‘Don’t Mention the War’: Israel’s Denial of Reality
Over the past month, I’ve endured much suffering at the hands of Israeli society. Though I engaged in productive political activities in defense of Israeli interests in Europe, my work here is ridiculed and ignored by all established forces. While I was able to initiate communication, and even collaborate, with Israeli officials in both the US and Europe, the utter disarray and paralysis that plagues the Israeli state, and its effect on the destabilization of general society, has confounded me. I once believed in the willingness of the Israeli state to defend its own political, economic and security interests, but I am now confronted with a sad state of affairs in which the Israeli state has not just unraveled to the point of insignificance, but what’s left of its autonomous clout has been diverted to self-injurious, sadistic-masochistic corruption and violence that threatens not only the direct victims of Israel’s ill-conceived and disorderly military campaign (this is hardly a war), but the livelihoods, and lives, of its own. The Israeli state is turning against its own citizens and is slowly preparing them for suicide in the form of an all-out regional conflict involving Hezbollah, Iran, and the Palestinian Authority.
In the face of this insanity, I am troubled with the obvious question: Why should the “Jewish state,” which purports to act in defense of Jews worldwide, ignore the warning signs of the US-China (Iran) proxy war and fall deeper into disorder and corruption? How can we understand the gross and continuing failure of all state agencies, all ministries and government offices, in the face of growing isolation, antisemitism and strategic threat? What causes a state to lose its resolve to live, to fight for its own existence, and instead dissolve itself in misguided hegemonic protection? There are, of course, many pressures that affect the Israeli state, including internal corruption, external imperialism, etc. However, I would like to devote this post to the psychological causes of such a mass-paralysis, and I may attempt to offer a possible solution.
Israeli society is not normal. The Israeli state, a direct product of the traumas of the Holocaust has developed independently of the rest of the world. The Holocaust remains the driving force of Israeli identity and one can even claim that it forms the raison d’être of Israeli society. “Never Again” is not just a slogan in Israel, it’s the basis of identity, it serves as a reminder, a threat, and a justification. In many ways, Israel has not progressed from the defensive mentality that followed the Holocaust. Most of the population still see themselves as uprooted, vulnerable and under constant threat. The initial trauma that engendered the Israeli state has maintained the population in a consciousness that resembles more the Palestinians in their refugee camps than the majority of peoples of the world. This refugee mentality has limited the ability of Israelis to connect with the land, to integrate into their surroundings, and to free themselves of their deep, innate distrust of humanity. Israelis are not necessarily xenophobic. However, they are acutely paranoid, and increasingly, this paranoia has lost touch with the global reality.
The world has become safer for Jews over the past 80 years. Partly due to Israeli security prowess, but mostly due to the progress that the US has made in de-radicalizing the majority of the “problematic” populations of Europe. The continuing American occupation of Europe, while immoral and, at times, counterproductive, has at least succeeded in subduing the historically fascistic and militaristic tendencies of the Europeans, and has allowed Europe to rebuild itself socially, politically, economically and militarily, to a degree that requires the recognition of global powers. Israel’s unwillingness to forego the historical animosity it holds towards its former enemies in Europe, and its total dependence on US-backed channels for relations with European powers, while actively collaborating with US/EU interests by continuing to broadcast anti-European, pro US propaganda, not only harms Israel’s diplomatic and security interests in the European context, but also inflicts untold psychological harm to the collective consciousness of Jewish Israelis who still live in existential fear of another Holocaust. Israel’s inability to make direct, human contact with its European neighbors keeps its population in an unnecessary, artificial state of paranoia and fuels the loop of anti-Semitism that encircles Jews worldwide.
As an American-Israeli Jew of Eastern European ancestry, I feel the direct ramifications of the Holocaust whenever I visit my ancestral continent. I have no extended family left in Europe, they were exterminated by the Nazis, and my only connection to Europe is cultural, through the Yiddish I used to speak with my grandmothers, genetic, and through my personal experiences. In the US, I feel uprooted and confined to the artificial dimensions of the “American-Jewish community,” in Israel, I feel unmoored and assigned an arbitrary identity of refugee, forced upon me by both society and the state, and in Europe, where I feel most at home, I lack official status. To the European establishment, I am merely an American-Israeli. In my free time, I may or may not be able to fight to prove my Polish ancestry through a bureaucratic process that takes years and costs lots of money, but for now, I am not European, I am not a “normal” American (since I grew up in a closed Jewish community and lacked any real contact with general American society), and I’m not even allowed to express my cultural identity as an Israeli, as that would dispute Israel’s commitment to world Jewry.
So, I am neither American nor Israeli, and surely not European. What am I, then? I am a Jew, but a Jew in the negative sense. I’m a Jew that needs protecting. I’m a Jew and must suffer the trauma of generations past. I’m a Jew and must adhere to strict ideological parameters or face the brunt of antisemitism all alone. I must be thankful for the mere fact of my existence, or else. To ask for self-fulfillment, freedom, a normal life is just too much. If I demand a modern, grounded identity, for the right to self-expression and to live as an equal, I am deemed entitled and utopian. I am stuck in this fake identity, self-imposed by the “Jews,” and reinforced by external antisemites, and I cannot breathe.
Zionism was supposed to solve the problem of antisemitism. Israel was supposed to connect the Jews to the land and reintegrate us into the world order, with the added protection of a Jewish-run militia (The Hagana/IDF). If Jews worldwide still feel threatened by antisemitism, and the Jews in Israel still have not succeeded in escaping their refugee mentality, then surely Zionism has failed its primary objective. If living as a Jew means paying such a high psychological price, as we must relive the traumas of the past while accumulating new ones with every war, terror attack or act of bigotry, Israel, then, has not only failed to address and resolve the problem of antisemitism, but has compounded it, and thus bears partial responsibility for its perpetuation.
Zionism, and Israel, cannot succeed without the resolution of the psychological trauma of the Holocaust. We must not only forgive, but also forget the trauma. We must break the ice with Europe. We must move on.
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.”
(Leviticus 19:17)
