Jan.19, 2005

The following is my comment to the article "Whose Hatred?", by Zvi Bar'el. Published in: Ha'aretz, Date of issue: 3 December 2004

From a psychological point of view, the Jews are of paramount importance to the Western world. No matter if they kill them or they praise them, they are always an issue.
As the French say: "Parlez bien, parlez mal, mais parlez de moi".
This is a Western problem, not a Jewish one. As one once said: "If an anti - Semite runs after me with a knife, my problem is not anti - Semitism, my problem is the knife. Anti - Semitism is his problem". It is a complex and multilevel issue. Many books have been written on the issue, and no one could produce a satisfactory and complete explanation.
But the Palestinians are intensively puzzled by this question, because they have the sensation that the key to their failure and to Israeli success is in some hidden magic formula, they have to decode in order to succeed.
Anti-Semitism is a Western cultural feature, that was engendered in the encounter between the Greek - Roman - Christian culture, which is icon - worshipping and progressive, and Jewish culture, which is iconoclastic, puritanical and psycho - historically regressive (Cf. Mikis Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Anxiety).
To Western culture, the Jews unconsciously represent the threatening paternal imago, a repressed inhibiting instance. As I have sustained in Es e Io nello specchio di Apollo e di Dioniso, Western anti – Semitism is a mechanism of defense against the emergence of repressed contents that are perceived as psycho - sexually regressive: a phobia.
The Arabs are not anti - Semitic in the classic sense, because they are even more iconoclastic and regressive than the Jews. From a psychohistorical point of view, Judaism and Islam are more akin than Islam and Christianity: they both represent the rule of the Father and his repressive demands, while Western culture progressed on the sign of the supremacy of the Son and his victory on the paternal imago.
Paradoxically, from a cultural point of view, the only reason the Muslims have today for hating the Jews is that, in the last two centuries, the latter became more "westernized" than they had previously been. Israel is a Western country, democratic and sexually permissive, as the rest of the Western world, in contrast with the Islamic backward and repressive habitat. However, in trying to lure the West to their cause, the Palestinians cannot say, of course, that they hate Israel because it is too "westernized". Only lately, the most extremist Islamic fundamentalists, as Osama Bin Laden, have compared the Jews with Western Crusaders, and the late Ayatoulla Homainy had said that the road to Washington passes through Jerusalem. At this point, after the 11th of September, Islamic hatred for the West is running so high that Islamic fundamentalists don't mind to conceal the link between Israel and the rest of the West. To them, they represent the same sinful and corrupted culture, which must me destroyed by the martyrs of Allah, as God annihilated Sodom and Gomorra. I suppose that the Palestinians are not very pleased by their bluff having been called by their own associates. They would prefer a more "rationalistic" set of argumentations, directed at capturing the West's symphaty.

In the last century and until lately, with the political conflict between Arabs and Jews, the former, searching for a tool for contrasting and stinging Zionism, have being adopting anti - Semitic stances mimicked from classic Western anti-Semitism. However, as every mimicry, it is a forgery of a frame of mind they do not share (Cf. Thomas Schmidinger, Importing the protocols of the elders of Zion Anti-Semitism in Islamic societies).

As we are told in the article by Zvi Bar'el, the Arabs now protest against the use of the concept “anti – Semite” solely in relation to the Jews, and they demand that the idiom “anti – Semitism” would be applied also when we are dealing with anti – Arab sentiment. The reason is that they are “Semites” too.

Of course, it is ridiculous. The term anti – Semitism was coined by the anti – Semite agitator Wilhelm Marr, in 1879, to distinguish between old-time Jew-hatred and modern, political, ethnic, or racial opposition to the Jews, and since then it has only been used as “anti – Jewish” sentiment. The Nazis claimed to be anti – Semite, and not anti – Arabs. Furthermore, the Nazis displayed a high degree of sympathy with the Arab cause, as part of their anti – Semitic stance.

The Arab demand points at the high degree of mental confusion not only in the context of Jews – hatred, but also in the context of their own identity.

Since the Arabs are not anti-Semites themselves, to them anti-Semitism is a very mysterious affair that they do not understand, but that they feel being associated with Jewish success. So, they are envious even of not being the target of that strange incomprehensible hatred.

The archaic connection

Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and gave her the child, and sent her away. She departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. The water in the bottle was spent, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. (Gn. 21:14-15)

As we know, a child sometimes prefers to be mistreated than ignored. If there are two children in a family, and one is spanked and the other ignored, the outcome is that the ignored child will be envious of his abused sibling, and not the other way around. Parental abuse is unconsciously interpreted as a sign of "love" and attention.

Therefore, the Palestinians are envious that there is not a parallel phenomena called "Anti - Palestinianism", which would have made of them the center of attention. This is the real latent reason of their associating the Holocaust with their own Nackba. It is like saying: "If the Jews are the center of attention, because of the Holocaust, if we pretend to have been "Holocausted" too, we shall be the center of attention, too".

It is the old envy - affair between Ishmael, the elder son turned out by the father, and thrown into the desert, and Isaac, the beloved youngest son, preferred and sacrificed.
Much has been said in drawing a parallelism between the Holocaust and 'Akedat Izchak, (Isaac's sacrifice by Abraham).
The Jews have always felt "preferred", and therefore "sacrificed" on the altar by their own Father. It is virtue born from necessity. Being sacrificed, is unconsciously interpreted as being the purest and preferred son. After all, the ancients sacrificed to the gods only perfect animals, spotless and without any fault.

It is not by accident that the Arabs introduced a "little" change in the biblical story, and where is written that Abraham sacrificed Isaac, they changed it into "Abraham sacrificed Ishmael". So, since the very beginning, they have been envious of the biblical role of Isaac, their younger and preferred sibling, to the point of adopting the myth, but changing the details. They did not formulate a myth of their own. They only mimicked the biblical story written down by their younger and more successful brother, and just changed the name of the hero, from Isaac to Ishmael.

It is the archaic envy of the Bedouin, doomed to wander in the wilderness, vis a vis the semi - nomadic Hebrew, who at last succeeded in conquering the Land and in becoming a cultivator (Cf. Shepherds and Bedouins).

The Land is the symbol of the Mother's body. Therefore, they unconsciously interpret their status, as Bedouins, as if they had been hindered from the object of their desire. An archaic perception of abandonment by the father (Cf. Why Islamic Terror Now), condenses with that of maternal rejection, due to their status as nomadic people.

Two thousands years later, the Bedouin too, succeeded in conquering the seeded land. However - from a psychohistorical point of view - it was too late in order to change the internal sensation of being the "turned out son", abandoned by the father and thrown into the desert, and the Arabs psychically remained eternal nomads, envious of their youngest brother, who had made it in archaic times. It does not matter that in the meantime the Jews became the nomads, rejected from the Land (maternal body) and doomed to wander. The Reality Principle could nothing to replace the archaic perception of being the rejected and displaced. The borderline Bedouin installed himself on the Land. However, mentally he remained a nomad, for ever envious of the preferred sibling.

In the meantime narcissistic Isaac became the wandering Oedipus for ever harboring the lust for a once possessed Land.

While the Jews are perceived by the Arabs as the younger brother, they are considered by the Christians their elder brother (Cf. Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son. On Elder and Youngest Brothers), who is unconsciously perceived as the representative and the clone of the Father. At the same time, the Christians consider themselves the youngest preferred son, the new Israel.

Henceforth, Western anti – Semitism is the hatred for the repressed paternal instance, projected into the Jews.
The West fell victim to its own success, and now they dread the retaliation. They “made” it vis a vis the Jews, who are unconsciously perceived as being the representatives of the assassinated Father, and now they dread the defeated Father and his vengeance. It is a question of fear nurtured by sense of guilt.
Freud, in a letter to Romain Rolland, entitled "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis" (1936), has described very well the sensation of a son who makes it in surpassing his father: “It must be that a sense of guilt was attached to the satisfaction in having gone such a long way: there was something about it that was wrong, that from earliest times had been forbidden”.

The Arabs, on the other hand, consider the Jews the youngest preferred sibling. Henceforth, Islamic “anti – Semitism” is quite the opposite than its Western counterpart. It is not anxiety of retaliation. It is envy versus the younger sibling. They would love to be Holocausted, to be the center of attention, sacrificed by their father, as the preferred Isaac.

There is a parallelism between the infancy of the single and that of peoples. As Freud pointed: "I have taken as the basis of my whole position the existence of a collective mind, in which mental processes occur just as they do in the mind of an individual" *.
As it happens with the single, early events dictate the outcome of later life. The libido fixates in the earlier experiences, in this case of being rejected and abandoned.
The Arabs entered history so late, after thousands of years of civilization in the Middle East, that they could not stand the challenge of their predecessors. Instead of inheriting the Land, they eventually destroyed her. Where had been flourishing towns and fertile fields, now there are only dunes, and the archaeologists must guess where to start digging. The Arabs invalidated four thousands years of civilization in the Middle East. The object of the lust, the Land, symbol of the maternal body, could not be possessed at the genital level, through a mutual interaction, but only at the oral – sadistic level, through destruction of the very object of the lust.

The events of the last century are unconsciously interpreted by the Arabs as a repetition of their own archaic prehistory: the youngest sibling, Isaac, inherited the Land, while they feel as if the were left out in the cold. The Jews could build again the country because they already had in their historical past an experience of interaction with her at the genital level. They had only to reconnect to that early Weltanschauung. Building and cultivating the Land was part of their phylogenic experience.

Confronted with a more satisfactory way of psycho-sexual interaction with the object of the lust, the Arabs reacted with envy and an explosion of anger and frustration. Now they shout into the sky: "We are the youngest and preferred son! We own the Land! We have been sacrificed by our Father! We are the Semites!" They have even concocted a theory of being the real scions of the ancient Canaanites who had possessed the Land before the Hebrew conquest of the Promised Land in biblical times.

In this way, they perceive that they are de-legitimizing the Zionist argument that the Jews have rights on the Land because they had inhabited her before the Arab invasion of the 7th century. The Palestinians are trying to sting Zionism using a Zionist argument. Even that points to the inner insecurity and lack of self - confidence concerning their own rights.

It is all a cover up in order to conceal the fact of the matter that they are unable to possess the Land at the genital level. They are the ones who are not confident in their relation to the Land, otherwise they would not use a Zionist string of argumentation to enhance their claims. Now, in order to prove that they do possess her, they are acting out the most regressive level of psycho - sexual relation: committing suicide. Namely, possessing her at the intrauterine level.

They are so confused concerning their relation to the Land, that instead of using the only real argument which has any relevance to the matter, that they have indeed rights on the land simply because they are here now, they embezzle Isaac's historical arguments. It is a childish farce. Historical and psychological arguments are of no relevance at all, when we are dealing to the point with trials of resolving conflicts between peoples. Every side has always its own psychological arguments, based on alleged "historical facts", which are never relevant to the other side.

Therefore, it is not casual that the Palestinians became "professional victims", with no capability of mastering their own life into a better future. Being the victim became an instinctual drive. It is the only possible resolution to a phylogenic condition of abandonment. They boxed themselves into a libidinal fixation, which is preventing any constructive resolution on the basis of the Reality Principle. The outcome is hatred, frustration, and self - destruction, accompanied by confused arguments and the overwhelming feeling of always been victimized.

Paradoxically, they hate the West, and its permissive culture, much more than they hate the Jews (Cf. Why Islamic Terror Now).

However, as every manipulative borderline, they are ready to enlist even their worst enemies, in order to act out their self – induced abandonment.

On the other side of the equation, Western anti-Semitism is so strongly rooted, that the Europeans are unable to see that what is at stake in this particular historical junction is the survival of Western civilization vis a vis Islam. Selling Isaac for thirty pieces of silver will bring them no relief.
The Europeans are unable of refraining from Jews - hatred. It is an old passion, which must be acted out, even if it means shooting themselves in the foot.

* "Totem and Taboo", in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, The Hogart Press, London 1955, 1957 and 1962, vol. XIII, p.157.

Links:

Thomas Schmidinger, Importing the protocols of the elders of Zion Anti-Semitism in Islamic societies
Mikis Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Anxiety
Pinocchio: The Puberty Rite of a Puppet
Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son. On Elder and Youngest Brothers
Freud and Reik: Was Moses an Egyptian?
Maestri and Disciples
Why Islamic Terror Now

 
 
 

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