temple as part of the expected messianic future that follows divine justice and the elevation of Israel and he does not seem to be involved with the current political maneuvering to rebuild it on the site of Al Aqsa Mosque from what I can see online.

with my interest in cannabis, and placement of it in my own mad Apocalyptic interpretations, I decided to look into wether Rabbi Glaser had any interest in cannabis. He has a dedicated talk/video titled “Cannabis” (uploaded around June 2019 on his YouTube channel) in which he addresses cannabis use at length. In the 2019 video, Glaser observes that cannabis use is more common in Jerusalem’s religious circles than outsiders might assume. He notes that nearly everyone he has met who once used cannabis continues to do so in some form, and he specifically remarks that this includes “people you just be shocked” to learn about—individuals whose public religious observance or social standing would make their ongoing use surprising to many in the community. He does not name names or give detailed categories, but the comment is framed as a wry observation about the gap between outward appearances and private habits in the city’s Orthodox and Chassidic environments.

Glaser contrasts regular/overuse (which he says applies to the vast majority of users and has different, more problematic effects) with infrequent use (roughly 6–10 times a year), and describes potential effects such as heightened clarity, making novel distinctions/connections, and increased gratitude/appreciation for life, spouse, and family. He ties this to brain science, specifically the default mode network, and notes similarities to certain psychedelics or meditation in temporarily taking that network offline.

He has also given talks framed around “Wanna Get High?” (e.g., a Practical Spirituality class available on Hidabroot and his channel). These focus primarily on getting “high on life” or spirituality without drugs (dancing, nature, sports, experiences, etc.), while the associated tags and framing reference weed/smoking weed, and he explicitly distinguishes the drug-related sense of “high.” In at least one interview (a Practical Spirituality conversation), he recounts a personal story involving someone arrested with weed.

Interestingly, in his cannabis he twice compares cannabis from the forbidden tree in the Garden o Eden, but favourably so, in the video he states “cannabis can decouple things that are distinct from one another, that it can distinguish them, meaning things that should be just a better ordered, it will help you distinguish them, its like the tree of knowledge, good and evil, it helps you see the things that you thought were one or actually two, there are two you shouldn’t mess up that distinction”.

However, I could find nothing from Glaser on the 8th century BCE Hebrew ritual use of cannabis at the temple in tel Arad, Jerusalem, which was not known for its cannabis evidence till 2020, a year after his cannabis video, or the linguistic debate on the Hebrew kaneh bosem as cannabis. Considering even the Temple Institute has been pondering wether kaneh bosem identifies cannabis or calamus, It will be interesting to see this Mad Rabbi’s interpretation of this new evidence into his cosmology, and how it fits in with his own crazed Apocalypticmania!

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, stands as one of the most brazen architects of state-sanctioned dehumanization and collective punishment in the modern era. From his perch in government, this far-right ideologue has transformed the machinery of Israeli power into an instrument of open ethnic supremacy, advocating policies that amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the systematic erasure of Palestinian life. His words and actions reveal not mere “security concerns” but a genocidal mindset that treats Palestinians as less than human—fit for execution, expulsion, or slaughter—while he basks in domestic popularity as an elected official whose extremism resonates with significant segments of Israeli society.

Ben-Gvir’s political rise is no accident. Once a fringe agitator who brandished a gun in Sheikh Jarrah while declaring “We’re the landlords here,” chanted “Death to Arabs,” and openly admired the Kahanist ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane, he now occupies a senior cabinet post.

Ben-Gvir’s rise to fame began in October 1995, just weeks before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—widely regarded as one of the last serious chances for a negotiated two-state peace with the Palestinian Authority—young far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared on Israeli television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament he claimed was stolen from Rabin’s official car and declared, “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too.” Rabin was murdered on November 4, 1995 by Yigal Amir, a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo process. Ben-Gvir’s public threat occurred amid intense right-wing incitement against Rabin.

According to testimony given by Yigal Amir to the state commission of inquiry after the assassination, Amir stated that he knew Itamar Ben-Gvir from right-wing activist circles in the mid-1990s. Amir recounted that on the bus to the Tel Aviv peace rally on the night of the killing, a Likud activist told him that Ben-Gvir wanted to kill Rabin at the demonstration. Amir said he laughed off the idea, describing Ben-Gvir at the time as “just a kid” and a provocateur rather than a serious threat. They operated in overlapping Kahanist/anti-Oslo networks. Years later, Ben-Gvir publicly supported efforts to free Amir (including co-forming a committee calling for his release) and has spoken in ways that treat the assassin more sympathetically than mainstream Israeli politics allows.

Itamar Ben-Gvir has a long-documented history of personal and political association with the ideology of Baruch Goldstein, the American-Israeli extremist who murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994. Both were affiliated with the radical, anti-Arab Kach party, later designated a terrorist organization. As a young activist in Kach and Kahanist circles, Ben-Gvir openly idolized Goldstein. Footage from 1995 shows him dressed as Goldstein for Purim and publicly calling him a “hero.” For years afterward he kept a framed portrait of Goldstein hanging in his living room in the Kiryat Arba settlement.

^Itmar Ben-Gvir LARPs as Goldstein. In the video, Ben-Gvir is in costume as Goldstein, wears a sign roughly translating to “Blessed is the man who opens fire,” and says “He is my hero.”

In 2020, ahead of elections and in a bid to make his Otzma Yehudit party more acceptable for broader right-wing coalitions, Ben-Gvir announced he was removing the portrait. While he has since occasionally claimed to oppose Goldstein’s act or stated that “people change,” critics note that he has never fully disavowed or apologized for his earlier reverence. He continues to operate squarely within the same radical nationalist and Kahanist current from which Goldstein emerged.

As National Security Minister, he wields direct influence over police, prisons, and internal security policy. This platform has allowed him to push legislation for the death penalty against Palestinian “terrorists,” calling for regulatory changes to enable a crocodile-filled moats around detention facilities holding Palestinian prisoners, and demand the ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the thin euphemism of “voluntary emigration” paired with Israeli settlement. His tenure exemplifies how electoral democracy in Israel has empowered figures who treat domination and demographic engineering as legitimate governance.

The accusations against him are not abstract. Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners, framing the death penalty as the solution to prison overcrowding and a moral imperative. He has expressed personal enthusiasm for carrying out such killings, stating he would be “very happy” to execute convicted terrorists and that relatives of victims were “lining up” for the task. Videos show him near bound detainees declaring that execution is the remaining step. He has pushed and celebrated Knesset legislation making death by hanging the near-mandatory penalty for certain Palestinian cases, even wearing noose pins and claiming medical volunteers stood ready. In cabinet discussions he has asked why so many Palestinians were being arrested rather than killed, and demanded that women and children approaching borders “get a bullet in the head.”

On August 18, 2026, Ben-Gvir’s office announced that construction had begun on a dedicated death-row wing and hanging facility in a central Israeli prison for those sentenced under the “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law passed in March. The facility is to include a gallows and viewing booths so victims’ families can witness the executions. While some Spanish-language reports rendered the announcement as the start of a specialized “unidad de ejecución,” English and Israeli sources describe it as prison infrastructure under the Israel Prison Service for court-ordered hangings—not a new operational or military special unit for field executions. Crucially, the law is structured so that it applies in practice almost exclusively to Palestinians: military courts in the West Bank (which try only Palestinians) make death the default sentence, while the parallel civilian-court provision is worded around an intent to “deny the existence of the State of Israel,” a formulation widely understood to exclude Jewish Israelis. As a result, Jewish Israelis face no realistic prospect of the death penalty even for the most heinous nationalist or terrorist murders of Palestinians or others; the apparatus Ben-Gvir is now building is reserved for one side of the population.

His rhetoric on Gaza is even more explicit in its genocidal intent. In a recent podcast he rejected scaled-back operations and called for targeted assassinations of “30 to 40 every night,” declaring that certain people in Gaza “are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.” He has insisted that “the only thing you should be sending to Gaza is shells,” demanded a complete halt to humanitarian aid, total occupation, destruction of Hamas, encouragement of migration, and settlement. “Gaza is ours,” he has proclaimed, while advocating Jewish settlements across the Strip and the forced removal of its Palestinian population. “For the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.” These are not isolated outbursts; they form a consistent pattern of advocating ethnic cleansing and mass killing.

Ben-Gvir has also systematically overseen and publicly defended the abuse of Palestinian prisoners. As the minister responsible for the Israel Prison Service, he ordered the deliberate worsening of conditions after October 7, 2023: drastic reductions in food rations, severe limits on showers and hygiene items, cancellation of privileges such as canteen access and self-prepared food, extreme overcrowding, and the reopening of underground facilities like Rakefet where detainees never see daylight. He has boasted repeatedly that “jails have turned into a nightmare for terrorists,” that he is “proud” of the changes, that “the era of sing-alongs, marmalade and mutton has ended,” and that he ensures prisoners receive only “the bare minimum.” Israel’s High Court ruled that the state under his policies failed to provide enough food for basic existence and ordered improvements; Ben-Gvir mocked the judges for debating “whether the killers’ menu is balanced” and continued resisting. Public Defender’s Office inspections documented skeletal inmates, near-daily beatings, medical neglect, scabies epidemics, and conditions “not fit to hold human beings.” Rights groups and released prisoners have described systematic violence, sexual assault, stress positions, and dozens to over a hundred deaths in custody since late 2023. Ben-Gvir has toured facilities, filmed himself with bound prisoners, taunted high-profile detainees such as Marwan Barghouti, and ordered rough handling while relatives of victims looked on. When former Israeli hostages stated that his public boasts prompted Hamas to intensify torture of captives (including beatings until unconsciousness and starvation rations), he refused to apologize and declared himself “proud of what I did.”

He has equally defended IDF soldiers accused of war crimes and abuse. In cabinet meetings he questioned why so many Palestinians were being arrested rather than killed. He praised troops involved in the “flour massacre” that killed more than a hundred starving civilians. When military police moved to arrest soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility over alleged sexual assault and other abuses of a Palestinian detainee, Ben-Gvir called the arrests “shameful,” urged the army leadership to “support the combatants,” and recommended they follow the Prison Service’s harsher model. He has promoted officers whose units were filmed shooting Palestinians who had surrendered, given blanket early support to police who killed civilians in Bedouin operations, and publicly backed soldiers who openly advocated resettling Gaza. Accountability is treated as an obstacle; the soldiers are cast as heroes, the investigators as the problem.

Ben-Gvir’s treatment of protesters and international flotilla activists further exposes the same authoritarian cruelty. Under his oversight, Israel’s police and the controversial National Guard he championed have been accused of transforming into a politicized force—widely derided by critics as “Ben-Gvir’s militia.” Officers have been filmed punching, kicking, and hurling anti-government and anti-war demonstrators to the ground. Stun grenades have been deployed against crowds, including in incidents that hospitalized protesters. Ben-Gvir has publicly backed officers under investigation for excessive force, sought to promote them, and pushed policies to outlaw road-blocking protests and restrict demonstrations in other spaces. Non-violent activists, including older women distributing pamphlets calling for hostage deals, have faced home arrests, shackling, prolonged interrogations, and strip searches. The pattern is clear: dissent is met with intimidation and violence designed to deter future protest.

His handling of the Global Sumud Flotilla in May 2026 was especially grotesque. After Israeli forces intercepted the aid vessels and detained roughly 430 international activists, Ben-Gvir personally visited the makeshift holding area at Ashdod port and posted videos of himself taunting the detainees. Activists were forced into stress positions—kneeling with hands tied behind their backs and heads pressed to the ground—while the Israeli national anthem played. Ben-Gvir waved a large Israeli flag over them, declared “Welcome to Israel, we are the landlords,” and encouraged security personnel as they shoved a woman shouting “Free Palestine” to the ground. He mocked the group, saying they “came here all full of pride like big heroes. Look at them now,” and appealed to Netanyahu to imprison them for a “long, long time” in terrorist prisons. Reports from rights groups documented injuries including suspected broken ribs, use of tasers and rubber bullets during the interception, and claims of degradation and sexual harassment. The spectacle drew rare public rebukes even from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, along with international condemnation and diplomatic summonses from multiple countries.

Ben-Gvir’s arrogance toward the United States and the wider world is equally stark. When the Biden administration withheld munitions over plans for a major offensive in Rafah, he tweeted “Hamas [loves] Biden” with a heart emoji during a security cabinet meeting, then doubled down by insisting such provocations should multiply and claiming support from both Trump and some Democrats. He has treated international criticism and potential ICC scrutiny with contempt. Reports of the International Criminal Court prosecutor seeking or preparing arrest warrants against him (alongside Bezalel Smotrich) for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and apartheid-linked policies only underscore the global alarm his record has generated. Canada, the UK, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand have sanctioned him for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank; his response has been defiance rather than reflection.

His sense of superiority is unapologetic. On the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif he has repeatedly entered the site, led prayers, and declared “We restored governance on the Temple Mount… The Temple Mount is in our hands.” He has backed recruitment of far-right religious activists as police officers to “enforce sovereignty” there, advancing an agenda that treats one of Islam’s holiest sites as a stage for Jewish supremacist assertion and potential Third Temple construction. Toward Lebanon he has demanded that “all of Lebanon should become our playground. All of Lebanon should be our target,” rejecting any distinction between the state and Hezbollah. In Bedouin towns he has declared himself “the landlord,” ordered aggressive raids, and issued demolition threats while taunting residents.

None of this is fringe within Israel. Ben-Gvir is an elected politician whose party and policies enjoy substantial support. Polls have shown majority Israeli Jewish backing for rebuilding the Third Temple. His calls for maximum force, settlement expansion, and Palestinian expulsion find resonance among those who view October 7 and ongoing conflict through a lens of permanent dominance. The crocodile-moat spectacle—celebrating the reclassification of Nile crocodiles so they can surround prisons holding Palestinian detainees, complete with AI images of himself holding one on a leash—perfectly captures the theatrical cruelty that has become policy. Critics, including Israel’s own Nature and Parks Authority, have condemned it as unlawful and impractical; Ben-Gvir presents it as deterrence.

This is not security. It is the language and practice of ethnic hierarchy enforced by state power. Ben-Gvir’s record—death-penalty advocacy, calls for daily assassinations of people he deems “not even people,” demands to shoot women and children, promotion of Gaza’s depopulation and colonization, systematic starvation and torture of prisoners under his direct authority, defense of soldiers accused of war crimes and sexual abuse, repression of protesters, public humiliation of international activists, and contempt for international norms—constitutes a sustained campaign of dehumanization that meets the threshold of genocidal incitement and war crimes in the eyes of many human-rights observers and international legal actors. His popularity demonstrates that such extremism is not an aberration but a reflected current in Israeli politics. The world ignores it at its peril.

Bibliography

• Netanyahu rebukes Israeli security minister after video shows degrading treatment of Gaza flotilla activists (CBS News, May 2026)

• Outrage over Israel’s Ben-Gvir flotilla abuse video: What we know (Al Jazeera, May 2026)

• Far-right Israeli minister condemned for taunting handcuffed Gaza flotilla activists (BBC News, May 2026)

• Israeli security minister stirs diplomatic outrage with flotilla activist abuse video (The Guardian, May 2026)

• Ben Gvir posts video of himself taunting bound and detained Gaza flotilla activists, sparks global outcry (The Times of Israel, May 2026)

• Police employ controversial National Guard to disperse anti-government protesters (The Times of Israel, March 2025)

• How far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir weaponised Israel’s police (Financial Times, September 2024)

• Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit police (Haaretz, November 2025)

• Ben Gvir: We should kill ‘30 to 40’ of Israel’s enemies in Gaza every night, ‘they’re not worthy of life’ (The Times of Israel, August 2026)

• Israel’s Ben-Gvir calls for killing ‘30 to 40’ Gazans each night (The National, August 2026)

• High Court rules state not giving Palestinian prisoners enough food, in slap to Ben Gvir (The Times of Israel, September 2025)

• After overseeing rough handling of Palestinian prisoners, Ben Gvir posts proud video (The Times of Israel, February 2026)

• Despite High Court ruling, Palestinian security prisoners say they’re still going hungry (The Times of Israel, July 2026)

• B’Tselem alleges Israeli policy of abuse, torture of Palestinian prisoners (The Times of Israel)

• Ben Gvir refuses to apologize to hostages who said his rhetoric led to torture (The Times of Israel)

• Ex-hostage says Ben Gvir’s comments on prisoners led captors to beat them unconscious (The Times of Israel)

• Israeli Prison Report: Palestinian Inmates Face Starvation and Beatings, Audit Finds (Wall Street Journal)

• Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps (B’Tselem / ReliefWeb)

• Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight (The Guardian)

• Multiple contemporaneous reports on Ben-Gvir’s death-penalty advocacy, Temple Mount provocations, “landlord” declarations, crocodile-moat proposal, and defense of Sde Teiman soldiers (Ynet, Haaretz, Times of Israel, AP, and international outlets, 2024–2026)

• Judy Maltz, “The Lawyer for Jewish Terrorists Who Started Out by Stealing Rabin’s Car Emblem,” Haaretz, 4 January 2016.

• Wikipedia – Itamar Ben-Gvir
  “Itamar Ben-Gvir,” Wikipedia.

• The New Yorker
  “Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of Chaos,” The New Yorker, 27 February 2023.

• Wikipedia – Yigal Amir

• Itamar Ben-Gvir: Constructing facility to hang terrorists under new death penalty law (The Jerusalem Post, August 18, 2026)

• Ben Gvir anuncia inicio de una “unidad de ejecución” para palestinos condenados a muerte (Infobae / EFE, August 18, 2026)

• What’s Israel’s death penalty law that only applies to Palestinians? (Al Jazeera, March 31, 2026)

• Knesset passes death penalty law for Palestinians convicted of deadly acts of terror (The Times of Israel, March 30, 2026)
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

In the Hebrew Bible, 1 Samuel 15:3 delivers one of the clearest commands for total annihilation ever written:

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

This is not metaphor. It is an order to wipe out an entire people—men, women, children, and even their livestock—leaving nothing alive.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly invoked Amalek after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, he did not quote that verse word for word. He did not need to. In speeches and a letter to soldiers he declared: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” And later: “Remember what Amalek did to you… We remember and we fight.”

In Jewish tradition and Israeli political rhetoric, “Amalek” is not an abstract historical footnote. It is the eternal enemy whose memory must be erased. The Deuteronomy command to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” sits beside the 1 Samuel order for total destruction. Together they form a single, lethal idea: the opponent is not merely to be defeated but erased.

Netanyahu’s words were heard by soldiers, politicians, and the public as a cattle call. Within days, Israeli officials and media figures openly spoke of “total annihilation,” “erasing the seed of Amalek,” and leaving “no one” in Gaza. The real-world result has been catastrophic. Gaza’s civilian population—already trapped, densely packed, and half of it children—has been subjected to relentless bombardment, starvation, and displacement. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, the overwhelming majority non-combatants, have been killed. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. The International Court of Justice has heard these same Amalek references presented as evidence of genocidal intent.

Language that frames an entire people as Amalek does not stay in the realm of rhetoric. It licenses the idea that ordinary men, women, and infants are legitimate targets. It turns a war against an armed group into a campaign against a population. That is the direct, observable consequence of Netanyahu’s choice of words.

Biblical commands from three thousand years ago do not excuse modern mass killing. When a head of government reaches for the language of 1 Samuel 15:3 in the middle of a military campaign, he is not offering historical color. He is issuing a cattle call. The bodies that have piled up in Gaza are the answer to that call.

This fits the wider pattern, of using the Bible and Torah to justify, ethnic cleansing, land theft and Genocide. This is the story of the taking of the Promised Land in the Bible, “...I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”(Joshua 24:13). “It was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy...”(Joshua 11:20). “ When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day- all the people of Ai.” (Joshua 8:24-25). “ You shall do to Ai and its kings as you did to Jericho and its kings, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves.”(Joshua 8:2) “All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.” (Joshua 6:19). “Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey your words, whatever you may command them, will be put to death.”(Joshua1:1) “He left no survivors. he totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded.”(Joshua 10:40).

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers...to give you---a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant--then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful not to forget the Lord...”(Deuteronomy 6:10-12).

Importantly, there is no archaeological evidence supporting the biblical account of Joshua’s military campaign of conquest. Sites traditionally associated with the narrative, such as Jericho and Ai, show no matching destruction layers or occupational patterns for the purported time of the invasion. Instead, the rise of highland settlements appears gradual and largely continuous with earlier Canaanite culture.

Modern DNA studies reinforce a picture of deep local continuity. Genome-wide analyses of Bronze Age remains from the Southern Levant show that both present-day Jewish populations and Arabic-speaking Levantine groups (including Palestinians) derive a substantial share—typically more than half—of their ancestry from these ancient Canaanite-related populations. Palestinians and other local Levantine Arabic-speaking communities generally retain a higher proportion of this indigenous Canaanite/Levantine ancestry, while many Jewish groups carry additional genetic contributions from later diaspora admixture (European, North African, or other sources). See - Canaanite Legacy: Jews and Palestinians: DNA Studies Reveal Close Ancestral Relationship between Jews and Palestinians

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

“Who among the gods is like you, O LORD?” Exodus 15:11

Yahweh, who came to be the National God of Israel, is of unknown and complicated origins. No clear etymology of his name exists in Hebrew, and his worship is thought to have come from foreign sources. Even in the Bible, Abraham brought the God of his fathers with him out of Ur, so from even the fundamental perspective, Yahweh was an import, not an indigenous god. The oldest reference to the name of Yahweh, is about 3,500 years old, a challenge for the Biblical creationist, who places the origins of the world itself at about 6,000 years ago. Regardless of his origins, it was Yahweh alone, that arose out of the plethora of Gods and Goddesses of the ancient Near East, to be worshipped as the One supreme God which in our modern world an estimated 2.5 billion people pray to and believe in.

Now the intention of this article is not a complete breakdown of biblical monotheism, so this is an intentionally brief overview of some of the main points. I only delve into this here, as the story of the rise and fall of the ritual use of cannabis, which I have written about extensively, is wound up with the rise of monotheism and the fall of polytheism. There are many well written scholarly works, which describe the polytheistic nature of the ancient Near East and Israel, and how one deity rose to prominence out of the many in great detail. For those who seek a deeper understanding of the current scholarship on this, there are numbers of detailed books such as Mark Smith’s The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (2001) or Gods, goddesses, and images of God in ancient Israel (Keel & Uehlinger, 1998).

Although these ideas may seem radical to people who only know the Bible through their faith, these are actually very mainstream views among Biblical Historians

Like other ancient deities, it is believed that Yahweh originated as an answer to explain natural phenomena. Ancients attributed natural phenomena to supernatural forces. We see this with the worship of sun gods like Shamesh, ocean god like Neptune and his counterpart Posiedon, grain goddesses, fertility goddesses, rain gods etc., etc. In the case of Yahweh, the general view is his worship and identity arose to explain volcanos and storms. Throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh’s appearance coincides with volcanic-like phenomena. When Yahweh descends from Mt. Sinai to bring the Torah to Moses and his people, the mountain bursts forth with fire, spewing lava and billowing clouds of smoke accompanied by both earthquakes and thunderstorms (Exodus 19:16-19). Psalm 18:18 describes Yahweh as billowing with smoke and fire “smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.”

Like the other gods of his day, Yahweh battled dragons, and required copious animal sacrifices, which would make a modern Vodou ritual seem like a friendly weenie roast in comparison. Another reason that the Hebrews burned copious amounts of fragrant incense in and around their places of worship was the unbearable stench from the massive animal sacrifices. These sacrifices were a daily occurrence and constituted a large part of ancient Hebrew worship. In fact, many of the laws and instruction recorded in the books of Moses are concerned with rules for proper sacrifice; which from the descriptions given, must have been a very gruesome sight indeed!

“This is what you are to do to consecrate...priests. Take a young bull and two rams....Bring the Bull to the Tent of Meeting... Slaughter it in the Lord’s presence at the entrance to the Tent...Take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar…pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar. Then take all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them, and burn them on the altar...Take one of the rams... Slaughter it and take the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides. Cut the ram into pieces... Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the lord, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the Lord by fire.”(Exodus 29:1-20)

This was typical of Near Eastern worship, and by no means something particular to the worshippers of Yahweh alone. Again like the other deities of the ancient Near East, Yahweh was part of a pantheon of deities, and the decline and disappearance of this polytheism, or more distinctly Poly-Yahwism, as Yahweh came to head a pantheon, is wound up with the eventual disappearance of cannabis from Hebrew worship.

The leading theory on how the worship of yahweh came to the Israelites is known as The Kenite Hypothesis (also known as The Midianite Hypothesis) which has Yahweh originate with a foreign group of miners and blacksmith, who brought the worship of Yahweh to Canaan. Once in Canaan Yahweh was adopted into an existing pantheon there, and Yahweh became was one of the 70 sons of Canaanite high god El, many of whose attributes he would later come to take.

The Kenite Hypothesis

The Kenite hypothesis was first proposed in 1872 the Dutch historian of religion, Cornelis P. Tiele, in an attempt to explain the origin of the Yahwist religion. Since then, many scholars have built upon Tiele’s theory, and archeological evidence has emerged which has supported it.

The Kenites, were members of a nomadic tribe of metalworkers and coppersmiths, often described as a sect of the Midianites, although some see distinctions between the two. Jethro the father in Law of Moses, is described as both a Kenite and Middianite. Jethro, is described as priest of Yahweh and a tribal leader, and it was only after meeting him that Moses would later reveal to the Hebrews, Yahweh as their own God whom they had forgotten. It was while working for Jethro that Moses had his first meeting with Yahweh at the burning bush. When Jethro inaugurated the Tent of the Meeting, he proclaimed “Yahweh is greater than all other gods”!

The Kenite theory is seen as bolstered by what are considered the first inscribed references to the name of Yahweh, to a semi-nomadic semitic group referred to in Egyptian writings, known as the Shasu. It is believed the root behind the name Shasu, indicates a “wandering” or nomadic people and refers primarily to a group of nomadic people who were located primarily in Syria-Palestine, and it is believed they may have also settled in regions of Canaan. The name Shasu is found in a variety of New Kingdom references including in administrative and military documents from the reigns of Thutmosis III, Amenhotep II, Thutmosis IV, Amenhotep III, Akhenaton, Seti I, Ramses II, Merneptah, and Rameses III. (Akhenaton is interesting here, for his role as the first monotheist, indicating the possibility of an influence).

The Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who is believed to have reigned around 1386 to 1349 BC, had a temple built in honour of the god Amun-Ra. The temple held a series of columns which listed various enemies the pharaoh had vanquished, with each listed alongside a depiction of the captive which depicted their ethnicity, and the indications in the image of the Shasu, portray semitic features, rather than the African ones more widely engraved. Most interestingly is the engraving that accompanied the image, “the land of the Shasu (nomads) of Yahweh”

A reconstruction of the “Land of the Shasu of Yahweh” inscription at the temple of Soleb. Photo Credit

A 13th-century BCE topographical list composed at the time of Rameses II in West Amāra mentions the “Shasu of Seir”, this is interesting in combination with the other engraving referencing Yahweh, as Deuteronomy 33:2, Judges 5:4 both state this is where Yahweh came from.

“When you, LORD, went out from Seir, when you marched from the land of Edom, the earth shook, the heavens poured, the clouds poured down water.” (Judges 5:4)

“(Moses) said: ‘The Lord came from Sinai and shone forth from Seir to them; He appeared from Mount Paran and came with some of the holy myriads; from His right hand was a fiery Law for them’” (Deuteronomy 33:2-3)

Seir refers to a mountainous is the region stretching between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba in the northwestern region of Edom. As noted earlier, fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.E. Egyptian texts refer to “Yhw [Yahu] in the Land of the shasu,” while a twelfth century B.C.E. papyrus Anastasi VI links the Shasu tribes with Seir and Edom. In her article ‘Who Were the Kenites’ Marlene Mondriaan notes of this: “The latter region was in the ‘South’, a territory frequented by the Kenites. It is therefore possible that a connection existed between the Shasu tribes and the Kenites and thus, by implication, linked the Kenites and Yhw” (Mondriaan, 2011). Mark S. Smith, Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University, has gone further and suggested that the Shasu, could be added to the Midianite-Kenite combination, or at least came into deep contact with them. Egyptian records indicate conflicts with the Shasu over lands with copper resources, indicating they were metal workers and miners like the Kenite/Midianites. As a result of this connection the Midianite-Kenites adapted Shasu Yahwism to suit their own communities and sanctuary spaces, and conceivably, if we are to consider Moses as a historical figure, through Jethro, the Father in Law of Moses, this worship was adopted by the Israelites.

Alternatively Yahweh was imported into the land of Canaan by Shasu who had settled there, and Yahweh was adopted into the already existing pantheon of Canaanite gods. This introduction would have come as a shock to the existing Canaanite pantheons various cults, and no doubt created conflict. A Semitic tribe forced out of Egypt like the Shasu, is clearly a scenario which conceivably may have influenced the Exodus migration myth. (There is little to no evidence for the mass exodus as described the Biblical account).

Archeological finds at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the Sinai peninsula, which is believed to have been a shrine in the late 9th and early 8th centuries BCE, has inscriptions that make reference to “Yahweh of Teman” and “Yahweh of Samaria” along with dedications to El, Baal, and Asherah, indicating Yahweh as part of this wider pantheon and that he was worshipped in Edom (Teman) and in Israel (Samaria) early on alongside these other deities.

El

Originally the Supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon, sometime after the adoption of Yahweh, El became conflated with the new God, who acquired many of his attributes in this transition, and even El’s wife Asherah. How a new God rose to the top of the pantheon, and then once there, suppressed the worship of the other deities involved, is somewhat wound up with the references to kaneh bosm. A similar usurpation happened in the Vedic religion’s pantheon. The Vedic religion was imported into India, and once there, they adopted the indigenous Indian deities Shiva and Kali, and the local God Shiva, in many ways supplanted the chief deity Indra. (As I’ve discussed in Cannabis and the Soma Solution, this is tied up with the history and disappearance of the identity of the Vedic entheogenic sacrament, soma).

We know of El’s existence outside of the Biblical narrative, through various Ugaritic texts. He was the King and Father of the other Gods and Goddesses in the pantheon, and was coupled with Asherah as their mother. His sons included, Baal (Storm and War God), Mot (God of the Underworld) , Yam (God of the Sea) who frequently come up in Old Testament condemnations. Mot was appeased with child sacrifice, so came to be particularly despised, although Biblical condemnations seemed particularly focussed on Baal.

Baal

Baal, as a storm and war god, shared these attributes with Yahweh, and this was likely a source of conflict early in between these sub-cults. Baal, was also coupled with his sister, Anath, a goddess of war, and as with the later adoption of El’s wife Asherah as the wife of Yahweh, in later times in Egypt, and possibly elsewhere, Yahweh was coupled with Anath as well. As well, Baal means Lord, was used as a title for a number of regional gods, and some scholars suggest that in earlier times it was even applied to Yahweh. Biblical references are generally viewed as referring to Baal Hadad, who was worshipped by the Canaanites. The title baʿal was used at times as an equivalent of the Hebrew adon ‘Lord’ and adonai ‘My Lord’ still used as epithets of the Lord of Israel Yahweh.

We can see the term ba’al used in the names of figures depicted clearly as worshippers of Yahweh in the Old Testament, the judge Gideon was ale known as Jerubaʿal, Israel’s first king Saul’s son is named Eshbaʿal , and David’s son Beeliada, as well as others.

In the early period, the name Baal was used by the Hebrews to refer their God without concern, but as a competitive struggle between the the cults of Baal and Yahweh developed, the name Baal became detestable. Hosea 2:16 indicates the cult of Yahweh’s anger at the obvious conflations which saw the two gods often combined by the Israelites “No Longer will you call me Baal”

Polytheistic Israel

This sort of polytheistic pantheon, was actually a stepping stone towards later monotheism, as it represents a coalition of gods and goddesses, likely brought together from unifying various tribes who worshipped them prior to their incorporation. In the view of many scholars, initially Yahweh was adopted into the Canaanite pantheon as one of the 70 sons of El.

In his book The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (2001), Mark Smith, suggests that evidence of Yahweh as more of a bit player, can be determined from Psalm 82, which “presents Yahweh in an explicit divine council scene does not cast him as its head (who is left decidedly mute or undescribed, probably the reason why it survived the later collapsing of the different tiers)” (Smith, 2001).

God (Elohim) stands in the divine assembly/assembly of El (Adat El),

Among the divinities (Elohim) He pronounces judgment. (Psalm 82:1).

Psalm 82:6 refers to the “Sons of the Most High (Elyon)”. Smith suggests that ‘Elyon’ here is “a title of El at an early point in biblical tradition (cf. El Elyon mentioned three times in Genesis 14:18-20). The term Elohim is a “Plural form usually translated in English Bibles as the singular ‘God’, because in Jewish thought there is only one supreme, true god” (Jones, 1982).

We see this in other passages in the Psalms as well

Ascribe to Yahweh, sons of Gods (bênê ‘Ēlîm),

Ascribe to Yahweh, glory and strength. (Psalm 29:1)

For who in the skies compares to Yahweh,

who can be likened to Yahweh among the sons of Gods (bênê ‘Ēlîm). (Psalm 89:6)

A final occurrence of this can be found in Daniel 11:36:

And the king will do according to his pleasure; and he will exalt himself and magnify himself over every god (’ēl), and against the God of Gods (’El ‘Elîm) he will speak outrageous things, and will prosper until the indignation is accomplished: for that which is decided will be done.

If this supposition is correct, these passages preserve a tradition that casts the god of Israel in the role not of the presiding god of the pantheon but as one of his sons. Each of these sons has a different nation as his ancient patrimony (or family inheritance) and therefore serves as its ruler” (Smith, 2001). Thus we see names like Baal and Yahweh incorporated into various place names, such as Baal-gad, Baal-hermon, Belmarkos, or in the case of the newer adopted God Yaweh, this name is incorporated into the second syllable of Judah, as is the name of the supreme deity El, into the last syllable of Israel.

Many scholars have noted that in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, El was their god. Abraham, does not know the name of Yahweh which is introduced much later in the story of Moses, and came through an introduction by his Midianite/Kenite Father-in-Law, Jethro. Exodus 6:2-3 reads “God also told Moses, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by My name the LORD (Yahweh) I did not make Myself known to them”. Everywhere in the Old Testament where the name ‘God’ Appears, is actually a translation of a word with El, as a component, and ‘Lord’ is a translation of Yahweh. God Almighty here is an incorrect translation of El Shaddai, which is more correctly translated as ‘God of the Mountain’ a known attribute of the Canaanite El. Exodus 6:3, shows the efforts to merge these two deities.

The House of God Jacob builds is called Beth El, i.e. ‘The House of El’. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, ‘El Perseveres’ in two conflicting account, Genesis 32:22-28 where he gets after he wrestles with God, and the other Genesis 35:9-10 where El himself dubs Jacob ‘Israel’ on his return from Paddan Aram.

Yahweh is often identified in the Hebrew texts with the Canaanite El Elyon, however, this was after a long process of conflation with El in through religious syncretism that likely took place over a few generations. Over time, El (Hebrew: אל) became a generic name for ‘God’, and was applied in epithets to a number of deities, as opposed to the name of just the supreme Canaanite God, and titles such as El Shaddai over time were to be applied to Yahweh alone, while Baal’s qualities of a storm god became assimilated into Yahweh’s own identification with storms and fire.

Initially, the call for Yahweh alone worship, was not the denial that other gods existed, but rather their rejection. only later did the concept that there was only one god emerge. Thus the earlier supporters and some of the prophets of the Yahweh faction are widely regarded as being monolatrists rather than true monotheists. This means they did not deny the existence of other deities, but that for them, it was Yahweh alone who should be worshipped.

The Old Testament was created by the merging of various texts and traditions, particularly the reluctant marriage of the traditions of the Yahwist Text, said to embody the beliefs of the 9th century kingdom of Southern Judah, and the Elohihist Text, a compilation of the beliefs and myths of the eighth century BC kingdom of Northern Israel. Throughout much of Kings and Chronicles these two kingdoms are in almost constant battle, sometimes allying with different powers in the region. In their last war, Judah allied with Assyria while Israel allied with another power named Aram. This last war led to the destruction of Israel by an Assyrian force in 723 B.C. under Hezekiah, and then later Josiah would see the Babylonians take over in Judah resulting in their period of Exile.

An Assyrian influence on Judah, may account for the similar use of cannabis in the Yahwist Exodus 30:23 account as well as explain its presence within the Holy of Holies at tel Arad, as well as the temple’s cancelation, as Hezekiah had been on a mission to remove Assyrian religious influences from the Holy Land. See Kaneh Bosem 101: The Botanical, Linguistic, Archaeological and Contextual case for Hebrew ‘kaneh’ as ‘Cannabis’

As noted, in the Yahweh text, the Creator is Yahweh, always translated in English as the Lord. Mixed with this was the Elohist Text, which uses the plural Elohim to describe the deity. This word is translated as the singular God in most modern Bibles, although as noted above Elohim is an intensive Hebrew plural of the Canaanite singular deity name El, and in actuality it means “the goddesses and the gods”.

After the fall of the Elohist kingdom in the north around 700 BC, the remnants of their sacred scriptures were taken to the southern kingdom of the Yahwist’s. The Yahwist point of view by an editor, apparently of the seventh century BC, merged the texts. Making things even more complicated, both the Elohist and Yahwist texts were restructured in the sixth century B.C.E. to fit with the later Deuteronomist Text. These were in turn edited and revised around the fifth century B.C.E. by a later group whose handiwork is known as the Priestly texts. Modern translators of the Bible have carried on this tradition by often unconsciously making their translations fit in with their belief system, (i.e. translating the plural Elohim as the singular God), as did their earlier counterparts. Although, it shouldn’t be supposed that these rewriters and editors of the older Hebraic traditions were always forgers and falsifiers in our modern conception of the word. The ancients in general had no idea of literary ethics as we understand them, and writing of a religious character usually resulted from a calling of the inner spirit, which to people of this long ago time was identical to a calling from the gods.

This merging of texts, has created many contradiction in the Old Testament narrative. Most pointedly, these contradictions are in Genesis 1, where God is referred to as Elohim, a pronounced plural, while in Genesis 2, the singular name Yahweh, the “Lord”, is used, (sometimes in conjunction with Elohim, making a singular Lord-God). A close reading reveals that the Elohim of Genesis 1, is more androgynous than the later solely male deity, Yahweh-Elohim (Lord God) of Genesis 2, which was written much later and then inserted at the front of the Old Testament story. In Genesis 1:27, Elohim states; “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.” Alternatively. in Genesis 2, Man is created first, then later Eve is created from the rib of Adam after the Lord notices the first man’s loneliness and decides to create him a mate.

In 1863 a Bishop Colenso, noted other points of contention between the two differing cosmologies;

1. In the first the earth emerges from the water and is therefore saturated with moisture. in the second, the ‘whole face of the ground’ requires to be moistened.

2. In the first, the birds and the beasts are created before man. In the second, man is created before the birds and the beasts.

3. In the first, ‘all fowls that fly’ are created out of the waters. In the second, ‘the fowls of the air’ are made out of the ground.

4. In the first man is created in the image of God. In the second, man is made of the dust of the ground; he is placed by himself in the garden, charged with a solemn command, and threatened with a curse if he breaks it; then the beasts are made, and the man gives names to them, and lastly, after all this, the woman is made out of one of his ribs, but merely as a helpmate for man.

The fact is , that the second account of Creation together with the story of the fall, is manifestly composed by a different writer altogether from him who wrote the first.

This is suggested at once by the circumstance that, throughout the first narrative, the Creator is always spoken of by the name Elohim (God), whereas, throughout the second account, as well as the story of the Fall, he is always called Jehovah Elohim (Lord God), except when the writer seems to abstain, for some reason , from placing the name Jehovah in the mouth of the serpent.

This accounts naturally for the above contradictions. It would appear that for some reason, the production of two pens have been here united, without any reference to the inconsistencies.(Colenso 1863)

———————

And God saw everything he had made, and behold it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on earth, and it grieved at his heart.

Genesis 6:6

The next time the argument over teaching creation versus evolution comes up at a school board meeting or elsewhere, these contradictions need only be pointed out. The modern-day Biblical defenders can first decide whether they mean the version of creation in Genesis one or in Genesis two!

This merging of texts took place in stages. Particularly during the reign of Hezekiah’s grandson Josiah, after the Fall of Israel to Assyria, and the alleged discover of Deuteronomy, ‘The Second Book of the Law’, during renovation at the Temple of Solomon, which saw drastic changes directed towards instilling and enforcing monotheism. Not only theological views led to monotheism, there were political reasons as well. A kingdom divided by cults, was a kingdom divided, and Monotheism was a means of unified rule. These factors will be explored more thoroughly later.

After the Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, which came shortly after this, yet another group of editors, known as the Priestly group, are thought to have further worked the texts during the Exile, bringing us into the era of time where other gods were not only to be not worshipped, but also said to have no existence, and the concept of Yahwehist monotheism as we know it today, was more fully established. This new monotheistic theology came into Israel when the exiled Jews returned to their homeland, and had to be taught and enforced on the people who had remained there through the Exile, with foreigners the Babylonians had placed there and with whom they had intermarried. The cultural upheaval and trauma in this period, along the loss of continuity of tradition here, can only be compared to what happened to the First Nations people of what is now the Americas.

The story of the Bible, is in many ways, the story of the theological evolution of monotheism, and the story of cannabis in the Bible, is in many ways related to the cultural evolution of the development of religion itself and its origins in plant based shamanic ecstasy. These two tales, as we shall see, are intertwined.

(This is an excerpt from my book ‘Cannabis the Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World’

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River—today’s Israel and the Palestinian territories—has been called holy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims for millennia. Yet its political history is one of almost continuous conquest, occupation, and layered domination. No single people has held unbroken sovereignty. What follows is a chronological account of the major groups that controlled the region, drawn from archaeological evidence and historical records. Dates are approximate; control was often partial, contested, or exercised through local vassals.

Deep Prehistory and the Canaanite Foundation

Long before written history, the Southern Levant was home to successive prehistoric cultures. By the Bronze Age (roughly 3000–1200 BCE), the land was dominated by Canaanite city-states. These independent or semi-independent urban centers—linked by trade, language, and religion—were frequently under the shadow of larger powers, especially Egypt during the Late Bronze Age. The famous Amarna letters reveal Canaanite rulers writing to Egyptian pharaohs as subordinates.

Around 1200 BCE the Bronze Age system collapsed. Coastal areas saw the arrival of the Philistines (one of the “Sea Peoples”), while the central highlands experienced the gradual emergence of a new population. Importantly, there is no archaeological evidence supporting the biblical account of Joshua’s military campaign of conquest. Sites traditionally associated with the narrative, such as Jericho and Ai, show no matching destruction layers or occupational patterns for the purported time of the invasion. Instead, the rise of highland settlements appears gradual and largely continuous with earlier Canaanite culture.

Modern DNA studies reinforce this picture of deep local continuity. Genome-wide analyses of Bronze Age remains from the Southern Levant show that both present-day Jewish populations and Arabic-speaking Levantine groups (including Palestinians) derive a substantial share—typically more than half—of their ancestry from these ancient Canaanite-related populations. Palestinians and other local Levantine Arabic-speaking communities generally retain a higher proportion of this indigenous Canaanite/Levantine ancestry, while many Jewish groups carry additional genetic contributions from later diaspora admixture (European, North African, or other sources).

Hebrew Polytheism: The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah

In the highlands after the collapse, a people identifiable as Israelites began to form. By the 10th or 9th century BCE two related kingdoms existed: the northern Kingdom of Israel (capital at Samaria) and the southern Kingdom of Judah (capital at Jerusalem).

These were periods of Hebrew polytheism (or Yahwism), not Judaism. Yahweh was the national deity, but worship commonly included other gods and goddesses—Asherah, Baal, and local household cults. Inscriptions, figurines, and biblical texts themselves (which repeatedly condemn such practices) confirm that exclusive monotheism had not yet taken hold. The northern kingdom fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 722 BCE. Judah survived longer as an Assyrian and then Babylonian vassal until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE, carrying much of the elite into exile.

Empires of the Ancient Near East

• Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian rule (late 8th to mid-6th century BCE) ended the independent Hebrew kingdoms.

• Achaemenid Persian Empire (539–332 BCE) conquered Babylon. Cyrus the Great permitted exiled Judeans to return and rebuild the Temple. During and after the exile, Israelite religion underwent decisive change: the denial of other gods’ reality solidified, and what scholars recognize as early Judaism took clearer shape under Persian provincial administration (Yehud).

• Hellenistic (Greek) domination followed Alexander the Great’s conquest in 332 BCE. The region passed between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. Greek culture and language spread; tensions over Hellenization eventually sparked revolt.

The Sole Pre-Modern Monotheistic Jewish State

In 167 BCE the Maccabean (Hasmonean) Revolt against Seleucid rule succeeded. By the mid-2nd century BCE the Hasmonean Kingdom had established an independent Jewish state practicing Second Temple Judaism—by this point clearly monotheistic. This is the only sustained period of monotheistic Jewish political control over significant territory before the modern era. Full independence lasted roughly from the 140s BCE until Pompey’s intervention in 63 BCE—less than a century. The Hasmoneans expanded their borders, but internal divisions and Roman pressure turned the kingdom into a client state. Full Roman annexation followed.

Rome, Byzantium, and the Rise of Christianity

Roman rule (from 63 BCE, formal province from 6 CE) lasted centuries. Two major Jewish revolts—the Great Revolt (66–73 CE, ending with the destruction of the Second Temple) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE)—were crushed. The province was renamed Syria Palaestina. After Constantine, the eastern Roman Empire became the Christian Byzantine Empire (4th–7th centuries CE). The land was Christianized; churches and monasteries proliferated. A brief Sassanid Persian occupation (614–628) interrupted Byzantine control before the final Byzantine period.

Islamic, Crusader, and Later Muslim Rule

Arab Muslim armies conquered the region in the 630s CE, ending Byzantine authority. Successive caliphates—Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid—administered the territory as part of larger Islamic empires. In 1099 Crusader forces from Europe captured Jerusalem and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Latin states. Christian rule lasted, with interruptions, until the late 13th century. Saladin’s Ayyubid forces recovered Jerusalem in 1187; the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt completed the expulsion of the Crusaders and governed until 1517.

The Ottoman Empire then ruled for four centuries (1517–1917/1918). The region was a relatively quiet province of Ottoman Syria, with local autonomy and a mixed population of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

The Modern Transition

World War I brought British conquest. The League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine (1920–1948). Zionist immigration increased dramatically, especially after the Holocaust; Arab resistance and intercommunal violence grew. In 1947 the United Nations voted for partition into Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted the plan; Arab leaders rejected it. On 14 May 1948 the State of Israel declared independence. The ensuing war left Israel in control of more territory than the UN had allotted, Jordan holding the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Egypt holding Gaza.

Subsequent wars, especially the 1967 Six-Day War, brought the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem under Israeli control (the latter two effectively annexed). These territories remain central to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has been the second—and only modern—state of monotheistic Jewish sovereignty in the land.

A Land of Shared Ancestry and Contested Claims

The historical record shows no exclusive, continuous ownership. Canaanites, Philistines, Israelites practicing Hebrew polytheism, successive Near Eastern empires, a single Hasmonean Jewish interlude of less than a century, Romans, Byzantines, Arab caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, the British, and finally Israelis and Palestinians have all held power—often simultaneously in different parts of the territory or through layered systems of rule. Religious significance has layered upon political control rather than determining it.

Given that the ancestry from the polytheistic Canaanite and early Hebrew periods is shared by both Jews and Palestinians—with Palestinians generally retaining a higher proportion of that local Levantine genetic continuity—and given that independent monotheistic Jewish political domination of the region lasted less than a century in antiquity (far shorter than the rule of many other groups), claims of an exclusive Jewish homeland based primarily on ancient political control appear historically questionable. The land’s past is one of overlapping peoples and successive dominations, not of singular, continuous title.

Further Reading – Hyperlinked Bibliography

Ancient DNA & Canaanite Continuity

• Agranat-Tamir, Lily et al. “The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant.” Cell 181, no. 5 (2020): 1146–1157. Full text / abstract · PubMed · PMC open access version

• Haber, Marc et al. “Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences.” American Journal of Human Genetics 101, no. 2 (2017). PMC open access

Archaeology of Israelite Origins & the “Conquest”

• Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Free Press, 2001. (Widely cited synthesis arguing against a large-scale Joshua conquest and for gradual highland emergence.)

• Dever, William G. “Archaeology and the Israelite ‘Conquest’.” In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman. Online excerpt discussing the scholarly consensus

• Killebrew, Ann E. and various contributors in recent surveys of Late Bronze–Iron I transition (summarized in multiple academic reviews noting the near-consensus rejection of a rapid military conquest model).

Broader Histories of the Land

• Krämer, Gudrun. A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton University Press, 2008. Publisher page

• Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Metropolitan Books, 2020.

• Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999. Vintage, 2001 (updated editions available).

• Shapira, Anita. Israel: A History. Brandeis University Press / University Press of New England, 2012.

• Black, Ian. Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017.

Additional Accessible Overviews

• Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem: The Biography. Knopf, 2011. (Sweeping narrative history of the city across all periods.)

• Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Holt, 1989 (and later editions).

These sources cover the genetic evidence for shared Canaanite ancestry, the archaeological consensus against a biblical-style Joshua conquest, and the successive political control of the region from antiquity through the modern period. Most academic DNA papers are freely available via the links above; the books are widely held in libraries and available commercially.

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

I have never started a Patreon, and don’t turn on the paid subscription on Substack or anywhere else, as this blog is more about the spread of information in a time of confusion. A form of literary Activism. But for anyone who feels the call to support my work, one of the best ways is to buy my books. I’ve written and co-written 5 books on cannabis history, here is a bit about them, and where you can get them. And if you have read any of them, please leave a review on Amazon and other sites.

Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023)

Although prohibited in most of the today’s world, cannabis and humanity have a shared history that extends far back into ancient times. Evidence of its role in the production of cloth and rope goes back more than ten thousand years. Its psychoactive properties have also long been known by humanity, and ancient man attributed a supernatural force behind such effects. Archaeological evidence of cannabis ritual use of cannabis dates back to 3500 BCE, and it became considerably widespread. Egyptians, Assyrian, Babylonian and Persians used cannabis in Temple rituals, and for medical purposes, as has long been acknowledged, . Although, it has generally been seen that the neighbours of these cultures, the ancient Hebrews, whose religious history was recorded in the Bible’s Old Testament and the Hebrew Tanakh, rejected these practices. However, in 1936, a little known Polish anthropologist and etymologist put forth the controversial hypothesis that the Hebrew words, kaneh and kaneh bosm, identified cannabis, and had been mistranslated as calamus. This linguistic suggestion drastically changes the story of the Bible in a number of ways, but it seemed destined to be an obscure linguistic hypothesis, until 2020, when evidence from a 2,800 year old temple site in tel Arad, Jerusalem confirmed the ritual use of cannabis Among the ancient Hebrews.

Reviews

“Chris Bennett’s latest book is an impressive, scholarly account of the little-known role of cannabis as a religious sacrament in the ancient Near East and Middle East.” —Martin A. Lee, author of Smoke Signals and Acid Dreams.

“Chris Bennett strikes again! In his latest tome, he examines the latest incontrovertible evidence of cannabis usage in the sacred Jewish rites at Arad and integrates those into his examination of this holy herb as foundational to various contemporary faiths. A provocative read, to be sure.” -Dr. Ethan Russo, author of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutic Potential

“Chris Bennett’s latest offering, Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World, is by far his most focused work to date. Building on the formidable research presented in his previous efforts, Cannabis goes even further in demonstrating that hashish, without a doubt, played an important role in the religious life of the ancient Hebrews. The final nail in the coffin of the Kaneh Bosm debate, Bennett’s scholarly book challenges everything we thought we knew about both Judaism and ancient cannabis use.” -P.D. Newman, author of Theurgy: Theory and Practice: The Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine

“Chris Bennett’s Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World draws together scholarly and archaeological evidence for the use of cannabis in ancient magico-religious practices in a balanced, comprehensive and accessible manner. In particular Bennett explores the influence of cannabis, and cannabis occasioned altered states of consciousness, on the Judeo-Christian traditions, especially its role in facilitating a sense of communion with the divine. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in exploring the entheogenic roots of religions.” -Dr. Jack Hunter, author of Spirits, Gods and Magic: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Supernatural

“Bennett gives us another tour de force of the deep history of Cannabis, spanning diverse societies of the Ancient Middle East. The scope of cannabis ritualization in the past elevates its current status as a perennial sacrament. Bennett totally revises the notion of what were the “Burning Times.” -Dr. Michael J. Winkelman, Editor of Advances in Psychedelic Medicine

“...One of the world’s leading cannabis scholars and historians, Chris Bennett continues to expand on this body of knowledge in this, his fifth, book. Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancients... a fascinating read and of great value to anyone who wants to know more about how intimately cannabis has travelled with and benefited humanity since time immeasurable.” -Stephen Gray, Editor/contributor, Cannabis and Spirituality: An Explorer’s Guide to an Ancient Plant Spirit Ally.

“Chris Bennett has been easily the most important scholar of cannabis.... [he] has done the research to confidently argue, and maybe even prove that yes Virginia, the original tree of Life and the true Haoma/Soma of the Vedas and the Zoroasterae was Cannabis Sativa specifically.” -Yoseph Leib Ibn Mardachya, Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs

“Chris Bennett’s latest book is an impressive, scholarly account of the little-known role of cannabis as a religious sacrament in the ancient Near East and Middle East. Marshaling an extensive array of archeological and literary sources, Bennett documents how the embrace of One Almighty God led to the displacement of cannabis, the polytheistic drug of choice, as a ceremonial substance in ancient Israel.” —Martin A. Lee, author of Smoke Signals and Acid Dreams

You can get it on Kindle, Paperback and Hardback on Amazon

I do have signed hardback copies available but I’m in Canada and it can increase shipping costs, pm me directly.

Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult (2018)

Although little known, cannabis and other psychoactive plants held a prominent and important role in the Occult arts of Alchemy and Magic, as well as being used in ritual initiations of certain secret societies. Find out about the important role cannabis played in helping to develop modern medicines through alchemical works. Cannabis played a pivotal role in spagyric alchemy, and appears in the works of alchemists such as Zosimos, Avicenna, Llull, Paracelsus, Cardano and Rabelais. Cannabis also played a pivotal role in medieval and renaissance magic and recipes with instructions for its use appear in a number of influential and important grimoires such as the Picatrix, Sepher Raxiel: Liber Salomonis, and The Book of Oberon. Could cannabis be the Holy Grail? With detailed historical references, the author explores the allegations the Templars were influenced by the hashish ingesting Assassins of medieval Islam, and that myths of the Grail are derived from the Persian traditions around the sacred beverage known as haoma, which was a preparation of cannabis,opium and other drugs. Many of the works discussed, have never been translated into English, or published in centuries. The unparalleled research in this volume makes it a potential perennial classic on the subjects of both medieval and renaissance history of cannabis, as well as the role of plants in the magical and occult traditions.

Reviews

The Holy Grail of historical cannabis books. A tremendous scholarly work, ridiculously well-researched and referenced, that entertains and delights, replete with amazing artwork and fresh ideas about the church versus 'the devil’s weed,' cannabis as a religious sacrament, the hashishin, witches, baptism by fire, and my favorite—the elixir of immortality." —Julie Holland, MD, Editor The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis; Ecstasy : The Complete Guide : A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA

"The latest book to arrive on my desk this morning is Liber 420 by Chris Bennett. It is an Excellent book—very well researched. Even if you are not interested in cannabis, it is an excellent survey of the development of magic, alchemy, the Templars and Freemasonry from a fresh perspective. 777 pages of well written information with many B/W illustrations never seen before." —Stephen Skinner, Author of Sacred Geometry: Deciphering the Code and Techniques of Solomonic Magic

"In his latest effort, Bennet has uncovered and amassed an overwhelming amount of evidence in support of his claim that cannabis played a central role in many of the Western esoteric traditions, including Alchemy, ceremonial magick—and yes, even factions of Freemasonry! Liber 420 is sure to cause a stir within the Masonic community!" —P.D. Newman, 32° Scottish Rites Freemason and author of Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry (2017)

"I highly recommend this grand treatise... Well researched, well written, well illustrated. Given the size of this book, the price is quite reasonable." —David Allen Hulse, author of The Key of it All: The eastern mysteries and The Western Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magickal Systems of the World

"With legalization of cannabis a central theme in politics today, the timing could not be better for this information to reach the public. This book should be sold in every dispensary. The abundant proof from a wide variety of sources, and the internal consistency of the patterns revealed, leave little doubt that even the most illustrious among our spiritual ancestors knew not only the usefulness of hemp, and the healing qualities of cannabis, but also the entheogenic properties of THC." —Ronnie Pontiac, Newtopia Magazine

“Bennett has done it again. Going right to the primary sources, he has produced an extraordinary volume outlining the history and occult secrets of cannabis. … Should you be interested in knowing how and why cannabis found employment in the occult arts throughout history, take heart in knowing that you hold in your hands the definitive work written by a brilliant historian.” —Tom Hatsis, author of The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic (2015)

"Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs & the Occult... is literally anything and everything you’d want to know about the occulted use of cannabis in religion, mystery traditions, magickal rituals, alchemy and much more" —Occulture

"He has followed the white rabbit through the Picatrix and the Solomonic texts, to the Rosicrucians, to the Masons and the occult lodges of the 19th Century, through alchemy, witchcraft, and much more. Cannabis and other mind-altering substances have been an underground and occluded fact of the Western Mystery Tradition all along." —Aaron Leitch, author of Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires: The Classical Texts of Magick Deciphered (2005)

"Chris Bennett’s impeccably sourced and densely researched text unfolds in humorous, compulsively readable, richly lucid prose allowing the grateful reader to swing like a monkey through the jungle gym of the kabbalah, the Vedic mysteries and the pages of the Picatrix, through a smoky skein of myths and symbols, charting a history at once incredible and true. Liber 420 deserves pride of place in any occult library, essential reading for anyone with an interest in magic and human consciousness, regardless of whether or not they have smoked the Devil’s weed. A cornerstone work." —Richard Stanley, Writer and Director, Color out of Space, Hardware, The Island of Dr Moreau

"Bennett explores some interesting themes in his latest book regarding the use of liquid concoctions in certain lost Masonic rites and occult orders." —Dr. David Harrison, author of The Genesis of Freemasonry (2009) and The Lost Rites and Rituals of Freemasonry (2017)

You can get this 777 page tome on Amazon on Kindle or Paperback.

Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010)

Seeking to identify the plant origins of the early sacramental beverages Soma and Haoma, this study draws a connection between the psychoactive properties of these drinks and the widespread use of cannabis among Indo-Europeans during this time. Exploring the role of these libations as inspiration for the Indian Rig Veda and the Persian Avestan texts, this examination discusses the spread of cannabis use across Europe and Asia, the origins of the Soma and Haoma cults, and the shamanic origins of modern religion.

Reviews

“Every cannabis aficionado, patient, and advocate will find something of great value in Chris Bennett’s Cannabis and the Soma Solution. The great Jack Herer laid the foundation of our understanding of the foolishness of cannabis prohibition in its modern form: Chris Bennett has performed an invaluable service by proving once and for all that the oldest and greatest spiritual sacrament in human history is cannabis use.” —Treating Yourself (November 2011)

“It is a volume that must be read by every scholar who works in the field of biblical studies, world religions, psycho-spirituality, or the history of the paranormal as friend and familiar.” —J. Harold Ellens, PhD, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of the Claremont Graduate School

“A treasure trove of up-to-date ancient information on cannabis. Highly recommended to round out your library on religious uses of psychoactive drugs.” —Julie Holland, M.D., editor, The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis

“I have read Mr. Bennett’s several books on this subject and am in general agreement with what he states, especially about the extent to which the Vedic hallucinogen Soma was probably made from cannabis. Indeed, his research has changed my own thinking about this ancient conundrum (heretofore, the majority of scholars have suggested that Soma was prepared from psychotropic mushrooms) . . . . In short, I heartily recommend Bennett’s book to anyone seeking a better understanding of this well-nigh universal, albeit all too often misunderstood hallucinogen and its crucial role in the history of human spirituality.” —C. Scott Littleton, Ph.D., Emeritus professor of Anthropology, Occidental College

“Chris Bennett assembles religious, historical, medical and poetic sources with immaculate ease, in order to construct what is sure to be an enduring examination of the global history of cannabis use by widely diverse human populations.” —Dr. David C.A. Hillman, author, The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization

“I’ve enjoyed this book immensely—a masterful investigation of religious intoxication cults from ancient India, Persia, Asia Minor, Scythia, and Europe. Refuting R. Gordon Wasson’s theory that Soma of the Vedas was Amanita muscaria mushrooms, Bennett shows that Soma was probably a mixture of cannabis, ephedra and poppy (confirmed by Sarianidi’s archaeological discoveries in Bactria), and he traces the uses of cannabis as a sacrament through many ancient cultures. This is a must-read for everyone interested in the ancient history of drugs.” —Michael R. Aldrich Ph.D., author, Marijuana Myths and Folklore

“With no left turn un-stoned, this wonderful book - so full of detail, passion and thorough historical exploration - describes the fascinating journey the humble weed has woven through human civilization to bring us it’s enlightenment, color and culture.” —Dr. Ben Sessa, author, The Psychedelic Renaissance: Reassessing the Role of Psychedelic Drugs in 21st Century Psychiatry and Society and To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic

“If you are interested in the history of the Indo-Europeans, the history and identification of soma / haoma, or the history of cannabis as a hallucinogen, you owe it to yourself to read Chris Bennett’s substantial tome.” —Victor H. Mair, Professor, Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania

on Amazon on Kindle or Paperback.

Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001)

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE BIBLE BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

(With Neil McQueen) The Holy Bible is by far the most influential book in the history of the Western World and its texts held to be the Gospel truth by over a billion believers around the globe. Even non-believers cannot help but be affected by its doctrine and adherents.

But what are the real origins of this vastly influential religious text? Like all people, the compilers of the Bible were strongly influenced by humanity’s basic struggle for survival, striving for fertility and search for meaning. Of the many influences that contributed to the theological development of the Bible -- and religion in general in the ancient world -- the most profound were without a doubt, Sex, Drugs, and Violence.

As humanity comprehended, sex ensured their continued propagation, the sex act became sacred, and was thought to magically affect all sorts of areas of life, even the actions of the gods themselves. The Old Testament is rife with references to such religio-erotic practices taking place, not only amongst foreign cults like the Canaanites, but even amongst the Israelites themselves. Erotic activities that later, according to the New Testament and other sources, filtered into early Christianity.

Second only to sex, do drugs - as in psychoactive substances - play a pivotal role in the development of religious thought and experience, and the Judaeo-Christian traditions are no exception. What will be surprising to most modern readers is the frequent use of intoxicants, like wine, strong-drink, and mandrake in the Bible. Perhaps even harder to accept will be the copious use of cannabis (Hebrew, Kaneh-bosm), by both the Hebrew Priests and Kings for shamanistic purposes... a tradition that was continued both by Jesus and his followers.

Moreoever, the history of the Bible and the history people who have preached its words are histories of violence. This fact should not at all be surprising when one considers the endless atrocities that fill the pages of the so-called “Good Book.” Indeed, if members of today’s moral majority ever took the time to analytically read the book which they continually point to as the pillar of morality, they would be horrified to find a book filled with Sex, Drugs, and Violence!

This one is harder to find, and can fetch a few hundred when it is on Amazon, I recovered a few boxes I had in storage for a decade, contact me directly to get a signed copy for a fracion of that price.

Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion (1995)

Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion by Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn, and Judy Osburn, published in 1995. A wide-ranging study exploring the historical, religious, and magical uses of cannabis across cultures and traditions, examining its role in ritual practice, mythology, and spiritual experience. The authors draw on historical sources, ethnobotany, and comparative religion to trace the plant’s symbolic and sacramental significance from ancient civilizations through modern esoteric movements. Long regarded as an influential work in the study of entheogens and religious practice.

Hard to find, expensive and outdated research. If you are not a collector, check my other books for more detailed and current research.

Two months ago I published Hondurasgate: The Israeli, American and Latin American Conspiracy the Mainstream Western Media is Ignoring. The 37 leaked voice notes released in late April by hondurasgate.ch and Canal Red described a concrete operation: Juan Orlando Hernández, recently pardoned by Trump, coordinating with Asfura’s government to restore his own power, expand ZEDEs, secure a deeper U.S. military footprint, and build a U.S.-based media cell. That cell, funded in part by Honduran public money and an alleged $350,000 from Milei, was to manufacture dossiers and attacks against progressive governments in Mexico, Colombia and beyond. JOH was recorded claiming Israeli networks and “a meeting of rabbis” had “everything to do” with his release.

I noted then that the story dominated Latin American politics while major English-language outlets largely looked away. That blackout has not lifted. What has changed is the scale of the architecture around it.

On 26 July Hernández returned to Honduras after a local warrant was suspended. He moves freely while facing fraud charges few expect to restrain him. In mid-August new audio emerged in which he discusses purchasing or controlling major Honduran television stations. The publishing site continues to report cyberattacks traced in part to U.S. and Israeli ranges. Forensic disputes remain unresolved — Earshot gave moderate confidence on key files; Phonexia denied authenticating the set; Contracorriente documented the original YouTube channel’s prior record of unverified material. Hernández still denies the voice is his.

The larger pattern, however, no longer depends on any single recording.

Israel has spent decades building one of the most effective foreign-influence systems inside American politics and media. Since 2023 that effort has intensified: more than $100 million in disclosed FARA spending, AI-driven text campaigns, paid influencers, and contracts with Republican-linked firms aimed at shoring up support among conservatives and younger audiences whose backing has eroded. The objective is clear — protect aid, diplomatic cover, and narrative control inside the country that still supplies decisive military and political backing.

At the same time Israel has pursued a parallel international strategy: more formal allies, more votes in international bodies, more embassies in Jerusalem, more security and technology partnerships. The Isaac Accords, launched with Milei, are the Latin American expression of that drive. Right-wing governments elected across the region in 2025–2026 have been rapidly aligned — restored ties, recognition of Israeli claims, counter-Iran rhetoric, practical cooperation. Honduras under Asfura fits the same pattern.

The United States has never treated Latin America as a zone of genuine sovereignty. The current administration has simply made the method more overt. In January 2026 U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and flew him to New York. Trump stated the United States would “run” Venezuela during a transition and prioritized access to its oil. Defense Secretary Hegseth has since refused to rule out military options against Cuba and announced that Colombia’s new far-right government has already authorized joint U.S. military operations on Colombian soil. The language is consistent: the hemisphere is an American security and resource zone, and governments that resist the preferred alignment face escalating pressure — economic, informational, or kinetic.

Hondurasgate sits at the intersection of these two projects. The alleged operation was the soft-power counterpart of the Venezuela model: elite restoration, media weaponization, and narrative preparation against progressive governments instead of an overnight raid. The claimed Israeli role in the pardon and the Republican-linked support for the disinformation cell sit comfortably inside both the long U.S. intervention tradition and Israel’s concurrent search for more reliable regional partners. When Western mainstream outlets largely ignored a story that named U.S. and Israeli actors while saturation-covering thinner allegations against their adversaries, that silence itself became part of the pattern — the same narrative management that influence operations inside the United States are designed to reinforce.

The questions I raised in June are therefore still open, and more concrete. Was the Trump pardon of a convicted narco-president facilitated by Israeli networks? Was a disinformation cell financed to target elected left governments? Why does a story that maps onto an open regional realignment receive almost no serious scrutiny in the outlets that claim to police foreign interference?

Until those questions receive honest forensic and journalistic answers, Hondurasgate is not a closed file. It is one visible expression of a larger project still unfolding across the hemisphere.

Bibliography

• Hondurasgate: The Israeli, American and Latin American Conspiracy the Mainstream Western Media is Ignoring – Chris Bennett, 12 June 2026

• Official Hondurasgate audio archive

• Exclusive: Audios reveal Israeli role in JOH’s release – Diario Red

• Hondurasgate: Key Leaked Audio Files Found Authentic “With Moderate Confidence” – Drop Site / Earshot

• Honduras ex-President Hernandez returns home after Trump pardon – Reuters, 26 July 2026

• New Hondurasgate Revelations: Juan Orlando Hernández Tried to Buy Media Outlets – Orinoco Tribune / Diario Red, August 2026

• Trump extends his military tentacles in Latin America – EL PAÍS, 14 August 2026

• The Eighth Front: Inside Israel’s $1 Billion Influence Campaign – Quincy Institute

• ‘Hondurasgate,’ the alleged US and Israeli interference plot – EL PAÍS

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century as a response to persistent antisemitism in Europe, the failure of emancipation and assimilation for many Jews (especially in Eastern Europe amid pogroms), and longstanding Jewish religious and cultural ties to the Land of Israel. While rooted in ancient yearnings for return, it took organized nationalist form under secular leadership before religious currents fully integrated with it.

Early precursors included the practical “Lovers of Zion” (Hovevei Zion/Hibbat Zion) groups that arose after the 1881–1882 Russian pogroms. These societies promoted agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine, establishing more than 20 new Jewish communities between 1870 and 1897. Figures such as Leon Pinsker (Auto-Emancipation, 1882) and the Bilu student pioneers emphasized self-help and national revival over pure philanthropy. Parallel to this, secular socialist thinker Moses Hess had already called for a Jewish national home in Rome and Jerusalem (1862).

The decisive organizational leap came with Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), an assimilated Viennese journalist and playwright. Confronted by the Dreyfus Affair in France and rising racial antisemitism, Herzl concluded that Jews could not safely assimilate in Europe. In his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), he argued for a sovereign Jewish state secured by international law—initially open to locations beyond Palestine if necessary, though Palestine quickly became the focus. Herzl was secular and framed the project in political, diplomatic, and pragmatic terms rather than religious ones. He convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, founding the World Zionist Organization and adopting the Basel Program: “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.” Subsequent congresses built institutions such as the Jewish Colonial Trust and the Jewish National Fund for land purchase. Herzl pursued diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Britain, and others until his death in 1904.

The early movement was pluralistic. Political Zionism (Herzl) prioritized great-power guarantees; cultural Zionism (Ahad Ha’am) stressed Hebrew revival and a spiritual center; practical and Labor Zionism emphasized settlement and socialist pioneering (the kibbutzim and Histadrut); Revisionist Zionism (Ze’ev Jabotinsky) demanded maximal territorial claims and military readiness. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by Britain during World War I, marked a major diplomatic breakthrough by expressing support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, later incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate. Jewish immigration (Aliyah waves), land acquisition, and institution-building accelerated under the Mandate, while tensions with the Arab population grew amid competing national claims.

Although Herzl and most early leaders were secular, religious Zionism developed in parallel and eventually became a major force. Its roots reach back several decades earlier, to Orthodox rabbis who were the first to draw directly on the Tanakh to justify an active Jewish national claim to the Land of Israel.

The earliest of these was Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878), a Sephardic rabbi serving in Semlin (near Belgrade). Beginning in the 1830s, Alkalai systematically used biblical passages to argue that Jews must take practical steps toward return rather than wait passively for the Messiah. In works such as Shema Yisrael (1834), Darkhei No’am (1839), Shalom Yerushalayim (1840), and Minchat Yehuda (1843), he reinterpreted the traditional concept of teshuvah (repentance/return) in a literal, collective sense: physical return to the Land itself. Citing verses on the covenant with Abraham, the promise of the land of Canaan, and prophetic visions of redemption, he called for a national assembly, a tithe to fund settlement, the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, land purchase, and agricultural development. Human initiative, he insisted, was itself part of the redemptive process.

His contemporary, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874), developed parallel arguments grounded in the same biblical covenant. His 1862 book Derishat Zion urged mass aliyah, farming, and diplomatic efforts as the necessary first stage of messianic redemption. Together, Alkalai and Kalischer shifted religious thought from purely spiritual waiting to activist national effort, laying the foundation for Religious Zionism decades before Herzl’s political movement.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Rav Kook, 1865–1935), the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine, later provided the enduring theological synthesis. He viewed even secular Zionist pioneers as unconscious agents of divine providence and the return to the Land as the “beginning of the flowering of our redemption.” In his framework, secular labor and state-building prepared the way for eventual spiritual elevation. This ideology allowed religious Jews to participate fully in the national project while retaining messianic and biblical frameworks. It later underpinned movements such as Religious Zionism and the settlement enterprise.

In the 1930s, as Nazi persecution intensified, the Zionist leadership pursued pragmatic arrangements to facilitate Jewish emigration. The most significant was the Haavara (Transfer) Agreement of 1933 between the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Jewish Agency, and Nazi economic authorities. It allowed roughly 50,000–60,000 German Jews to emigrate to Palestine while transferring a portion of their assets in the form of German export goods. The arrangement broke the international Jewish boycott of Germany and was highly controversial within the Jewish world, yet it enabled significant rescue and economic development in the Yishuv before the outbreak of full-scale war. Fringe elements, notably the Stern Gang (Lehi) in the early 1940s, made further unsuccessful overtures to Axis powers based on shared opposition to Britain; these were marginal and condemned by mainstream Zionist bodies.

By the late 1930s and early 1940s the movement had built substantial institutions, a growing population base, and military capacity (Haganah, later other groups) under the British Mandate. The Holocaust catastrophically accelerated urgency and international support, culminating in the 1947 UN partition plan and the 1948 declaration of the State of Israel.

From Palestinian and many Arab perspectives, the Biblical promise holds no relevance to modern territorial claims. It is regarded as an ancient religious text rather than a title deed under international law; some interpretations note that the broader Abrahamic promises include descendants through Ishmael, generally viewed by tradition as ‘Arabs’, or view the covenant as conditional or superseded. Emphasis is placed on continuous indigenous presence, Ottoman-era land ownership patterns, and the displacement of 1948 (the Nakba). International legal arguments for Israel’s existence rest primarily on the 1947–1949 UN decisions and subsequent armistice lines, while post-1967 occupations are widely viewed as illegal under international law. Religious or Biblical justifications are dismissed as non-secular and irrelevant to questions of sovereignty, human rights, or borders.

Religious Zionism’s integration of the Biblical claim as a core tenet—seeing the state as the beginning of redemption—has been essential for many religious Jewish and Christian supporters who regard the Land as an eternal divine grant. Secular political Zionism supplied the organizational, diplomatic, and settlement infrastructure that made a state possible; the religious dimension supplied powerful ideological motivation and continuity with Jewish tradition. Both strands, along with the historical circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shaped the movement that produced the State of Israel.

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

In the ruins of Gaza, where the human cost of the conflict that began on 7 October 2023 has reached catastrophic proportions—more than 70,000 Palestinians killed according to Gaza health authorities, with children comprising roughly 30 percent of fatalities in key periods and over 20,000 children dead by late 2025—the search for a durable settlement has produced competing visions. One, embodied in Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, offers reconstruction under a personalized, immunity-heavy structure that critics describe as a real-estate carve-up. The alternative, rooted in United Nations principles and historical practice, centers on enforced peace, supervised elections, and rigorous war-crimes accountability. It prioritizes self-determination, justice, and the rule of law over transactional development.

The Board of Peace Problem

The Board of Peace, authorized in limited form by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (November 2025) as a transitional administration for Gaza through the end of 2027, quickly expanded in ambition. Its charter installs Trump as permanent chairman with the power to nominate his successor; permanent membership can be purchased for $1 billion; and key figures include allies such as Jared Kushner and Tony Blair. Many established democracies kept their distance. A leaked June 2026 draft resolution would grant sweeping immunity from arrest, detention, or local legal proceedings to Board members, staff, the Office of the High Representative, international forces, contractors, and technocrats—subject only to waiver by the chairman with Board approval. It would also allow the Board free use of public premises and facilities in Gaza, raising concerns about uncompensated appropriation of Palestinian public assets.

This architecture sits uneasily alongside UN findings. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Israeli authorities and forces committed genocidal acts in Gaza, including deliberate targeting of children as a key indicator of intent to destroy the Palestinian group in whole or in part. Killings, serious harm, imposition of destructive conditions of life, and measures affecting births were documented; the pattern continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. Parallel documentation covers war crimes by non-state actors, including Palestinian armed groups. Reconstruction under a body accountable primarily to its chairman, with legal shields and land-access provisions, risks entrenching external control rather than restoring Palestinian agency.

Public opinion on both sides underscores the difficulty of purely bilateral solutions. Israeli polling has repeatedly shown large majorities of Jewish Israelis opposing an independent Palestinian state and, in earlier surveys, resistance to external pressure to wind down operations. Palestinian support for two states has also declined amid the destruction. Extremist leaderships—Likud-aligned hardliners and Hamas—have thrived on mutual rejection. A different framework is required.

Netanyahu’s recent actions further expose the structural flaws of the Board of Peace approach. In August 2026 he publicly rejected the Board’s 15-point roadmap—already accepted by Hamas—declaring that Israeli forces “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed” of all weapons, heavy and light, and that “as long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, not in Gaza and not in Judea and Samaria.” This stance is consistent with a career-long opposition to Palestinian statehood. It is also consistent with documented policies, including the facilitation of Qatari funding streams into Gaza, that successive Netanyahu governments used to strengthen Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, thereby keeping the Palestinian national movement divided and blocking any viable path to two states. Netanyahu himself was quoted at a 2019 Likud meeting stating that anyone who wished to prevent a Palestinian state needed to support strengthening Hamas. At the same time, he remains subject to an outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant, issued in November 2024, for war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the conduct of hostilities in Gaza. When a sitting prime minister who is under active ICC indictment, who has made the prevention of Palestinian statehood a central political project, and who refuses the very withdrawal and transitional arrangements the Board of Peace was created to implement, continues to dictate terms, the process cannot deliver genuine peace. These realities underline why lasting solutions require an enforced international framework capable of removing both Likud’s rejectionist leadership and Hamas from power, rather than relying on arrangements that leave either in a position to veto progress.

Why the United Nations?

The role of settlements and the inhumane treatment of Occupied Palestine by Israel is really is at the heart of the situation. Perhaps since the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, played such a pivotal role in the reformation of Israel, the United Nations should act as an intermediary Government for both sides, and both Likud and Hamas removed from power and the people re-educated from the extremist views of both sides and taught to cohabitate peacefully.

The UN and its predecessor, the League of Nations, have long been involved in the region’s institutional architecture. When local parties cannot or will not reach a sustainable settlement, the Security Council has authorized transitional administrations that exercise temporary legislative, executive, and judicial authority while building local capacity and preparing for elections. Precedents include:

• East Timor (UNTAET, 1999–2002): Full transitional administration after violence following the independence referendum. The UN provided security, ran the civil administration, facilitated reconstruction, drafted a constitution, and conducted elections leading to independence.

• Kosovo (UNMIK, from 1999): Interim administration with broad powers to establish provisional democratic institutions, maintain law and order, and facilitate a political process on final status.

• Cambodia (UNTAC, 1992–1993): Oversight of the Paris Agreements, including elections, demobilization, and administrative control over key ministries to ensure a neutral environment.

These missions were imperfect—capacity-building lagged, local ownership was sometimes delayed, and security challenges persisted—but they demonstrated that an impartial international authority can freeze conflict dynamics, deliver basic services, and create space for political transition when the parties themselves cannot. A UN-led framework for Gaza (and potentially coordinated arrangements for the West Bank) would operate under clear Chapter VII authority, report to the Security Council, and remain time-limited and purpose-bound, avoiding the open-ended personalization of the Board of Peace model.

Enforced Peace and a Secure Border

A UN transitional authority would deploy an International Stabilization Force—drawn from a broad coalition of member states, preferably including regional actors under UN command—to enforce a ceasefire, oversee demilitarization of all armed groups (Hamas and other factions on one side; removal of occupation forces and dismantling of settlement infrastructure inconsistent with a final status on the other), and secure borders. A UN-monitored border regime would remain until hostilities demonstrably fade and mutual confidence is rebuilt. This is not indefinite trusteeship; it is a bridge to self-governance. Humanitarian access, reconstruction of housing, hospitals, schools, and water systems, and the return of displaced persons would be prioritized under transparent international oversight rather than through opaque development contracts.

Elections and Political Renewal

Transitional administration would prepare the ground for free, fair, and inclusive elections. This requires more than ballots. Extremist structures—whether the current leadership of Hamas or the most rejectionist elements of the Israeli right—would be sidelined from governing roles during the transition. Parallel programs of civic education, focused on coexistence, international law, human rights, and the costs of perpetual conflict, would aim to reduce the appeal of maximalist ideologies. Palestinian institutions would be reformed and capacitated so that a legitimate, elected leadership can eventually assume full control of Gaza and, in a two-state framework, the West Bank. Israeli politics would face its own pressures for accountability and moderation as occupation ends and security is guaranteed multilaterally. The goal is not to “re-educate” populations into passive acceptance, but to create conditions in which democratic choice can favor compromise over permanent war.

War-Crime Trials and Accountability

No political settlement can be durable without justice. The International Criminal Court has already issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant on charges including the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity (murder, persecution, other inhumane acts). Warrants were also sought against senior Hamas figures; proceedings against some were terminated after their deaths. The UN Commission of Inquiry has recommended accountability for units and individuals responsible for the targeting of children and other atrocity crimes. Parallel investigations must address October 7 atrocities, hostage-taking, and any other violations by Palestinian armed groups, as well as settler violence and other crimes in the West Bank.

The ICJ’s ongoing proceedings and advisory opinions reinforce the legal framework. A UN-backed process would support ICC cooperation, facilitate evidence-gathering, protect witnesses, and ensure that no party enjoys de facto impunity. Immunity clauses of the kind contemplated for the Board of Peace would be incompatible with this requirement. Accountability is not victor’s justice; it is the necessary foundation for reconciliation and deterrence.

Two States—or One Democratic State?

The classic two-state solution—Israel and a viable, contiguous, sovereign Palestine based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, security arrangements, and a negotiated resolution of refugees and Jerusalem—remains the internationally endorsed framework. A UN transitional role could create the security and institutional conditions that bilateral talks have repeatedly failed to produce.

Historian Ilan Pappé and others argue that demographic realities, settlement expansion, and the depth of mutual trauma make partition unworkable, and that a single secular, democratic state across historic Palestine, grounded in equal rights, justice, and inclusivity for Palestinians and Israelis, better addresses the colonial dimensions of the conflict. Both paths require the same immediate steps: an end to active hostilities under enforceable international guarantees, accountability for atrocity crimes, and a political process that is not controlled by the most rejectionist actors on either side. The UN framework is compatible with either outcome once conditions for genuine self-determination exist.

Conclusion

The Board of Peace risks becoming a vehicle for external control, legal shields, and selective reconstruction that leaves the underlying drivers of conflict—occupation, rejectionism, and impunity—intact. A UN-enforced peace, culminating in supervised elections and comprehensive war-crimes trials, offers a harder, more principled alternative. It draws on proven (if imperfect) models of transitional administration, subordinates power to law, and places Palestinian self-determination and Israeli security on equal footing under multilateral oversight. The rubble of Gaza and the trauma of both peoples demand more than luxury renderings and immunity clauses. They demand justice, accountable governance, and a political horizon that is not carved up in advance by those with the biggest wallets. History will record whether the international community chose the easier deal or the harder peace.

United Nations & Official Reports

• Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children – OHCHR press release, 23 June 2026

• “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children… – UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry Conference Room Paper (A/HRC/62/CRP.2), June 2026

• Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory… – A/HRC/62/22, May–June 2026

• Gaza Faces Its “Most Devastating Attack” Since 1948 – Statement by the Chair of the Commission of Inquiry – 15 June 2026

• Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025) – 17 November 2025 (Board of Peace / International Stabilization Force)

• Report of the Board of Peace through the Office of the High Representative for Gaza – S/2026/418, 15 May 2026

Board of Peace Charter, Roadmap & Immunity Draft

• Full text: Charter of Trump’s Board of Peace – Times of Israel, January 2026

• Read the full text of Board of Peace roadmap for Trump’s Gaza peace plan – Jerusalem Post, July 2026

• Board of Peace plans to grant itself legal immunity, draft shows – The Guardian, 27 June 2026

• Donald Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace plans sweeping legal immunity framework – Jerusalem Post, June 2026

International Criminal Court

• ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas commander – BBC News

• ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders – Wikipedia (updated 2026)

• ICC rejects Israeli bid to halt Gaza probe; maintains warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant – Times of Israel, December 2025

Casualty & Humanitarian Data

• Reported impact snapshot | Gaza Strip (24 June 2026) – OCHA

• UNICEF and Gaza Ministry of Health figures cited across multiple 2026 reports (children killed ≈ 20,000–21,700 by mid-2026; total fatalities exceeding 73,000)

Public Opinion & Context

• Gallup: Israelis No Longer Ahead in Americans’ Middle East Sympathies & related 2025–2026 World Poll data on two-state support

• Israel Democracy Institute polls (2025–2026) on attitudes toward Palestinian statehood, ceasefires, and external pressure

• Just 22% of Israelis back Palestinian statehood… – Council for a Secure America / World Israel News, July 2026

Netanyahu, Board of Peace Rejection, and Long-Standing Policy Toward Hamas and Palestinian Statehood

• Netanyahu Rejects Trump’s Plan for Disarming Hamas – New York Times, 9 August 2026

• Israel officially rejects BoP 15-point plan… Netanyahu declares – Jerusalem Post, 9 August 2026 (includes explicit “no Palestinian state” statement)

• Netanyahu rejects Trump’s 15-point Gaza plan… – Times of Israel, 9 August 2026

• ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas (and related 2025 follow-ups) – New York Times reporting on Qatari funding policy under Netanyahu

• A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance – Haaretz

• Israeli support for Hamas (policy overview and 2019 Likud quotation) – Wikipedia compilation with primary citations

• ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (status remaining active as of 2026) – ICC official records and Wikipedia summary

Historical Precedents for UN Transitional Administration

• United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)

• United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)

• United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)

One-State Perspective

• Writings and interviews of Ilan Pappé (e.g., Palestine Chronicle interview, July 2026; earlier works advocating a single secular democratic state)

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Jews and Palestinians are closely related and share deep ancestral roots in the Middle East. Research on Y-chromosomes and whole-genome data reveals that both groups descend largely from the ancient peoples of the Levant, including the Canaanites and ancient Israelites, making them genetic cousins.

Palestinian have 80-90% of ancient (Canaanites etc) DNA

Mizrahi [Jewish communities from the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Central Asia] upto 70%

Sephardi [Jewish ethnic subgroup descended from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) prior to their expulsion in] upto 60%

Ashkenazi [a major Jewish ethnoreligious subdivision whose ancestors settled in the Rhineland and France during the Middle Ages before migrating to Central and Eastern Europe. Representing the majority of the global Jewish population today} upto 50%

Key findings from genome-wide data on Bronze Age Southern Levant (“Canaanite”) remains compared to modern groups:

Palestinians and other Levantine Arabic-speaking populations: Typically show high continuity, often modeled at ~81–87% (or roughly 80%) ancestry related to Bronze Age Levantines (local Neolithic + Zagros/Caucasus-related components that defined Canaanite-period groups). Additional components commonly include East African-related ancestry (~8–12%) and smaller European-related input (~5–10%). Some summaries put Palestinians, Jordanians, and Syrians around 80%, with Bedouin and certain other groups higher.

Jewish groups: Most also derive substantial ancestry (>50% in broad models) from populations related to the Bronze Age Levant + Chalcolithic Zagros. Iranian/Iraqi (core Mizrahi) Jews often rank among the highest for this component (reports of ~90% in some overviews). Moroccan Jews have been reported around ~70%. Ashkenazi Jews show lower Levantine-related proportions due to substantial European admixture (commonly modeled near ~50–60% Middle Eastern/Levantine-related, with European input often ~30–40%+). Sephardi groups fall in between, with variable European/North African input.

Broader pattern from the studies: Modern Jewish and Levantine Arab populations share a large common substrate from Bronze Age Levantine peoples. Later gene flow (European for Ashkenazi and some Sephardi/North African Jews; East African and some Arabian for many Arabic-speaking groups) differentiates the averages. The Canaanite-period population itself was already a mix of earlier local Levantine ancestry and eastern (Zagros/Caucasus-related) input that increased over the Bronze Age. Direct “percentage Canaanite” is a modeling approximation rather than a pure discrete category.

Primary Ancient DNA Studies

• Agranat-Tamir, L., et al. (2020). The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant. Cell, 181(5), 1146–1157.e11. Full text (Cell) · PMC open access · PubMed Key paper: Genome-wide data from 73 Bronze/Iron Age individuals across multiple Southern Levant sites. Models modern Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking populations (including Palestinians) as deriving substantial ancestry (≥50%, often higher) from Bronze Age Levant + Chalcolithic Zagros-related sources. Reports higher continuity in many Levantine Arab groups and variable European admixture in Ashkenazi Jews.

• Haber, M., et al. (2017). Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences. American Journal of Human Genetics, 101(2), 274–282. Full text (AJHG) · PubMed Shows strong genetic continuity from Bronze Age Canaanites (Sidon) into present-day Lebanese and broader Levantine populations.

Supporting Genome-Wide Studies of Jewish and Levantine Populations

• Atzmon, G., et al. (2010). Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. American Journal of Human Genetics, 86(6), 850–859. PMC open access · PubMed Demonstrates shared Middle Eastern ancestry across major Jewish groups with varying degrees of European/North African admixture; notes genetic proximity to Levantine non-Jewish populations.

• Behar, D. M., et al. (2010). The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. Nature, 466(7303), 238–242. Nature · PubMed Shows Jewish populations form distinct clusters with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, closest non-Jewish neighbors often including Palestinians, Druze, and Bedouins.

Accessible Summaries of the Key Findings

• National Geographic (2020): “DNA from the Bible’s Canaanites lives on in modern Arabs and Jews.” Article

• Haaretz (2020): “Jews and Arabs Share Genetic Link to Ancient Canaanites, Study Finds.” Article

• The Jerusalem Post (2025 summary of related work): “DNA study: Jews and Arabs share over half their ancestry from Canaanites.” Article

Additional Context

• Wikipedia overview with citations (useful starting point, not a primary source): Genetic history of the Middle East – Israel and Palestine section

Chris Bennett has been researching the historical role of cannabis in the spiritual life of humanity for more than a three decades. He is co-author of Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995); Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001); and author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution (2010); Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal herbs and the Occult (2018); and Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World (2023) . He has also contributed chapters on the the historical role of cannabis in spiritual practices in books such as The Pot Book (2010), Entheogens and the Development of Culture (2013), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances (2014), One Toke Closer to God (2017), Cannabis and Spirituality (2016) and Psychedelics Reimagined (1999). Bennett’s research has received international attention from the BBC , Guardian, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Vice and other media sources. He currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.