After five weeks of heavy fighting, in which Israel was close to achieve 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 is not its main purpose, but only the defusing of the Hizballah�s threat, the Government of Israel suddenly engaged in a hasty retreat, just like six years ago.

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 optimistic stance was premature.

Now the Israeli Government begged the UN, and especially the Europeans, to take over the responsibility for 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 with anti- Semitic connotations.
However, 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 Italian 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 so naive to believe that Italians on our northern border will solve the problem. Now, how such a thing might be happening?

The odd affair can be decoded only on the ground of Jewish sense of guilt.

D�Alema came to Jerusalem, and like a benevolent but just and apprehensive Father, scolded the Israelis. He reassured the naughty child that even if he criticizes Israel, he says what he says out of fatherly concern and true friendship: �We are true friends of Israel, but there is no worse publicity to Israel�s cause (read between the lines �our cause�, as if he did identify with Israel's struggle), than seeing little children been drawn out of the rubbles of bombarded buildings�. Now Israel, the scolded child, who was caught in his naughtiness, feels profound affection and gratitude for the paternal image having remained benevolent and affectionate, after all. The cement of the sense of guilt is the presumed affection of our Father. In order to be able to patronize us, first he had to reassure us of his affection, as is written: " One who spares the rod hates his son, But one who loves him is careful to discipline him." ( Prov. 13:24). The next step is to beg the Italians to take over the responsibility of the situation.

In �The Disproportionate Reaction of Israel, I wrote that �reaction� is to be unconsciously 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 May 23, 2000: "The Price of Guilt"). Now, Israel had an erection into somebody else woman, and as it happens to men oppressed by an overwhelming sense of guilt, the erection triggers the guilt, and the guilt transforms the erection into a 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 (genital contraction), the begging for d�Alema�s approval and understanding (pretty please - Daddy, I am a good child!!), 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 by product 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?

Images�Images�Images

Love and hatred, sympathy and aversion, likes and dislikes in human beings as in peoples and cultures are a consequence not of what people are or what they did, but of what they represent in the eyes of others. We all are different things to different peoples.

The West hates the Jews because in western culture they represent a paternal imago. The ambivalence hatred �admiration is projected into them.
In Christian mythology the Jews are depicted as the elder brother, who is unconsciously perceived as a clone of the Father (see the story of the Prodigal Son).

The Arabs hate the Jews because � on the contrary - they represent the younger more successful brother: Successful in achieving the Land (the Mother�s Body) whereas they were left out in the cold (see the biblical story of Isaac - Ishmael, which was adopted by the Arabs, too). The Arabs are not anti � Semitic in the western sense. The borderline abandoned Arabs are just envious of their younger narcissistic brother [1]. It is a siblings affair (cf. A Comment to "Whose Hatred" (Haaretz). On Western and Islamic Anti - Semitism).

The Jews hate themselves because, if everybody hate them, there must be something in it, after all. This is the logic of an abused child. He cannot reach the conclusion that if adults abuse him it is because he represents an image in their eyes. The obvious conclusion is that there is something bad in himself. The �something bad� is his own genital urge. So, if the Europeans tell to the Jews: �You are bad! You kill other peoples!�, the Israelis cannot grasp that they are told so because they represent an image in the eye of the beholder. They automatically make an unconscious interpretation that they are bad because of their instinctual need, namely their erection into Lebanon. The scolding triggers the sense of guilt, and now the Israelis contract, they reverse their erection, and they beg the Europeans to take over.
In the meantime the Reality Principle goes bananas.

How it happened, this time

However, once upon a time, it was different. It has not always been that way. Ben Gurion used to say: �It is not important what the Gentiles say, it is important what the Jews do�.
Now, no matter what we may think of such an arrogant declaration, it is a fact that if the Jews had not adopted that narcissistic defiant attitude, they would not have been able to gather the strength necessary to achieve their freedom and independence.
Only the narcissist has the chance to achieve his goals in a constructive, positive way. The borderline is only able to fall in a depressive state and to become a professional victim. To the Arabs, being victims and eternal refugees became a way of life. It retraces their phylogenetic experience of being nomads, eternally rejected into the desert, beyond the borders of the seeded land, as it was with Ishmael, who is their cultural hero. If they are able to gather strength, it does not lead to a constructive achievement, but to the destruction of their object and of themselves in the same condensation [2], like the oral sadistic baby, who cannot distinguish between subject and object. Acting out their libidinal need means destroying both: the maternal "bad breast" and themselves. Indeed, Islamic terrorism consists in a collective psycho-sexual regression into the oral sadistic (borderline disorder and - in the acute stage - psychotic paranoia) and intrauterine (schizoid - paranoid) stages, where they allucinate to meet their absent Father (see Why Islamic Terror Now).
We can see that if the Israelis so far have been able to win every war, it is not only because of their wits and technological superiority, but because a narcissist always has the upper hand on a borderline. To the latter, losing is a libidinal need, as winning is to the former.
So, what happened, this time? Why the contraction before the goal�s achievement?

Under the compulsion of the instinctual need, the libido fixates into early images. Because of the libidinal fixation, which is energy fixated into existential need � pleasure, peoples find themselves under the compulsion to repeat destructive patterns of behaviour. What triggers the compulsion to repeat early libidinal patterns of fixation is an archaic sense of guilt, activated by an actual event.
In The Assassination of Rabin and its Consequences for the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict, I made an interpretation that the actual event that triggered the sense of guilt and the contraction was the assassination of Rabin.
It seems that the Israelis have not yet been able to overcome the psychic consequences of that event. It becomes more and more evident that it represented a trauma, namely it was an event which blocked the progression of the libidinal flow, induced it into a regression, and now the Israelis are self � induced into contraction.
No more Ben Gurion�s dictum: �It is not important what the Gentiles say, it is important what the Jews do�. The trauma of Rabin�s assassination triggers a contraction whereas an instinctual need had triggered an erection.
Now d�Alema�s scolding and patronizing are enough to have the Israeli Government behaving like children searching for adults� approval and benevolence.

NOTES

[1] The Palestinians call the Israeli Independence Day �The Nackbah� (the Holocaust), mimicking the name the Jews give to their darkest historical occurrence. However, whilst the Jews call "Holocaust" the physical extermination of half the Jews of Europe, the Arabs use the same term to define the Israeli Independence Day, namely the birth of the Jewish state. Indeed, a little child perceives the birth of a sibling as a �Nackba�, namely a catastrophic occurrence.
To the Jews, the Holocaust is associated to their brothers� physical extermination, whilst to the Arabs is associated to a brother�s birth.

[2] It is worth mentioning what Ibn Khaldun says on the Arabs:

Arabs dominate only of the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. They pillage everything that they can take without fighting or taking risks, then flee to their refuge in the wilderness, and do not stand and do battle unless in self-defense. So when they encounter any difficulty or obstacle, they leave it alone and look for easier prey. And tribes well-fortified against them on the slopes of the hills escape their corruption and destruction, because they prefer not to climb hills, nor expend effort, nor take risks. Whereas plains, when they can reach them due to lack of protection and weakness of the state, are spoils for them and morsels for them to eat, which they will keep despoiling and raiding and conquering with ease until their people are defeated, then imitate them with mutual conflict and political decline, until their civilization is destroyed. And Allah is capable of their creation, and He is the One, the Victorious, and there is no other lord than Him. (Ibn Khaldun on the Arabs From Wikipedia)

Links:

The Assassination of Rabin and its Consequences for the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict
Shepherds and Bedouins
Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son. On Elder and Youngest Brothers

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