Killer cults

The difficulty in calling one bunch of lunatics a cult is that it opens up one's own group to the same criticism. Today's New York Times describes the maniacally destructive religious cult, now embedded in the Israeli army, that kills Innocent Gazans because it fulfills their insane cultish beliefs. The essential message of this murderous cult is "We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land." Don't try to argue with these nutcases; they have their proof; it's right in the holy book. Thou shalt not kill...except of course when you should. They are not the only cultish nutcases; there are those Zionist Christians who in a fundamental sense are their allies. Their rock-solid belief - also backed up by the holy book - is that the Jews must conquer all of Palestine in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. Jews should not be too enamored with these allies since the end of this prophecy is an age old choice for Jews: convert or finito.The basic disease of all cults is their conviction that they know what is unknowable. Existence is a mystery that does not lend itself to simple-minded fables. Instead of these cockamamey belief systems that justify superiority, righteousness, oppression, and murder, cult members would do better to cast off their beliefs, live with the uncertainty of existence, and act on the basis of one simple principle: Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you. See where that takes you.