Iakov Levi
2007-01-24
Caroline Glick is Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post. She writes most valuable articles on the Israeli situation. In the sea of stammering and insipid comments by so called “political observers” flooding the world and Israeli media, her lonely voice outstands as an exploit of the scarcest commodity in our days: Lucidity.
I always enjoy her almost daily
contributions, and I usually find no need to comment to what seems to
me a
perfect analysis.
She vividly and correctly
points to the
shortcomings of our political and military leadership, and I have
nothing to
add to what is an accurate description of what seems to be the most
idiotic
possible way of handling our public affairs.
However, as a psychohistorian, I am focused not only on the “What”, but on the “Why”, namely on the psychological reasons that induce a person or a collectivity to behave in one way rather than in another.
Since we, the Jews, are more
known for our
wit than for our stupidity, when a Jewish entire political class behaves
in a
such an idiotic self – destructive way, we must ask the “Why” even with
a more
impellent sense of urgency. And let’s not forget that a ruling
political class
usually is the interpreter of the unconscious needs of the public which
it
represents. Otherwise - in democracy as in tyranny – its days will be
very
short indeed.
In short, especially
reading
Caroline Glick’s articles, we are more and more permeated by the
impression
that we are not just dealing with some politicians’ mishaps, but with a
national mood.
Now, to the article itself, which I report almost in its entirety. I have colored in red the most meaningful expressions:
There are two reasons that IDF chief of General Staff
Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz's resignation this week was essential. First,
during the
war last summer with Hizbullah, Halutz failed to conceive of a war
fighting
plan for the IDF. Having failed, he needed to go. Second, both during
the war
and in the six months since its cessation, Halutz lost the faith of his
officers and soldiers. A commander cannot function without the faith of
his
men, and so, again, he had to go.
There is every reason to expect that Halutz's
replacement will win the faith of troops and officers. And it is
essential that
he do so quickly for as the war made clear, the IDF needs to undergo a
massive,
painful and rapid process of reform and overhaul if it is to meet the
wide-ranging and acute challenges it faces.
Yet even if Halutz's replacement is an Israeli version
of General George Patton, it is doubtful that he will have the
opportunity to
apply his military talents to the conceptualization and implementation
of a
fighting doctrine capable of defeating
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to
According to Jones, Livni convinced Rice that it is
necessary to provide a "political horizon" to convince the
Palestinians to replace Hamas with Fatah. After the Palestinians
overthrow
Hamas, he explained, it will be possible to implement the agreement and handover
Judea and
That is, the Israeli government is pushing a national
strategy that is based on a total lie. While Abbas plans his visit this
weekend
with Hamas terror master Khaled Mashaal in
A revitalized IDF will be unable to secure
SINCE THE inauguration of the 1993
Things needn't be this way. The Israeli public is
quite sick of
hallucinatory peace processes and is keen to reignite
a Zionist national
discussion. Consistent opinion polls show that the overwhelming
majority of the
public knows there is no possibility of achieving peace with the PA and
that any
Palestinian state will be a terror state. Moreover, in poll after poll,
the
Israeli public expresses its patriotism and its desire to strengthen
and
preserve the Jewish, democratic character of the State of Israel.
And there are options other than delusion. On
Wednesday, one such option was presented in
Led by American economist Bennett Zimmerman and former
Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, the AIDRG first burst onto the screen
in early
2005 when it presented the first comprehensive analysis of Palestinian
population data.
Since 1997,
The AIDRG took it upon itself to do what no
Israeli governmental body had considered doing: Its members just
started counting heads. It worked out that the
doomsday scenario
was based on a massive fabrication. […]
Here the
author enters
into details of the massive fabrication on the demographic aspect, and
then she
continues:
At last year's
conference, the AIDRG team presented the data they had
painstakingly compiled. They
were greeted with unabashed hostility. Many walked out in the
middle.
Others groaned or chatted loudly with their friends trying to drown out
the
presentation. The
audience of elitists didn't want to hear proof that for the past
decade,
This year the team will
return to the conference. But rather than being
allowed to present their newest data and their plan, they were given a
mere
three minutes to speak at the end of a session about something else
entirely.
Halutz's resignation was
a good and necessary thing. But in and of
itself, it will have little significance for
Our failed and
delusional leaders must take their
mendacious and defeatist national debate along with them. As they
depart, we
must regain control over our national conversation and build it upon
the firm
foundations of reality and a renewed commitment to advancing and
securing
Now,
beginning from the end, should it not be obvious that commitment to
advancing and securing
After
all, in a civilized society we are not used to call as traitors
the ones who think differently than ourselves.
The
point is that we, as a nation, have lost sight of what is our
interest. We no more care about our survival because we have other
things in
mind. Our priority is no more to survive, but to satiate another more
impellent
need. It is the Moloch inside ourselves, who is demanding
a human sacrifice.
Politicians,
as journalists, intellectuals, artists and other elitist
groups - in short, our representatives, who represent our unconscious
and darkest
needs - are out to satisfy their mandate, which is to relieve the
people of
their sense of guilt.
That
is the reason why Caroline Glick - no matter how lucid and accurate
she is, no matter how deeply her reasons are rooted in the Reality
Principle,
vis a vis her opponents’ stammering and confused ways – cannot convince
the
Israeli establishment to change its ways. There will always be a
Peretz, a
Holmert and a Tzipi Livni to seduce the guilt ridden Israelis to
surrender
their security – in short their very life – in the name of the
appeasement of their inner sense of guilt.
Don’t
forget that Menashe, king of
The IDF's doctrinal discussions are framed by the
larger national debates in
Of
course. However, it is not just an intellectual confrontation on the
best ways to preserve our security, but a debate between those who feel
a
compulsion to surrender, driven by an overwhelming and compelling sense
of
guilt, and those who can discern between the Reality Principle and the
masochistic fantasies induced by a self destructive sense of guilt.
Those
fantasies are what in the article Glick called “those
debates remain captive to the same fantasies and lies…”
Fantasies
are rooted in the Pleasure Principle, in our case a
masochistic pleasure, and in order to be acted out they need the cover
up of
lies. Lies that are covering the acting out of a pleasure cannot be
easily
defused, because the libidinal pleasure is invested with many energies
in order
to self – preserve.
The
sense of gilt induced into a retrenchment – a contraction – and
vital energies, which at the beginning were meant for self
–preservation, now
are dedicated to self –destruction. That is the nature of masochistic
pleasure:
a deviation of energies from a vital libidinal target to a contorted
self
defeating aim.
to implement
the agreement and handover Judea and
If we didn't
hurry up and hand over Judea,
Again, the national
priority is not our own security and life but how to defuse the sense
of guilt
by surrendering as soon as possible - and as much as possible - of the
Land of
Israel, which is the object of our sinful drives. Therefore – and again
- the IDF is cognitively barred from
rationally approaching
hallucinatory peace processes is a very precise definition. So exact that it
is doubtful whether The Israeli
public is quite
sick of it. May be some of the public, but as long as the
majority is
led by the nose into hallucinatory rituals of self abashment – because
that is
what they feel comfortable with – I don’t know if we can expect any
change soon.
the doomsday
scenario was based on a massive
fabrication. People who feel
guilty love doomsday scenarios.
NEXT WEEK
If we are guilt –ridden
little children we deserve to be spoken at as little children
At last year's
conference, the AIDRG team presented
the data they had painstakingly compiled. They were greeted with unabashed
hostility.
Many walked out in the middle. Others groaned or chatted loudly with
their
friends trying to drown out the presentation. The audience of elitists didn't want
to hear proof that for the past decade,
What
else?
As
King Lear said to
Why
otherwise the hostility? Why the obtuseness? Why they didn’t want to
hear? Why to destroy the Zionist idea if not because of its
unconsciously
perceived lustful and sinful substance?
On Caroline Glick’s Our World: The rule of lawyers
I had
just finished my comment on “Column One: Where Israel Went
Astray”, that Glick published another article: Our World: The rule of lawyers.
From
my point of view it is a continuation and a confirmation of the
previous one.
Law
and lawyers are strictly associated with sense of guilt. The Jews
have built the most complex code of Laws –The Oral Law and the Talmud –
because
they harbour the most enormous and “disproportionate” sense of guilt of
all the
peoples of the world.
Our is
not just a Law. It is a ritual. And the more compelling and
disturbing is the sense of guilt, the more the ritual is complex and
intransigent.
However, as Nietzsche said: "
That someone feels "guilty" or "sinful" is no proof that he is right, any more than a man is healthy merely because he feels healthy. Recall the famous witches trials: the most acute and humane judges were in no doubt as to the guilt of the accused; the "witches" themselves did not doubt it and yet there was no guilt. "( Genealogy of Morals, third essay, 16).
Now,
the columnist in her article deals with the absence of law
enforcement regarding the gangs of Bedouin thieves in the Neghev, vis
a vis
the extreme severity inflicted on the Israeli farmers who try to defend
their
property. It is a way to “give back” the Negev, as they are in such
a hurry
to give back the West Bank,
At the
source of the hurry, as I sustained afore, there is a compelling
sense of guilt associated with the Land herself. In order to appease the
sense of
guilt, not only the West Bank,
[ Supplement: On the roots of Jewish and Israeli sense of guilt, I have written on the 21 March 2007 in
A Tale of Two Cities. The Unfolding of the Sense of Guilt in Judaism and in the West]
Links:
From the Invasion of Lebanon to the Charges of Rape (October 21, 2006)
The Cease - Fire and the Hasty Retreat of Israel (August 25, 2006)
The Disproportionate Reaction of Israel (July 22, 2006)