December 2000
The
Assassinated Father
BeShem HaAv (In the Name of the Father)
In a previous
work (1) we interpreted Rabin’s assassination as a patricide, perpetrated
by the Hebrews on the ground that the Israeli leader was committed to deliver
to the enemy parts of the Promised Land, which is unconsciously perceived
in Jewish psyche as the body of the Holy Mother. (Promised Land, Holy Land
are concepts associated to the Oedipal lust of the sons versus the female
body) (2).
According to this thread, Rabin was murdered because
he inhibited the Hebrews from possessing the whole body of the Mother,
namely, he was unconsciously perceived as the castrating Father who deterred
the horde of the brothers from acting out the incest. In our analysis we
sustained that Moses had been murdered because he tried to inhibit the
children of Israel from invading the Promised Land, and not- as sustained
by Freud- only because he wanted to impose too spiritual a religion on
them (3). In our essay we brought evidence that the biblical text has removed
Moses’ real intention of holding the Hebrews in the wilderness, and presents
instead to us a situation as if he were the one pushing for the pursue
of the Conquest. The text discloses enough evidence in the form of lapsa
calami and contradictions in the narrative, disclosing the real sequence
of events. We drew a parallel between Moses’ assassination and Rabin’s
murder, since both had been committed for the same reasons: the inhibition
of incestuous desires versus the Promised Land.
Since we had finished the work, at the end of 1998, the
events in the Middle East confirmed our thesis, and unfolded in a very
puzzling way, that can be decoded and understood only using the key of
Freudian Oedipus complex and Murder of the Father, as exposited in Freud's
Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism.
In the aftermath of Rabin’s murder, the Israeli writer
S. Izhar had uttered in a television review the word “parricide”. However
the media preferred to ignore the allusion and none dared to unfold the
discourse further. It was as if all knew that we were indeed dealing with
a parricide, but as if decency imposed a veil of silence: the word itself
became Taboo. The
Executioner, and The Woman (Gen. 3:12).
After Rabin's assassination in 1995 some guilt induced
knee jerk reaction was to be expected. It was in the air. As Lea Rabin
expressed herself after the Likud Party won the elections on the 26 of
May 1996, addressing the election activists of her own labourist party
“Israel One”: “you should have squeezed every drop of political gain from
my husband's murder!”. Since the public perception was that the murder
had been acted out with the approval of the hawks represented by the Likud
Party, Lea Rabin and many others expected that the sense of guilt would
have deflected the general sympathy towards the Party of the victim.
Following a parricide of that extent, the Israelis were supposed to feel
some guilt. But what happened instead was that, immediately after the assassination,
the Israeli public adopted an even more extremist stance, and the Likud
party won the election reaffirming their "not one inch" position. There
had apparently been an immediate denial of the murder and of the guilt.
What Freud called: the latency period. The very ones who had delegated
the murder, won the election. It seemed that the perfect crime had been
acted out
At this point I want to make it clear that I am not accusing
Benjamin Natanyahu of being responsible for the murder of Rabin. He condemned
it strongly, as every other leader of the Likud Party, and there is no
doubt that he and his colleagues were shocked by the murder as every other
sensible person in Israel. But we are dealing here with collective
unconscious contents. We are trying to decode the events in the way the
collective unconscious of the Israeli people has elaborated them, and that
decided the outcome of the following collective behavior.
Even the slightest details, as unfolded in the last years,
confirmed the overall thesis of a parricide perpetrated against the Father
figure, on the grounds that he was preventing the female body from the
horde of the brothers.
Freud told us that the son who took upon himself the
acting out of the parricide, and ultimately substituted the Father as chief
of the males’ band, had been the youngest of the horde (4). As an instance
we may bring the Greek myth of Zeus the youngest son, who killed Cronos
his father, and took his place. Moreover, there are many popular
tales as Grimms’ The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, The Six Swans,
The Three Feathers, The Three sons of Fortune and others, where the
youngest son is always the one who prevails. Even the Prodigal
Son tells us the same story.
Now, after the murder of Rabin, who should become the
next king, if not Benjamin Netanyahu?
First of all, he was the youngest PM we ever had. Until
then, Israel had always been a young country governed by old kings, but
the real sting and honey is in the name. Benjamin is synonymous for the
youngest son. It has become, in the history of mankind, a household name
for the little kid of the family. I remember being very puzzled, during
those election campaign, back in 1995, by the fact that in the media he
was called much more Benjamin, even in its affectionate diminutive, “Bibi”,
than by his last name. In America is very usual, but in Israel it is not,
after all we are a very old respectful people. Nobody had ever called Ytzhak
Rabin “Itzik”, Shimon Peres “Shimi” or Menahem Begin “Meni”.
Let's check what Freud said:
The hero was a man who by himself had slain the father - the father who still appeared in the myth as a totemic monster. Just as the father had been the boy’s first ideal, so in the hero who aspires to the father’s place the poet now created the first ego ideal. The transition to the hero was probably afforded by the youngest son, the mother’s favourite, whom she had protected from paternal jealousy, and who, in the era of the primal horde, had been the father’s successor. In the lying poetic fancies of prehistoric times the woman, who had been the prize of battle and the temptation to murder, was probably turned into the active seducer and instigator to the crime [...] the hero who has to carry out some difficult task (usually the youngest son, and not infrequently one who has represented himself to the father substitute as being stupid, that is to say, harmless) (5).The ones, who assisted to the general atmosphere at the eve of the elections after Rabin’s assassination, remember how the next-to-be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was represented. For example, it seems that there was a video-cassette circulating in Israel, in which he was said to have been filmed in love-making acts with one of his numerous mistresses. The Israeli public not only was not enraged at all, but seemed delighted to have a clown as next PM. There were also endless jokes circulating on this issue. The Israelis mocked him as a womanizer, who is not only caught but also filmed in the middle of the action, and nevertheless elected him to their next PM.
However, and here comes the joker, in a short time he
began to become first derided, then slandered, and eventually thrown out
of his job in the most disgraceful way I have ever seen in the history
of the State of Israel. The Likud party lost, in a span of four years,
all the gains the nationalist right had won in 25 years, since they had
put an end to the Kingdom of the House of Ben Gurion.
The assassinated Father has been vindicated through transformation
of the first among peers, the son of the horde who had taken on himself
to act out the murder, into the poison container of the removed
guilt.
And now the second stage: the guilt induced renunciation
of the female body. With the words of Freud:
They revoked their deed by forbidding the killing of the totem, the substitute for their father; and they renounced its fruits by resigning their claim to the women who had now been set free. They thus created out of their filial sense of guilt the two fundamental taboos of totemism, which for that very reason inevitably corresponded to the two repressed wishes of the Oedipus complex (8).On May 17, 1999, Ehud Barak won a commanding victory in Israeli national elections to become the country's new prime minister. At the head of a Labor dominated coalition, he defeated ruling Likud prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same time, centrist parties increased their seats in the Knesset. The election results were seen as a turning away from the hard-line policies, particularly in relations with the Palestinians, which had been pursued by Netanyahu.
However, if the Israelis’ agenda was to get rid of the
sense of guilt, the Arabs had their own agenda, which was to maintain a
condition of tension with Israel, and to avoid a peaceful solution to the
conflict. We shall discuss below the psychohistorical substance of the
Palestinians’ refusal to accept a peaceful interaction with the Israeli
society.
The Hizballa guerrilla reacted by immediately intensifying
their attacks on Israeli patrols. The Israelis did not understand why they
reacted by escalating the violence, just as it had been announced that
their aim will be achieved by peaceful means.
It did not make any sense, but the Israelis attributed
the upgrading in bellicosity to some kind of misunderstanding. Even if
it was obvious that the withdrawal from Lebanon would result in an escalation
of violence and not in the craved peace, the Government was determined
to act out the delegation of the people, which was erasing the sense of
guilt by delivering to the Arabs the most land possible.
The Hizballa said to themselves: "Maybe the Jews don't
understand that we don't want them to retreat, and we will bomb them anyway,
since we are interested in a continuation of the tension on the border.
So, why retreating and exposing their own civilians to the danger?". And
when the Israeli army began the withdrawal, the Hizballa panicked to the
point that they began bombing the Kibbutzim on the northern frontier.
Delegation after delegation of Lebanese Christians
went in pilgrimage to Jerusalem, pleading the Government not to retreat.
We were dealing with 12 lousy miles anyway, heavily populated by Israel's
allies, the Christian Lebanese, who were at risk of being slaughtered by
the Moslems as Israel retreated. The Army pleaded with the Government not
to do such a stupid thing. But nothing could be done: the Fatum (Destiny),
like in a Greek tragedy, must fulfill its ways.
So, the Maronite Christians have lost their freedom and
many have been slaughtered; Kibbutzim are targeted by the hostility of
the Hizballa, but nobody will put himself between the Jews and their guilt.
To paraphrase King Lear: "don't put yourself between a dragon and its fury”.
Fury that in this case is called : sense of guilt.
The Syrian affair has been even more ludicrous.
The Golan Heights are populated by 35.000 Druses, very
friendly to Israel, the majority of whom opted for Israel citizenship back
twenty years ago, in the old good days, when the Likud government enacted
Israeli law on the Golan Heights. After all, the Druses themselves had asked
for that. Since the 1973 Kippur war, this region has been an island of
peace and pastoral idyl. The Syrians have hinted in every possible way
they don't want the place back. They have their very good reasons. Besides
internal considerations of power strugle and balance between the various
parts of Syrian population, there is a very practical reason. They are
afraid that, as a result of signing a peace treaty with Israel, they
will be asked by the international community and by the Lebanese themselves
to return home. The Syrians have no interest in giving up their presence
in that country since it is their main source of hard currency
cash.
However, nobody was allowed to resist this new Israeli
frenzy for peace.
Here we have a good example of the difference between
the substance of reality and the substance of fantasy. In reality Israel
already is at peace with the Syrians. Twenty seven years without a single
shot or any act of bellicosity on the Syrian Israeli border are the real
thing. The Syrians have proved very well that, if they want, they can prevent guerilla
infiltrations from their border into Israel. There has been not even a single border incident on this
front for more than two decades: more peace than that can't be imagined.
They just can't afford a formal treaty because of their good internal reasons.
But the Israeli Government had been delegated by the people to erase Guilt,
regardless of political, security, strategic or other considerations.
Since guilt is involved, it overrides the importance
of Syrian needs. In the last year (April –May 2000) we had the acts
of the most ridiculous farce of all. The Syrians could not openly say they
can't sign a treaty with Israel, so they escalated their demands. First
they demanded ALL the Golan Heights, to the border previous to the Six
Days War.
They were sure Israel would refuse. After all it is a
very serious thing having them back so close to Haifa. When Israel agreed,
they demanded the control of the water. In our dry region almost all Israeli
waters come from there. The Israelis were astonished at first by this Chutzpah,
but after all, what are drinking waters, when guilt is involved? So the
Syrians asked for a piece of the Galilee lake, where Jesus had walked on
the water, they wanted it too. Now the game became obvious even to the
guilt blinded Delegate of the People, and finally there was no treaty,
just as the Syrians had wanted in the first place.
But the funny thing is that yesterday (18 MAY 2000),
in an interview on television, the interviewer scolded our PM like a child
for failure to perform his delegated duty, and he felt the need to apologize
before the people, almost weeping for his shortcomings.
So, one PM has been already assassinated for wanting
to deliver land, another has been almost assassinated for having acted
out the assassination, and may be another one will be assassinated by some
peace extremist, because he has not delivered enough land, not having
been able, in this way, to purify the children of Israel from their own
sense of guilt.
When Palestinians began rioting, at the end of April
2000 at the very moment of being able to reach all their aims peacefully,
the situation was so absurd that an European friend, member of the list
of deMause’s Psychohistory asked on list the simple question: “Why are
the Palestinians rioting? Isn't it irrational? ”.
An Israeli member of the same list, a scholar, responded:
I do not see any irrationality in Palestinian behavior. I am a Zionist, but if I were a Palestinian, I would do what they do. We Jews have waited two thousand years to return to our homeland. Without blaming ourselves for the Palestinian suffering, we can understand those who want to return to their home only a half century after they left it.This attitude of the public, so well expressed by an Israeli scholar, was so obviously the byproduct of a sense of guilt, and not of a lucid evaluation of the situation, that I responded (18 May 2000):
As for the Palestinians, the irrationality does not consists in wanting their independence. The irrationality consists in rioting at the very moment they are getting their aim. As for our irrationality, it consist in thanking them for throwing at us stones. This Israeli irrationality is part of the guilt induced trance we have entered in the last months. As every trance entering, it is dangerous, because it prevents us from distinguishing the frontier between fantasies and reality.Then, on the 23 of May, answering to a question relating to the the same context, I added:
Yesterday, still today, N.Y. time, 200 Christian Lebanese have been captured by the Hizballah, and captured means slaughtered. Israel has granted shelter to the militiamen and their families, who have been fighting side by side with the Israelis in the past 20 years, and everyone of them who enters the gate to salvation, spits, and calls the soldiers at the gate "traitors". I wonder who will ever trust Israel again, in this region. Tens of thousands of Lebanese are moving towards the Israeli frontier asking for political asylum, and I don't now what the Government is planning to do with them, I suspect it does not know either. This is not a consequence of reality of life. This is a consequence of trance entering, of sense of guilt induced behavior, of brushing aside reality in favor of fantasies. To have peace, you must have a big heart in your chest, and an even bigger stick in your hand, and Israel has both. So, all this suffering is unnecessary, superfluous and uncalled for. Israel has never been stronger. It is not only a question of military might, which is enormous, vis a vis all the others. Israel is strategically very strong, for the simple reason that there is a silent strategic pact with Egypt, Saudia and Jordan, which are interested in a strong Israel, and an open pact with Turkey which is even more interested in it. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, there is no way even the U.S. can make on Israel any pressure, even if they had an interest in doing so at all. The Syrian army is practically non existent. They have no Air Force and only rusty cannons. Since the Hizballah are a Syrian delegate, it is enough a strong warning to Damascus and all this mess could be stopped immediately, without shooting a single bullet. And there would be no suffering, no slaughter, no Lebanese abandoning their homes, no waves of refugees, no kibbutzim bombing and civilians running for shelter.As we can see, back in May, it was obvious to me that Israeli behavior has nothing to do with a lucid and realistic evaluation of the political and strategic situation but is induced, instead, by guilt fantasies. Today, in December 2000, we all see the result: more bloodshed, which could have been prevented if the Israeli stance had been the result of the evaluation of actual reality of life. The End of a Fantasy
But the Israelis are being discussing the most important Talmudic question whether we should retreat to the international border signed in the armistice of 1948, or whether we should retreat to the international border between the British mandate and the French, signed in 1923, which is 50 more meters (it is not a lapsus, I said METERS) more southward, and in some places even less. Every side brings ancient maps and circumstantial evidence to strengthen his stance. I am ready to bet that the winner will be the most severe school of Talmudic commentators. To an outsider observer, all this can't make any sense at all, and narrative historians will discuss for decades what happened in this segment of the history of the Arab Israeli conflict, but no document will ever decode the odd affair.
The key to the code is in the Freudian murder of the primal horde and the guilt induced female renunciation. On this ground can be understood also the legalistic discussion on the precise place of the border, i.e. the female pudenda. In the Bible there is one word ERVA, to describe the entrance to a city, the weakest point of a fortification and the female genital. So, it is of the utmost importance to know exactly where the place is, in order to prevent an eventual sacrilege. God in the day of the Last judgment will demand a renunciation certificate
...And
the Borderline's justice
Addendum
July 2002
Since this essay has been completed, on December
2000, there has been an interesting new development, as the drama
unfolded.
The negotiations with the PLO leadership failed,
as every Israeli concession was met by escalating new demands.
Exactly as had happened with the Syrians.
The Syrians had demanded a piece of the lake of Galilee,
which had belonged to Israel even before the Six Days War, and now the
Palestinians demanded not only the quarters inhabited by Arabs, but also
those inhabited by Jews and Christians, + forcing Israel into accepting
200000 so called Palestinian refugees into her borders.
Little by little it became clear, even to the most
dovish Israelis, that Arafat’s aim was not to reach a settlement
of the conflict, but to prevent it.
Under the stress of the mounting Palestinian unrest,
which had reached unheard proportion, due to the use of firearms by the
same Palestinian police, that was supposed to prevent terrorist attacks
against civilians, the Israelis went to the polls to elect a new Prime
Minister.
At first it seemed as Benjamin Netanyahu will be elected
again, as he was the only viable alternative to the now universally
scorned Ehud Barak.
After all, he had been proved correct, in sustaining
that the PLO is not a truthful partner, and no peace will result in dealing
with Arafat and his associates.
However, at the last moment, he himself “shot in his
own foot”, declaring that he will not run without a dissolution
of the Knesset and a General Election.
Since the Parliament was not interested in engaging in
an upsetting election campaign, his proposal has been rejected.
Now the Likud Party turned to Ariel Sharon, who until
then had not even been considered, due to his age and to his much disputed
role in the Lebanon War of 1982. The
Reality Principle
Ariel Sharon, unlike Netanyahu and Barak, is, again, a
father figure, like Rabin: the same generation
of founders of the state but, unlike him, an hawkish father – figure, who
is committed to retain the Holy Body of the Mother, instead of delivering her to the enemy.
Israel re - enters Lebanon
After five weeks of heavy fighting in which Israel was close to achieving its aim of destroying the Hizballah, suddenly the Government decided to accept an early cease fire, and to leave the work unfinished. After having declared for weeks that staying in Lebanon was not its main purpose, but only to defuse once and for all the Hizballah’s threat, the Government of Israel suddenly engaged in a hasty retreat, just like six years ago.
The horde of brothers, under the stress of
the events, turned away from the substitute of the “murderous” son, Barak,
who had himself substituted Netanyahu, and elected again a father
– figure to lead them. But, this time, a Father who
will grant at least some of their wishes and needs.
The Murder of the Father's lesson had been learned. Through
the process of identification with the assassinated Father, a new sense of
reality has entered the children of Israel. The sense of Guilt induced them into
renouncing the omnipotency fantasies of being the sole owner of the maternal
body. The very fantasies which had pushed them into the Murder, in the
first place. Now, after the process of atonement is being worked out, hopefully
there will be place for a more balanced judgment, under the guidelines
of the Reality Principle. They will never search again for a Son -leader
figure, who promises an unlimited gratification to their incestuous drives.
In my opinion, Netanyahu could never have been re-elected,
because of his too direct an association, in the unconscious mind of the
people, with the primal sin: the murder of Rabin.
Sharon fitted because, being perceived as a Father - image, he
could also grant the much needed absolution: a Father, benevolent versus
his son’s needs, vis a vis a Father (Rabin) who demanded too a strict
inhibition and restrain from the incestuous wishes, namely, the tyrannical
Father of the horde, as exposited by Freud.
Again the Jews fulfilled their destiny: the rejection
of the Kingdom of the Son in favor of a compromise with the Father, and
then the acceptance of him as their only ruler.
P.S.
July 12, 2006
I told you...
August 25, 2006
I must admit that a month ago I was optimistic on the prospect of the Israelis overcoming their sense of guilt and acting out a behavior based on the Reality Principle. It seems that such an optimism was premature.
Now the Israeli Government begged the UN, and especially the Europeans, to take over the responsibility of Israeli security, as if we had not enough miserable experience with the UN in this context. The Europeans have never been so anti –Semites as they are to – day. The criticism of Israel on its “disproportionate reaction” has never been so venomous, malicious, and permeated by anti- Semitic connotations.
But Israel begged the Italians to take over. This is the most incomprehensive proposition which could be possibly raised. D’Alema, the Foreign Affair Minister of the new left wing Government, who visited Israel, said that he is a great friend of Israel. It seems that he convinced the Israeli Government. However, with such a friend, who needs enemies?
No one can be such naïve or stupid to believe that Italians on our northern border will solve the problem. Now, how may be happening such a thing?
It can be decoded only on the ground of Jewish sense of guilt. In “The Disproportionate Reaction of Israel, I wrote that “reaction” is to be understood as “erection”.
Israel had an erection into Lebanon, beyond the internationally recognized border. As we already know, the Land stays for the mother’s body. Henceforth the legalistic obsession with the exact place of the border between Israel and Lebanon six years ago (see above). Now, Israel had an erection into somebody’s else woman, and as it happens to men oppressed by an overwhelming sense of guilt, the erection stimulates the guilt, and the guilt transforms the erection into contraction. Guilt begs for approval. A guilty child begs for the adults’ benevolence and leniency, especially if he perceives them as hostile. Israel made of d’Alema a parental judicial instance. Hence the hasty retreat, the begging for d’Alema’s approval and understanding, and – worst of all - the delivering of our own security into the hands of the ones who proclaim their friendship, like the wolf on the threshold of the three little pigs house. Only a deep and overwhelming sense of guilt can produce such a strange behavior.
Six years ago, on the 05.25.2000, I wrote:
And so has been until yesterday, when a Hizballah bully pointed to an
Israeli soldier, beyond the gate, in its double meaning, his stretched arm
as phallic symbol of despise, and "showed him back". Because winning the
Oedipal contest had had also the byproduct of leaving the preferred child
with a heavy, disturbing, sediment of guilt, which, when reactivated,
paralyzes and makes him impotent. (May 25, 2000 - Why Are the Palestinians Rioting?
Unfortunately, it seems that nothing has changed.
Links
Hatred
for Women and Islamic Terror
The Mary Magdalene of the Israeli Horde
Why are the Palestinians Rioting?
Shepherds and Bedouins
Mikis Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Terror
[email protected]
NOTES
1. Iakov Levi and Luigi Previdi, Uccidere Dio: il Destino del Popolo Ebraico, in “Agora’”Vol. IV (Liceo Scientifico Statale “G.Ferraris”, Arterigere s.r.l ) Varese 2000, pp.171-200. English translation: Killing God
2. Theodor Reik, The Puberty Rites of Savages, in “Ritual-Psychoanalytic Studies” (Farrar, Strauss & Co.) New York, 1946, p.157.
3. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1937-1939), Second Essay, par.7
4. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis
of the Ego (1921) Poscript, Chap. XII (B). See also S.Freud: 6. “...O Yehonatan, slain on thy high high places.
I am distressed for thee, my brother Yehonatan: very dear hast thou
been to me: thy love to me was wonderful, more than the love of women.
How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war cast away” (2 Samuel
1:25) The public was very aware of the biblical association, and of B.N.
being the beloved brother of a heroe of Israel. In a television intervew
by the CNN, at the eve of the elections of 1996, he has been asked about
his brother and his connection to him. Namely, he was perceived by the
public as a brother figure, and not as father figure, as Rabin.
7. For Clinton as a phallic leader see: Lloyd deMause,
The Clinton Scandal and Attacking Iraq, in http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/6074/scandal
.htm, entered June 2000; for American presidents as brother figures
and phallic leaders see: Lloyd deMause, Reagan’s America, Creative
Roots, Inc., Publishers, New York and London 1984.
8. Sigmund Freud, "Totem and Taboo" (1913), in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
(The Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, translated by James
Strachey ) London 1964, Vol. XIII, p.143
9. Ibidem
For natural reasons, youngest sons occupied an exceptional position. They were protected by their mother’s love, and to take advantage of their father’s increasing age and succeeded him on his death. We seem to detect echoes in legends and in fairy tales both of the expulsion of elder sons and of the favoring of youngest sons (Moses and Monotheism, Third Essay, D).
5. Group Psychology and the Analysis
of the Ego, Postscript XII(B).
