I was once asked this question on an American patriot talk show. The assumption was that, as a Jew, I could answer it. After reading "A Controversy of Zion," by Douglas Reed, I can venture a reply.

I begin by explaining my perspective. Recently I borrowed a video on Judaism from the library. I wasn't sure what Jews believe. I suspect I'm pretty typical in this respect.

The video showed how Jews were persecuted in Egypt and how God punished the Egyptians. After a few minutes I turned it off. It seemed the religion of the Jewish people was the Jewish people. No wonder so many Jews look for religious meaning elsewhere.

My parents were Poles who survived the war by passing as Catholics. After they immigrated to Canada, they just wanted to assimilate. They gave their children anglicized names. Dad flirted with the Unitarians. Mom said prayers on the Sabbath. Except for attending synagogue twice a year, that was it.

Religion is our connection to Eternity. Growing up without it was growing up in a vacuum.

At first I sought my "identity" in terms of community.

I became a Canadian nationalist; then, a Zionist. In 1972, at age 22, I tried to "make aliya" (immigrate to Israel) but this experience made me realize I could not sacrifice my individual freedom for "community."

For example, I was picking oranges in a tree on a kibbutz. My radio was on the ground, tuned to the BBC. Someone came by, changed the station, and walked off.

I left the Kibbutz and went to Jerusalem but the attitude was the same. Israel seemed to devour its citizens. It had many endearing qualities but I couldn't find the spirit of brotherhood in everyday life. It seemed more "dog eat dog" than Canada. I returned home but considered myself a Zionist nevertheless.

Douglas Reed's book, "The Controversy of Zion" (completed in 1956 but published in 1978) has helped me to understand my ambivalent reaction to both Judaism and Israel. During the 1930's, Reed was the "London Times" corespondent in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. He accompanied Anthony Eden to Moscow in 1935. When his warnings of Hitler's warlike intentions were spiked, he quit the newspaper in order to search for the hidden agenda.

The title of Reed's book refers to an age-old "controversy" between those Jews who believe in a loving God and those whose image of God is spiteful and tyrannical.

According to Reed, the "House of Joseph" believed the Divine Principle is love and universal brotherhood. These Jews were inclined to identify with their gentile neighbors and devote their energies to the common betterment of humanity.

On the other hand, the "Levites" championed a vision of a capricious vengeful God ("Moloch") that demanded his followers segregate themselves ("chosen people") and obey an arbitrary law.

Obeying the Lord and achieving hegemony over the gentiles were synonymous. If the Levites didn't obey, they would be persecuted. If they did, they would destroy the Gentiles and rule the earth. Persecution, revenge and destruction, was an integral part of their identity.

Reed cites Deuteronomy as an example: "This day will I begin to put the dread of thee, and the fear of thee upon the nations...And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them nor show mercy unto them; neither shall thou make marriages with them...For the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth.."

According to Reed: "Thus, the itinerant priests [turned] one small, captive people away from the rising idea of a God of all men, to reinstate a bloodthirsty tribal deity and racial law, and to send the followers of this creed on their way through the centuries with a destructive mission...The end was to be the triumphant consummation in Jerusalem when world dominion was to be established on the ruins of the heathen and their kingdoms." (3-4)

The Old Testament contains both the hateful and loving image of God, which is very confusing. Jesus championed the loving image and denounced the priests for making arbitrary laws in the name of the tyrannical god.

Flash forward 2500 years. The Jews of the House of Joseph were content to assimilate. The Levites, centered in Russia, were not. Around 1850, Reed believes the Levites took over the "Illuminati conspiracy" which eventually controlled Communism (and possibly Zionism.)

Winston Churchill described this conspiracy in "A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People," (1920). He distinguished between "national" (House of Joseph) and "international" (Levite) Jews: "This movement among the [international] Jews is not new. From the days of [illuminati founder] Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bea Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality has been growing steadily."

Reed describes how Zionism and the New World Order took control of England during WWI. World Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann lobbied Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and Army Chief Sir William Robertson to divert soldiers from the Western Front to conquer Palestine. When the British leaders demurred, Weizmann used money and control of the press to install Lloyd George and Sir Henry Wilson in their place.

More than a million men were then diverted to the Middle East. Palestine was conquered and promised to the Zionists in a letter to Lord Rothschild in November 1917 (the Balfour Declaration). During the same week, the Bolsheviks took power in Moscow. American soldiers replaced the British troops on the Western Front. The conspiracy was firing on all cylinders.

The other people in Lloyd George's pro-Zionist government -- Lord Milner, Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian), Robert Cecil -- were all members of the "Round Table", Cecil Rhode's secret society dedicated to world government.

Listen to what Weizmann says (in his autobiography "Trial and Error") says about Robert Cecil: "To him the reestablishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine and the organization of the world in a great federation were complementary features of the next step in the management of human affairs..." (Reed, 249).

How do the Zionists make common cause with British aristocrats?

The aristocrats were shareholders in the Bank of England with the Rothschilds. Central bankers wanted the New World Order to protect this monopoly that allows them to charge billions in interest for money they create out of thin air.

The bankers and their corporate allies are consolidating a global system of privilege and oppression. They hoodwinked atheistic Jews, the product of the barren primitive Levite tradition, with promises of an egalitarian "brave new world" or "national home." Reed provides evidence from diaries and biographies that international bankers and their allies have used Communists and Zionists, (both Jews and gentiles) to control British, American and world politics since WWI.

Flash forward to the projected attack on Iraq.

Given Douglas Reed's perspective, Israel likely has a secret role in the banker's bizarre NWO. It will be the seat of world government and religion and will help to "convert" the Moslems to "modern" ways.

Americans and Israelis, indeed the whole world, are hostage to fanatics who worship Moloch and are creating an Orwellian tyranny ruled by a "chosen" few.

Is it Jewish? Many misguided or opportunistic Jews are part of it. So are many gentiles. The owners of the central banks and allied corporations are both Jewish and gentile.

The true Jewish tradition, like Christianity and Islam, believes that God is synonymous with Love, Truth and Justice. Like me, most Jews identify with the cause of humanity.

God is the only Reality. No worldly power will ever change this.