This, of course, sounds like an absurd question, but it was less than two years ago that Eytan Weinstein, the co-host of "Two Nice Jewish Boys" Podcast said “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow, I would press it in a second.” 09/03/2024
Doesn't sound like such a "Nice Boy," does he?
Of course most reasonable people would never do such a thing and were shocked when this video went viral almost two years ago, but if you listen to the full video both Weinstein and his co-host Naor Meningher agreed that most Israelis would push the button, although many of them would do so on the condition that no one knew, unlike Weinstein. Unfortunately there's an enormous amount of evidence to show that he's right about this, and even though many Zionists wouldn't say so publicly, like Weinstein did, many others have indicated they would. After an enormous amount of backlash the "Two Nice Jewish Boys" defended themselves saying it was taken out of context, although the video was often accompanying the quotes so it's hard to take that excuse seriously.
Why would so many Israelis think like this?
Understanding this would require going through their history, and just as important, the version of history which they choose to believe in, and the fact that it may be heavily censored and often false. I've gone through significant portions of their history in numerous Blog Articles since October 7th so I'll keep it brief here, but part of the problem seems to be that many Zionists, especially in Israel, only listen to each other and automatically assume that anyone that disagrees with them is an "antisemite" which they seem to think only applies to hatred of Jews, ignoring the fact that Semitism is actually a reference to Middle Eastern languages, and Palestinians are Semites too, or, when Jews do a more accurate check of history and demand equal rights for all people, including Palestinians, they're often falsely called "self-hating Jews."
The short version is that, of course, many Jews were victims of bigotry throughout history, although the more I read about it, the less likely I am to believe that this was worse than any other prejudices than I used to be, and this went back before the Holocaust when there were many anti-Jewish Pogroms, and got much worse when Hitler came to power and brought about the Holocaust. However, as I pointed out in The Planning For The Nakba Is A Matter of Public Record! the planning to create a state of Israel began before the Holocaust happened and escalated no later than the 1890s when Theodor Herzl wrote "The Jewish State," this escalated and plans to use violence were begun when Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote "The Iron Wall." However, there was some discussion about using violence to create a State of Israel even before this, although it was only a minority of Zionists considered fringe at the time. One example is Vladimir Dubnow who wrote his brother Simon in 1882 saying:
... taking control of Palestine over time and restore to the Jews the political independence that has been denied them this two thousand years. .... [To achieve this goal he proposed] to try to ensure that the land and all production be in Jewish hands. .... The Jews will then rise up and, with arms in hand (if need be), they will declare themselves in a loud voice the masters of their ancient homeland.
This was cited by Tom Segev in "A State At Any Cost" 2019 p.80 who also said that "Ben-Gurion quoted his letters in full in his memoirs (decades later) and lauded him for his open-eyed view of the Zionist vision." Segev also provides more evidence that prejudices by Jews against Arabs was more common than most people realized in the late 1880s when he wrote:
Jewish farmers often treated their Arab laborers condescendingly and contemptuously. Traveling through Palestine at the end of the 1880s, Ahad Ha'am wrote: "They behave toward the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, commit unwarranted trespass, beat them shamefully without any good reason, and brag about doing so." In another article, he wrote that the Jewish farmers treated their Arab tenants just as they treated their farm animals. “They do not think of the fellahin [peasants] as human,” a resident of Jaffa, Israel Rokach, wrote to Levontin, the banker. "A State At Any Cost" 2019 p.76
This is one of many examples from history books showing that some historical Jews were also prejudiced against others, not just victims of Prejudice, and it was cited in sever other historical books as well and at Palestine Remembered: Zionist Quotes: Ahad Ha'Am-A Brief Biography & Quotes To be honest, this came as a surprise to me, since I wasn't raised to believe that Jews were prejudiced, and I don't recall any Jews that I knew acting that way; Jews were always portrayed as victims, not bigots and I saw no reason to doubt that, but some historical records, and much more reporting from Israeli Zionist Jews, or even bigoted American Zionist Jews which have gone viral since October 7th show this isn't always the case. In all fairness this doesn't apply to many Jews, possibly including Ahad Ha'am, who was a Zionist Jew who criticized this behavior and may have wanted a more progressive version of Zionism, if that's possible; nor does it apply to many anti-Zionist activists and researchers or former Zionists who explained how they learned they were misled and never intended to be prejudiced or regretted it when they may have been.
The short version is that Jews were persecuted for centuries, but instead of seeking reparations against those oppressing them, mostly from Europe, they blamed those in Palestine and stole their land, often committing many of the same crimes, including ethnic cleansing or genocide, against the Palestinians, who weren't responsible for the ethnic cleansing or genocide against the Jews.
But the Zionists have created a heavily censored, and often false, version of history and current events to justify blaming the wrong people. And many of the best researchers or activists exposing this are often other Jews like Historians including Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, and more, as well as activists like Jewish Voices for Peace and If Not Now are other Jews; and Zionists often turn against their own people when they don't support misleading or false beliefs.
It's like a Cult where Zionists only believe each other even though they repeat censored and false versions of history.
Are there other false beliefs leading to other disasters besides Zionism?
There certainly are, but I'm not aware of more examples that are as obvious, but there may be at least one example that is even more important.
Would you push a button if it would get you free or cheap clothing, but children would be forced to work in sweat shops to provide it?
Would you push a button if it would provide free housing with lots of extra space, appliances, computers, and much more, but it would contribute to, or cause, an Ecocide that would eventually destroy society?
Of course neither of these scenarios require you to push a button, just participate in our economic system as usual, and even though this isn't a perfect description, but it's somewhat close. There's no easy way to describe the details, but there's no doubt that children around the world are forced to work in sweatshops to produce consumer goods, and there's no easy way for consumers who want to prevent it to do so, although it can be reduced by minimizing waste. The same goes to contributing to an Ecocide, or Sixth Extinction, which is happening, although it's hard to explain all the details, but once again, it can be reduced by minimizing waste, starting with individuals.
But, of course, even if many individuals reduce their own waste by refusing to buy things they don't need and conserving as much as possible, changing our entire system will still be required to prevent abusing people without political power or worse, Ecocide, which will eventually destroy everything for everyone, even the rich who are doing the most environmental damaging, and, for now, paying the least price, while the environment gets destroyed where the poor live first, especially in the Third World and abandoned inner cities.
Considering the importance of this and that Ecocide is almost certainly the biggest threat to the entire human race it should be the most important subject to discuss and act on for both mainstream media and the political establishment.
The fact that it isn't shows we're being ruled by lunatics, even if they create a massive amount of propaganda to make themselves seem rational and sane, although even with this propaganda many of them still seem insane.
In Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment they found that the subjects were much less likely to shock the victim, who only pretended to be shocked, if the victim was closer, or if there was a second person that stood up to the authority figure with him, among other things. This could have, and should have been used to teach many more people to stand up to authority when it's being misused; however, it was mostly taught to a small percentage of the public familiar with sociology experiments, and briefly presented to a larger audience, which quickly forgot it. Unfortunately most of those that understood it didn't attempt to teach the public, and a significant number of them almost certainly advised the wealthy how to get blind obedience to authority, instead of preventing it.
Instead of reporting on the damage done to society by many actions, including wars based on lies, obsessive consumerism that doesn't improve the quality of life for most people but does an enormous amount of damage to the environment contributing to Ecocide, rigging the economy so one large segment of society does all the work while the wealthy get all the wealth and benefits, and other things providing short term benefits to the rich and long term damage to the vast majority of the public, the media and political establishment provides non-stop propaganda and outright lies to convince the public this is in their best interests and won't inevitably, eventually, destroy our society as we know it.
Some of the wealthiest and best educated people in the world have created a massive and effective propaganda machine going back well over a hundred years to rig the economy in their favor robbing the vast majority of the public; but it will inevitably destroy society, starting with the poor, but eventually even themselves.
Ecocide will destroy everyone, eventually even the rich.
The rich have developed an incredibly sophisticated and intelligent propaganda process to do something incredibly stupid!
The fact that they continue to push this fanatical ideology indicates they may have fooled themselves with their own propaganda more effectively than they fooled the majority of the public.
When we make decisions in a Democratic society it's vital to get accurate information to make proper decisions; with the wealthiest people controlling almost 100% of the information we use, especially mass media, we can't do that. If we knew that by "pushing a button" or participating in the political and economic system as it currently exists would support a genocidal war, or worse, bring about an Ecocide, no rational person would ever do it. It's hard to imagine what people like Eytan Weinstein and a shocking number of other Zionist Israelis are thinking when they say they would "push a button" if it caused the genocide of Palestinians; would they think the same if a Palestinian wanted to "push a button" to commit genocide against Jews, not that I think that is justified either? Of course not.
However, even though this went viral on several Social Media platforms it was totally ignored by mainstream media, so many people, especially older people or those not paying attention to politics on Social Media won't know about it, which may mean they're more likely to look the other way about Genocide in Gaza or other conflicts in the Middle East and around the world which are all based on lies.
The same goes for epidemic environmental damage or even Ecocide, as I and many environmentalists or researchers have been trying to point out for years. To the best of my knowledge destruction of the environment isn't instantaneous and may not happen for years, decades, or perhaps a century; but, in many parts of the world, especially in the Third World or abandoned inner cities it's already happening, and there's plenty of evidence to show it will only get worse and eventually destroy areas where the middle class and even the rich live.
I've explained several strong scientific articles, studies or issues that conclusively prove Ecocide is well underway, although since the planet is so large it takes decades if not centuries to finish the job, and modern society has been at it for hundreds of years, since the industrial revolution which led to a massive increase in the burning of coal, which was mostly replaced by burning of oil, but has never stopped, and the worst destruction is still there, especially in the third world or abandoned inner cities.
In the past I pointed out that starting in 1970 the human race began using more natural resources annually than the planet can restore in a year, and it's been getting worse steadily since then, although some resources are worse than others. Numerous sources have reported that oil reserves will run out long before they can be developed again, since they take millions of years to form. Maude Barlow has pointed out in several books including "Blue Gold," "Blue Covenant," "Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop the Last Plunder of the Planet" and several others showing that we're destroying the fresh water supply partly because of efforts to sell bottled water which is less efficient than private tap water, and other industrial activities destroying fresh water, which will inevitably destroy access to clean and fresh water. Maude Barlow is doing research to prevent inevitable destruction of our water supply that she's unlikely to live to see, or at least I hope it doesn't come that fast, but hundreds of millions if not billions of younger people almost certainly live to see it.
I also pointed out that despite some efforts to make it seem like we're cleaning up polluted sites in the United States the List of Superfund sites shows that more are being introduced than are being cleaned up, so the number is actually slowly but steadily increasing instead of decreasing. Until recently the Wikipedia article for this listed a high number of sites that have been cleaned up, but only a much lower number that were being added, after checking the source I realized that it claimed these were only the most recent additions, which explains why despite these numbers the number of sites was growing. Simply adding the word "recent" changed the false impression that more sites were being cleaned than added. The bigger problem is that a global list of Superfund sites that needs to be cleaned up is guaranteed to be much larger and, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't even an adequate effort to track it, so it's virtually guaranteed this is getting worse much faster, but mostly for poor people in Third World countries, although this will inevitably spread to the middle class and even the wealthy, but I'm not aware of a study to tell us how fast.
Another major study showing we're already in the process of committing Ecocide is one that went viral during the 2018 campaign about Climate Change, which the so-called Squad ran on, saying that if we don't act within twelve years that Climate Change might be irreversible, although this doesn't mean that it would destroy or society in 2030, as some people interpreted it, just that some of the biggest changes would escalate after that and there would be little if anything we could do to prevent it, assuming the study is accurate. The study from 2018, an article about it and a more recent article include Special ReportGlobal Warming of 1.5 ºC 2018; We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN 10/08/2018 and Are We Approaching the Point of No Return for Irreversible Climate Damage? 03/23/2026
We should be hoping this study overestimates the danger and that we have more time, but there's little or no chance that even if that is the case and we do have more time, that most of the research is accurate and the sooner we make major changes the better. Even if one of the arguments that I cited is wrong, which I doubt, the others are true, and there's almost certainly much more evidence of other threats to the environment in environmental research papers not widely read by the public.
Clearly we need to educate the public much better immediately and act on it, by any reasonable means necessary!
But unless it happens soon by people with more influence there's little hope, and if we wait much longer for the damage to escalate it will be much more difficult, if not impossible to repair the damage.
Why is an international crime of ecocide necessary? 06/01/2023 Cover Photo
“If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow, I would press it in a second.” August 2024 Cover Photo inset
To save our planet, we need to criminalise ecocide 12/09/2021 Cover Photo inset If ecocide were to be criminalised, we could not only punish mass polluters for the damage they cause, but also prevent the advent of new fossil fuel companies and projects.
Ecocide has got a legal definition: International Panel convenes definition of ecocide as crime 06/25/2021 “Ecocide” has got a legal definition: we congratulate the initiative held by the Independent Expert Panel put together by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, which aims for this definition of the crime of ecocide to serve as a basis for an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Would you press the button to make humanity go extinct? 10/26/2016 I often hear people entertaining the thought of making humanity disappear from the universe because, as a species, we are causing a lot of suffering, to ourselves and other sentient beings and the planet. One thought experiment goes like this: if you could make humanity painlessly disappear with the pressing of a button, would you press it? Or, slightly reframing the experiment so that you can make an abstraction of your own responsibility: would you stop someone else from pressing the button? ....... These are the reasons why I would not press the button.
