Gilad Atzmon - Sabra, Shatila and Collective Amnesia | Palestine Think Tank

In his review of the film Waltzing with Bashir Gilad Atzmon writes:

The film is a smashing success in Israel. The Israelis love to weep collectively, and to express regret for the Christian Phalangists who killed on their behalf. They apparently come out of the film saying, 'Only here, in our wonderful free country, can we confront our past so bravely.'

Gilad adds later in the review:

Following the screening at the London Jewish Film Festival, there was a short Q & A session with David Polonsky, the art director of the film. I asked him a simple question:

"If the Israelis find it so difficult to remember what happened to them just 26 years ago, how is it that every Israeli remembers exactly what happened in Europe between 1942 and 1944?"

Surprisingly enough, in spite of the fact that this was a Jewish gathering and my question was rather provocative, no-one in the room exhibited any manifested rage. I assume that Jews, once left to themselves, happen to ask many questions they would avoid engaging in, in an open public discussion. However, Polonsky couldn't really provide an answer. This is more than understandable.

The film however offers two possible answers, both provided by Folman's psychologist friend. The memory is a construction, it has little to do with reality, says the psychologist. Apparently, Israeli and Jewish institutions, as well as individuals, are very productive in constructing and manufacturing a personal and collective memory of Jewish suffering. Suffering inflicted by Jews, on the other hand, is rather repressed in the contemporary Israeli and Jewish culture.

Later in the film, the same psychologist suggests that Folman's amnesia may have been the outcome of his personal engagement with the Holocaust. 'You were engaged with the massacre a long time before it happened, through your parents' Auschwitz memory.' To a certain extent, this insight resolves Folman's quest. His repression started well before Sabra and Shatila.

Once again, we learn that Jewish Post-Traumatic Stress is actually a Pre-Traumatic Stress disorder.

The Jewish and Israeli mindset is an institutional preparation for a tragedy still to take place.

In a previous paper dealing with Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I defined the mental state as follows:

"Within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the fantasy of terror is focussed is itself becoming grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction.”

Gilad's hypothesis explains a lot about modern Jewish culture especially with regard to the total refusal of modern Jews to accept responsibility for the crimes that like the Holoexaleipsis, Holodomor and Holosphage grow out of Jewish politics.

Gilad's article might have been improved by the addition of a discussion of self-fulfilling prophesies in connection with Jewish behavior that inspires hatred of Jews, but over all it is well worth reading.

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