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Yeah, I was sort of circling that idea. Sort of like an opposite world Epicurean paradox.
If the leader is not genocidal and the country is not ethnonationalist, then whence cometh Israel?
Tangentially related, but I think the Epicurean paradox is so philosophically solid that it obviates the concept of God as Metaphor.
Christianity has such a weirdly anthropomorphic view of God that just doesn't make sense to me as a Jew. Even the Rabbi of my pretty middle of the road Reform synagogue growing up was very explicit about the view of God as a metaphorical concept rather than as a literal Magic Sky Daddy, which would be blasphemous in just about any Christian church.
Should look into the rest of Epicurus’ philosophy. He didn’t miss much, and there’s a reason Marx did his college thesis on him. He had early conceptions of germ theory, atomic theory, evolutionary theory and even quantum mechanics arguably (he argued that hard materialism did not deprive us of free will or make everything pre-determined due to “atomic swerve” that was possibly random but could not be accounted for in models of physics).
He also viewed the Greek gods in much the same way, as examples and metaphors. So that he wouldn’t be labeled an atheist and harassed he reluctantly admitted they were real existing beings, but said that they were so perfect that they were completely self-contained and needing nothing more, so they did not interact with the world in any way. Thus their purpose is as archetypes for us to learn from and inspire us, and not as beings who would intervene on our behalf. Any influence from them was more of a passive radiation and exposure than anything direct or intentional.
I fucking love the concept of god as a sense of personal morality. Like whether something is permissible is "between you and god." Or things that are up to chance are "in god's hands."
It's kinda the fascist Base and Superstructure, the economy of Israel is entirely based in colonialism and genocide, and the politicians and civilians are mutually locked into a death spiral where they just keep making eachother more genocidal.