As these lines are being written, IDF gunmen have killed over 40 Palestinians near the Gaza fence, and injured 2,200 more; a dozen are considered to be mortally wounded. When you read these words, the numbers are likely to have jumped higher. The IDF Spokesman is in the habit of claiming its gunmen were “in danger.” When you hear these words, turn your thoughts back to Operation Speedy Express.
Speedy Express was carried out by the Ninth Infantry Division of the US army in the Mekong Delta in 1969. The US army claimed it killed 10,899 enemy combatants. It suffered only 244 casualties. Sitting in Saigon, a young genius named Alexander Demitri Shimkin, a veteran of the civil rights marches, baffled his fellow journalists with a strange hobby: he actually bothered to read the official communiques, and tabulated what written in them.
After several months, Shimkin came up with a strange statistic: the 9th Division claimed to have killed 10,899 combatants, but captured only 748 weapons. Shimkin’s conclusion was simple: the disparity between the dead and the captured weapons means most of the people killed in Speedy Express were not combatants but civilians. Shimkin had a problem getting his early example of data journalism published, and Newsweek only published it in 1972. Yet the publication caused a political firestorm, with the US army having to retreat to the desperate claim that “many of the guerilla units were not armed with weapons.”
Speedy Express should be a lesson to all journalists when they have to deal with information supplied by a military (any military): look closely at the data, and ask the necessary if unpleasant questions. The questions any journalist talking to the IDF Spokesman should be:
- How many casualties did the IDF suffer in Gaza? If the number is zero (as it is when these lines were written) or close to it, then the forces were not in danger, and this was not a military action but a massacre.
- How many weapons did the IDF capture, or at least documented used by the Palestinians? If the number is zero (and currently it is), or less than the number of people killed or wounded, then at least some of those shot were not a danger to the IDF. Given that currently the number is zero, it’s fair to assume none of those shot presented the IDF gunmen with mortal danger.
Israeli leftists on social media wondered today why the IDF always has a particularly gun-happy posture when it comes to Gazans. The answer, I’m afraid, comes from the nether realms of national psychology: Gazans remind Israelis of the Nakba by their very existence, they are the ghost which keeps haunting the silenced “great nights of horror” of 1948. They are ghosts reminding Israelis that their country is built on a massive graveyard; hence they must be silenced, in any way possible.
When the IDF claims it faces “a threat” from Gazans, it does not mean a mundane, physical threat: some improvised guns or a few homemade bombs. Beneath the drivel about “a threat”, lurks the tortured conscience of Lady MacBeth: “What, will those hands ne’er be clean?”
RE: Israeli leftists on social media wondered today why the IDF always has a particularly gun-happy posture when it comes to Gazans. The answer, I’m afraid, comes from the nether realms of national psychology: Gazans remind Israelis of the Nakba by their very existence, they are the ghost which keeps haunting the silenced “great nights of horror” of 1948. They are ghosts reminding Israelis that their country is built on a massive graveyard; hence they must be silenced, in any way possible. ~ Gurvitz
PUT ANOTHER WAY: The Gazan “Great March of Return” represents a ‘narcissistic injury’ to narcissistic Likudnik Israel; resulting in Likudnik Israel’s ‘narcissistic rage’ as evidenced by the massacre of Gazans.
■ Narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage_and_narcissistic_injury
[EXCERPTS] Narcissistic rage is a reaction to narcissistic injury, which is a perceived threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or self-worth. Narcissistic injury (or narcissistic scar) is a phrase used by Sigmund Freud in the 1920s; narcissistic wound and narcissistic blow are further, almost interchangeable terms.[1] The term narcissistic rage was coined by Heinz Kohut in 1972.
Narcissistic injury occurs when a narcissist feels that their hidden, “true self” has been revealed. This may be the case when the narcissist experiences a “fall from grace”, such as when their hidden behaviors or motivations are revealed, or when their importance is brought into question. Narcissistic injury is a cause of distress and can lead to dysregulation of behaviors as in narcissistic rage.
Narcissistic rage occurs on a continuum, which may range from instances of aloofness and expressions of mild irritation or annoyance to serious outbursts, including violent attacks and murder.[2] Narcissistic rage reactions are not limited to personality disorders and may be also seen in catatonic, paranoid delusion and depressive episodes.[2] It has also been suggested that narcissists have two layers of rage. The first layer of rage can be thought of as a constant anger (towards someone else), with the second layer being a self-aimed wrath.[3] . . .
• Kohut and self psychology
Heinz Kohut explored a wide range of rage experiences in his seminal article “Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage” (1972).[17] He considered narcissistic rage as one major form among many, contrasting it especially with mature aggression.[18] Because the very structure of the self itself is weakened in the narcissist, their rage cannot flower into real assertiveness;[19] and they are left instead prone to oversensitivity to perceived or imagined narcissistic injuries resulting in narcissistic rage.[20]
For Kohut, narcissistic rage is related to narcissists’ need for total control of their environment, including “the need for revenge, for righting a wrong, for undoing a hurt by whatever means”.[21] It is an attempt by the narcissist to turn from a passive sense of victimization to an active role in giving pain to others, while at the same time attempting to rebuild their own (actually false) sense of self-worth. It may also involve self-protection and preservation, with rage serving to restore a sense of safety and power by destroying that which had threatened the narcissist.[21]
Alternatively, according to Kohut, rages can be seen as a result of the shame at being faced with failure.[22] Narcissistic rage is the uncontrollable and unexpected anger that results from a narcissistic injury – a threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or worth. Rage comes in many forms, but all pertain to the same important thing: revenge. Narcissistic rages are based on fear and will endure even after the threat is gone.[23]
To the narcissist, the rage is directed towards the person that they feel has slighted them; to other people, the rage is incoherent and unjust. This rage impairs their cognition, therefore impairing their judgment. During the rage they are prone to shouting, fact distortion and making groundless accusations.[24] In his book The Analysis of the Self, Kohut explains that expressions caused by a sense of things not going the expected way blossom into rages, and narcissists may even search for conflict to find a way to alleviate pain or suffering.[25] . . .
Another question Journalist could ask is why Israel is still allowed to sit in the UN as a full member when its full membership was contingent on it agreeing to implement Resolution 194 which Israel agreed to do. Surely at the very least it should be suspended from the UN until it does implement its agreed commitment to implement Resolution 194.
Mr Gurvitz is superb. He grew up in Israel but he also learnt how to think.
The IDF is shooting Zionism when it kills unarmed civilians.
American Jews do not want to have to choose but the more Gazans Israel kills the closer the choice becomes.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/06/07/israel-in-peril/
“Orthodox hypernationalism and its sometimes violently antidemocratic, even racist voices partly account for Beinart’s pessimistic prognosis for mainstream American Judaism and its relation to Israel.8 “American Zionism,” he fears, “will become the province of people indifferent to liberal democratic ideals, and the American Jews most committed to those ideals will become indifferent, at best, to the Jewish state.”9 He cites studies showing that younger non-Orthodox American Jews, conspicuously liberal in their values and politics, are less and less attached to Israel. Here is the American Jewish version of the conflict I have described in Israel between democratic ideals and tribal nationalism. Both my grandfathers, like most American Jews of their generation, at once Rooseveltian Democrats committed to strong notions of social justice and ardent Zionists, would have been horrified by what has happened in Israel and by the consequent need for American Jews to make such a choice.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urbcmEF3TGM
“recognizing the difficulty of implementationl” (or words to that effect) was added to the condition placed Israel.
Zioland has morphed into a truly dystopian alternative universe. In the latest article in the NY Times there is an absolute corker from a “columnist” from the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
Read and weep !
Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist for Yediot Aharonot, searched for a culprit and landed upon what he called the “Nakba culture,” which he said had held back Palestinians going back to 1948.
“There was a Nakba,” he wrote in Tuesday’s paper, using the Arabic term for the “catastrophe” of the formation of Israel and the loss of Palestinians’ homes. “The Arabs of Palestine underwent expulsion. Tens of millions of people throughout the entire world, including Jews, underwent similar expulsion. But only the Palestinians adopted an ethos of rejectionism, victimhood, suffering and death.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/world/middleeast/israelis-gaza-protests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
“only the Palestinians adopted an ethos of rejectionism,victimhood,suffering and death”. FFS!!