The Babylonians carried their moon 'lord' or 'sin' into Israel in 587 B.C. when they conquered the empire of the Jews and yoked the descendants of Moses and David to the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. The Jewish God Yahweh seemed doomed. Solomon's temple, the most sacred symbol of Jewish theology, was destroyed by the Babylonians. The city was plundered and razed. The Jews were thrown into bondage and long lines of desperate slaves made their way back to Mesopotamia, to serve their new masters. Jewish theology was seemingly and irrevocably destroyed.

In 536 B.C. Cyrus the Mede overthrew the Babylonian empire. He granted amnesty to the Jews and ushered them back to the homeland of Israel. Cyrus is still called the 'Great' by the Jews and his actions of liberation are embedded in the Torah. He is venerated as a saviour of the Jewish people. It is not an exagerration to state that without Cyrus, the entire Jewish 'race' or more accurately, system of belief would have died. If the Jews had been under Babylonian or foreign tutelage for more than a few generations, it is highly likely that they would have simply become Babylonian or Mede or Persian and Jewish liturgy, belief and rituals would have died out.

The Babylonian invasion brought Baal of course into Judea and Israel. For good reason this moon idol is described in the Jewish Torah as being evil. Names such as Beelzebub, [meaning "Lord of Flies"], is the name given in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament to a Philistine god whose original name was "Ba'al Zabul", meaning Baal the Prince. Baal was the only 'lord' or 'prince' of the Babylonians and was the chief moon deity of the Mesopotamian cult. In Jewish Ba'al is 'man', a lover of peace is Ba'al Shalom, a strong man is Ba'al Koah, a man of business is Ba'al Massa U-Mattan. So not all connotations of Ba'al with Jewish culture are negative. But it is clear that in Jewish liturgy Ba'al is associated with unbelief, the work of Satan and the eventual destruction, as revealed in 587 B.C., with the Jews.

Judges 2: The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua…the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. And they buried him…in the hill country of Ephraim. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal.

The Israelites were conquered by the Babylonians as punishment for the work of idol worship, in existence long before 587 B.C. Joshua was the successor to Moses circa 1200 BC. Ba'al or idol worship must have been an ongoing issue within Jewish society. The Hittites and Canaanites also worshipped Ba'al, albeit in different forms than the Babylonians. The Hittite empire lingered on until 1000 B.C., the Canaanite was absorbed by the Israelites under Joshua and his successors. Most likely Judges refers to the veneration by some Jews of the Hittite and Canaanite Ba'al idols. When the Babylonians swept in, during the invasion of 587 B.C. carrying their Ba'al idol as the only 'prince of men', many Jewish theologians must have thought that the extinguishing of the Hebrew faith was God's punishment for centuries of disbelief and idol worship.

The Jews of course did survive the onslaught of the armies of Ba'al. But now ironically a new Ba'al which was erected by the Arab politician Muhammad in the guise of a religion, is as much or more of a threat than the Babylonian version. This Ba'al or moon idol or celestial object is the only force in the Universe with free-will and thus the only 'thing' which can dispense the Golden Rule, judgement, and an after-life. This Ba'al is now named Allah. It has no time for the Jews or Infidels. Allah or ilah is the 'one', the only true 'lord'. Before the rise of Muhammad, the 'lord' of the Meccan Kaaba was of course Hubal or Ba'al, the moon deity. Al-Lah, or the 'greatest amongst the Gods' is the conflation of celestial worship with Jewish monotheism. A new and improved Ba'al whose only version was created in 610 A.D., never to be changed or altered. Its only spokesman never to be superseded, was Muhammad the creator of the cult and the originator of the idea to fuse Ba'al with the Jewish ideal of a monotheistic deity. This new Ba'al is probably a more dire threat to Jewish existence than the ancient version.

For Jews and others history sometimes moves in a wide circular pattern. 2600 years ago the Jews were on the verge of oblivion. Now in the modern age where we congratulate ourselves on our combined intelligence and 'progress', the new Ba'al is re-packaged as a 'religion for minorities' and is beyond criticism and reproach. Self-loathing Jews, Christians and secular socialists it appears have little regard for the pagan antecedents of this not-so-new totalitarian fascism, nor its historical roots and import. Maybe they need to relearn their Judges and their Old Testament.