Spectrum Analysis
God places a rainbow in the sky after a mabul/flood destroys the world that has become “corrupt” and filled with hamas. The Hebrew word hamas (the h pronounced as a hard guttural ch), homophonous with the Palestinian militia’s name, means “lawless violence.” Betokening God’s berit olam / “eternal covenant” with our world,1 the rainbow comprises a spectrum of seven colors.
From this parable our Rabbis distilled seven laws2 that, like the rainbow’s colors refracting, dispersing and reflecting light, filter Jewish values into a universalistic ethical mindset.
It binds Jews and all righteous souls. However, the Noahide code Jews came up with has been corrupted, twisted back to recoil violently upon Jews. What the medical profession labels “autism spectrum disorder,” or neurodivergence more broadly considered, comes into play.
Stigmatizing autism is wrong; treating neurodivergence not as disease but as an asset to the rich diversity of human life is right. Even so, not every distinctive personal trait is good; our differences vary in quality. There ought to be a limit to what passes for reasonable in our endeavor to validate everybody’s unique strengths. Hamas is lawless violence.
Whether (as widely alleged) or not a convoy of boats that last August sailed to Gaza to show solidarity with Palestinians had financial and organizational backing from the terror group,“Hamas, in a statement, expressed support for the flotilla activists.”3 Greta Thunberg participated in that protest. She has autism, maintains that it is “central to her advocacy,”4 and claims this neurological difference has “shaped her activism” as environmentalist (and lately, it seems, pro-Palestine crusader).5
The “autism” classification elicits a range of reactions from those affected and, along with other subjects in brain chemistry research, has worked the anti-psychiatry and human potential movements’ combined forces - partisans of “mad pride” - into a frenzy.
Shall they revamp and rehabilitate psychiatric terminology or instead militantly reject it as mentally damaging? No need to choose - they can have it both ways as may suit their agenda and not let the contradiction bother them.
On one side of that rhetorical rainbow: autism (or any neurodivergence) not a “disorder” and disability but “a catalyst for transformative action.”6 (That approach fits Thunberg: She leans into autism, calling it her “superpower.”7
On the other side: the concept of “diagnosis” negated as control mechanism devised by mainstream medical interests serving hierarchical capitalist social order to regiment, repress and colonize free-thinking individuals and smother original thought.8
This fluid realm of psychologistic doublespeak, being, like H20 formless by “design,” brooks no structural inconsistency. Now professionalized and standardized, the mania for alternately or simultaneously junking and repurposing psychological definitions for political purposes has spread9 and saturated public imagination - to the point where you can throw away the rules, or just make them mean what you wish. To quote the Cheshire Cat, “we’re all mad here.”
Forget Noah’s ark! All aboard Plato’s Ship of Fools!10
Among the Noahide Laws is a directive to establish courts to administer justice. Several nations joined with South Africa’s libelous accusation, at the International Court of Justice (this ICJ proceeding began in December, 2023), that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.11 No corresponding charge against Hamas - despite its overtly genocidal intentions and actions - has come before any international tribunal.
The International Criminal Court (not the same as the ICJ), in issuing arrest warrants, for various other crimes, against Israel’s prime and defense ministers, did the same against Hamas commanders, thereby providing moral equivalence cover for the judicial charade.12
Speaking of kangaroo courts, here are some recent op ed headlines, from Down Under, that attempt to prop up the U.N.’s and Amnesty International’s flimsy smear campaigns against Israel: “Isaac Herzog is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza. He shouldn’t be welcomed to Australia”;13 “AUSTRALIA MUST INVESTIGATE PRESIDENT HERZOG FOR GENOCIDE.”14
Humane principles Judaism gave the world - Noahide Laws - have been repurposed to harm Jews. The rainbow spectrum’s prismatic promise of pro-social, peace-promoting values is flattening out into black-and-white caricaturing of Zionists (advocates for Jewish liberation) as villains while casting actual villains (Hamas terrorists) as heroic freedom fighters:
Turkish dictator Erdogan praises Hamas as “a liberation group”;15
Diana Buttu, an attorney who teaches at Harvard,16 lauds Hamas as “a movement for freedom, for liberation”;17
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of a Gaza hospital, who serves as colonel in Hamas’s medical corps and is under Israeli detention, is dubbed humanitarian “hero” and “hostage.”18
And so on.
These public displays exemplify mass social pathology that - pretending to be aligned with aspirations of those seeking to free the psyche from invidious social constraints - condemns reason and morality to the humiliating task of redefining good as evil and evil as good. Pandering to an audience sunken, drowning in radical subjectivism, antizionists have built this inversion of moral categories - in which decency and indecency have swapped places - into the psychological construction of their assault on Jewish peoplehood.
The rainbow has clouded over. The sky is darkening. In a spectral light, the old threat has assumed a new form.
(illustration by John Tenniel / https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/wp-content/uploads/1book22.jpg)
(from our mirpeset/balcony in Zikhron Yaakov, Israel)
Torah references are from Genesis 6:11,13; 9:11, 16, 17.
See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 56a:24.
https://www.cds.udel.edu/item/greta-thunberg-became-a-climate-activist-not-in-spite-of-her-autism-but-because-of-it/
https://achievingmore.com/autism-as-empowerment-greta-thunbergs-journey-of-activism-and-inspiration/
https://exceptionalindividuals.com/about-us/newsletters/dec-2021/greta-thunberg-aspergers-is-my-superpower/ )
https://mental-health-matters.org/2024/07/11/what-is-mad-pride/
Plato, The Republic, book 6 / https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/05/albanese-can-still-withdraw-the-invitation-to-israels-president-he-should-do-so-for-the-sake-of-social-cohesion-ntwnfb
https://www.amnesty.org.au/act-now/australia-must-investigate-president-herzog-for-genocide/ ; see also: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-gaza-genocide-icj-9b85d9be617ba38ef3047cd8f0aae26d
https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/faculty/diana-buttu/
What’s next for Hamas in Gaza? - The Take - YouTube
https://www.timesofisrael.com/resurfaced-photo-shows-detained-gaza-hospital-director-wearing-hamas-uniform/ ; https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/29/739935/Frontline-defender-Dr-Hussam-Abu-Safiya-a-hero-in-scrubs ; https://imemc.org/article/dr-abu-safiya-marks-one-year-as-a-hostage-of-israeli-forces/