Karim Jbeili, Psycho-analyst

Transfixed, we witness daily the spectacle of death and desolation in Palestine. The same blood-stained bodies, the same battered houses, the same up-rooted trees. As in a nightmare, we want to cry out, to do something to finally awaken out of it. But nothing happens and the horror continues day to day. Western political leaders, whom we expect will, by way of the magic of their words and the power of arms break the impass, bring forth a few formal phrases by which they attempt to avoid the trap of favoring one side over the other.

Each tries to avoid a scrape without too much damage to himself but no one has anything to propose. No one has a solution. At best we try to manage the crisis; at worst, we are content to let it worsen. All wish to believe that the non-intervention of the Americans, the Europeans, and the Arabs hides a cruel indifference, and if they really wanted, they could easily bring the conflict to an end. We find it difficult to accept the idea that all the beating-around-the-bush really masks incompetence, and that the genocide will go on for weeks, months, years, or even decades. The imagination can conceive of nothing to stop the infernal machine.

Besides, to resolve the problem, one first has to understand it. But those commentators who apply themselves to the question must conform to an extremely precise code and keep on repeating those ideas which emanate from pure fantasy so as to satisfy the genre and the obvious interests of the contracting parties.

One is thus forced to admit to a certain number of ideas without the authorization to question their validity. One has to accept as self-evident that Israelis are all kind because some of them have been victims of the Holocaust. One must accept the idea that if Jews have suffered from anti-semitism and poor relations with Europeans, then it must also be the case a fortiori with the Arabs. If Europeans seemed hardly able to restrain themselves from killing Jews, what then could be said of the Arabs, uncultured and less inclined to self-control!

From these untruths follows the ultimate conclusion that Jews will not be tolerated except if closed in between the four walls of a state with sufficient numbers of airplanes, artillery, and missiles to protect them from the universal hatred which they inspire. One can think as one pleases as long as one assuages these basic elements or, at least, does not contest them.

To the lot of received truths must be added the notion that the two camps are equal and that it would require only that both make concessions for peace to be established. The enormous unbalance between the two in terms of force raises no one’s eyebrows, nor does the fact that this situation is the pure instance of colonization at a point in time when the claim is that the entire planet has been de-colonized.

Anything rather than dealing squarely with the problem. Any solution as long as it gains a little time so as to permit some to pretend that they are responsible statesmen. Finally, last but not least, the idea – certainly not at the bottom of the list – which proposes that Israel is a religious state which cannot get along with its neighbours because these are Muslims and Christians, it being in the nature of religions to be at odds one with the other.

These few concise notions taken as a whole, we have all the necessary ingredients to render the problem eternal and foment a civil war for the next ten years and which, moreover, has already reached its second anniversary. At the crossroads of the Orient and the Occident, the problem is at the point of provoking devastation of global dimensions with no one finding even the shadow of a solution. It is the blind spot, the point of total incomprehension, the symptom of a profound malaise, a malaise which concerns all those who suffer from the problem because they do not understand it, and those who profit by it.

From Antiquity on, conflicts between the Occident and the Orient have been about the nature of the state. For the Roman, death played a central role in the architecture of the state. It meant displaying it shamelessly in the arena in the form of the blood-soaked corpses of gladiators, condemned prisoners, or Christians. As regarded the religious, the Romans showed them considerable tolerance on the condition – not a negligeable one – that over and above each body of religious worship, was to be added the cult of the Emperor. In this manner did they ensure the supremacy of the state above all religions. The proof of this supremacy was made manifest by those who, to the joy of the masses, offered their bloodied bodies in sacrifice. They agreed to die for the emperor and even took pains to salute him before doing so. Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant. (Hail Caesar, those about to die salute you.) The Roman soldier, without whom Rome would have been little more than a village, also agreed to risk his life for 25 years.

We find the same acquiescence to death in Jesus Christ whose bruised body as displayed on a crucifix dominated the Middle Ages. A period during which dying for God or for the sovereign ruler during the Crusades or during a life of hard labour was of no small value.

With the Renaissance, acquiescence to death as state-merit took astonishing forms. Nature had become res extensa, a pure extension. Those beings who people this extended Nature, when science kindly asks it of them, consent to become nothing more than a conglomerate of matter. Whether or not these beings are alive is entirely irrelevant. In any case, it would be necessary one day for this life to submit to the fatal decree of being nothing more than matter.

Even communities cemented by religion and whose goal is collective survival through procreation must consent to their own deaths in order to become societies.

The community relations essentially oriented toward reproduction must be replaced by civic relations centred on production. The community is the overall group of people who marry among themselves while society is the overall group of people who produce and consume the same products.

The Roman model of the state, from Antiquity to our day, gives itself the task of transcending communities by making them subject to a superseding principle, on condition that they give their consent to die. By means of this acquiescence, the state and the communities co-exist peacefully, each responsible for a distinct domain. The state receives death as its allotted portion while the communities take responsibility for life.

All communities acquiesced to death during Antiquity except the Semitic communities as represented by the Jews, the Phoenicians, the Nabateans, and the Carthaginians. For the Semites who, generally speaking, have particularly ferocious gods – volcanic gods, said Freud – death is not conceivable as a mere fact before which one must abandon oneself. It is more in keeping with the idea of punishment or sacrifice to appease an angry god: Yahweh, Baal, or Moloch were also irascible. It is therefore necessary to resist death through procreation and hope that that the divinity does not suddenly turn his back. At critical moments, in order to placate his anger, one would offer him that which was most cherished – a first-born or the premise of a harvest.

From Abraham’s sacrifice, which is a semblance of this gift, the Semites succeeded in lowering the stakes somewhat. By way of an unyielding fidelity – monotheism – they succeeded in calming the fury of God, hence maintaining life without being jostled too much. It was the hand of Yahweh that stopped the sacrificial knife thus showing proof of His newly acquired forbearance, without necessarily guaranteeing it in all circumstances. There is, therefore, no question of the Semite sacrificing to another god – including a civic one – and still less possibility of acquiescing to death in its name. If such prudence succeeded in diminishing God’s jealousy, such was not the case for the Emperor. The Semites paid dearly for their refusal to sacrifice to him. Carthage, Jerusalem, and Palmyra were destroyed one after the other. Anti-semitism marched in the form of the Roman legions.

In the Middle Ages the struggle between the Roman model of the state and the Semites was made manifest by the Crusades waged against Muslim states, and the constant repression of Jewish communities in Europe. The destruction was relatively moderate given the relative weakness of the Occident. There is but one new destruction of Jerusalem and its population in 1099.

The Renaissance lends significant impetus to the Roman model of the state which henceforth comes to be known as the nation-state. At the same time that the latter assumes its heritage as a Roman-style state, its radical opposition to communities no longer limits itself to Semites but little by little extends itself to all communities.

Generally speaking, when many communities are found within a given territory, the state is taken charge of by one particular community among them in exclusion of the others. The dominant community presents itself as an exclusive model to be emulated in a burst of narcissistic love that can be compared to what is known as the individual ego.

Normally, communities ensure their cohesion by way of strictly codified marriages as well as an intimate relationship with the divine. Their perception of being, and their feeling of unity are ensured by this genetic link. When a community accedes to power and imposes its own codes at all levels of the state, it is forced to newly conceptualize itself in statist terms, which causes it to lose that perception of itself which was assured by its contact with the divine. In this substitution of the State for God, the community loses its symbolic feeling of cohesion and must therefore regain this cohesion at the level of self-image, hence the necessity of the aforementioned narcissistic love.

The image of a homogeneous, coherent, and unitary state is the attempt to compensate for the loss of the direct relation with the divine. The imaginary register substitutes for the symbolic one. It is the image of the apparent homogeneity and unity of the nation-state which must be assured so as to forget the emptiness of the heavens.

The dominant community of the nation-state consents to die, or to renounce its own community relations for the benefit of its civic relation, usually of an economic nature. This death – compensated if I may add – happens gently in the measure that all of the machinery of the state works in such a way as to render it more acceptable. Death here happens for the benefit of the state. The algebraic equation could be summarized by: A=A. "I am the model, and the best and only application of that model," trumpets this community. The first form is forgotten and what results is the narcissistic bareness of the second one.

What comes to be a problem is the other community, the one which is not "A" and which does not conform to "A," the one which shares the territory while having no access to the machinery of the state. For that community, death holds no attraction since it implies death with no possibility of compensation. This other community therefore presents two essential difficulties: not only does it spoil appearances by maintaining public signs of community solidarity hence endangering the image of the nation-state’s homogeneity, but it also maintains its vitality having no reason to renounce its life as the dominant community has done. The solution to both problems becomes immediately evident: genocide. It is necessary to "convince" the subjugated community to die for the sake of the state, as has done the dominant community.

The techniques of "persuasion" can be diverse: genocide, colonization, slavery, terrorism, massacre, ethnic cleansing, cultural and economic subjugation. All means are acceptable to impose upon the other the death that one community has already brought upon itself.

Thus the nation-state in Spain is born with the Reconquista. The armies of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castilla expelled the Muslims and Jews from Spain. To execute this less than seemly task – the first instance of ethnic cleansing – they called upon the infamous Torquemada. Loyal servant of the state, he massacred tens of thousands of non-Christians and deviants of all sorts, and expelled from Spain a million Muslims and Jews.

It has been the skill of the nation-state to blame religion for such massacres. In reality, the massacre is the instrument used by the state for the purpose of homogenization. The French state destroyed the Protestants with the Saint Bartholomew Day massacre. With the English, the move to Anglicanism allowed for the state to control religion and opened the way for the nation-state. The English state employed its genocide by way of colonization in Scotland, in Ireland, and in all of the countries of the British Empire. The Americans readily massacred and lynched the native peoples and members of the black communities.

The nation-state easily transformed itself into the colonial state. And the relation with the Other became one devoid of language. The colonized became the equivalent of an animal. He was malleable and subject to infinite forced labour through slavery. His life could be freely disposed of; he could be killed without raising eyebrows were he in any way threatening, or for any other reason. One could freely dispose of his land without taking his opinion into account. Colonization was the ultimate negation of the Other. It destroyed or helped to destroy the vitality of the populations of the continents of Africa, Asia, and America. Whether it be the result of past colonization or actual neo colonization, the indigenous populations of these continents continue to die away slowly with no hope of remission.

As long as the genocide has not been achieved, the disquiet and feverishness of the nation-state remain. This disquiet is ultimately reflected in the over-enhancement of the state’s self-image. This excessive self-love provokes war with the external enemy who previously had been no threat at all.

The nation-state is therefore involved:

in an internal war, often secret or masked, with the other community;

with the narcissistic over-enhancement of its own image;

in an external war with those different from its own self-image.

These three elements follow each other both logically and chronologically;numerous examples bear witness.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the nation-state began to strike at those countries which, up to that point, had been spared for diverse reasons. The Ottoman Empire, once dismantled, opened the way for the nationalization of its former principalities. Turkey itself becomes a secular nation-state in 1917 and in a quasi automatic way proceeds to its founding genocide – that of the Armenians.

Then, after the Second World War, the old fiefdoms of the Ottoman Empire are also affected by the frenzy of nationalism. The first of them is Palestine which has imposed upon it a Jewish nation-state which immediately proceeds to its founding genocide still in effect today – the negation, suffocation, and daily destruction of the Palestinian people.

And by a domino effect, most of the surrounding Arab states are nationalized and proceed as well to their founding genocides so that there remains virtually no non Muslims or non-Arabs in the Arab countries which became nation-states. This time spontaneous ethnic cleansing was the key factor.

The non-Sunni communities of the Middle East, be they Christian, Muslim, or Jewish were protected by the Ottoman Empire, and when the empire crumbled, by the majority Sunni community. With the policy of the Western powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Levant, these communities found themselves each protected by a different Western state. In effect, they had changed "bodyguards," which did not change their status even if there was an attempt to discredit the protection they had once enjoyed (a status known as dhimmi) by qualifying it as unequal.

Bolstered by this new "protection," these communities attempted to negotiate a new concept, that of "Arabicity." In regard to language, all the communities were on an equal footing and none could pretend to any privilege other than that conferred upon it by the knowledge of this language. Moreover, it must be remembered that the concept of Arabicity was invented by Eastern Christians, even if it was later taken up and popularized by Nasser.

This liberation of their status of dhimmi by way of Arabicity had as a result to propel these communities into emigrating to the Occident where they met with circumstances far worse than those from which they had been "liberated"- their progressive disappearance by acculturation and assimilation.

This is how the worst political regime in history, which has destroyed Africa, the indigenous populations of North and South America, which has devastated Europe several times, is now destroying the Middle East. Despite this, one must close one’s eyes to this devastation and praise the regime’s merits, avowing its superiority because it is "democratic." Self-glorification goes hand in hand with the hatred of community. This regime is so remarkable that it is necessary to bring its "benefits" to those unfortunates who have not yet come to know it and enjoy the scandalous privilege of still being alive.

The exportation of the nation-state to the Middle East had major consequences for Europe. With the creation of the State of Israel, the status of Jews throughout the world changed completely. As of 1948 Judaism is no longer a religion but a nation. It follows that Jews throughout the world, in particular those of Europe, are no longer members of diverse Jewish communities but potential citizens of the State of Israel. The innate opposition of the Roman model of the state and the Jewish communities – which is anti-semitism – went up in smoke. It survived in the form of an immense guilt with roots in the past. The immediate result was that the self-image normally cultivated by the nation-state came undone. There has been no war in western Europe since 1945. What is more, nationalist sentiment waned to such an extent that it became possible to envisage the construction of a united Europe. Let us state the matter clearly: Europe has been reconstructed thanks to the fact that Israel is a nation-state, whence we can conclude that Europe has been rebuilt on the blood and suffering of the Palestinians.

Palestine can also be interpreted in the American context. The indefectible alliance between the United States and political Judaism is there as a reminder that they are the victors of the last war and that they saved the Jews from the nazi genocide. Each time that an Arab threat – perceived or real – is on the horizon and the Americans intervene to the benefit of political Judaism, the final stages of the last war, with the victory of the Americans and the rescue of the Jews in extremis, are replayed. The Israelis, by imagining a thousand and one perils, also get the ball rolling and present their allies with the opportunity to replay the same scenario.

Beyond the replaying – this unceasing remake where one plays the role of the persecuted and the other that of the saviour – the alliance of the two states is based on a common statist equation. There is of course the traditional A=A of all the nation-states. But to this axiom is added the certitude that A is entirely unique or – what essentially comes down to the same thing – "a (chosen) people without a land for a land without people."

This formula is not specific to zionism; it is also applicable to the United States. A people of immigrants having no land, chosen by the grace of God as evident in the riches they have accumulated, occupying a land from which the indigenous people are excluded. Massacres have often been perpetrated in human history but it is a rare occurrence indeed to deny the very existence of the Other even while massacring them. This double negation of the Other – physical and metaphysical – has given the perpetrators exceeding arrogance – that of the conquerors.

These, the champions of legality and democracy, in a paradoxical gesture evident to all observers, step with arrogance upon the very rules of legality and democracy. And these transgressions are not momentary; they last as long as the resistance of the Palestinians. Which leaves plenty of time for the entire world to be outraged at the daily injustices.

Progressively, people go from indignation to anger, then to hatred and finally – for certain among them – to the nation-state in an overwhelming crescendo. It requires more than negligible hatred to build a nation-state. But one also has to know how to harness it. It is not inconceivable that, for the first time, Islam as such has introduced itself to the process through Al Qaeda. It is too soon to say.

It remains that within this opposition – whether moderate or radical – between the entire world on the one hand and the United States and Israel on the other, appears the shadow of both the idea and, increasingly, the mechanism of a world-state. It would appear, alas, that if the tendency persists, it will be a state comparable to the nation-state. There is also a strong chance that historians, in a few decades from now, will call it the civilization-state.

It is even probable that this future civilization-state is in the process of proceeding to its founding genocide. This means – as for the case of the nation-state – the exclusion by genocide of the ensemble of communities this time, all those which might be rivals to the Occident as concerns seizing control of this state, or polluting its white occidental stock.

We are thus witnessing the birth of a new anti-semitism the ideology of which expresses itself through the concept of the "clash of civilizations." As in Rwanda and Germany, lists appear in the white West, especially in America: states, organizations, and individuals to be liquidated. A genocide is prepared well in advance and very meticulously because it must be executed very quickly. The theme of the genocide will probably be anti-Oriental and predominantly anti-Islam. The three states of the "axis of evil" already give us a good indication of the intended victims.

The Israel-Palestine front is only one of the many fronts of the universal war of the civilization-state. Sharon put himself at the service of Bush and made him offers he could not refuse. Once he has assured himself of exercising power over Palestine in a definitive manner, Sharon will have no reason to stop along the path. He could easily provoke neighbouring states and bring them into his snare.

The morality of behaviour at the international level has deteriorated to such a degree that it authorizes all sorts of anomalies. The Muslim or Palestinian enemy is brought down to the level of the animal. He has no legal status. He is outside the law because he enjoys the protection of no law. He is annihilated without due process. He is a future genocide victim who will lurk in the shadows of history’s dungeons without the right to even one line in the registers of death or those of justice.

His land is a land without people, a wasteland which must be colonized. There are found only a few "animals on two feet." They recently put to death a herd of them – thirty or so – because one of them stood well over six feet tall like Ben Laden. What a shame, it was somebody else; they missed the one they were looking for, the leader of the herd. They managed, nevertheless to capture some and put them in cages in a new type of zoo in Guantanamo.

The long struggle of the Palestinians sometimes has atypical effects. Like the fall of the Bouchard government in Quebec in 2001 or the defeat of Jospin following a mysterious wave of so-called anti-semitic attacks which began with the electoral campaign and ended simultaneously with the campaign.

But what raises attention in Europe is the rise of the extreme right which threatens to cause cracks to form in European institutions constructed through treasures of diplomacy. Certainly, we can impute some of the motives of these repulsive movements to the too great cultural proximity created by European unity. But the fact that this resistance to Europe is also anti-semitic leads one to believe that some of the causes issuefrom the Palestinian conflict.

The mental process of cause and effect would entail the following:

The Palestinians resist the Israeli occupation.

Israel discredits itself a little more every day by its extortions.

Psychologically, we cease to support Israel as a nation-state.

The Jewish nation becomes the Jewish religion once again.

Age-long institutionalized anti-semitism becomes a possibility.

 

Hence the Palestinian struggle seems to have as an effect the re-birth in Europe of the pre-World War situation and to provoke the Americans on the other hand to simulate the post-war situation – that is, their final victory. This repetition of the past does not prevent the present situation from being an eminently original one. The premises of the civilization-state are already present. The Palestinians are simply its first victims.

Westerners are not yet aware of the crimes that are being prepared in their names and do not seem likely to uncover them. They see the world through an obsessive neurosis contracted after the Second World War. They are, as usual, one war behind and are stuck at the choice between accepting or refusing to be anti-semites in the traditional fashion. Their political horizon is entrenched within that choice.

That today’s massacres are perpetrated in the names of yesterday’s victims does not open their eyes to the novelty of the situation. The neutralizing mechanism specific to the obsessive neurosis entails the following:

They revolt against the conditions imposed upon the Palestinians by the Israelis.

They remember just how damnable anti-semitism is.

They fear that their revolt will be interpreted as being anti-semitic.

They suspend their revolt and, petrified, witness new injustices enacted against the Palestinians.

 

While Westerners, in their phantasms, try to put an end to an old war by wishing it had been different in nature, the next war with its procession of genocides has already begun. By the time they wake up it will be too late; they will already have been accounted guilty for a new genocide over which they can lament again.

 

To conclude

Anti-semitism is a "natural" process typical of the Roman model of the state and of the nation-state. It does not apply solely to Jews but to any community which refuses to submit to the command of its own dissolution for the benefit of the State. Although the process itself came to light in relation to the Jews. It is an institutional process which in itself is neither good nor bad. As in the notion of self-repression, it neither issues from morality nor ethics. It requires no innate wickedness on any one’s part, being of structural origin. Since 1940 and the war, Westerners have succeeded in enclosing and exporting the question of anti-semitism outside their own borders thanks to the particular relation they have maintained with Israel. It seems apparent, however, that the defence mechanism is slowing to a stop and that a new anti-semitism targeting Islam will crystallize world-wide.