What your opinion on Israel might say about you

“There’s no way people are really pro-Iran, right?” my sister whatsapped me from her safe room in Giv’at Shmuel. 

She was right to be incredulous. Within hours of the initial attack on Iranian nuclear sites and regime officials, online forums were flooded by comments celebrating Iran’s retaliation against Israel and justifying Iran’s nuclear efforts as leveling the playing field.

I love Israel and love people who live in Israel — which is why I believe we do Zionism a disservice by ignoring or outright rejecting these opinions. It’s critical that we try to understand where they come from, and why. 

Because often, when people talk about Israel, they aren’t really talking about Israel.

Israel has become a symbol — a projection of people’s feelings about power, victimhood, history, and identity. In other words, people don’t see Israel as it is. 

They see it as they are.

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Psychologists sometimes assess patients using a tool called the Rorschach test. The idea is simple: the practitioner holds up an inkblot and asks patients what they see. The answers, it is thought, allow the practitioner to access patients’ unconscious desires and anxieties.

What if the inkblot looked like Israel?

Some people would perceive a monster: a colonizing power, a genocidal regime, a global puppetmaster. Often, those images draw from millennia of antisemitic tropes, painting Israel as bloodthirsty or sinister. 

But some people see something dark in that inkblot unrelated to antisemitic beliefs or conspiracy theories. And for these people, their unconscious processing is worth a closer look. If we want to advocate for the State of Israel, we need to ask: what are they seeing when they look at the inkblot — and why?

I believe there are two substantial forces that make this inkblot look dark for many modern critics of Israel. 

One of these forces is guilt. Israel is an easy scapegoat for centuries of Western imperialism. Most modern countries — America, Australia, parts of the Middle East and Europe — have been built around conquest and resettlement. It isn’t possible to undo the choices of generations that came before us. And it’s painful to acknowledge how many of us live on land once taken from others. So, instead of facing that truth, a powerful guilt is morally outsourced toward Israel.

The other force is a desire to live in a world with clearcut heroes and villains. The world is morally complex, but we yearn for clarity. And sometimes we try to project that certainty — as in the case of so many people who engage with Israel along the binary of “oppressor vs. oppressed,” aptly broken down by Natan Sharansky. Israel plays the role of the irredeemable villain, and all of her adversaries the heroes. Of course, the Middle East isn’t a comic book, and conflicts in the region are profoundly complex. But for some, moral clarity is tempting enough to disregard that.

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The psychoanalyst can read a lot into the great tragedy of Parashat Shelach.

Twelve men are sent to scout the land the Israelites are meant to inherit and return with reports of a beautiful land occupied by giants: We can’t fight them. They are too big and we are too small. We’ll be consumed.

Two of those twelve men argue against this, but the Jewish people panic. It would have been better for us to die in Egypt, they cry. We should go back to Egypt.

The tragedy of this story is that this was a generation of ex-slaves, gripped by inferiority and lack of agency. They feared that they were insignificant and defenseless; that Israel would consume them. And so, they insisted, they would rather go back to the slavery they knew in Egypt. 

Just like the modern critics of Israel, the scouts projected something unconscious. To paraphrase novelist Anaïs Nin, they didn’t see Israel as she was. They saw Israel as they were.

The report of Calev and Yehoshua is the exception to this. “The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land,” they said. “If pleased with us, God will bring us into that land, a land that flows with milk and honey, and give it to us. Have no fear then of the people of the country, for they are our prey: their protection has departed from them, but God is with us. Have no fear of them!” 

But what is most telling about this assessment is that they don’t give it immediately. 

The text makes it clear: after the scouts gave the initial report, Calev tried to calm the people, but he was overruled by the others. After a full night of Israelite panic, he and Yehoshua tried again. This time, they were able to express themselves clearly. 

In their report, Calev and Yehoshua acknowledged the giants’ presence. But they emphasized the strategic elements of settling the land. They spoke about what it would take to overcome the feelings of inferiority. They understood that their task was to report what they saw, not how they felt. 

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In the coming weeks and months, we will encounter opinions that we find outrageous and ignorant.

This parasha teaches us that it is a Jewish value to challenge these ideas — but not immediately. It is meaningful to pause first. To understand others’ unconscious assumptions and emotions before reacting. To address their underlying yearnings or anxieties.

We will never persuade the loudest detractors of Israel. But we can certainly help others see Israel — and themselves — more clearly.