Swanson -- Stealing Palestine, Stealing Enlightenment

Stealing Palestine, Stealing Enlightenment

Leave a Comment / October 18, 2026

Yoav Litvin and Ilan Pappé’s Wired to Steal includes a history of European anti-Semitic horrors and the development of Zionist propaganda, propaganda that from the start drew on white-supremacy, eugenics, militarism, nationalism, eventually even Nazism, and the settler-colonial ploy of stealing territory, getting oneself attacked, and then labeling and understanding genocidal violence as “defense.”

“Zionists were widely unpopular among most European Jews, who saw the ideals of the Enlightenment, emancipation, equality, and integration as their ultimate goal.”

The authors trace the origins of Zionism, at least in large part, to Evangelical Christians who, much like back-to-Africa racists in the United States, sought the removal of people against whom they were prejudiced, but in this case did so for magical reasons of the Second Coming of Christ and related myths.

Zionism took the worst elements of rightwing Western ideologies and, in the fashion of the victim of child abuse who becomes a child abuser, claimed them as its own. Certain strains of non-Jewish, even anti-Semitic, Western politics have supported Zionism since before it existed and never yet ceased to celebrate it. But it strikes me that many in the Western and, for that matter, non-Western world moved on from the levels of bigotry and racism and colonialism of centuries gone by, even while hanging onto a vestige of those things in their endless support for the government of Israel, and did so for so long and with such dedication that Zionism has been returning the favor, has been re-implanting authoritarian, theocratic, militarist notions in a Western world that had partially outgrown them.

Of course, one is not supposed to say that. Even after the U.S. government has launched so many wars demanded by the Israeli government, even after so many Congress members have been on so many re-education tours of Israel, even after so many U.S. police departments have been trained by the Israeli military, even after so many weapons have been developed and “battle tested” by or in collaboration with the Israeli government and then sold to the West, even after Western borders have been made to look like Israel’s borders, the choices offered by Zionist propaganda are (1) speak no ill of the Israeli government ever, or (2) you are an idiotic, goofy bigot from centuries gone by who believes in hateful magical nonsense to discriminate against Jewish people (even if you are a Jewish person).

Nonetheless, for many years, millions of people have believed both that

• a) governments should uphold freedom of religion and speech and assembly, not discriminate on race or sex or any other irrelevant factor, and at least sometimes not kill people, and
• b) the Israeli government should discriminate against non-Jews, and restrict rights and kill as needed to uphold a government dominated by Jews.

And sometimes one has to choose between these ideas. Is it more important to ban criticism of the Israeli government even if it means that there will be no more political demonstrations on a college campus about anything at all? Is it more important to uphold state-racism and state-religion in Israel even as the idea spreads well beyond Israel? Is it more important that Israel get away with its crimes even as the structures of international law are at risk of crumbling?

To be clear, these are my musings upon reading Wired to Steal, not necessarily the thoughts of the authors of that book. But I recommend the book, albeit with a couple of caveats.

First, it’s always odd to treat political policies in terms applicable only to human beings. Analyzing human emotions to explain public policy usually implies a ridiculous belief in the actual existence of democracy. Here it does not. Here the topic is the propagandizing of the Israeli public. Those doing the propagandizing are cursorily identified as driven by greed. Yet, most greedy rulers do not do exactly what the government of Israel does, and I think Israel’s rulers would not unless they were committed to acting on, if not actually believing, their own propaganda. That topic could use more attention.

Second, the book is oddly scientistic. I would skip the whole first part which is painfully familiar silliness about whether chimps or bonobos doom us all to be warlike or cooperative. Largely debunked studies like Stanford Prison and Milgram come up repeatedly. We’re told which section of the brain some process may take place in even when it’s difficult to discern why that should matter. We’re even fed questionable studies about the universality of facial expressions and highly questionable studies about micro-expressions to no apparent purpose. In my humble opinion, we should of course be as scientific as possible in areas where science has developed something useful, but as humble as possible about acting scientific where it has not.

 https://davidswanson.org/stealing-palestine-stealing-enlightenment/