Delayed Reaction to Netanyahu's Speech Before Congress: Fear and Victimization

Adam L. Silverman

I've waited about a week to write up my reaction to Netanyahu's speech to Congress because every time I'd sit down to start writing I was worried it would turn into a rant. My initial response was a combination of disgust, anger, and embarrassment. I also knew that I didn't want to simply cover many points that have been covered here and elsewhere: that Netanyahu has been predicting that Iran is anywhere from 1 to 2 to 3 to 5 years away from achieving a nuclear weapon for going on twenty-five to thirty years; that much of what he said was an echo of what he stated about Iraq when he addressed Congress in the early 00s; that the Congressional GOP leadership had reached a new low (which the Senatorial GOP surpassed yesterday and I'll write about later today); as I covered before the speech - something similar was pulled on President Reagan by Menachem Begin, and the unmitigated gall of Netanyahu to claim to speak on behalf of all members of a religion.

Instead I want to focus on two distinct themes that Prime Minister Netanyahu kept hammering: fear and victimization. These themes in his remarks were really about the fear that Israel has of its neighbors, especially Iran. And the historic victimization of the Jews, which Israel will not allow to happen ever again. Despite the Israeli/Jewish wrapper of his remarks, Netanyahu was also hitting on two themes that play very well with Americans; especially after 9-11. When I was a college student one of my professors stated something that makes a lot of sense post 9-11: "there is nothing as dangerous as a democracy when its scared." In many ways I think this is a good way to understand a lot of American behavior post 9-11. Even more so many of our elected and appointed officials, as well as the professional pundits and commentators. We allowed al Qaeda, through our over reaction and the over reaction of politicians and pundits to an unusually and unexpectedly successful terrorist attack on three targets, to be transformed in our imaginations from a terrorist group to an existential and civilizational threat. This, by the way, was what bin Laden wanted.

Netanyahu's focus on fear and victimization was no accident. He understands how we've tuned our strings and simply plucked them accordingly. My disgust and embarrassment, however, went beyond his attempts to simply play America - or at least Congress and the punditocracy - to his remarks about Judaism, fear, and victimization. There is no doubt that Jews have repeatedly faced being the societal other, discriminated against, having the force of what we now call the state directed against them, and being victimized. However, this is not the totality of the Jewish experience. While it definitely accounts for the majority of Jewish life in Europe from the fall of Rome through to World War II and the Holocaust, it fails to account for other Jewish experiences. For instance, the Golden Age of Spain, which saw a high amount of societal and political integration between the Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Spain. It ignores the completely different experiences of the Jewish communities of India and China, the latter of which was so successfully integrated into China that it essentially assimilated fully into Han Chinese culture. And it definitely doesn't account for the modern Jewish American experience.

There is no doubt that Jews in Europe were often and repeatedly attacked for being Jewish or for bizarre accusations of what Jews do ritually, such as the blood libel. This was, of course, topped off by the Holocaust. However, some Jews did try to fight back. For instance, during the Holocaust there were significant numbers of Jews who fled ahead of the NAZIs to join with the various partisan movements and fight back. There were others, like Moe Berg a Jewish American professional baseball player who undertook a number of clandestine operations against the NAZIs. Or Hannah Senesh who undertook paratrooper operations against the NAZIs until caught and eventually executed. This doesn't even account for the Jewish American and Jewish British Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who fought against the NAZIs in Europe or against their AXIS partners/the Japanese in the Pacific. While Jewish resistance, whether to the NAZIs or to the anti-Semitism of their Christian neighbors, was not uniform, Netanyahu's equating the Jewish experience with victimization obscures a number of overtly heroic actions to counter the victimization. But it does something even worse. It fails to recognize the even harder form of resistance, the attempt to remain free within one's self when there is no immediate opportunity for external/physical resistance. By focusing on victimization and fear, Netanyahu missed the more important flip side of the coin: the mental resilience and resistance that are the basis for survival. It was to the perceived lack of this resistance among Americans that Netanyahu was playing and it demonstrates how little he thinks of his Congressional hosts, America's elected and appointed officials, and Americans in general. The only outstanding question is if we are going to prove him wrong.

Comments

[jonst]

I may be really blind about this...but I never grasped exactly WHAT I was supposed to fear on 9/11. Or the days after. Concern? Focus? Anger? Desire for revenge? Yes, understood, and shared, these reactions. But fear? Of what....of whom? But no doubt...fear was the reaction of the day....and it has never stopped. I still don't understand it fully...

[anna-marina]

Great article by Philip Giraldi, "Shutting Down AIPAC. Removing Israel from American politics." One can sense the deeply insulted feelings of the US citizen.
http://www.unz.com/article/shutting-down-aipac/
The word TREASON has become associated with Israel-firsters and their enablers in the US government.

[FND]

Yes, the fools did exactly what the 9/11 terrorists wanted them to do. First, they made preposterous statements that they hate us for our freedoms, then they passed the Orwellian Patriot Act and created the Department of Vaterland Security.

[ISL]

Adam, Thank you for your thoughts, they clarify a trend.

Specifically, that of allergic reaction in the body politic, over-reacting to threats that are largely non-threatening ("its existential") which in health leads to succumbing to a real threat that is missed while reacting to a new flower pollen (antibiotics prevent us from seeing this in our graveyards these days). Contrasting Norway and the US, we can see a proper immuno-response to their (domestic terrorism) event. Israel is far further down the road, than the US, but it is the same road.

If will leave it to SST to continue the biological allegory, where Israel depends on the US to cover the costs of its allergies.

[William R. Cumming]

Great post and many thanks!

[Jack]

Mr. Silverman
You should look into the role played by Sheldon Adelson the Las Vegas casino billionaire. He is one of the "owners" of the GOP and owns media in Israel that is definitely pro-Likud. His wife is an Israeli citizen. He reportedly played a significant role in organizing Bibi's speech to Congress. He is a classic example of an Israeli Firster who couldn't care a damn about US interests

[wisedupearly]

People who are fearful are easier to cow into submission and people who are told to be fearful, who see their leaders/elites exhibiting fear, generally become fearful. This has not be a good demonstration of American exceptionalism.

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

Good post, Adam.

[anna-marina]

Adelson is on a display as a benevolent distributor of his casino-money for the whoring politicians (see Gingrich). Adelson has no loyalty to the US: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/billionaire-gingrich-backer-adelson-regrets-he-served-us-instead-israeli-military
But there is also the political class (Rahm Emmanuel) and fourth estate (David Brooks), which prefer the Israeli Army to the US Army: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/surprise-brookss-israeli

[MRW]

I wish I could remember the exact phrase, but a shrink once told the daughter of someone I knew socially that her mother's reactions were always in excess of the stimulus. He called it a classic definition of mental illness.

[MRW]

@Adam,

"It fails to recognize the even harder form of resistance, the attempt to remain free within one's self when there is no immediate opportunity for external/physical resistance. [...] It was to the perceived lack of this resistance among Americans that Netanyahu was playing and it demonstrates how little he thinks of his Congressional hosts, America's elected and appointed officials, and Americans in general. The only outstanding question is if we are going to prove him wrong."

Nicely put.

[MRW]

The Brits managed much better as a people when there were actual bombs raining down upon them than we did after 9/11. We were hyperbolic. Then we allowed the profits-driven press to milk it, something Hannity still does every night.

But then that fear was also crafted within 90 minutes EST of the first tower going down by Ehud Barak on BBC World Service, something I watched in real time that day. If you've never seen this clip, it's instructive. What was more stunning to me, and keep this in mind if you watch it, is that Ehud Barak's appearance had been promoted two hours before he went on; I remember calculating the time then as 9:30 AM EST, and wondered what an Israeli official would have to say about planes flying into buildings. No towers had descended at that time. BBC used Picture-in-Picture to show Barak cooling his heels in the Green Room as a sort of heads-up to what was coming in the following hour. So Barak's reaction in the clip below to the towers falling is curiously detached.

Later that night (BBC time) Richard Perle and Ehud Barak were given 90 minutes solo on some BBC show cementing the 'bin Laden did it' theme that was never questioned, and was formulated with no forensic evidence whatsoever. Further, the two of them were acting as if they, collectively, represented the US in some official capacity to make these accusations. I have a copy of that somewhere, and don't feel like searching for it online. I remember thinking at the time that Americans want to hear from their President, not these two assholes peddling a bin Laden theme. Little did I know at the time.
"Ehud Barak interview, BBC, 11:29, 9/11"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Zj1fnGtjk

[Bryn P]

What I find difficult to comprehend is the willingness of so many of your Congressmen and Senators to betray their duty and responsibility to act in the interests of the people of the United States of America. Their unquestioning subservience to the leader of a foreign nation who came, in an insult to your president, to demand their total submission to the political will of his country filled me with contempt and disgust.

[MRW]

This is the BBC archived copy of the full show. It starts at Ehud Barak's part, but you go back to the beginning. Who the hell gave this guy the right to talk for Americans.
http://archive.org/details/bbc200109111121-1202?start=445

[MRW]

It is a great article.

[MRW]

As "b" at moonofalabama.org points out, from the land of "shared values" comes this:

"Liberman: Disloyal Arab-Israelis 'Should Be Beheaded'
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman advocated “cutting of the heads” of Arabs who were not loyal to Israel."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192309

THE LEDE: >

WTF?

[MRW]

Oops. I did something by using a double caret to set off the lede at 10 March 2015 at 02:38 PM.

Here it is:
"In a harsh comment Sunday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman advocated “cutting of the heads” of Arabs who were not loyal to Israel. “Those who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe,” Liberman said at an election event Sunday."

Now the WTF? makes sense. ;-)

[Charles I]

One may also recall the universal allure and critical facility of Casinos as money launderers.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Adam L. Silverman

3 years ago, in a discussion with LeaNder on this forum, I tried to explain the situation as I saw it then.

Just like the SS have been used as the alibi of Germany, and the NAZIS as the alibi of an entire continent (Romanian fellow: Germans made me do it.) I have very expectations that in case of US-Iran War for Israel and Western Jews to be blamed for the war after it has ended or has petered out.

This is what Israelis and their Jewish supporters are flirting with; the Jew once again reprising his role as the escape goat for a disastrous policy.

[elkern]

I will never forget (and maybe haven't entirely forgiven...) my own sister, saying that I should leave America because I objected to the invasion of Iraq. Wouldn't that qualify as an auto-immune response? (rejecting part of one's own body because it appears to be "other")

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Thank you, Mr. Silverman.

I would like to add something to your inclusion of the link to Osama Bin Laden's letter (...was what Bin Laden wanted). This is an article found in American Conservative written by Paul Schroeder back in October 2004 entitled, "The War Bin Laden Wanted". Although some references are a bit dated after the passage of 11 years, it still stands up to thoughtful consideration, particularly when read side by side with Bin Laden's letter.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-war-bin-laden-wanted/

It certainly appears that we have made all of the blunders - and in spades - against which Mr. Schroeder cautioned those years ago. Sobering, at least to those who believe in the value of reflection upon actions and events.

My respects to all.

JJ

[Imagine]

Also see CIA Philip Giraldi's excellent article on nuclear spy and Pretty Woman director Arnon Milchan:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-hollywood-spy/

[Imagine]

"Victimization gives license for unlimited cruelty." Revenge 10x over on the Other is always justified in the minds of the sleepwalking hairless apes.

PTSD requires digesting horrific events so that the record needle becomes unstuck, and you no longer have to keep watching and reliving the horror movie in your mind. To Netanyahu, it is always 1938. He makes sure the rest of Israel, and the US, feel this way as well. Spending life time rewatching horror movies wastes precious opportunity cost; those who cannot escape and transcend the past are doomed to always relive it.

This is, of course, highly useful. Thus the regular Two Minutes Of Hate.

[Imagine]

Emerald's "The Power of T.E.D. [The Empowerment Dynamic]" discusses transcending the Karpman Drama Triangle of Victim / Persecutor / Rescuer-Hero by transforming it into its reflection, Creator / Challenger / Coach. The writing only gets a B but its ideas are AA++. Victims are Done To and cannot move. Creators are Doers and are always moving. (Virginia Satir also had a lifetime to cover this topic well.) (Note America is stuck in Hero mode, and so is cardboard just like the Victim.) If you are serious about helping Israel transcend its current role, I recommend you read this book.

[SteveG]

Babak
Are you equating all
Jews with Israelis and
Visa versa?