Gadi: Stop Demonizing Bibi. It’s Self-Harming.
“Blame America First” was America’s problem four decades ago. Today its stepchild, “Blame Israel First”, is Israel’s problem.
In 1979 Jeane Kirkpatrick described how Carter held friends to a harsher standard than enemies, pressuring allies, undermining them, but excusing far worse hostile regimes. Under President Reagan, she gave the problem its “blame” name. Together they rallied Americans against it to win the cold war.
From “Blame America First” to “Blame Israel First” – and then Each Other
Today the self-blame game is back, but it takes the form of “Blame Israel First”. Israel urgently needs to wake up from it.
“Israel” here means Israel as a part of the West. “Blame Israel First” is a codicil to the “Blame America First” mentality. It means “Blame America and all the West” – when America supports Israel and the West, not when it undermines it.
Israel is in a tougher position for waking up than America was in the 1980s. It needs to no less urgently.
When America has twisted Israel’s arm to halt military campaigns for necessary goals, Israel hasn’t been able to afford to blame America openly for this; it would be diplomatically suicidal.
So Israelis hold their tongues and blame themselves. They internalize the blame.
Consequences of Internalizing the Blame
By redirecting the external share of the blame inward, Israelis go through all the Freudian mechanisms. They feel guilt for the blame, they exaggerate it, they sublimate it, they rationalize it, and they deflect it, projecting it on their political opponents.
Unable to speak up about the blame of Israel’s allies, they are left to blame themselves almost exclusively for their failures. Targeting themselves, they give it an exaggerated form; and redistribute the blame in accusatory forms against each other.
This has terrible side effects. It causes considerable self-harm.
Escaping the Blame Game
Israelis need to re-learn to think accurately about the distribution of the blame among the many actors involved – themselves, Americans, and others. They need to draw the logical conclusions in their analyses and policies.
In a matter of days, they will probably need to form a coalition between Eisenkot and Netanyahu. This gives the matter urgency.
Israelis will have to stop blaming “the other party” in exaggerated form. And to stop falsely declaring one of them uniquely corrupt and unacceptable for a joint government.
They will have to cure their minds of this disease in record time.
Demonizing Netanyahu has often led to other constructive center-Right parties refusing to join a government with him. This has already done great harm. It threatens to do so once again in the coming days, and to do even greater harm.