by Kalliste Hill
Jerusalem Fever is, or rather was, a recognised delusional psychopathy affecting some visitors to the city, who fixated on Jerusalem as the City of God, on the delusion of a divine authority that gives the sufferer psychotic episodes and ecstatic visions, self-identification with biblical figures and the conviction that their actions can contribute to delivering the 2nd Coming by bringing on “the End Times”. In short Messianic delusions of the return of Jesus in the case of Christians, and the Messiah in the case of Jews. It was first recognised in modern times in the 1930’s and there were efforts to recognise it in the 1990’s in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) which were “conveniently” quashed by 2000 for reasons that should be causing serious concern to those who are working for opponents of imperialism’s genocidal wars.
Historical cases are well documented from the Middle Ages amongst the pilgrims and visitors to the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular. Religious fanaticism increased in the ruling class, culminating during the period of the Crusades (between 1095 and 1291) in a series of bloodbaths of horrendous proportions that killed millions abroad and impoverished the lower classes at home – estimates vary between 1 and 9 million people – killing Jews and Muslims, and other Christians of different denominations. . The Vatican aimed to gain world domination for Roman Catholicism over all the Abrahamic religions by atrocities and genocide. The necessity of funding these wars by simony and usury eventually resulted in the Vatican falling victim to its own corruption as it lost moral authority, in turn spawning the Reformation, and Counter-Reformation. Its imperialist ambitions evolve and metastasize to this day into countless cults that bear no similarity to its origins, but instead focus on the goal of Zionism.
What we have seen since 1948 is a denial in the West of Jerusalem fever as a genuine mental disorder where one group of people hold increasingly hysterical and untenable attitudes to their neighbours, justifying apartheid and denial of basic right to self-determination and endless wars, right down to concentration camps, sexual abuse and starvation, genocide in the name of “self-defence” and their manifest destiny as the “Chosen People”. We see such things among both Jewish and Christian Zionists today.
Those who visited Israel and saw the true situation for themselves came home to bravely stand witness to the atrocious realities of Israeli occupation. This stance clashes with the “see no evil, hear no evil, think no evil” attitude by the “Israel has a right to exist” of the die-hard left, and the blind hatred of all things communist by the right. Thus, both political wings fell prey to the weaponisation of words and policies pursued by the Zionists. Christian Zionism started with the manipulation of gullible believers with signs, trials and tribulations, and prophecies of global natural, economic and environmental disasters in the 19th century and 20th century in the service of Imperialism just as Christianity had served the Roman Empire under Constantine. Imperialist wars continue to bring death and destruction despite, or rather because of the League of Nations and its successors UN and NATO.
This is a phenomenon of imperialism in decay, of which Zionism is a crucial part, attacking the rights of the masses with a variety of inventive techniques. In a myriad of ways, from the Holocaust Industry and the Hollywood mafia, controlling the information narrative, the legacy media to the secretive control of social media increasingly through to AI. It goes together with the manipulation of financial levers and stock markets by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds and the like. The artificial enhancement of the wealth of individuals using nepotism and insider trading, thanks to the corruption of the billionaire Epstein class with its many functionaries, from Trump to the Clintons to Mandelson to Starmer provide the funding to undermine concepts such as Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, and crimes against humanity are increasingly chimerical under capitalism.
The insistence of successive Israeli leaders extend to Western leaders and influencers to visit Jerusalem personally, often regularly, appear to exploit this phenomenon to pursue foreign policies that do not serve their own country but instead dedicate themselves to the sole interests of Israel, notably a succession of UK Prime Ministers culminating in Starmer’s election in 2025, declaiming his unequivocal support for Israel. Similarly, Trump, and his entire cabinet in 2024, including Chritian Zionist spiritual leaders as well as the Secretary for War, openly exhort their troops to fight for Israel and “God’s Plan”. Both, along with other European leaders, are trampling their own constitutions and citizens democratic rights to legitimise unpopular activities to support this genocidal state at the expense of their own interests.
It has long been the case that, as Trotsky once said, democracy was the most “aristocratic” form of class rule, confined to the privileged imperialist oppressor nations. But as imperialism flounders today, that aristocratic form is increasingly tenuous. Only socialist revolution on an international scale can reconquer even these basic rights.
