Are There Jews in Dune?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Chag Sameach, comrades. I know I haven’t written in a few weeks. Part of the reason is because I am visiting my family in the good ol’ Artzot Habrit, and want to spend every minute I have available with them (for reasons that will be revealed in due time), but also it is because the news cycle is simply too overwhelming for a delicate lady prone to hysterics like myself. Seriously… Iran, new American sanctions against IDF units, chickens coming home to roost at Columbia? Where does one start? Hopefully I’ll have interesting things to say about all that in the coming days and weeks, but for now, here is a completely unsolicited and mostly irrelevant analysis of Dune.

Fine, I’ll admit it. I watched the first installation of the new Dune franchise in a New York movie theater (that was formerly a synagogue – not important) because at the time, I was still obsessed with Timothée Chalamet. I haven’t been an admirer of Chalamet since Wonka, a cringeworthy film with a criminally sexless Chalamet, but I have become an admirer of the Dune series after seeing exactly what the beloved science fiction epic was all about. Growing up (well, at least for the straight boys I was forced to fraternize with), it was all about Star Trek and Star Wars, but I can now say, after the release of the highly anticipated sequel, that most all sci-fi pales in comparison to Dune, the themes of which inform our modern geopolitical stage. 

And I’m not the only one who thinks as much. Muhammad Hussein of Middle East Monitor recently penned an opinion piece entitled “Dune 2: A Tale of Palestinian resistance against Israel’s occupation,” where he makes the case that Dune is an eerily similar, though still an imperfect allegory to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the start of the war against Hamas, there have been a handful of articles in various publications, including Jewish publications, that propose the same theory.  

The plot of Dune unfolds on the desert planet of Arrakis, home to the Fremen, an indigenous people whose dress, language, and environment evoke parallels with Arab Muslims. Central to Arrakis is the harvesting of spice, a hallucinogenic substance crucial for interstellar travel, similar to oil on our own planet. Despite the stewardship of Arrakis being entrusted to the noble House Atreides by the Emperor, the Emperor betrays them and instructs the evil Harkonnens to violently overthrow House Atreides and seize the spice production. Left as the sole survivors of the attack, young Paul Atreides and his mother find refuge among the Fremen, rallying to resist the oppressive Harkonnen regime and reclaim control of Arrakis.  

Hussein of Middle East Monitor sees the Fremen as a stand-in for the Palestinians, made evident by their tactics of guerilla warfare, Arabic-inspired language (in the books, the Fremen style of attack is called jihad, wisely edited from the movie), and rhetoric of “resistance.” The Emperor can be thought of as the British, who promised Arrakis (Palestine) first to House Atreides, the Arabs, but then betrayed them by giving the land to the Harkonnens, the Jews. But the Emperor can also be thought of as America, the power which maintains the Harkonnen stranglehold on Arrakis — the Jewish stranglehold on Palestine. This theory is made acutely more offensive by the fact that the Harkonnens are white reptilian creatures who must shield themselves from the sun of Arrakis — antisemitic tropes not atypical from Middle East Monitor.  

At this point, if one has only seen the first two installments of Dune with actors Zendaya and Chalamet, they may see the merits of this comparison. If one is not familiar with the rest of the story, it can be assumed that if Paul Atreides and his army of Fremen are victorious over the Harkonnens and the empire, then maybe Frank Herbert, the author of the Dune book series, is trying to tell us something about the Middle East, or even more specifically, about Israel and Palestine.  

But in Dune: Messiah, the second book of the series which will correspond with the final film of the franchise, Paul suffers tremendously with his newfound role as leader, or messiah, of the Fremen. Though at first, Paul was seen especially by the religious fundamentalist Fremen as the prophesied savior, the outsider who would bring their people to victory, with his leadership comes new factionalism and feelings of doubt among the Fremen, leading to Paul’s dramatic political downfall and his lonely demise. In short, the indigenous people are not successful in their fight for liberation. The unfolding violence becomes impossible to control: close to 61 billion people are now dead in the “Holy war” that Paul Atreides began.  

With these developments in mind, Dune cannot be seen as a postmodern revenge fantasy plotted by a Columbia undergraduate, where the global south overthrows their imperial interlopers. Yes, the Harkonnens are destroyed, and yes, the Emperor is removed from power. But the divine sense of justice that the Fremen cling to is proven unattainable. Their very foundations as a people and social cohesion disintegrate the closer they come to their goal.

I believe that Dune can instead be thought of as a cautionary tale, not for merely the Palestinians, but for anyone fighting a never-ending existential battle, believing morality is exclusively on their side. This, I have realized, is the story Herbert is telling, and the story most audiences will see for themselves after the release of the final film.

The archetype of Paul Atreides as Messiah is a warning for everyone who encounters Dune, from every political community in the world. For Republicans in the United States, Paul can be thought of as Donald Trump, yes, but even more-so as the make-believe America that Donald Trump has promised to create, where vague malaises like “wokeism” are banished from the earth (spoiler alert: neither identity politics nor self-righteous leftists are going anywhere). For American Democrats, Paul does not take the shape of any one individual (at the moment) but rather complete vanquishment of the devil figure. There is indeed something pseudo-religious in America’s current political debate: technicalities over governance are certainly less relevant than the villain preventing an imaginary future.  

This dynamic stretches across oceans.  

For Palestinians, Paul represents the coveted “right of return,” which I would hope most of my readers are aware, is not a “right” enshrined anywhere in international law, and is the single-most persistent cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seeing how it has unraveled two of the most optimistic peace proposals in the early 2000s. Paul Atreides, to the Palestinians, is the act of putting your entire faith in a promise, a rallying cry, rather than a rational proposal to live with security and prosperity, and by doing so, committing collective suicide.  

For Israelis, Paul represents the ever-present longing to “redeem” the entire biblical land of Israel, which has rendered the task of defending and governing the State of Israel significantly more difficult. I recently had a conversation with author and politician Dr. Einat Wilf on our podcast We Should All Be Zionists, where Dr. Wilf mentioned how Israel’s only ever clear-cut military victories were achieved when it was fighting from what we now call “‘67 lines.” In 1948, there was no question that the Jews had finally achieved their independence. Throughout the 50s, Israel maintained its territorial integrity despite constant enemy shelling and terror, even winning shipping rights over the Straits of Tiran after defeating one of Nasser’s squadrons in Egypt. And in ‘67, Israel pre-empted what many at the time feared would be a second Holocaust, and we did it without access to Abraham and Sarah’s tomb.  

The Messianic complex in Zionism, now entrusted with immense political power, intends to extend blobs of Israeli sovereignty deep into enemy territory, fracturing our armed forces as they were on the morning of October 7th while simultaneously threatening Israel’s status as a democracy and its standing in the international arena. An imaginary future inspired by an imaginary past will be our downfall, as Paul Atreides was the downfall of the Fremen of Arrakis.

I wanted to conclude this piece by arguing that there are no Jews in Dune, that Frank Herbert’s themes of power, conquest, and religious fervor are universal, for all readers and all cinephiles. But then a friend told me that there are in fact Jews in Dune, and my world positively crumbled.  

Herbert’s Jews appear in the sixth book in the series, by which time even hardcore readers have dropped off — Chapterhouse: Dune. The Jews in this novel have quite impressively maintained their unique religious and cultural customs for tens of thousands of years, mostly by keeping to themselves. They are secretive creatures, yet brilliant and resourceful, who some say reside on entire planets composed only of themselves.  

Shocking though this development, I still think that the eventual appearance of Jews in Space! (as Mel Brooks would have called them) only furthers my contention.

No, Muhammad Hussein of Middle East Monitor, or anybody else who likes to colonize pieces of fiction for their own righteous cause. There are no Zionists, no Palestinians, no sacred intifadas in Dune. In fact, the author would appear to appreciate us Jews later in his series, even acknowledging our unique survival skills. What can be found in Dune is an indictment of your sort of imaginary thinking, that the Palestinian plight serves as a morality play between good and evil, spectacular enough for a Hollywood movie starring Timothée Chalamet.