The Samson Complex
מה זה אומר להיות "שאהיד"?
There is nobody I know of that has not gone through some shift or change in understanding these past months. No matter what direction, any motion forces more motion- heating particles crash into still ones, force them into motion, crash into other particles- we are all connected.
Even if you believe God is your real estate agent and portioned out land to you based on the borders of the Jewish kingdoms of the Bible, Gaza would not count as land given to you by God. This small oversight falls under the category of ‘biblical doublethink’ prevalent in zionist theology, where the contemporary policy needs of Israel, like controlling Gaza, override the biblical precedent, where Gaza, along with Ashdod and Ashkelon, two places Israelis today consider indisputably theirs, was once the Biblical land of the Philistines, and not implied to be a part of our promised land.
One of the biblical stories most closely intertwined with Gaza and the Philistines is the story of Samson in the book of Judges.
As the prime minister of Israel invokes Amalek, while 200 Israelis, dead or alive, are captive in Gaza, it is worth looking at how the story of Samson and the Philistines hold relevance to what we are seeing unfold.
To catch us up- Samson, big hero, hercules type but keeps Kosher and loves loves loves Philistine women (Judges 14 and 16). He was betrayed by Delilah, who cut his hair, had his eyes plucked out, (according to the talmud, for his sin of ‘following his eyes’) and humiliated as a slave in chains, pushing the grindstone in a Gazan grain mill. After some time his hair grew back, and when he was being led around in chains in the central pagan Temple of the Philistines in Gaza…
Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Let go of me and let me feel the pillars that the temple rests upon, that I may lean on them.”
Now the temple was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and there were some three thousand men and women on the roof watching Samson dance.
Then Samson called to GOD, “O Sovereign GOD ! Please remember me, and give me strength just this once, O God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes.”
וַיִּקְרָ֥א שִׁמְשׁ֛וֹן אֶל־יְהֹוָ֖ה וַיֹּאמַ֑ר אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֡ה זׇכְרֵ֣נִי נָא֩ וְחַזְּקֵ֨נִי נָ֜א אַ֣ךְ הַפַּ֤עַם הַזֶּה֙ הָאֱלֹהִ֔ים וְאִנָּקְמָ֧ה נְקַם־אַחַ֛ת מִשְּׁתֵ֥י עֵינַ֖י מִפְּלִשְׁתִּֽים׃He embraced the two middle pillars that the temple rested upon, one with his right arm and one with his left, and leaned against them; Samson cried, “Let me die with the Philistines!” and he pulled with all his might. The temple came crashing down on the lords and on all the people in it. Those who were slain by him as he died outnumbered those who had been slain by him when he lived.
His brothers and all his father’s household came down and carried him up and buried him in the tomb of his father Manoah, between Zorah and Eshtaol. He had led Israel for twenty years.
Like many other biblical figures from the era of Joshua and Judges tribal savagery, the violent heroism of Samson, particularly his suicidal heroism, left a deep impression on Atheist Zionists seeking biblical justification for their violence in order to spite and reject the weak diaspora Jewish tradition was critical of Samson and the violence of the bible. We see this in the Samson Option, a psychopathic innovation in the psychopathic field of Nuclear Strategy, where Israel extended the logic of ‘nukes prevent invasion’ to its logical conclusion.
Recently, the verse came back into the public eye when the italicized verse became the basis of the song “Zachreini Na”.
This hasidic rock jam was written by kahanist singer/songwriter Dov Shurin in the 90s in reaction to the murder of a settler woman. Originally for the Kahanists, then for the settlers, as Kahanism and Settler Religious Zionism- what I would call Pan-Judeanism- wove itself into the fabric of Israeli society, the song spread as well.
If you remember, this song had its moment in the global spotlight on Jerusalem Day 2021 (link if you want a refresher how tense it was at the time).
In another fascinating propaganda study, the Hasbarah apparatus tried to um actually 🤓☝️their way out of the ‘hate orgy collective orgasm’ accusations.
Here is an article about the event and coverage around it.
If your hebrew is fine-tuned, you might have picked up two differences between the Song based off the biblical verse and the song our jewish brothers at the Kotel… sing? chant? shout? like many other issues in this conflict, we do not yet have a word for ‘angry full of energy vengeful enthusiastic after a long day of marching through jerusalem and committing hate crimes while protected by the police, finally arriving at your 2nd holiest site, a wall below the holiest site which you’re ‘forbidden by halacha from entering’, you’re stuck down at the kotel, the koisel, the wailing wall, the physical representation of exile, and you’re so close to the holiest site, but there are fucking muslims there, and there were muslims here too, the Maghrebi quarter, but we got rid of those assholes, it’s the Kotel Plaza now, but we want it all now baby, it’s in our hands, last night our soldiers were up there beating up arabs, they’re beating them up right now, we hear the shooting and the fireworks, and now it’s fucking on fire, right as we’re here, it’s ours, it’s fucking ours, it’s ours, do you see it Uri, do you see, we are here at the end of Jerusalem day and the fucking Temple Mount is on fire??’. We don’t have a word for that.
The initial song, based off the biblical verse, says “Veinakma Nakam Ehat M’Shnei Einai M’Pelishtim” ‘And May You Avenge me just one vengeance from my two eyes, upon the Philistines’ (my translation 😙✌️)
The settlers make slight adjustments when singing. They substitute the word “Pelishtim”- a necessary dogwhistle in the peacenik 90s, for ‘Falestin’- Palestine. The second change is adding one of two phrases- either ‘Yimach Shemam!’ ימח שמם- May their names be erased, a classic jewish curse— But these tzadikim are not the old Jew who speak old hebrew, they speak modern hebrew and say “Yimchak Shemam”- sourced from מחק, used in modern hebrew for delete, backspace, destroy. “limchok et Huwarra” said by Betzalel Smotrich before he was interrupted by the interviewer who just had to speak his mind rather than let smotrich run his mouth. Israelis smh).
Both use מחק, conversationally used most often ‘erase’ and ‘backspace’, as the organic word to indicate the total erasure of a people. It’s possible that, for some singing, they simply misheard and thought the word to be Yimchak, a word they use conversationally, instead of Yimach. It happens!
These examples, like many minor PR crises for Israel, are PR crises because they indicate that there are bigger, systemic issues you maybe should worry about. Itamar Ben Gvir, who many will dismiss as a fringe lunatic representing a disdainful minority, was democratically elected. Feel your feet. Feel a tingling in your feet. Are your feet real? Itamar Ben Gvir is as real as your feet. Are your feet real? Itamar Ben Gvir is real. He’s handing out weapons to settlers in public, and is definetely smuggling them weapons and IDF equipment (openly, and more settlers in the army, more instances of ‘civillian’ settlers in army uniforms with army guns inflicting terror in the west bank.
And last I heard, nobody is losing their job for saying שצריכים למחוק את עזה, or losing their job for tolerating friends and love ones who say there are no innocents in Gaza. In fact, if you say it loud enough, they give you a spot on CNN!
Zachreini Na is a catchy tune, and it holds an idea central to holy war. To die in an act of vengeance is an honor, and to sacrifice yourself in order to kill your enemy is an enviable act. Past wrongs from your enemies can be righted with holy acts of violence, even at the expense of your life or the lives of soldiers and citizens we put in harms way. We do what we must to control the land that is ours by God’s granting, expect for this part of that land that God didn’t give us, but, still. Gush Katif 2024!
If the Israeli hostages in Gaza were cut from the same cloth as those young tzaddikim at the Kotel, they might be more enthusiastic about a chance to die for god and country.
Here’s a mass psychosis I can’t comprehend- The Israeli government clearly wants all of the hostages to die. We all know this and their actions make this clear. They have no interest in saving them, and the unstated policy is that their loved ones need to accept their deaths as a strategic sacrifice.
(Side Bar) How could anyone, with a real human brain, still sincerely believe that the Israeli government has any intention of rescuing hostages? It has been over a month, and we are learning that repeated offers from Hamas for hostages through international intermediaries were rejected by Netanyahu. When Yocheved Lifshitz was one returned to Israel, she described the network of tunnels she was taken through as hundreds of meters under the ground, endless, and ‘like a spiderweb’. She also described being taken into an ‘olam’ אולם with an alef- a large room or auditorium underground where she was cared for with 20 others. The Gaza Strip is only 50 kilometers long. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, over multiple levels of earth. What this means practically is that at any given point in gaza, dig straight down and eventually you’ll find a tunnel. The justification for indiscriminate bombing of any aboveground facility, especially hospitals, is these tunnel systems. As the IDF has invaded North Gaza, much of media released is centered around these tunnels. The working understanding is that the presence of a tunnel is evidence of Hamas terrorist guilt. The IDF’s stated strategy, and it seems, main or only strategic directive, is to destroy all the tunnels. After the immense security failure of October 7th, I don’t trust that the IDF would know the layouts of these underground tunnels, let alone what is where. As they invade northern Gaza, the policy has been to destroy tunnels without investigating for fear of Booby Traps. The one public hostage testimony we got said they were split into small groups and dispersed throughout tunnels. Bibi is saying ‘I’ll take accountability after the war is over’, so he’s drawing the war out until enough people will forget to blame him. He flat out rejected hostage deals and stands to benefit from perpetual warfare. The hostages are in the tunnels and the goal of the war is to destroy tunnels without consideration for what is inside. Am I going fucking crazy here? How do they not see this? (end sidenote)
Many of the hostages, however, are not Zachreini Na Israelis. One, for example, is Vivian Silver, others are the apolitical child soldiers of the IDF. Regardless of who they were, they are all now Samsons. People with no brains often ask me ‘well what do you want? What would you do? What else could they do?’.
I don’t know, after pushing back to the original border with full sympathy of the entire world on your side, wait one week? Just one week? Get signs of life, confirm identities, offer Hamas the opportunity to unconditionally surrender in exchange for the hostages? If they had waited just one week, at least offered the public pretense of surrender, they could have had normalization with every other country, unconditional support from Europe, and regime change in Gaza, or, at least, global approval of total war. From just waiting one week.
This is what people seem not to understand. The military policy of total displacement and genocide we are seeing is a part of the larger Israeli Zionist project, but it is uniquely inseparable from the ideological core of its far-right government, and it aligns with the political needs of their leader. Anyone who does not want their loved ones to be Samson is a boged, a traitor, a leftist arab-lover. You should want to be a Samson yourself, and you’re a coward if you wouldn’t.
It would be a miracle if 50 hostages were still alive. The rest had the honor of dying suffocated and alone in collapsed tunnels, crushed under thousands of tons of earth, their faces plastered as propaganda around the world to defend the actions of the government that killed them. They are citizens, human beings, they did not ask to die for God and Country, and their government has decided that they will. Already, the circulating propaganda is blaming every dead hostage on Hamas, spreading the idea that just implying that the actions of the Israeli government killed hostages is support of terrorism. This simple Newsspeak, reductive thinking, and McCarthyism, are definitive of the authoritarian environment fostered by the fascist radicalization of Zionism.
If you look at the above excerpt from Judges, you might ask yourself a question of continuity. If he collapsed the temple upon himself and killed thousands of Philistines, how did his brothers find his body so easily and bury him? If you asked that question, you are on the right path, because the Talmud asks the same thing. To solve this little conundrum, the Talmud says he collapsed the structure backwards upon itself, but mostly not on top of him, allowing his body to remain whole, unmangled, and recoverable.
Our family in Gaza will not have this luxury of a post-mortem recovery and burial. For some, perhaps hundreds, thousands, God forbid more, their bodies will never be found. They will rot and decompose forever where they died, crushed in a tunnel or building collapse orchestrated by the engineers and sadists over at IDF Demolitions. Perhaps their loved ones will rot too, alive in a jail cell, tortured to find the answer to a question of circumstance.
May God forgive us.
i love you alec