IsraCampus.org

" It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." James Baldwin (1924–87), U.S. author. The Price of the Ticket, "No Name in the Street" (1972; repr. 1985).

Israel's Anti-Israel Israeli Academics: A Case Study in Malignant Ignorance

Bearing witness to the malignant extremist-leftist lies so prevalent in Israel's academic environment has compelled me to offer this commentary, using the astoundingly malicious Micah Leshem email ("Israel's right to be racist"; 22 March 2007). My silence must be broken as decades of observation and empirical experience with extremist-leftist propaganda, its consequences, and transmission of such mean-spirited self-contempt has negatively impacted most Israeli students. There is a cure; it is called reality testing and reassertion that facts of history cannot be revised or distorted for the convenience of a dastardly agenda. [See The Authoritarian Personality, 1950; R.Nevitt Sanford et al] This psychology professor Leshem's subjective ranting is merely a virulent symptom of the instant expertise of the ignorant; Why someone trained in the necessity of retaining the subject-object split and rigorous methodology when examining important matters escapes me. I have devoted over 35 years to the study of human behavior and effects of war, propaganda and terror on human beings, especially children; only now do I feel I have earned the right to dispute the utter nonsense, unfounded conclusions and 'observations' of the anti-Israel (Zionist) extreme left.

Failed Attempt at Pathologization of Critics of the Extremist-Left

The pathology of the 'new extreme-left' has come to my attention on innumerable occasions, but especially when the extreme-left and the media misuse and hijack technical terms from my field of expertise, Clinical Psychology and Mass Psychology. You can imagine my exuberance when I noticed a piece written by a Psychologist from UH. Upon further examination, it turns out that this professor is an experimental psychologist whose area of expertise is the all-important study of rats' salt intake. However, I did not despair. Having also been trained in scientific methodology and the objective gathering of hypotheses and testing those hypotheses through replicatable observation and data gathering, I was excited to learn what facts this scientist came up with.

Of course, as we scientists know, any experimentation and observation do not prove anything but they can, to varying degrees of statistical significance, indicate or suggest what a particular reality might be, subject of course to further observation and corroboration. Leshem should definitely have limited his comments to his research on salt intake of laboratory rats; he has no conception of the psychology of human behavior and its aberrations, let alone the history of Jewish independence (Zionism).

Haifa Psychologist's Parading of Ignorance

"Facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored." A. Huxley

As I read this piece by my colleague Leshem, I remembered how difficult it was to be cooped up with rodents all day, week, year…insulated from the outside world. My undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology taught me that I needed to get out more and interact with real human beings; therefore, I switched to Clinical Psychology and had the good fortune to assist people from all walks of life, cultures, religions and experiences.

My inherent respect for each individual allowed me access to the inner world of those who had suffered tremendously for a myriad of reasons. However, I rarely generalized. This was out of respect for my traumatized patients and my sense of giving every person a fair chance, without judgment or preconceived templates.

With all due respect, Leshem's 'Israel's right to be racist' was an abject hate-filled diatribe of poorly written and researched slogans, a pure symptom of the lack of accountability, upholding of academic standards, and pathology that permeates Israeli academia. Not only was any semblance of objectivity or decency not present, but also it betrayed much more about the pathology of the Israeli extreme-left than it did about anything having to do with our daily reality in Israel. When it comes to Israel-bashing it is a worldwide free ride with no risk, accountability or need to back up the filth spewed; all with the falsification that the haters are taking great risks and exhibiting unparalleled courage by joining the world-wide "hate Israel" sideshow. [Katz and Sanford, Personal Discussion, 1990; Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962).].

The following examples are indicative of the abject hatred of Israel offered up by Leshem and his comrades: "…Zionism is the mother of all Dogmas." Catchy phrase but devoid of any reality or meaning other than singling out only Jewish people for the denial right of liberation, freedom and safe haven. One of the most damaging psychological mechanisms (displacement) used by Leshem and others is to utilize Israel as a reservoir of rage for the injustices of centuries of actual imperialism and colonialism: all anger that was never directed toward the sources gets dumped onto Israel only.

The kind of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice exemplified by Leshem and his ilk, especially regarding the dissemination of the pernicious lie that "Israel is a racist State", has led to an emotional contempt filled with primitive and irrational rage and pathological magnification of oft-delayed self-defense actions into grandiose genocidal conspiracy. All Israelis are to blame and all deserve to be murdered by learned (i.e. not racially inherent) Jew-hatred of the poor, innocent, victim Palestinians and their Arab and Persian, and, sadly, Jewish enablers.

Hatred For Hire

Oh yes, and there's a lot of mercenary cash and false glory available for parading Israel-hatred; so many have made a lucrative career spreading their mean-spirited self-righteous ignorance around the world to oh so many oh so willing vilification groups . These haters even distort the reality (inversion of reality) that they are taking up a neglected cause.

A neglected cause?! The poor Palestinians have been the recipient of more money (the greatest welfare fraud in human history; UNWRA, ad nauseum ) than any other group in history, have received more international press coverage than all other world hot spots and real refugees combined (like the ongoing genocide in Sudan). Yet extremist-left apologists get added aggrandizement for 'speaking for those with no voice' and their abject neglect of Israeli and other victims of the best financed and organized terror death squads in history. Too bad no one speaks for our dead and maimed or our 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries who lost EVERYTHING.

Reality Need Not Intrude on the Lies: Cognitive Dissonance Theory

No, the extremist-left self-appointed judges of the guilty do not consider these inconvenient facts of history. Leshem is obviously ignorant of Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory where cult members or true believers in a cause who "focused on the obsessive rejection of tangible reality" as followers of the fantasies and fictions of their in-group, like the anti-Israel Israelis, become oblivious to contradictory information and facts of history and reality (Hallucinations-both positive and negative). Any contradictory evidence, like the from birth education in the value and honor of killing and degrading Jews, the actual systematic and ongoing murder and psychological torture of Israelis, the corrupt psychopathic leadership structure of the Palestinians, and on and on…none of this reaches the lofty ivory towers of the academia haters, sheltered from these realities or apologists for them.

(See Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962) As Sarah Honig stated ("Flying Saucer Fanatics", Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2005) Festinger's groundbreaking book, When Prophecy Fails (1956), stated that the collapse of prophecies disseminated by cults [like the Oslo Extreme-left, for example,] "often has the opposite effect from what the average person might expect. The cult following gets stronger and the members even more convinced of the truth of their actions and beliefs."

The Israeli extreme-left Oslo fanatics' phenomenon took on "particularly preposterous proportions. So emboldened were they by the fiasco born of their prophecies, that they went on the offensive to redeem the incontrovertible flop" and deadly disaster. The extremist-lefts "brazenly branded insane anyone who dared dispute their clairvoyant wisdom, set in motion witch-hunts…" and (with help the media) they ostracized and demonized anyone protesting their imposed delusions." The extreme-left's "hallucinatory messianism" did nothing to restore empirical perspectives and the murder of Jews continues unabated with "proactive" apologists working feverishly to absolve present, past, and future Jew-killers of any responsibility or accountability (the mechanism of time distortion; Katz,1979; Library of Congress). The spiritualization of Jew-hatred has become a force for providing "the Other" (See, Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1946 and Katz, ibid.))

So yes, this madness of Israel-bashing and the cushy careers and road shows engendered by this well-rewarded group hallucination and self-hatred does cry out for the services of a veteran Clinical Psychologist who has studied and treated the effects of the actions which the extremist-left apologists leave in their wake. I have treated clinically hundreds upon hundreds of victims of terror, PTSD children who were either dismembered or witnessed the death of parents or loved ones in the most savage and bestial ways, Holocaust survivors whose next of kin were murdered or psychologically tortured by incessant Arab terror attacks and anti-Semitic propaganda, and on and on. Scarred for life and forced to never get past (Post) the trauma (PTSD; in fact, I have had to submit criteria for a new diagnostic entity in the upcoming 'bible' of psychology and psychiatry (DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual)-I have dubbed it STSD (Katz,2001), a sub-group of PTSD with a poorer prognosis since the perpetrators of "the identifiable psycho-social stressor" and trauma that "no human being should ever have to witness" are praised, glorified and rewarded as the victims are mocked , traumatized and humiliated further. The fact that this sadistic tormenting is ignored and replaced by Palestinians' 'daily degradation' [See Condoleeza Rice's recent comments, Jerusalem Post] at being stopped at checkpoints boggles the mind.

Freedom and Safe Haven

Some of the most damaging primitive psychological mechanisms (displacement, projection) used by Leshem and others is to utilize Israel as a reservoir of rage for the injustices of centuries of actual imperialism and colonialism: all anger that was never directed toward the sources gets dumped onto Israel only.

All Israelis are to blame and all deserve to be murdered by learned (i.e. not racially inherent) Jew-hatred of the poor, innocent, victim Palestinians and their Arab and Persian, and, sadly, Jewish enablers.

Leshem preposterously declares that "the only ideology spawned in the heyday of European imperialism 3 centuries back that has remained immutable".

Aside from his cavalier exoneration of true imperialism, Leshem reserves is misinformation to Zionism, arguably the liberation movement that has been forced to change from the beginning. Zionism had to accept 10% of what The League of Nations mandated in 1922; that non-immutable change was greeted with a war by Arab neighbors and mercenaries. Another of his fictions is the charge that "Anyone attempting to rethink Zionism is castigated and pilloried by its adherents..." Well, anti-Zionism is the world's favorite target. -it's the Coca-Cola of propaganda; it's everywhere. Only Israel is singled out (falsely) as "a state with a single monolithic ideology." Of course our "eviction of the natives" and our "incessantly oppressing and dispossessing other humans" is as preposterous as it is ignorant. Look at the truly dispossessed "natives", i.e. the 900,000 Jews from Arab countries, and then talk about "incessantly oppressing." Finally, in light of the incessant and growing "intergenerational transmission of hatred" proceeding full steam ahead in the Palestinian Authority, is so profoundly unspeakable, that to have the audacity to ignore this system of instilling Jew-hatred betrays his inverted obscenity that "minimum serious consideration reveals it a folklore ideology fit for the kindergarten where we are first fed its tenets, and the grave, to which most of us carry it unchanged, unchallenged, incontrovertible." as what the Israeli educational system does is unconscionable and contributes to child endangerment.

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

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