Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder-A Glimpse Into Israeli Collective Psychosis by Gilad Atzmon

17.9.06
“It is hard to believe, but only 60 years after the Holocaust the Jewish people is once again in danger of being destroyed - at least in its own state, where 40 percent of the world's Jews are concentrated. Evidence of the severity of the danger can be found not only in the explicit threats by Iran's president, which are backed up by an arms program that would provide the means to carry them out. It can also be found in recent articles in the European press that discuss the possibility of Israel's 'disappearance' as a reasonable 'working assumption.' Additional evidence regarding the threat level exists in the fact that not only is Israel the only country in the world that is threatened with destruction, it is also the only state whose right to exist is the focus of international polls, with many respondents answering negatively. That is an honor that even Iran, North Korea and apartheid-era South Africa were never granted.” (Yair Sheleg. Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/757767.html)

While many may find it heartening or amusing that even an Israeli right winger cannot see a ray of light at the end of the Zionist tunnel, it is rather disconcerting to read that Israelis are already seriously contemplating their next Shoah. I would argue here that it is exactly this form of deadly meditation that turns Israel, Israelis, global Zionists and Neocons into the gravest enemies of world peace.

Indeed, a growing number of people want to see an end to Israel, the ‘Jew Only State’. Yet, no one around expresses any murderous or terminal plans against world Jewry or even against their Jewish State. No one in the political or the media spheres is calling for a homicidal act against the Jews or their Jewish State. Thus the well-established Judeocentric tendency to interpret almost any legitimate political and ideological criticism as a perpetration of an upcoming Judeocide should be comprehended as a severe form of paranoia verging on collective psychosis, which I define as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TSD).

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 the 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.

One may wonder at this stage whether Pre-TSD is just another name for paranoia. I would argue that the difference between the two is rather obvious. In the case of paranoia he who is subject to the disease makes us feel sorry for him. In the case of confrontation with a Pre-TSD case, we happen to feel sorry for ourselves.

Projection and Pre-TSD

"We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon. …What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,’ (the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761781.html)

Let us face it once and for all. Since no one voices a call to throw the Israelis into the sea or to nuke them instead, one is entitled to argue that the Israeli inclination to blame Muslims and Arabs for holding such murderous tendencies themselves must be understood in terms of projection. The people who rained Lebanon with ‘more than a million cluster bombs’ are projecting their murderous zeal onto their victims and even onto their victims to come.

Sheleg, for instance, throws his own malicious tendencies onto the Muslim world and Iran in particular. Sheleg, being a devoted Zionist who advocates violent measures against almost anyone who fails to be a Jew, is doomed to project his own murderous zeal when referring to Arabs and Muslims. Obviously Sheleg is not alone; the American Jewish Committee (AJC) is doing exactly the same thing. In a recent PR campaign it warned Europe of Iran’s long-range missiles. Obviously within their phantasmic Judeocentric universe, a global war against Islam is a ‘Judeo-Christian interest’. However, Europeans tend to laugh once confronted with the AJC’s embarrassingly aggressive ideology. Europeans are obviously not afraid of Iran at all. Unlike the Jewish American Committee members who happen to promote violence, the Europeans fantasise over peace; seemingly Europeans have had enough wars (clearly AJC didn’t have enough yet….). Europeans also realise that as long as they do not harm Iran, Iran’s ballistic capability is totally irrelevant to their security. In other words, Europeans fail to regard Iran as a murderous entity just because unlike the AJC, Europeans are not murderous to start with. Because they aren’t murderers, they simply fail to see murderers in others. The Europeans lack the necessary aggressive zeal, which the AJC are overwhelmingly saturated with. This is exactly where a growing abyss is emerging between the Zionist’s utterly phantasmic bloodthirsty universe and the rest of Humanity.

Who needs a Nuclear Arsenal, (Aren’t Katyusha Rockets just more than enough)?

The general mood in Israel, which is expressed so eloquently by Sheleg and reflected in the AJC catastrophic scenario, reveals a severe collective form of Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Israelis and their supportive lobbies are contemplating publicly over their Nuclear Shoah to come. This pathological mode is rather bizarre considering the fact that the bold Hezbollah has managed to defeat the mighty Israeli army just with light weaponry. It also managed to defeat the Israeli society with nothing more than short-range Katyusha rockets. In fact, the enemy of Israel does not need to ‘nuke Israel’, all they have to do is just to send a message to the Jews of the world: Israel is anything but a shelter. By doing so they confront Israelis with the following realisation: once again you have failed in the ‘love your neighbours’ test. This is what Arab resistance is all about. It is a metaphysical message rather than a call for a Judeocide.

However, the Israelis somehow fail to read the message on the wall. Rather than looking at the mirror and spotting out their obvious faults that have already matured into severe moral bankruptcy, the Israelis prefer total submission to the materialist fantasy of Nuclear Judeocide. Rather than thinking in ethical terms, the Israelis surrender to the shallowest materialist discourse solely centred on ‘the destruction of the I’. The Israelis have succumbed to an imaginary phantasmic Shoah in which they are nuked on a daily basis. Worryingly enough, the Israelis are not alone, insofar as worrying of an illusionary terror is concerned, Blair and Bush are infected with the very same mental disease.

Repeatedly, Sheleg, the AJC and Bush refer murderous tendencies to the Iranian president but is this indeed the case? Do they have a case? Has the Iranian president ever spoken of destruction of the Jewish people, the Israelis, or anyone else?

Let us confront the obvious fact. President Ahmadinejad certainly said that Israel should be ‘wiped off the Map’. However, the president has never said that Jews as people should be murdered. He was clearly referring to Israel, the racist ‘Jew Only State’. This is a legitimate criticism as much as criticism of Apartheid South Africa was justifiable. But Ahmadinejad doesn’t stop there, he elaborates on the issue. Cleverly and rather reasonably, he challenges the West:

"If you (the West) have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel?… Our question is; if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?"

This is indeed a most appropriate question to be asked and yet, there is not a single hint that this man has any plans to annihilate the Jews or their State. If anything, Ahmadinejad does his best to find the Jews a new home. Clearly, the Zionist dream of a Jewish settlement in the Holy Land turned into a grave disaster. And it is Ahmadinejad who is already pointing out that the wanderers may have to Schlep again. May I suggest that a glimpse into the endless queue list of Israeli citizens who are now reclaiming Polish and other EU citizenship reveals that a growing number of Israelis already internalised the idea that Schlepping is probably the next phase of their Jewish existence.

The Real Axis of Evil

Reading Sheleg’s op-ed in Haaretz, one may wonder, “who exactly contemplates the liquidation of the Jewish State?” It is obviously clear that Iran plans to join the nuclear club. However, even if Iran intends upon developing an arsenal of deadly nuclear weapons, surely it won’t be the first in the region. It would just follow the Jewish State, a State that proved beyond doubt that the killing of innocent civilians happens to be its favourite practice. Thus, the Israeli as well as Zio-centric fear of Iranian nuclear aggression must be realised as nothing but projection. Since Israel is engaged on a daily basis in the killing of innocent civilians, Israelis and Zionists are doomed to interpret others’ behaviour as a murderous inclination.

This is indeed very sad but far from being unique. The case of America’s Cold War paranoia is not that different from the case of Israel. Since America was the first and so far, the only country to use the atomic bomb against other people, it was the Americans who were actually caught in a cold war Pre-TSD. They simply projected their collective murderous tendencies onto the Soviets. It goes without mentioning, that unlike the Americans, the ‘Communists’ have never dropped an atomic bomb on anyone nor it seems had they ever considered such an act. Somehow, it becomes clear that the more cruel one is, the more subjected to terror one is. Moreover, the more cruel practices a nation is engaged with, the more subjected to the politics of fear the nation would be. This simple formula may throw some light over the emerging bond between America and Israel. Applying some devious expansionist tactics, the two countries are sinking into dark deadly thought on the verge of collective paranoia. This collective paranoia maintains the hegemony of the one and only axis of evil around: i.e., Global Zionism and Neocons.

A comic Relief

The following is a Jewish Telegram:

‘begin worrying, details to follow’

The joke above is actually older than Israel, it is probably as old as the telegraph itself. In fact, it refers a devastating reality in which the dialectic of fear is dominating the Jewish existence as well as mindset. Seemingly, fright has been exploited politically by Jewish ethnic leaders since the early days of emancipation. It is possible that within the process of Jewish secularisation and emancipation initiated by enlightenment and the French Revolution, fear of imaginary phantasmic reality replaced the fright of the almighty evil God, the God that kills without grace and mercy, the very God of Sodom and Gomorrah. If this is indeed the case, ‘fear’ should be realised as the modern Jewish God and the Pre-TSD is better seen as the modern Jewish practice. The Judification of Blair and Bush can be realised as the emergence of the ‘Politics of Fear’. Seemingly, this very political practice is very successful in America but it proved to be a total failure in the UK.

However, Pre-TSD is not an Israeli invention at all. Jewish opinion leaders as well as ethnic campaigners were specialising in maintaining Jewish anxiety a long time before Israel came about. Early Zionists were very effective in terrorizing their brothers. Herzl was foolishly inspired by the Dreyfus case (as Lenni Brenner points out, Herzl failed to understand the meaning of the case and its implications. In fact, Dreyfus’s vindication proves that French people and French Jews won in their fight against Anti-Semitism and xenophobia). Other early Zionists were stimulated by some East European anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. In general, Zionism can be realised as an urge to formulate a general political agenda based on self-inflicting fright. This is probably why Zionism must maintain terror in order to sustain its power. It is evident that Bush and the Neocons use exactly the same tactic.

Divine Intervention

May I suggest at this point that it is rather possible that more than one world leader is alarmed by the Iranian atomic program not because they are afraid of Iranian aggression but rather because by now, they are all aware of the Israeli collective psychosis. Without knowing about Pre-TSD, Western leaders do grasp that Israel would not hesitate to initiate a nuclear war as much as it didn’t hesitate to cover Lebanese cities with more than one million cluster bombs. A country that can destroy its neighbour and turn one-third of its citizens into homeless people just for 2 POWs is basically capable of anything.

I am not a psychiatrist, I am not even a practicing psychoanalyst, I do not know whether there is an analyst couch big enough to accommodate the entire Israeli people and their many global Zionist brothers. I am not so sure whether there is a professional around who can take care and help the Israelis to deal with their current Pre-TSD phase. I don’t even know whether the Israelis would take the advise of a shrink. All I myself do is merely suggest a diagnosing of a rather severe malaise. While many of us are convinced that Israel’s behaviour is the outcome of moral bankruptcy, I insist that the Israeli identity is emerging as a pathological psychotic case. The moral bankruptcy, thus, is a mere symptom of a deeply concerning mental disorder.

Being in a psychotic state, the Israelis indeed enjoy their symptoms, from us they just need some brief attention. They basically need our approval. When they flatten southern Beirut, their spokesman insisted upon convincing us that it was actually a Western sacred war that they were fighting. They really wanted us to believe that they have done it all for our behalf and in our name. We may have to admit that except two democratically elected Pre-TSD cases (Bush & Blair) who approved the Israeli atrocities, the rest of humanity who was watching the emerging carnage in Beirut sensed some clear growing detestation towards the Jewish State and the entire Zionist adventure.

For those who still fail to see it, we are dealing here with a severe mad case of a State that is reaching the very peak of its collective psychotic phase. For those who tend to forget, this mentally disordered national entity possesses a vast nuclear arsenal, and it has its belly full of deadly intentions. We are horrified and so we should be. We can see them bullying the entire Middle East. We are encircled by their merciless hedonism and self-righteousness and there is very little for us to do except pray for divine intervention.