The Emotional Violence of Israel Advocacy

by Karin Friedemann with Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

While I prefer to look at the political economics of Zionism, my wife tends to analyze the psychology of Zionists. She recently put up a blog entry entitled The Emotional Violence of Jewish Advocacy, which generated a sizable discussion on her blog. I wanted to link to it, but I have problems with texts that use the word like as a subordinating conjunction and felt obligated to correct some of the writing. At this point the new version probably does not completely reflect all of Karin's ideas about her subject, and I have posted it here with this link back to the original document.


Part 1

Gideon Levy a Ha’aretz columnist recently asked: “If Israelis were so sure of the rightness of their cause, why do they display such violent intolerance toward everyone who tries to make a different case?”

In "Survival Instinct or Jewish Paranoia?" my favorite shrink, ex-Israeli Avigail Barbanel writes

The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this? Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed? If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?

Americans appear to be in a kind of an abusive marriage situation with Israel. Because they assume love and friendship are present in the relationship, they collectively in the role of the abused partner keep feeling guilt, act hyper-responsible, and try even harder to please the abuser.

Many Americans maintain friendships with pro-Israel Jews and simply decide not to discuss politics; however, such relationships are based in emotional blackmail because if an American non-Jew were to mention Israeli or Jewish-American genocidalism, the relationship would be over. (See also AT THE END OF AN ERA: A Meditation on Ecumenism, Exile and Gratitude by Marc Ellis.)

I was just reflecting on the Israel advocacy techniques that use emotional violence to shut down discussion about Jewish destructive behavior patterns or the State of Israel. Because arguments of tribal solidarity generally suffice in manipulating Jews, defenders of Israel generally reserve the most psychologically abusive tactics for Gentiles. Sometimes Israel advocates even double team in a good cop-bad cop routine, in which soft and hard Zionist groups gang up on someone to try to make the person feel ashamed for their alleged antisemitism. (Tikkun and the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council have in the past worked together to stymie the Somerville Divestment Project.)

A Gentile in America is raised from childhood to accept an abnormally heavy sense of personal responsibility for a carefully limited class of historical wrongs

• that were committed either by the USA or by Gentiles and
• whose importance is directly proportional to the potential for conferring moral authority upon Jews.

Such an upbringing results in a neurotic personality, who is always feeling guilty, and thus is too weak to stand up to Zionist criminal behavior and the comical, obviously non-factual Zionist ideology.

Jewish day schools inflict second- and third-hand post traumatic stress on their students via a demonstrably decontextualized Holocaust narrative often taught in conjunction with a false pogrom and persecution version of Jewish history

Not only do Jews in America feel socially empowered by this inculcated persecution complex to justify their reflexive and reactionary group solidarity with Zionist barbarism, but they actually use this historically very problematic victimology to rationalize their participation in group behavior that is deliberately manipulative and abusive for the purpose of punishing activists working for human equality and justice.

Over the years, US Jews have become increasingly nutty because of the cognitive disconnect between

• their self-image as progressive liberals,
• news reports of ever more heinous Zionist atrocities, and
• the Manichean pablum with which Israel Lobbyists (really members of the Zionist intelligentsia^*) are filling their brains so that they can convince themselves of their righteousness.

In the current propaganda disseminated by Zionist intellectuals, the State of Israel has ex post facto right to exist as well as complete license to rob and to kill Palestinians and their supporters because of the increasing power and authority of the Hamas organization among Palestinians.

Such a rationalization for Jewish Zionist murderousness shows how much basic understanding of causality has eroded among US Jews.

Hamas came into being relatively recently as a completely legitimate reaction (according to Nuremberg Law) to Zionist depredations and increasing crimes against humanity.

As Zionists have slaughtered more and more Palestinians, American Gentiles have had to face

• both deranged reactions to self-induced fantasies about mythic Jewish traumas of the distant past and also
• increasing deceit and arrogance from American Jews inculcated with a sense of moral entitlement since childhood.

Even in situations where the issue of Zionism is not overt, individual American Jews and American Jewish groups coordinate among themselves to enervate the Gentile sense of ethics and to destroy active or even merely potential Israel critics. This deliberate, wicked, premeditated behavior, which includes wrecking careers and interfering with their social relationships, is motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury.

It's impossible to cure Jews of Zionism without first neutralizing the Zionist intelligentsia. Not only do mainstream gullible Jews and their dishrag friends fail to fact-check claims about Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, but they naively believe anything racist against Muslims

• even if the source is someone as disloyal to the United States Constitution as Charles Jacobs formerly of the David Project and CAMERA or
• even if psychotic racist freaks at Aish HaTorah/HonestReporting generated the material.

American Jews tend to enforce blind conformity by bullying and shaming people into agreeing with a bogus sham written by a Polish immigrant funded indirectly by US taxpayers whose money was laundered through the JCRC and other Jewish 501(c)(3) organizations in probable violation of the US tax code. Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?

So many Gentiles fall into this trap and start doing the work of the Zionists by attacking people if they deviate from political correctness. If we could focus on the emotional violence of Israel advocacy techniques we might be able to empower Gentiles to stand up to the psycho Zionists without enduring quite as much emotional pain.

The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering.

When a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against deeply entrenched Pavlovian conditioning in a huge battle against his "inner Jewish censor" that makes him feel ethically inadequate and intimidated. Yet the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews.

The world needs to intervene both to free Jews from their inner darkness and also to save the Palestinians from racist murderous Jewish genocidalism.

Intervention involves convincing world leaders to do the right thing -- normally a difficult task in this case exacerbated by increasing Zionist influence and power in the West.

Grassroots activists without access to world leaders can be effective by dealing with Zionist Jews locally -- especially those maintaining the critical command and control structures of organized racism at the community level.

Forcing prosecution of Zionist organizations and their leadership will involve a long term effort to convince the establishment to define Zionism as a criminal ideology just like German Nazism.

Meanwhile, ordinary people can wear down ordinary Jews and their leadership by engaging them in arguments, and so on. The nicey nice "interfaith dialogue" routine is not working to help the situation as it just teaches Gentiles to be friends with Jews by never mentioning Israel's crimes against humanity.

One occasionally effective path for helping Jewish friends snap out of their ideological programming is simply to state the facts over and over again.

In my experience dealing with a Jewish narcissist is always a painful experience, and yet - as with a child molester - you have to intervene. If a person is walking around believing lies that enable violent crime, you would be a BAD person not to mention it to them.

If the Zionists on the local level could be made to feel a bit less comfortable with their ideology, and if they were robbed of the freedom that comes with privacy and non-discussion, American hospitality to Zionism could change very quickly.

Peace-seeking Israeli Jews often blame American Jews and the Diaspora lobby groups that raise money for hate propaganda and for campaigns to elect war criminals in Israel and so on. Getting rid of Israel would not solve the problem of this Jewish international crime network. If they lost Israel they would just find something else to mess up. American Jews are already arming the rebels in Darfur now.

Something has to be done to break the spell of hypnosis that these Israel advocacy organizations have put on the local Jews and their intellectually deficient lackeys. Discrediting the people who are spreading Israeli propaganda to the American public is absolutely paramount.

Part 2

I can't express how much more at peace I feel since I decided not to engage Zionists as friends anymore, but to treat them just as people treat any other members of racist criminal organizations like the KKK. I consider a Zionist anyone who believes that Israel must exist as a Jewish State, especially if they are emotional about the issue, because that means they believe Jews have a right to steal from non-Jews, and they believe Jews have more rights than others, which is an indefensible position to maintain.

In the past it was always the other way around. I mention Palestinians, and Jewish friends would act as if I did something bad and not talk to me for some months or years. I used to feel very hurt because I was not trying to offend them. I had actually spoken politely to them. From now on I'm just ignoring them.

Many people deal with Zionists by making light talk and never discuss politics, but I think we should stop doing that since it normalizes support for racist genocide.

Many Zionists don't call themselves Zionists, but to me a Zionist is someone who would deny Palestinians equal rights in order for the Jews to keep what they stole and call it Israel. Because they are very brainwashed, it's usually not useful arguing with them.

Jewish organizations and synagogues teach classes in linguistic martial arts tactics (how to confuse your opponent etc.) to deflect blame from Jews and Israel. It's extremely dishonest and manipulative.

One such organization specializing both in the teaching of these Israel Advocacy techniques and also in the dissemination of Islamophobic misinformation to the public is the David Project, which openly declares its mission to diminish the impact of Israel's detractors.

Some Zionists are simply ignorant and can be educated if they are willing to listen to arguments based in American ideas of equal rights and as long as they ask questions in a polite way, but the vast majority act manipulatively and do everything to prevent a normal discussion on Jews/Israel. I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary.

Most of the Zionists claim to want a Palestinian State side by side an Israeli state, but as Israel Shamir points out in his book, Flowers of Galilee, it's a political maneuver: a bluff. They are simply taking advantage of your good faith to keep you engaged, to give Israel more time to steal more land.

Nowadays I simply point out that even if the Jews just stole half of Palestine instead of the whole thing, it's still stealing, and they need to give it back and to let the refugees come home according to legal and ethical norms. The UN definition of "genocide" says destroying a people "in whole or in part." Thus even if Zionists just took part of the land, it's still considered genocide.

The two-state Zionists show their true colors when the issue is cutting off US funding to Israel. They are very attached to the idea of a racist Jewish apartheid state whose expenses are born by non-Jews. If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state, they become very angry and start using bullying tactics unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or attempt to destroy your career or social status through character assassination.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is a good example of this type of racist. He believes that Jews need to take care of the Palestinians and teach them how to become civilized. He considers stealing Palestinian land as "affirmative action for Jews."

Practically all Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 (or more) years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" victimization. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the cognitive disconnect between their belief in Jewish righteousness and the reality of Zionist crimes against humanity by developing various forms of functional and compartmentalized psychotic behaviors or disorders including schizophrenia and paranoia. In some cases where the psychosis becomes particularly severe, the compartmentalization breaks down and a deranged Jew may fake an anti-Semitic incident. In other cases, some extremely paranoid psychotic individuals remain functional and rise very high in the Jewish communal hierarchy. (Abraham Foxman of the ADL is probably an example.)

A few Zionists are a good deal more in touch with reality than Foxman, Alan Dershowitz, Larry Summers or Marty Peretz. If you say, "You stole their country," they just say, "Yeah, so? And what are you going to do about it?" I'm actually more willing to deal with such sociopathic Zionists because at least they are honest, and this does leave some room for discussion. But why? Just as Americans are not required to support Israel, we are not obliged to interact with racists in our daily lives.

Note

^* In standard parlance lobbyists try to influence others on behalf of a special interest. The intelligentsia acts as the vanguard in mobilizing some part of society to serve a cause. Sphere: Related Content