Israel, Gaza, and the Bronze Age Mindset

Who are the true Nietzscheans?

Since the start of the war, one faction of the right has been consistently apathetic about the Palestinian cause, if not entirely hostile. Conversely, other members of the right have embraced the mantra of “free Palestine.”¹

Fuentes, for example, claims that, while he himself is not a Nietzschean, if any side can claim that label, it is the Palestinian forces! Anyone who makes fun of far left activists while professing a “bronze age mindset” must be a secret Zionist. Who are the true Nietzscheans: Israel or the Palestinians? Or, in other words, is it easier to be a Nietzschean Zionist or a Nietzschean Palestinian?

Palestinian Nietzscheans

In the Palestinian camp, it is claimed that the following actions are “Bronze Age”:

1. The use of personal aviation devices.

2. Literal piracy.

3. The capture or rape of women as “war brides.”

4. The digging of tunnels.

5. Lighting one’s self on fire.

#1: Flying in makeshift paragliders is compared to the cutting edge technology of the chariot, which the Indo-Europeans used to conquer western Eurasia, or to the mounted archers which the Mongols used. The difference here is that the paraglider technology was not new, innovative, or effective. Hamas managed to cross the border briefly to attack and kill civilians, but did not manage to attack or destroy any military targets. As suggested by conspiracy theorists, there is evidence to suggest that Hamas did not achieve success because of their brilliant technology or feats of genius, but because the Israeli military deliberately held back in order to maximize civilian casualties and generate PR and a casus belli.

#2: The piracy of the Houthis is genuinely impressive and unexpected. However, Houthi piracy is not piracy as such — instead, it amounts to harassment. The difference here is that historical pirates had a very different way of life and a very different motivation. Odysseus fleeing Troy, the Barbarossa brothers, Sir Francis Drake, and Blackbeard were all pirates. All captured ships and looted these ships in order to fund their own pursuits, both hedonistic as well as military. The Houthis, thus far, have captured some ships, but more often they have engaged in wanton destruction of shipping vessels. Missiles cost money, and when cargo sinks to the sea floor, the Houthis make no profit. This calculus only makes sense when you recognize that the Houthis are funded by Iran. Without Iranian support, Houthi piracy is not self-sustaining. This is the “Bronze Age” appeal of piracy: it is a means for a warrior class to truly break free from society and become self-sufficient. There is a difference between a paramilitary group or client state waging a proxy war on behalf of another state, and a totally independence piratical crew which owes no allegiance or loyalty except to the jolly roger. Additionally, the motives of the Houthis are not to build a pirate empire, but to stop the genocide in Gaza. What group of pirates fights for a moral cause? Can you imagine a real pirate saying, “we’ll stop attacking once you stop the genocide!” Real pirates are not defined as “a paramilitary navy.” In fact, pirates operate on land as well, such as Vikings and Varangians, who were huge slave traders. Can you imagine the Vikings protesting genocide for moral reasons? They would be more likely to engage in it!

#3: Like the Houthi piracy, the capture of “war brides” was unexpectedly effective. Like Houthi piracy, it was impelled by motives quite different from “Nietzscheanism.” In fact, the women captured by Hamas have not been used as breeding stock, and so far, reports from the hostages themselves claim that no sexual violence was used against them. Instead, the women captured were taken solely as hostages, or human shields. Whether or not this tactic is honorable or legitimate, it is clearly effective in that it slowed the Israeli offensive, especially with regard to the gassing of tunnels. Pirates, Vikings, and bronze age warriors all engaged in the enslavement and rape of women. They did not, however, capture women to use as human shields to defend against a superior enemy. Using women as a human shield is a tactic of a weaker enemy which seeks to abuse the sentimentality of his opponent. In other words, it is a psychological weapon which appeals to a sense of mercy. A true “bronze age mindset” would be to rape or kill the hostages, not to use them as bargaining chips to try to buy time and extend the war. Hamas knows that the longer the war drags on, the less good it looks for Israel. This is a war they seek to win in the court of public opinion, not in the battlefield. The tactic of taking hostages is a stalling maneuver to outflank Israel in the moral arena, not in the war itself. Such a moral war of public relations cannot be described as “bronze age.” Palestinian defenders want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to claim that the Palestinians are the real “bronze age warriors,” but also claim that Hamas treats the hostages perfectly well. However, it is not possible to be both “bronze age” and to respect the rules of war. The two are opposites.

#4: Somehow, strangely, the digging of tunnels has been brought up as a “bronze age tactic.” Many people throughout history have dug tunnels. Orthodox Jews dig tunnels under New York. Mole people dig tunnels. Ancient civilizations dig catacombs where they bury their dead. Tunnel digging is not the practice of a warrior cult. If anything, Vikings were cremated at sea on ships, or buried under mounds (hence the term Kurgan culture for their Indo-European ancestors). Tunnel digging is a defensive maneuver, and has little to do with the Bewegungskrieg tactics of the Indo-Europeans on their chariots, or with the mounted archers of the Mongols. Just because a tactic is old does not mean that it is “bronze age.”

#5: The tragic death of Aaron Bushnell is the latest evidence for the Nietzscheanism of the Palestinian cause. What could be more “bronze age” than lighting yourself on fire? While ancient Indo-European cultures did have rituals of self-immolation, these were reserved for priests and for wives. Self-immolation was a feminine or highly androgynous practice, which should not be confused with the funeral pyre, which was performed after death. For the female example, Queen Sita, the wife of Lord Rama, entered into the flames to prove her sexual chastity. Agni, God of fire, allowed for her preservation and return from the fire. However, there is no precedent for a Kshatriya self-immolating in a warrior culture.

Consider this passage from Caesar’s Gallic Wars on the practice of Gallic immolation:

“Their funerals, considering the state of civilization among the Gauls, are magnificent and costly; and they cast into the fire all things, including living creatures, which they suppose to have been dear to them when alive; and, a little before this period, slaves and dependents, who were ascertained to have been beloved by them, were, after the regular funeral rites were completed, burnt together with them.” (6.19.)

Here, living immolation is a fate for slaves, dependents, and pets. One who immolates oneself for Palestine would be saying, in Gallic culture, “I was the favorite slave of Palestine.” This is not unlike the practice of circumcision, “I am a slave of Yahweh.”

Tolkien, who studied ancient Germanic culture extensively, can be considered an expert in this matter. When Denethor chooses to self-immolate, he is depicted as a madman and a coward. As Denethor leaps off the cliff of Gondor, he appears eerily similar to those victims of 9/11 who jumped out of the building rather than be consumed by the flames. Such an image is not heroic, but tragic. Bushnell, in any case, was not a “bronze age warrior,” but a bureaucratic pencil pusher with a fetish for perceived victims. His attacks on segregation, white supremacy, and settler colonialism represent the greatest antithesis to the “bronze age mindset.” Choosing to sacrifice himself in what he thought was a “Christ-like” manner was inspired by guilt and shame over his white skin, not over a heroic, sadistic, or aristocratic sensibility. It is difficult to reconcile the Nietzschean hatred of Christ as a self-sacrificing God with the apparent admiration of self-professed Nietzscheans for Bushnell. Perhaps Bushnell, like the early Christian martyrs who were burned alive in the Roman furnaces, or like the Jews of the Holocaust, is winning converts from Nietzscheanism to self-sacrificial moralism. But he is not, in that case, Nietzschean.

Israeli Nietzscheans

In the Israeli camp, it is claimed that the following actions are “Bronze Age”:

1. Killing civilians and committing genocide.

2. Starvation as a weapon of war — not distinguishing between civilians and soldiers.

3. Torture and mutilation of prisoners of war.

4. Killing surrendering soldiers rather than taking them as prisoners.

5. Destroying non-military targets, such as medical or agricultural installations.

#1: According to Roman sources, 1 million out of the 6 million Gauls were killed in the Gallic Wars by Caesar. This is approximately 17% of the population over 8 years. So far, Israel has only killed 0.15% of the population of Gaza in 145 days. At this rate, even if the war lasts 8 years, Israel would only kill 3% of the population of Gaza, a far cry from the likes of Caesar. By this standard, Israel needs to kill at least five times as many people to be considered “bronze age” by the standards of Julius Caesar.

#2: Caesar used starvation as a weapon of war. “A great number of men also died of thirst” due to Caesar’s siege tactics. (Caes. Gal. 8.41) Specifically, “he endeavoured to prevent their getting water. [..] [he] disposed archers and slingers [..] and attempted to hinder the townsmen from getting water at the river.” (Caes. Gal. 8.40) In other words, Caesar set up a blockade where townspeople (not soldiers) would be shot and killed if they tried to retrieve water.

Caesar made little distinction between civilians and soldiers, and refused to provide humanitarian aid to women and children:

“[The Gauls] determined that those who, owing to age or ill health, were unserviceable for war, should depart from the town, [..]. The Mandubii, who had admitted them into the town, are compelled to go forth with their wives and children. When these came to the Roman fortifications, weeping, they begged of the soldiers by every entreaty to receive them as slaves and relieve them with food. But Caesar, placing guards on the rampart, forbade them to be admitted.” (Caes. Gal. 7.78)

#3: Caesar ordered that Guturvatus, "the instigator of that rebellion [..] was whipped to death, and his head cut off." (Caes. Gal. 8.38) There is some indication that Caesar hesitated to do this because it was so extreme, but it was demanded of him by his soldiers.

#4: General Gaius Caninius Rebilus, under the command of Caesar, “did not allow a single man to be taken alive.” (Caes. Gal. 8.35) The language here implies that the Gauls were defenseless, fleeing, and would have preferred to surrender.

#5: After pursuing a fleeing enemy, the Romans under Caesar “destroyed and burned every thing far and wide,” implying that they burned fields to starve the population (Caes. Gal. 4.35) More specifically, they “laid waste all their country, having burned their villages and houses.” (Caes. Gal. 3.29)

“It was not only the Roman sword that inflicted death on the Gallic population. Large parts starved to death because the harvests were confiscated or destroyed and their settlements and farmsteads burned, or they froze to death when the legions drove them out of their settlements in winter and burned down buildings, villages, and towns.”²

Conclusion

It is not my intention to defend the morality of a “bronze age mindset,” which includes rape, murder, and genocide. Instead, I merely demonstrate simply, plainly, and clearly, using a cursory look at relevant sources, that Palestine is not the more “Nietzschean” of the two sides in this war. One side clearly is the victim, and relies upon global Christian or leftist moralization to fight a war of public relations against a stronger enemy. The term “genocide” did not exist in the Bronze Age, but if it did, it would be a mark of pride rather than of shame. To totally destroy one’s enemy was thought glorious, while to complain, lament, cry, complain, or self-victimize and self-pity was considered dishonorable.

It is entirely possible to claim that Palestine is the victim, and Israel is cruel. It is nonsensical, however, to claim at the same time that “Palestinians are the true Nietzscheans.” Such argumentation is made by twisting the truth for superficial political point-winning on social media. Anti-Zionists on the right find themselves in the awkward position of defending third world brown people from genocide, and struggle to obscure the embarrassment of their failed flirtation with the far left. While the libertarian to alt-right pipeline was once strong and effective, the leftist to “American first” pipeline is non-existent.

The contradiction and hypocrisy of anti-Zionists exists at their very core: do they believe in the rule of the stronger, the better, the smarter, and the more technologically advanced? Or, do they believe that justice involves the destruction of the oppressor, the colonizer, the imperialist, the enslaver? The latter is not possible to uphold simultaneously with the legacy of the conquistadors, but the former is not possible to uphold with a pro-Palestinian position.

This hypocrisy might not be genuine, but could be a product of sheer cynicism and pragmatism. Perhaps anti-Zionists recognize the contradiction, but find it justifiable, as the truth is secondary to victory over Israel. This could be considered by some as a “Nietzschean” position. However, the right has tried this before: using the legacy of Martin Luther King to fight affirmative action; using women’s sports to attack trans rights; saying that the “great replacement” is about voting rights, not race. These lies and distortion, where the right hides its true intentions and “rides the wave” of some superficial backlash against the current thing, may produce the illusion of winning without delivering lasting gains.

By contrast, the left wins by taking a brutally simple principle (equality), and demanding ever-further applications of that moral principle. Because the left is fueled by genuine fanaticism and utopianism, rather than cynicism and pragmatism, it produces radicals who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. For all the talk of “post modern deconstruction,” it seems that the left is genuinely trying to build a better world, while the right merely criticizes and attempts to turn back the clock. It is possible that the conflict between religious fanaticism and conservatism cannot be resolved by political means alone. Rather, the solution lies solely in civilizational genesis, which occurs through religious revolution, military apocalypse, or both. Time will tell which happens first.

1. https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/status/1762142812752204141

2. https://crossworks.holycross.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1350&context=necj