A defiant Margalit (before the jail sentence)
Archive of the Jerusalem Post
The Mary Magdalene of the Israeli Horde
And the man said, The woman whom
Now, I want to issue a statement: I am dealing with the issue only from the psychoanalytic - psychohistorical aspect, namely, how the events are being interpreted by the collective unconscious mind of the people. It is what psychohistorians call: GF (Group Fantasies).
Now, back to our psychohistorical endeavour.
thou didst give to be with me,
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat (Gen., 3:12)
In Myth and Guilt, Theodor Reik has interpreted the eating of the Tree of Knowledge as an acting out of the primal patricide and cannibalism on the body of the Father. As he has shown, for the ancients the trees were the primal divinities.
The story of Margalit Har Shefi
When I call Margalit Har Shefi: "The Mary Magdalene of the Horde", it has nothing to do with her personal life, nor with her personal morality, that are not under discussion in my paper. I am dealing exclusively with my interpretation of the unconscious contents that are dictating the collective acting out, and with the symbols activated by the events. The person or the persons are not the topic of my investigation.
I am using the name "harlot" as a psychoanalytic concept, in the context of the Freudian horde (Totem and Taboo IV:5, note 1) as a single female, or females, in the midst of a horde of males, and not as it is used in everyday life as a "woman by the dubious morality".
There is no doubt in my mind, that in the collective unconscious mind of the Israelis (GF), Margalit Har Shefi is perceived as the instigator of Rabin's assassination. Many say: "Yigal Amir pulled the trigger to boost his own image in her eyes". If it is true or not, it is not up to me to say, only his psychoanalyst can try to decode his unconscious motivations. As a psychohistorian, what is relevant to me is not the material truth, but the collective perception, namely, the Group Fantasy.
In the days before the murder, she had been very active and vociferous in expressing her political views against the Oslo agreement, and she reminded the cheerleader of a football game team, as cheeleaders are the mnemonic trace of the females inciting the brotherhood horde to fight.
However, she was not accused of being the instigator of the murder, because there was no evidence for supporting such an accusation. In a democratic country, no one can be sentenced on the grounds of perception and Group Fantasies, but only on the grounds of facts and evidence.
Therefore, she was accused of Knowing of the murderer's intentions but not reporting
In my opinion, the case against her is very weak. As her lawyers correctly pointed, even if she had heard Yigal Amir saying that he intended to kill Rabin, who would have taken seriously such a statement?
Henceforth, the Court ruled according to Group Fantasies of her having been the instigator, but since they could not sentence her on the grounds of the collective perception, they stated that she knew, but she did not tell, relating to Amir's testimony that he had uttered such a sentence in her presence.
An interesting detail. As reported by the Jerusalem Post:
President Moshe Katsav has criticized the nine-month prison sentence given to Margalit Har-Shefi last month. "Someone who has been sentenced for knowledge of a planned assassination attempt against the prime minister, and could have stopped it, deserves a 90-years term and not nine-months," Katsav asserted.
(http://www.usajewish.com/scripts/usaj/paper/Article.asp?ArticleID=1107)
However, the same President Katzav shortened her nine months jail term and released her, after she completed two-thirds of her sentence.
The only way of straightening the contradiction between someone who "deserves 90 years jail term", and is released after 60 days, is that the President did not believe that the sentence was justified. The accuse of "knowing and not reporting" did not stand, and the accuse of instigating the murder was not even formulated, because, in the absence of any evidence, it belongs to the field of psychoanalysis and psychohistory, and not to the field of Law enforcement. I believe that Theodor Reik was right when he warned in his book, The Unknown Murderer, against meddling psychoanalysis with Courts of Law.
The Biblical link
As we can see, the same extremists have made the Biblical connection, namely, they linked by association between the case of Margalit Har Shefi and the wandering of the Israelites in the desert.
In another paper, I have drawn a parallel between the Israelites pursuing the conquest of the Holy Land and the primal Freudian horde, which wandered in exile and was eager to possess the femal body (the Pomised Land)
The Israelites, whose wandering in the wilderness and conquest of the Promised Land (the Mother) are equivalent to the wandering in exile of the primal Brotherhood Horde, met a harlot, whose image unconscious significance can be decoded only with the key of Freud's Totem and Taboo: "...a youthful band of brothers living together
in forced celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single
female captive" (IV:5, note 1).
In the book of Joshuah, is written:
And they went, and came to the house of
a harlot named Rahav, and lodged there. And it was told the king of Yeriho,
saying, behold, there came men in here tonight of the children of Yisrael
to search out the country. And the king of Yeriho sent to Rahav, saying,
Bring forth the men that are come to thee, who are entered into thy house:
for they are come to search out all the country. And the woman took the
two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men to me, but I know
not from where they were: and it came to pass about the time of shutting
of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out; whither the men went
I know not: pursue after them quickly; for you shall overtake them (Jos.2:1-5). See Killing God. From the Assassination of Moses to the Murder of Rabin
In Christian tradition, the Harlot of the Horde is Mary Magdalene (see: Jesus and Mary Magdalene).
Both, Margalit Har Shefi and Mary Magdalene, openly displayed their hair; Magdalene's was long and fluent, and Margalit's was very much in evidence, with a curl always wind - swept before her eyes. For many months, that rebellious curl seemed to be her battle - flag.
To our unconscious, the association is so compelling that Margalit Har Shefi, after she was sentenced for her part (fantasized) in the murder of Rabin, gathered her hair, as a statement of modesty and of "not guilty of instigating male lust".
It seems that she, too, unconsciously shared the collective fantasy which brought her jail sentence.
Mary Magdalene, the cheerleader of the brotherhood horde, in which the Son finally dethroned the Father, is represented as repented, but eventually became a Saint.
Margalit Har Shefi, the cheerleader of a brotherhood horde, in which the Father always retains the preminence, denied the sin, but was sent to jail.
Caravaggio: Conversione della Maddalena (The Detroit Institute of Arts).
The painting is named "Maddalene's Conversion", namely, after her repentance (conversion) she gathered her hair.
Links:
The Assassination
of Rabin and its Consequences for the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict
