I think this Israeli psychologist is exactly right. Israel is incapable of pulling themselves together on this. They need the International community to take charge, to intervene on their behalf in this delusional antisocial paranoid neurosis. It is well-established that trauma does this to individuals, and these same symptoms collectively characterize a traumatized society. World statesmen are wrong to wait for the Israeli voter to have his say before they decide whether to recognize a Palestinian state and impose sanctions that will spur Israel to reach a political settlement with the Palestinians. Equally misguided are Israeli opposition leaders who fear that had the United States not cast its traditional veto in the United Nations it would have driven Israel’s voters to greater extremity. It’s precisely in the run-up to an election that Israeli voters need a wake-up call from the outside about the implications of the results of the voting for Israel’s international standing. For the past 47 years, Israel has been longing for a slap in the face from the international community, but in vain. It’s not only the individual will that is caught in a constant conflict between contradictory inner wishes and yearnings: Collective political wishes and national yearnings are also compromise results of unconscious conflicts between life impulses and death impulses, between a preference for omnipotence and messianism, or coming to terms with reality, recognition of dependence and acceptance of the “other.” This is the only way to understand why public opinion polls in Israel show consistently overwhelming support for the two-state solution and the evacuation of the settlements, while in practice few Israelis give expression to this when they cast their ballots. What this shows is that the Israeli voter needs firm support from the outside in order to extract his sane parts from the shelter in which he’s been hiding them for the past half-century or so. Only intervention by the international community can undo the balance of terror that Israelis maintain inside themselves, between knowing what’s good and doing what’s bad. Only “involuntary treatment” of Israeli rejectionism, executed with sincere concern for the country’s fate, would demonstrate to its citizens that there is no correct way to live an incorrect life...
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 05:24:02 +0000
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