http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/08/do-most-israelis-and-many-other-jews-need-to-feel-persecuted/

Do most Israelis and many other Jews NEED to feel persecuted?

- 26. Aug, 2010

By Alan Hart (My Catbird Seat)

Nakba, Sabra - Shatilla, Qana, Jenin, Gaza ?

I have written and often say that very many if not most Jews do not want to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. (An essential element of the truth being that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing).

Because I am a goy, a non-Jew, (actually a blonde, blue-eyed Englishman of advancing years), that may strike some readers as a very presumptuous statement for me to make. How can I possibly know for sure that at least some if not many Jews don’t want to know truth of history? It’s a fair question and my answer to it, quoted below, is in the now published Volume 3 of the American edition of my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (www.claritypress.com andwww.zionismbook.net).

After my dear wife, my best friend in the world, for more than 40 years, is my Jewish accountant. I’ll call him M. He is very orthodox in the practise of his religion and strictly kosher, but not a zealot. He lives in London and over the years he has travelled with me on a number of foreign assignments. Shortly before Golda Meir died, and as a way of saying thanks to M for his friendship, I invited him to travel with me and sit in on my last conversation with her. I imagined she would not object and she didn’t. Our conversation lasted nearly five hours. When it ended, I asked Mother Israel if I could take a photograph of her and M. In the tiny back garden of her small home in Tel Aviv, M put his arm around her shoulder (she didn’t object to that either) and I took several pictures. It was, as I knew it would be, one of the proudest moments in M’s life. One of the pictures was given pride of place in M’s home, and he subsequently told me that younger visitors would look at the photograph, point at the old lady, and ask, “Who’s that, your grandmother?”

Over time and privately M came to loathe what Israel has become but he won’t read my book. He doesn’t want to know the truth of history. Shortly before the publication of the original UK Volume One, I said to him the following. “Like most Jews everywhere, you believe that Israel went to war in 1967 either because the Arabs attacked first or were about to attack. What if I can prove to you, using only Israeli sources, that what you believe is Zionist propaganda nonsense and that it was a war of Israeli aggression?” After a long pause, M replied, “If what I believe about that war is not true, everything crumbles.”

I chose not to add to my friend’s agony by asking him what “everything crumbles” really meant or at least symbolizes; but over the several years since that conversation took place, and quietly in my own mind, I’ve been trying to work it out for myself.

What, actually, would “crumble” in those Jews, sadly most Jews, who don’t want to know the truth of history but by some miracle were confronted with it?

The short answer is their sense of victimhood, the impulse to see enemies everywhere who are committed to exterminating Jews.

Though constantly reinforced by Zionist propaganda since the creation of Israel, and currently by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, this impulse is, of course, the product of persecution and pogroms on and off down the centuries and which climaxed with the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust.

On 14 November 2009, in a comment on a Truthout post by Ira Cherna headlined “Israel’s Pathology”, Monty Renot wrote:

“I have thought, for a while now, that in the aftermath of the Nazi extermination during World War II, many Jews (and I speak as a Jew) entered into a mass state of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from which they’ve never emerged or recovered - like a nightmare trance in which they are stuck. The symptoms are, and have been, so unmistakably evident, especially in right-wing religious groups such as Meir Kahana’s Kach, whose slogan was ‘Never Again’ and whose vow was to ‘hit ‘em back 10 times as hard as they hit us.’’

Pre-emptive battle ?

What Renot called this “hypervigilant state, so typical of PTSD,” reveals that those who are still stuck in the nightmare trance believe that the threat to them (annihilation) is ever present and always will be; and any sign or omen that the worst was about to occur again “is magnified by the residual paranoia into ‘Uh-oh, here we go again!’, accompanied by a tightening of the emotional armoring and a heightened readiness to go into pre-emptive battle in order to forestall the worst from happening.”

In his analysis, Cherna asked how it can be that pathological feelings of fear, weakness and victimization “are comforting” to very many Israelis (and, I add, very many other Jews)

Gaza massacre

He answers: “For starters, they automatically put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame the weak victim for the violence? All the trouble, it seems, is started by the other side… And if all the trouble is started by the other side, then all the fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and victimization seem to prove that ‘We’re moral.’ Obviously, it’s our enemies who are immoral and thus to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no reason even to consider changing any of their policies or behaviors.”

Cherna believes, as I do, that as long as this pathology dominates Israeli political life, it’s hard to see what Barack Obama or anyone else can do to move the Israelis toward a just peace, one that would be acceptable to the vast majority of Palestinians (“who need no special mental condition to feel victimized; all they have to do is look out the window at the Israeli military patrols passing by.”)

The answer to my headline question seems to be, “Yes, Jews (most of them) do need to feel persecuted. The question arising is what if anything can be done, and by whom, to cure the sickness of traumatized Israeli and other Jewish minds?In theory

I can think of two possible ingredients for a cure.

One would be a New Covenant, not between the Jews and their God but between the Jews and the Gentiles. For their part of the deal the Gentiles would commit to slaying the monster of anti-Semitism. An undertaking to let the monster die in its sleep would not be good enough. There would have to be evidence that the stake was being driven into its heart. For their part the Jews of the world would commit to making common cause with rational Israelis for the purpose of making a real and lasting peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all (Arabs and Jews).

The other would be an explicit declaration by all Palestinian institutions, organizations and groups, endorsed by all Arab and other Muslim governments, to the effect that whether it be in a genuine and viable two-state or a one-state solution, the security and political and human rights of all Jews (in the one or two states) will be absolutely guaranteed.

Beyond that I have no answers to the question of what can be done and by whom to cure the sickness of traumatized and brainwashed Israeli and other Jewish minds. Do others have answers?

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.

His Latest book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is a three-volume epic in its American edition.  He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets onwww.twitter.com/alanauthor.