Home

About IsraCampus

Search

עברית

   Ben Gurion U

   Hebrew U

   Tel Aviv U

   U of Haifa

   Other Schools

    A-C

    D-G

    H-K

    L-N

    O-R

    S-V

    W-Z

Israeli Academic Extremism

Israeli Academic Extremists outside Israel

Anti-Israel Petitions Signed by Israeli Academics

ALEF Watch

Van-Leer Watch

How to Complain

Contact Us

Editorial Article

The anti-Israel Cult of Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of the University of Haifa

By Lee Kaplan, www.isracampus.org.il

Benjamin Beit- Hallahmi is Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa and has written a series of books and articles painting Israel as an evil imperialist militarist society. Compared to most other anti-Israel Israel academics, Beit-Hallahmi has produced academic papers in his field and has published research and books beyond works sponsored or paid for by the PLO or European Union. His specialty is in the study of cults.

But is Beit-Hallahmi a member of a cult himself, a cult of anti-Israel activists?

Apparently he is.

Hallahmi’s book, The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, is in fact a conspiracy theory in which Israel allegedly sold arms to Central America and South Africa, as well as to the Shah’s Iran wherein Beit-Hallahmi suggests Israel, as an oppressive colonialist enterprise, sought to maintain colonization in those other parts of the world as a way to protect its own colonialism of Arab lands.

Yawn….

This notion of democracies like America, Britain and Israel shoring up dictatorships at the expense of indigenous populations to keep some strategically important countries from falling to Soviet imperialism and communist rule was a main staple of the pro-Soviet Left’s propaganda campaign as the USSR conducted its own colonialist expansion during the Cold War.

Hallahmi does have a point about dealing with less-than-savory governments. But, as a psychologist, one would expect him to appreciate that his “anti-imperialist” book fails to take into consideration that if Israel did not find its allies where it could during the Cold War, it ultimately would have been left  with none at all. The psychological malady of narcissism affects Ben Hallahmi because he focuses on the bad acts Israel’s armaments industry may have done in one period, one wart if you will, while ignoring the big picture (a common psychological trait of anti-Israel activists, by the way). The Soviets were busy with an arms race back then and Israel as a loyal US ally was in Soviet crosshairs as Arab dictators were also provided weapons to wipe out the Jews.

Is Israel, let alone the rest of the world, better off with the mullahs in charge in Iran instead of the Shah? Some might call Hallahmi’s psychological perspective delusional.

Israel’s arms industry needed cash revenues to grow rapidly enough to fund expansion given a growing menace from the surrounding Arab states. For example, It was during this time Israel developed the Kfir jetfighter to allow the country more independence from the US and France who even today can be erratic allies. An absurdity is the US requires even today that Israel not upgrade its jetfighters it buys from the US so as to put them on a par with those sold the Saudis and the UAE.

So Israel was not a “lamp unto the nations” because of some clients that it sold weapons to? Well, had Israel not supplied those countries weapons, they could have fallen into the Soviet sphere that sought as part of its goals the destruction of the Jewish state. So one could argue that just as America supported some unsavory characters, the long term security of the state may have required it of Israel. Maybe Hallahmi wouldn’t be able to enjoy his comfy office at the University of Haifa today had it not been done.

Israel may be God’s country, but it doesn’t live in a vacuum. That is a trait of people who live in cults, like the International Solidarity Movement that advocates lying as an acceptable tactic to bringing down the Jewish state and ultimately the capitalist West “by any means necessary.” One would expect Hallahmi to expose the Palestinian-led and created ISM to the Israeli government to shut them down. Instead, Hallahmi could be a member. Oddly enough, one of the US leaders of the ISM, Jess Ghannam is a Ph.D in psychology at the University of San Francisco. Born in the USA, he rails about Sabras living on “his land” and has done so since his undergraduate days as a campus radical at the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley and supports Hamas as a leader of Al Awda. Ghannam even claims it was the Jews who drove the Arabs into the sea in 1948.

There’s something psychologically strange about psychologists who can’t see the world beyond their own desired goals. And if that goal happens to be the end of the Jewish state, well, then…whatever it takes. “Colonialism” on a college campus is a buzz word these days, even though Israel in no way is a colony of anybody, nor are the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Meanwhile, just keep spouting the same lie over and over.

It is this same narrow group think that Hallahmi the anti-cultist adheres to that makes his background as a psychologist all the more puzzling. He belongs to the anti-Israel cult that knows neither logic nor fairness, something one in his position should register in himself.

The PLO, that today is building a state next door thanks to Israel’s help and with Israel’s participation, is ultimately a beneficiary of that policy by the US of supporting certain “bastards” with a long term goal and idea in the offing since the American democracy pays for another constitution based on Sharia Law for a 23rd fledgling Arab state that will not be truly democratic but imitate present day Iran and Saudi Arabia. And it is this continuance of Pan-Arab and Muslim cultism surrounded around making the areas of Judea and Samaria and Gaza ultimately free of Jews and subject to the Islamic Law. The Muslims and their mantra of dismantling Israel is a far greater cult than anything Hallahmi can criticize of the Jews and Israel for practicing economic and military defense in an imperfect world.

In his book, Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel, Beit-Hallahmi goes beyond the anti-Israeli academics deconstruction of history and he even denies that Jews can legitimately claim to be a nation. Here, the anti-cultist joins the cult of the Arab League, the communists, and the anti-Semites to destroy Israel by not even acknowledging a seminal right to exist (but exist it does). Using Nazi terminology, Hallahmi claims Zionism is a form of racism, and labels it Herrenvolk (the Nazi term for the “”master race”) ideology. He, of course, alludes to the Nazis, making comparisons with Zionism or Jewish determination and Nazism, just like the ISM and their Arab handlers.

Well, I’ve got a Nazi term for Hallahmi myself: judenrein. It means “Jew-free” and it is the Arab mantra even in Gaza today toward Israel next door now that Gaza thanks to Jewish psychological introspection and guilt is judenrein. For 2,000 years Jews have always said “Next year in Jerusalem” during Pesach and Chanukah but Hallahmi denies they even have the same right to determination that 22 Arab Muslim states enjoy.

It is the Arabs who buy Mein Kampf in droves and who sport Nazi symbols except when they are accusing the Jews of being Nazis and committing “genocide” for western world propaganda consumption enhanced by pompous psychologists at Israeli universities who want to impress the far-Left crowd of their American colleagues abroad.

Judaism is an idea, not a race. Jews come in many races I am sure Hallahmi knows. As a psychologist he certainly knows how human beings set up for themselves their place in the world. Apparently, his is not as a member of an identifying group opposed by some “other,” so he need not fear a psychologically-indoctrinated-with-Jew-hatred Arab entering his home to blow his children’s brains out. It’s s “I’m OK-Your OK” in the ivory towers of academe, you see.

He’s against a Jewish state. Jews are a cult. He’s an expert on cults. Arabs aren’t a cult that raises their children to want to kill, that treat their women and children as chattel and won’t let the Jews live next door in peace. Well, maybe he does think so, but the reality of their being that way is irrelevant because those pesky Jews think they are better than the Arabs for trying to set an example for mankind. How dare they? If psychologically fit world takes away the Jews’ right to self-determination after 2,000 years of persecution Arabs will live in universal brotherly love with them and we can all have coffee together at the campus coffee house.

Maybe this guy should see a shrink?

========================================

Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.org are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.org