Iakov Levi

 

 

Who Wants to Be Raped? Little Red Riding Hood and Israel

 

 

January 9, 2008

That someone feels "guilty" or "sinful" is no proof that he is right, any more than a man is healthy merely because he feels healthy. Recall the famous witches trials: the most acute and humane judges were in no doubt as to the guilt of the accused; the "witches" themselves did not doubt it – and yet there was no guilt. (F.Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, third essay, 16)

I report below a segment from the last article By Caroline Glick

Column One: The rape of Israel Jan 3, 2008 22:28 | Updated Jan 7, 2008 20:10

 

Last Wednesday, New York's Jewish Week reported that the editor of Israel's self-described "newspaper of record" asked the US secretary of state to rape his country and told her that his erotic fantasy is to watch America rape Israel.

 

On September 10, at a dinner at the home of US Ambassador Richard Jones, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met with a group of Israeli "elites." Among the elitists was Haaretz editor David Landau. According to the Jewish Week, Landau "referred to Israel as a "failed state" politically, one in need of a US-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted "to be raped" and that it would be like a "wet dream" for him to see this happen.

 

When questioned by the paper, Landau claimed this account of his comments was inaccurate, but then confirmed saying that "Israel wants to be raped" into a settlement and that he told Rice it was his "wet dream" to address her on the issue. He added that several people came up to him afterwards and congratulated him for his remarks, claiming, "I articulated what many Israelis feel."

 

Actually, almost no Israelis feel what Landau expressed. But his views are shared by his newspaper and by a significant portion of the elitists who dominate the country.

 

The unconscious fantasy of being raped by the father is a fantasy peculiar of little girls in the Oedipal stage of psycho – sexual evolution. This fantasy finds its expression in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood , where a little girl is devoured by a wolf, which is a classic Father imago. Being devoured is equivalent to be raped.

 

Now why Mr. Landau and a significant portion of the elitists who dominate the country are suddenly possessed by this strange fantasy? After all, we are not dealing with a group of little Oedipal girls.

 

I agree with Caroline Glick on every point in her article. However, I am not sure that the fantasy of being raped is the exclusive domain of “elitists” and newspaper editors. My view, as I have expressed before, is that “elitists”, intellectuals, and journalist are the delegate of the people to give voice to what essentially are the people’s unconscious needs.

 

They are narcissist member of society, who ride the wave of populist desires, in order to feel important, and in order to gratify their own inflated Ego. If it were not so – and if they were giving expression exclusively to their own personal fantasies -, they would not find any audience, and would promptly be dismissed from the centre of popular attention. Glick would not have anyone to argue with in the first place.

 

So, this fantasy is indeed shared by a relevant segment of the population. I don’t know whether they are the majority, but unfortunately they are strong enough to dictate the behaviour of the government and its policy. A relevant part of the Israelis share the masochistic fantasy of being raped by a strong parental imago: America – the Wolf.

 

Back in April 2000, I analyzed the Israeli frenzy for peace - at that time the issue on the agenda was the withdrawal from Lebanon and the “peace talks” with Syria- and I related it to the Israeli collective sense of guilt. At that time I associated the sense of guilt to Rabin’s assassination.

 

As I have shown in The Assassination of Rabin and its Consequences for the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict , Rabin was interpreted by the collective unconscious as a Father imago, because he endeavored to inhibit the people from possessing the whole body of the Mother, i.e. the Promised Land[1]. He intended to give back parts of the Promised Land, and therefore was assassinated.

 

Since the assassination was acted out with the purpose of maintaining the libidinal object (the Land), the sense of guilt for the murderous act induced the renunciation of the very object which provoked the deed. I quote from the article:

 

And now the second stage: the guilt induced renunciation of the female body [The Promised Land]. 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 [2]

 

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 to erase the sense of guilt by delivering to the Arabs the most land possible

[…] the Israeli Government had been delegated by the people to erase Guilt, regardless of  political, security, strategic or other considerations.

 

We can see that in the seven years which elapsed nothing has changed. There was only a further escalation in the intensity of the sense of guilt and in the urge to get rid of the Land.

 

In A Tale of Two Cities. The Unfolding of the Sense of Guilt in Judaism and in the West I hinted that the collective sense of guilt was not generated in its core by Rabin’s assassination – although was greatly exacerbated by it – but germinated on the ground of Israel’s own success. There is no contradiction because every success is unconsciously perceived as an overtaking of the Father and a possession of the Mother.

 

On Dec 20, 2007, Glick wrote another brilliant article Column One: The triumph of legal defeatism on the strange compulsive need of the Israelis and the Israeli army to consult lawyers at every step, to the point of seriously inhibiting their own capability of action and reaction. The result is paralysis and serious threat to Israel security. To consult lawyers at every step, and to feel insecure regarding the very legality of one’s own right to survival, are symptomatic of a compounding sense of guilt.

 

Now, how happened to be that a people struck by a compounding sense of guilt became possessed by fantasies of being raped by a paternal image? How Israel became Little Red Riding Hood?

 

How became that erections became contractions and masculinity became femininity. How activity became passivity and fantasies of raping became fantasies of being raped?

 

The Israeli of the 1967 Five Days War was a macho male, possessed only by his own masculinity. There were – at that time – no limitations to his narcissistic feeling. He was a male in the full satisfaction of his erections. He conquered and possessed the Promised Land, which - as we already know - represents the body of the Mother. No journalist or editor would - at that time – think of expressing the desire of being raped, because the national mood was then to rape, and not to be raped.

 

The “elitists” of that time roared into the air the collective right to maintain the national erection on the Land and her inhabitants. The ruling trio Golda – Galili – Dayan (anybody remember them? I am old enough and hopefully wise enough not to forget) represented the rock against which all the hostile wave of the Gentiles’ pressure – foes and friends – shattered in vain.

 

Golda even declared that there is not such a thing as “the Palestinian people”.

Moshe Dayan, the Hero by the heroic patch (like the pirates of our childhood fantasies) embodied the national myth of the young successful and defiant hero.

 

However, as I have sustained in A Tale of Two Cities. The Unfolding of the Sense of Guilt in Judaism and in the West , too much success breeds the seeds of the sense of guilt.

Failure after an outstanding success confirms even more that the former success was undue and sinful, and now must be atoned for.

 

Success now becomes unsustainable, and the subject is unconsciously driven into inducing himself into failure. The last Lebanon war against the Hizbullah is an amazing instance of how success is castrated from reaping its awards.

As I have sustained in From the Invasion of Lebanon to the Charges of Rape the war was unconsciously interpreted as the rape of a woman. As such it must be self – punished.

 

A child who feels guilty for his erections experiences contractions. His penis contracts, and in his fantasy transforms into a vagina.

The change of psycho – sexual position from male to female and from active erections into passive contractions is a mechanism of defense against the oppressive sense of guilt . It may occur to Oedipal boys who cannot sustain the burden of their own masculinity, because of a hostile environment. Parental abuse (or other), may induce him into interpreting his own erections as sinful. By changing sexual position he feels that he is appeasing the parental instances.

 

As Freud and Abraham have shown, the little child makes an interpretation of sexual intercourse as an aggressive act of castration inflicted on the female by the male. Heterosexual intercourse is interpreted as a violent act through which the female loses her penis, she is castrated, and that is the precondition for her femininity[3]. Moreover, in our unconscious: "The female genital is looked upon as a wound, and as such it represents an effect of castration" [4].

 

Castration is unconsciously perceived as being the “right” punishment for a rapist.

Now that the boy has castrated himself, he no longer fantasies to be the rapist (genital sadistic level), but fantasies to be raped, just like his female counterpart. It is a classical inversion of the libidinal flow. In the same condensation, he feels to be appeasing the parental instance ( his own Super -Ego). He represses his own sense of guilt, and discharges the libidinal flow in a passive feminine mode.

 

Now we can understand why Mr. Landau have implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted "to be raped" and that it would be like a "wet dream" for him to see this happen.

 

Like Little Red Riding Hood he has “wet dreams” of being “devoured” by the wolf. Let’ us hope that the wolf prefers other more agreeable dishes.