Same procedure as last year - and the last 2000 years

Utmärkt inlägg.Man kan inte låta bli att citera den israeliske psykoanalitiker Shalit. Israel som världens jude.

Israel and the Jew - the ‘Similar Other’?

Erel Shalit

Wickard von Bredow – A Hero in Dark Times

How easy is it not to look back all these decades into the mirror of history, at all those common Germans, Jews and Europeans and wonder, how come they did they not see?

For far too many years after the Shoah, many Jews and especially Israelis, arrogantly looked down at their brethren who had, so it seemed, submissively been brought “like sheep to the slaughterhouse,” victims not only to ineffable brutality and demonizing projection, but also to systematic deceit – and then, after the catastrophe, to the silence of suppression and denial, and the words and the voices of depreciation.

And the common German, in a wide spectrum from willing collaborator to frightened compliant, had he not been infected by years of indoctrination and selective information? When I myself look into the mirror, I must shamefully admit that, perhaps, I may have wished Chamberlain success in his mission of appeasement. Thus, I cannot blame the passively collaborating German, and can only admire and feel a deep love for those who dared to see and those that dared to act.

Wickard von Bredow is to me the example of exceptional heroism: As County Officer (Landrat), he received the order, November 9, 1938, to burn down the synagogue in the East Prussian town of Shirwindt, just like all the synagogues in Germany were to be destroyed during the next few hours.Von Bredow put on his German Army uniform, said goodbye to his wife, and declared: “I am going to the synagogue to prevent one of the greatest crimes in my district.” He knew he risked his life and that he could be sent to a concentration camp, but added, “I have to do this.”

When the SA, SS and Party members arrived to put the synagogue on fire, he stood in front of the synagogue, loaded his revolver in front of the group, showing them that they could only get into the building over the dead body of the Landrat. The synagogue in Shirwindt was the only one in the district not destroyed.[1]

Would I have dared to trespass the prohibitions, for instance to buy from a Jewish store? I hope so, but the honesty that fears evoke, makes me wonder, were I to be a 1938 German, if I would not have looked the other way, avoiding the shame and the guilt gazing back at me in the storeowner’s eyes of shattered glass.

For the non-German European, and perhaps particularly for the northernmost neutral Swede, the situation seems infinitely easier. But the very simplicity of the matter complicates it infinitely. At respectful distance from the epicenter of dreadful battle, political drama and sudden upheaval, both thoughtful judgment, moral commitment and compassionate identification with the victims of injustice are conveniently at hand. However, that same geo-psychological distance may easily turn judgment into arrogance, morals into scapegoating, and identification into blindness – sometimes without sensing the necessity of looking into the mirror, oneself.

Enlightened Anti-Semitism

An anti-Semitic blood libel appeared in Sweden’s largest circulating newspaper, Aftonbladet, August 2009. We may shout ‘Gevalt!,’ but the article is, in fact, merely symptom of an illness that lingers, often unnoticeable, in the collective psyche. Periodically it seems to be in remission, at other times it flares up like an itching eczema. While efforts have been made to treat the illness, it seems deeply rooted in Europe’s cultural psyche, as even some of the reactions that followed have shown, however subtly. Simultaneously, it is important to mention the many examples of integrity and clarity of vision, such as exhibited by the Swedish Sydsvenskan, which was the first paper to react, bluntly calling the article anti-Semitic.

In the article, the author weaves a story of facts, rumours and lies, combining unrelated items that are linked together by the author’s prejudices and projections.[2] The unfolding corruption scandal in New Jersey, including organ trafficking, in which rabbis are involved, is linked to an event of a killed Palestinian in 1992 and an Israeli campaign to encourage organ donation, with the conclusion that the Israeli Defense Forces harvest organs by killing “the sons of the Palestinians.”

The responsible editor then claims the article is based on facts, even when the author confesses it relies on rumours, and the Palestinian family concerned denies having claimed theft of the killed son’s organs. The author, in a brilliant twist of prejudice-reinforcing self-affirmation, concludes that the criticism against him only confirms how right he must have been.[3] If met my silence, as some of those criticizing the vociferous Israeli response have recommended, I wonder if the author may not have taken that, as well, as proof of truth – and perhaps a sign of the Jewish/Israeli/Zionist conspiracy, silencing ‘inconvenient voices.’ The ‘inevitable’ conclusion, as stated by the newspaper, is a call for investigation. And so a mixture of rumours, lies and conspiracy becomes a shadowy projection of accusations, whereby the falsely accused (usually termed ‘scapegoat’), is guilty until proven innocent, in accordance with medieval decree.

The anti-Semitic structure and content of the article are visible, unless one is blinded by ignorance. The cultural editor of Aftonbladet (with a doctorate in history), did not know anti-Semitic blood libels of Jews killing Christian children, in order to steal their blood, existed. However, unawareness does not exonerate from blame, when behind the convenient garb of ‘criticism against Israel’ hides dishonesty and distortion.[4] For several years, Israel has been the target of anything from subtle misrepresentation to hideous distortions, falsifications and outright lies.

Willing Collaborators

At the one extreme, Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map, racing toward the bomb, and at the other end the question is asked, why the Palestinians should suffer the establishment of a Jewish state because of Europe’s Holocaust guilt? (as if Israel was created, and entitled to be created only because of the Shoah; questions are rarely raised as regards Jordan, founded in 1946 by the Hashemites, who, invited by the British, had recently arrived from the Arabian Peninsula.)

Hezbollah at Israel’s northern border, and Hamas in its south, are military and ideological allies of Ahmadinejad’s, equally intent on Israel’s destruction and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews, relentlessly targeting civilian Israeli population from within populated areas. And so the UNIFIL commander in South Lebanon speaks about Hezbollah as a welfare organization, and Human Rights Watch senior military analyst Marc Garlasco determines, in one of his many expert analyses, that an Israeli shell caused the death of a Palestinian family on Gaza beach, which makes big news (smaller news: it wasn’t Israel). While it does not implicate him as a Nazi, it remains somewhat uncanny that davka Garlasco of the HRW, the author of many mistaken reports and false accusations against Israel, is a compulsive collector of Nazi memorabilia.

Freedom of speech and respect for the other are invaluable democratic principles. But the delicate balance between them becomes striking, when the same major newspaper claims freedom to spurt out blood libels against the Jewish state, while imposing respectful self-restriction out of consideration for the sentiments of the other. For example, chief editor Anders Gerdin (yes yes, the very same Aftonbladet), expresses it thus, “There is no reason we print pictures (cartoons) that insult millions of Muslims worldwide... when dealing with such sensitive subjects, it has to be done in a well worked-through manner… we must not encourage those forces that consider us as cowards [not publishing the cartoons]…”[5]

With what ease does not Western media buy into the sometimes crude distortions, falsifications and false accusations, with which they are fed by anti-Israeli sources – such as the so called Jenin massacre, which never took place. Few will notice the following, seemingly peripheral fact: in the aftermath of the Aftonbladet blood libel, the prominent Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter publishes an article by Per Jönsson, criticizing not the blood libel, but what he calls Israel’s attack against Swedish authorities (and may it so be; I am no follower of FM Lieberman and his bully-ways).[6] However, this is the very same expert, who in insinuating language lies about how Jenin was nearly destroyed, intentionally using language referring to the Holocaust.[7] How strange that the massacre (or implied holocaust) did not take place!!!! Or, as a prominent Swiss journalist, who had been at place, told me at the time, “Everybody knows there was no massacre, but you can’t write that.”

Honestly - why not?

Compassion with the victim seems to depend less on whom the victim is, and rather on who the aggressor is (or is perceived to be). Thus, an Israeli rocket attack on, for example, a Palestinian family on Gaza beach (as mentioned above) will resound in every respectable media outlet – as it should! I recall the feelings of sadness many here in Israel felt, not only at that occasion. It takes time to prove the truth,, and as in several other instances, when Israel was found not to be the aggressor, truth had become obsolete. One may wonder if recent instances, such as a terrorist attack on a Palestinian wedding party, injuring more than 60, or the recent killings of many Palestinian civilians, the killing of an Imam and the destruction of a mosque in Gaza, would have gained warranted coverage and reasonable compassion with the victims – if only the aggressor were to have been Israel.

Examples of distortions, falsifications, lies, and the search for Israel as the purported aggressor are numerous. Denial and demonization cooperate in a way that has reached dangerous dimensions. When Israel stands on trial of false accusations, guilty until proven innocent, we deal with anti-Semitism.

The Similar Other

May it be that Israel and the Jew is “the similar other?” and thus serves as target of both classical anti-Semitism as well as its post-modern kin? For the classical anti-Semite and for the fundamentalist, the Jew is that Despised Other (the language of classical European and Muslim anti-Semitism are in many respects rather similar), who may come too close and thus infect (e.g. the Arians or the Muslims) with his evil, as in the following,

The Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring ... the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...’ These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption… (The Imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca; the same words of incitement are repeated daily in Gaza, Ramallah and innumerable mosques elsewhere.)

For the post-modern anti-Semite, however, the Jew and the Israeli may represent the detested similar in me, who is in conflict with that other, who warrants my respect and whom I desire to reach out to. I can project what I reject or detest in myself, such as colonialism, racism, militarism onto that ‘similar other,’ thus relieving myself from the need of self-scrutiny. This similar other is difficult to deal with psychologically; Freud spoke about the narcissism of minor differences. I have used the example of Jesus and Judas to illustrate the necessity of the archetypal traitor when something (such as a new gospel) develops. The need to emphasize the difference, requires the dark shadow to be split off, projected onto the otherwise threateningly similar other.[8]

Since post-modernism emphasizes multiple narratives rather than truth, the result may sometimes be a dangerous mixture of the freedom to lie and the respect of evil, rather than knowing right from wrong and honest compassion with the victim(s). Serious self-scrutiny would be advisable for all involved, before the deeds of evil will chase away the arrogance of comfort, and guilt and remorse will stare back at too many, too late.

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Dr. Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra’anana, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He is a past Director of the Community Mental Health Clinic, Shalvata Psychiatric Centre. Erel Shalit has served as officer in the IDF Medical Corps, and is a member of The Council for Peace and Security.

He is the author of Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path (2008), The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel (2004), and The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego (2002), Archetypal Images of the Life Cycle (forthcoming 2010).

Entries and chapters of his appear in The Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, in Tom Singer (ed.), Psyche and the City (forthcoming 2010), in Rob and Janet Henderson, Living With Jung: “Enterviews” With Jungian Analysts (forthcoming 2010), and elsewhere.

Articles of his have appeared in Quadrant, The Jung Journal: Psyche and Culture, Spring Journal, Political Psychology, Clinical Supervisor, Round Table Review, Jung Page, Midstream, Judisk Krönika, and other professional and cultural journals.

Dr. Shalit lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe and the United States.

Email: shalit@orange.net.il

Website: www.eshalit.com; http://erelshalit.blogspot.com