Zionism Reimagined: Israel, the Land of the Igbo

12 Tevet 5785 (12 Jan 2024)

Revealing retarded views spread by social media influencers like the CEO of Sudras™, Rudy Rochman, has long been a LEZM mission. Simply put, Rudy’s worldview is fools gold. His utopian ideas are conveyed with grandiose rhetoric, and mystical language, but they are impractical at best, and deliriously dangerous at worst. The “decolonized Judeans™” taking offense should take a step back, and analyze the worldview of their progenitor and also of their own brand. It’s not spoken of enough how sadistic the bulk of actual decolonization rhetoric is, or how utterly inappropriate it is to adopt it for the Jewish/Zionist narrative but we’ll save that another rant.

There is an utterly treacherous proposition from Rudy that deserves special attention solely because of its full-throttle insanity. This idea was first communicated to the Lawless Levite (LL) two years ago at a screening of the pilot episode to Rudy’s “documentary” about “lost” Israelite tribes in Africa. The take was as shocking to hear in person then, as it is to hear online now. LL refrained from addressing it publicly because Rudy had not articulated it in a public setting until now. In order to  avoid another threatening message from a lawyer and accusations of mischaracterizing Rudy’s “ideas”, LL kept quiet (if said lawyer would like to contact LL again however, please do, he would love to discuss the boundaries of defamation law with you). Well anyways, it’s out now, so let’s get into it. 

In a recent Youtube debate, Rudy emphatically re-iterated that he supports the Palestinian “right of return”. That isn’t new, though it is a position that he has received little scrutiny for from the Jewish community. The reasons for scrutiny are obvious: it ends a Jewish demographic majority within Israel, therefore posing an existential danger to our nation-state. However, Rudy seems to believe this is a virtuous position because of some contrived shared “Levantine” identity that resonates with neither Jews nor Arabs. Rudy’s ‘solution’ to the existential danger created by the ‘right’ of return is the intake of 15 million Igbo Africans, who by his halachic decree are “lost Jews”.  LL can attest from his personal exchange with Rudy that it is his sincerely held view that millions of Igbo Africans are in fact Jews who must be returned to Israel to fulfill messianic prophecy. We wish we were joking. “We Were Never Lost”, which landed him (briefly) in a Nigerian prison, is in short - an activist piece of footage to articulate exactly that, here is the video and subsequent quote:

“…I’m constantly speaking to Jewish communities, and they say how do we create a reality that Palestinians will be able to have the right of return?… How do you maintain a Jewish majority? Well there's a few things that have to happen. These are two problems that come to the Jewish people. Problem number one is demographics and problem number two is culture. How can you bring in populations of people who currently, where we are standing right now, most Palestinians in the diaspora hate Israel and are probably more supportive of Hamas than not. How do you bring in that population? Well the first thing you need to do for demographics is do something you need to do unrelated even to this conflict, is bring back the rest of the tribes of Israel today. The Jewish population is 156 million Jews that we are around the world, [there] are about 15 to 16 million and we're the descendants of 2.5 tribes, there's 9.5 other tribes of our nation that still exist out there, that are in Africa and Asia and South America today their descendants are about 500 million… not all of them are identifying as Jews. Most of them have been converted to Islam and Christianity. Over time those who still identify as Jews are about 20% of that population, those who [would want] to make Aliyah to Israel to are about half, so we're talking about a population about 50 million people. If that population was brought back to Israel… they should be brought back because these are the people who are indigenous to the land and they have every right to come back to this land, then from the Jewish perspective there's actually no more demographic problem.”

One can only laugh at how absolutely insane and detached from reality this whole thing is. The devil's advocate might say: new ideas are often provocative but shouldn't be dismissed outright. Well, we dismiss it outright. This isn’t a provocative or revolutionary idea, it's closer to a psychedelic fueled rambling you’d expect from a self-identified shaman at a forest rave. 

Rudy is advocating for mass migration into Israel by hordes of people who are not Jewish by any contemporary or historical measure. He seems to want to present the antithesis of Zionism as Zionism itself. There is not a single legitimate halachic authority that affirms these millions of people to be Jewish. The evidence for Judaism among the Igbo ranges from non-existent to biased wishful thinking. Rather, the bulk of history in Southern Nigeria suggests that a small number of Igbo Africans adopted Jewish/Zionist narratives as a consequence of Christian missionary activity, and aspirational political separatism. Indeed, the source of Igbo-Israelite origin theories was a Christian freed slave named Olaudah Equiano (also known as Gustavus Vassa, but that is a deep rabbit hole for another time). Now there have probably been individual cases of legitimate Igbo gerim to Judaism, but they couldn’t fill a minyan for mincha much less offset importing a single Dearborn, MI worth of Palestinian Arabs into Israel. 

It used to only be our worst enemies dreaming of flooding Israel with millions of goyim - “OPEN BORDERS FOR ISRAEL!” - and yet now that also includes some of the largest public Zionist advocates we have and support. There is no bigger gift we could give to those who seek our destruction, than to import tens of millions of people who are alien to our identity, culture, religion, and shared history. It’s national suicide. Remember, that this proposal is supposed to be the response to accepting the “right of return” for up to 20 million Arabs that he himself characterizes as “supporters of Hamas”. Do any of his followers even pay attention to the ideas he propagates? Are boomer Hasbara Inc donors so desperate to max out their public speaking budgets that they’ll give such ideas and such a person a podium?

For argument’s sake, let’s try and put Rudy’s luminary suggestions into practice. Adding 15 million Igbos alone (ignoring another potential 10 million+ belligerent Arabs) would make Israel the most densely populated country in the world. New Jersey, which is comparable to Israel in size, is home to 9.3 million residents. In Rochmans world, Israel - a far less developed state, and strained for land given the uninhabitable Negev Desert - would be home to over 30 million people, all while making us a minority in our own state. Everywhere, from moshavim in J&S to Tel Aviv, all aspects of life would be immediately crushed by this level of immigration, even if it was spaced out over time. Israel’s own documented history of accepting Jewish immigrants from all corners of the world came with its own challenges that still affect Israeli society, plague national discourse, and strain national unity.  It is already miraculous enough that Israel manages to function amid such chaos. DAYEINU. It begs the question, Is Rudy Rochman even a Zionist anymore? This proposal would obviously destroy Israel’s demography as a Jewish state. 

Not a single sector of Israeli society would support this farcical idea. It is so obviously insane that it, like Jews for Jesus, has the potential to bring the various tribes of Israeli society together in opposition to it. Seriously, ask any Israeli their thoughts about Neve Sha'anan - the mini Mogadishu of south Tel Aviv dominated by Eritrean gangs that brawl in the streets over the same tribal feuds that drove them to flee their homeland in the first place. Make no mistake in thinking that Nigeria is somehow vastly different in its internal politics and culture to Eritrea. 

Imagine the joy of going outdoors and narrowly avoiding being crushed by swarms of Igbos. Congratulations! The success of the Jewish people has been achieved by diluting our entire society into a slum of abject squalor! When you feel it crushing your soul, that’s when you know it’s the geula!

The only audience that has any appetite for Rudyism exists in the diaspora, and it’s doubtful that even this circle of supporters could defend this batshittery. It is interesting that most of Rochman’s content seems to be about engaging Jews and goyim outside of Israel. Why is that? Well, I’d imagine it’d be quite a challenge to convince Kfir the Gett driver to devastate his already strained socio-economic prospects in the name of restoring a so-called “lost tribe” of Israel. Much less so any conversation about a Palestinian ‘right’ of return. Israelis happen to have a good (((nose))) for bullshit, and Kfir would probably tell him he is “chai be’seret”.

Two years ago, Rudy went on a podcast opposite a man named Godfrey (who incidentally, is a fan of Louis “I am not anti-Semite, I am anti-Termite” Farrakhan), and alongside Jewish hip hop artist “Kosha Dillz”. The conversation focused on Black-Jewish relations in America after a famous Basketball American, Kyrie Irving, promoted a Black Hebrew Israelite propaganda movie on his Twitter. Here’s some of their exchange: 

I think my favorite part of this clip is how certain Rudy is that Godfrey is a “Jew from Gad” while Kosha Dillz is only “probably from Judah”. Hahaha. I don't know how Mr. Dillz sat through that conversation so still, hip-hop beefs have turned lethal for far less shade thrown. Godfrey claims to be a descendent of Igbo Africans that were brought to the United States as slaves. That could be true, and that seems enough to satisfy the Sudra™ salesman that Godfrey is “one of us”. Gone are the guardrails of Jewish identity that have existed for thousands of years. Gone are the lamentations of the prophet Ezra who outlined for us the parameters of Jewish identity. All the pages of Talmudic discourse on gerut are rendered utterly useless in the presence of Rudyism. Is this what being a “decolonized judean” means? The complete refutation of Jewish identity as it has existed since forever? These aren’t rhetorical questions by the way, we’d like to hear some answers.

We’ve been told by Rudy and his supporters that the way we engage with his ideas is lashon hara. Even those neutral on the subject of mass importing 10s of millions of African and Arab goyim to Israel feel LEZM comes on too strong because “Rudy means well, he’s on our side!”.  To these people, we have a simple message: throughout Jewish history, we have been led astray by false prophets like Shabbtai Zvi, and confident utopians like Karl Marx to cataclysmic consequences. Both believed themselves to be conduits for a new grand future. Asserting, explaining, and maintaining Jewish identity is already a heavy task unto itself, without nonsense about “lost tribes” to add more layers of chaos and confusion. LEZM GANG isn’t allowed to fall for this trap. 

We have the same respect for Rudy’s service in Tzahal as we do for every other soldier who has faced our enemies, but his army service cannot shield his terrible ideas from ridicule and scrutiny. As we’ve stated previously, part of the persuasive power of any idea comes from its aesthetic appeal. Rudy has tapped into an energizing Jewish archetype - he mogs Mort from Family Guy, but beyond the aesthetic, his positions are completely fringe, and most importantly, cringe. 

Now we know what you’re thinking (and yes, LEZM does have access to mind-reading technology, you fucking wot m8): “Well, all LEZM does is criticize others while offering no solutions!”. Here is our proposal to fix Israel’s demographic issue: tell the Hamas fans to check their pagers on the way to Gehennom while you adhere to the very first mitzvah bestowed upon us in our Torah, פרו ורבו (“be fruitful and multiply”). Simple as. Now, go find your bashert LEZM GANG.

- Lawless Levite and Autistic Ashki