Israel is screwed up because Israelis by and large have no communication with Arabs. That’s a simple fact. They don’t know Arabs and don’t trust ’em. I saw that for myself. Works both ways.
But America is screwed up because–and this has to do with the power in the establishment of Jews who have no idea what Israel is really like but feel a responsibility to defend it no matter what–our journals cannot run the true Works of Genius that are appearing in the Israeli press. Avrum Burg’s work appeared in Israel, not here. Uri Avnery, ditto. And though Bob Simon finally brought a dose of this understanding to CBS last week, Israeli journalists routinely surpass us, because they are utterly engaged by the spiritual crisis and need to cry out.
Long preface. Here is a simply majestic report in Haaretz, by Akiva Eldar, on a study of Israeli consciousness. As Eldar points out at the end, Israelis can’t escape from this legacy of victimization without outsiders taking a role. I.e., and very simply: American Jews saying, Sorry, Israel, We cannot condone the slaughter of 400 children!!!
Also, note that one of the authors of this study lives in New York. But his work is reported in Israel. Let us hear him in New York. Oh no, the goyim will hear, and turn on Israel! That is actually the thinking.
Here’s the great Eldar:
confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by
Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world’s leading political psychologists, and
Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews’ consciousness is
characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind
patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the
Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. The fighting in Gaza
dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left – that this public would
exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves.
“Most of the nation retains a simplistic collective memory of the
conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us in a very positive
light and the Arabs in a very negative one,” says the professor from
Tel Aviv University. This memory, along with the ethos of the conflict
and collective emotions such as fear, hatred and anger, turns into a
psycho-social infrastructure of the kind experienced by nations that
have been involved in a long-term violent conflict. This infrastructure
gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians
are deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward
peace. Bar-Tal claims that in such a situation, it is hard even to
imagine a possibility that the two nations will be capable of
overcoming the psychological obstacles without outside help….
In a telephone interview from New York, Nets-Zehngut
says it is very clear that those with a “Zionist memory” see Israel and
the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and do not tend to support
agreements or compromises with the enemy in order to achieve peace.
This finding, he explains, demonstrates the importance of changing the
collective memory of conflicts, making it less biased and more
objective – on condition, of course, that there is a factual basis for
such a change.
Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of
reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against
Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that
is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion, an analysis
of the present situation indicates that with the exception of a small
minority, which is capable of looking at the past with an open mind,
the general public is not interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza
for many years..
[H]is study shows that a larger percentage of
the Jewish population in Israel believes that in 1948, the refugees
were expelled (47.2 percent of respondents), than those who still
retain the old Zionist version (40.8 percent), according to which the
refugees left on their own initiative.
Bar-Tal says he takes no comfort in the knowledge
that Palestinian collective memory suffers from similar ills, and that
it is also in need of a profound change – a change that would help
future generations on both sides to regard one another in a more
balanced, and mainly a more humane manner. This process took many
decades for the French and the Germans, and for the Protestants and the
Catholics in Northern Ireland. When will it finally begin here, too?
Couple more comments. The study shows that most Israelis think Barak-who-destroyed-400-children made a generous offer at Camp David. Americans have the same false understanding. Where is this getting written about–just in the American Conservative and LRB. Second, I think the paranoia and sense of victimization above somewhat describes Jeffrey Goldberg, who calls any critic of Israeli apartheid an antisemite. It is frightening to think that he is the most important Jewish journalist in America. I think that is about to change by the way: Goldberg, out of fear, took the wrong position on Gaza. As America and U.S. Jewry move forward, they will look to other guides. My horse is Josh Nathan-Kazis. He’s only in his early 20s, but he has what my grandmother who I lived with on the Lower East Side used to call “potentials.” (Phil Weiss with thanks to Richard Witty and Susie Kneedler for tip)
