Israelis and ObamaHenry Siegman, former national director of the American Jewish Congress, in The New York Times: Polls indicate that President Obama enjoys the support of only 6 to 10 percent of the Israeli public... The reason for this unprecedented Israeli hostility toward an American president is a fear that President Obama is serious about ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza...
That is how Israel's government and people respond to any outside pressure for a peace agreement that demands Israel's conformity to international law and to UN resolutions that call for a return to the 1967 pre-conflict borders and reject unilateral changes to that border... An American president who addresses the Arab world and promises a fair and evenhanded approach to peacemaking is immediately seen by Israelis as anti-Israel.
The Israeli reaction to serious peacemaking efforts is nothing less than pathological -- the consequence of an inability to adjust to the Jewish people's reentry into history with a state of their own following 2,000 years of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination by a Jewish right-wing extremist is being remembered this week in Israel, told Israelis at his inauguration in 1992 that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's message that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust... is unfortunately still a more comforting message...
Ida Chernus, Truthout: Pathological feelings of fear, weakness and victimization are comforting? How can that be? For starters, they automatically put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame the weak victims for the violence? All the trouble, it seems, is started by 'the other side.'...
And if all the trouble is started by the other side, then all the fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and victimization seem to prove that 'We're moral.' Obviously, it's our enemies who are immoral and thus to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no reason even to consider changing any of their policies or behaviors...
The pathology is deeply rooted in Israeli life. It goes back to the very beginnings of the Zionist movement. And it's a terribly complicated syndrome... It also involves a sense of shame, both countered by pride in acts of (often violent) strength.
To understand, however, is not to forgive. Regardless of what pathological traits may explain Israel's resistance to peace, they should not be allowed to block a resolution of the conflict, which virtually the whole world now demands.
As Henry Siegman rightly concludes, 'the conflict continues because US presidents -- and to a far greater extent, members of the US Congress -- have accommodated a pathology that only be cured by its defiance.'
Related:
The Independent: Must Jews always see themselves as victims?
