The Oslo Syndrome

I heartily recommend to our readers the groundreaking book The Olso Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege, written by Kenneth Levin (Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, 2005).
Dr. Levin is a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, a B.A./M.A. in English language and literature from Oxford University, and a B.A. in mathematics from the U. of P.

He may need all of this remarkably diverse learning and erudition to take on the incredibly difficult and baffling subject of his study: why have Israel's government, as well as most of its academic, educational, journalistic, cultural and artistic elites, betrayed their country by handing over strategic territories directly adjoining Israel's major population centers to Israel's most violent enemies, Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, in the deluded belief that this will somehow bring about "peace?" Why have Israel's political leaders handed over large sections of their own country to terrorists bent on their people's expulsion and annihilation? Why have these politicians allowed the terrorists to build up large and increasingly well-armed units next to Israel's population centers, with the result that well over a thousand Israelis, the majority of them civilians, have been brutally slaughtered by terrorists since the Oslo "peace process" began in 1993? How could these politicians have confused fourteen years of terrorist warfare with a supposed "peace process," and treated their terrorist enemies, such as Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and their Fatah organization, as 'peace partners?"

And why have Israeli historians, journalists , writers and other "intellectuals" sought to delegitimate their own nation by depicting it as an aggressor and intruder in the Middle East, one that stole the land from the Arab "natives" and that continues to subject them to "racist" discrimination? Why have Israeli educators sought to strip the education of Israeli children, adolescents and college students of all Jewish content, by removing any material about Jewish history and religion, and on the relationship of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, from the public school curriculum? Why have they sought to discredit and deny well established historical facts, such as the reign of King David 3,000 years ago, his son Solomon's construction of a magnificent temple in the heart of Jerusalem, the mass suicide of the heroic defenders of Masada after the defeat of the great Jewish revolt against Roman colonial rule, by labeling them "myths" or "national mythology?" Why have they stripped the training of Israeli soldiers of any education in their Jewish origins and history, and in the Jewish origins and character of Israel? Why have they even eliminated the traditional swearing ceremony at the site of Masada, in which new recruits used to pledge that "Masada shall not fall again," from the training of Israeli soldiers, on the grounds that it is too "nationalistic" and based on a "myth?" Why have Israel's cultural elites opposed even Holocaust education and visits by Israeli youngsters to the death camps in Poland as too 'nationalistic" and likely to promote " Jewish nationalism?" Why do the Israeli cultural elites who oppose Jewish "nationalism," or "Zionism," casting themselves as "post-Zionists," so enthusiastically support Arab and Islamist nationalism of the most bloody, aggressive and ruthless variety?

Dr. Levin, as befits his profession, comes up with an essentially psychiatric diagnosis of this Israel "syndrome:" decades of "besiegement" of the Israelis by enemies bent on their extermination, plus the two thousand year history of persecution inflicted on Jews even before the modern state of Israel was founded, have left Israelis profoundly demoralized. Feeling helpless to end the unrelenting fury and brutality of their foes by military means, many Israelis have decided to accept the justice of the enemies' cause, and to grovel to them, psychologically, spiritually, politically, diplomatically and even militarily, in the hope that this grovelling will somehow induce their Arab enemies to have compassion on the Israelis and grant them "peace." These Israelis hope that by responding to Arab grievances and complaints by a process of "self-reform," they will persuade the Arabs to abandon their siege and make peace with Israel's Jews. As Levin points out, there is no credible evidence that the Arab world as a whole, or much the less the Palestinian terrorists, will ever agree to make peace with Israel in response to this program of self-criticism and appeasement. Yet sizable parts of the Israeli population, and above all Israel's cultural and political elites, cling to the delusion that "self-reform" and self-abnegation to Israel's enemies will somehow transform ruthless, uncompromising enemies into friendly protectors.

The Israeli practitioners and advocates of appeasement may also be trying to make some sense out of their own predicament. After all, why would all the world, not only the entire Arab world and of course the propaganda arms of the terrorist organizations, be constantly "indicting" the Israelis (in Dr. Levin's phrase) unless they were actually guilty of something? And why would their enemies be so cruel and unrelenting, unless they have legitimate grievances of some sort against Israel? Is it possible that human beings could be so cruel to other human beings for no reason at all?

Finally, the Israeli appeasers perversely think that by grovelling to their tormentors, they are in some way regaining control of their own destiny. They imagine that if they yield to the demands of their enemies, the enemies will finally grant them the desperately longed-for peace that they seek. and the long nightmare of endless terror and violence against the Israelis, going back at least sixty years, will finally come to an end. These Israelis imagine that by giving in to their oppressors, they, the Israelis, will acquire influence over them. And that in turn will enable them to regain some control over their own lives.

Many Israelis have concluded that they cannot ever free themselves by military or police measures from the terrorists who incessantly blow up buses and restaurants, turning the Israelis inside them into tiny fragments of widely scattered bits of flesh and bone, and who seize school children as hostages, incessantly shell border towns with rocket-fire , etc. etc. Israel's military measures contain the damage inflicted by the besiegers somewhat, but have so far failed to end the siege or even to bring an end to it in sight. Therefore, these Israelis feel that only by joining in support for the alleged grievances and demands of their terrorist oppressors, which in any case already have received powerful support from nearly the entire "international community" of Arab, Muslim and Western countries, can Israelis ever know "peace."

In order to find a parallel to the self-destructive and baffling behavior by Israel's ruling elites, Levin turns to an equally baffling incident that occurred some thirty years ago in Stockholm, Sweden, that psychologists have labeled "The Stockholm Syndrome." Several female bank employees in Stockholm were raped and held hostage for days by a gang of escaped- convict bank robbers. In spite of their ill-treatment by this gang of rapists, kidnappers and robbers,the victimized women became their oppressors' firm allies and supporters, even testifying on their behalf in court. One of the female victims even became engaged to one of her rapist/abductors. (The title of Levin's book, "The Oslo Syndrome," is a pun on both the Stockholm incident and on the agreement that Israel's government signed in the Norwegian city of Oslo, not far from Stockholm, in 1993, with the PLO, a front for the Fatah terrorist organization. It was through that agreement that Israel began the process of handing over to its its terrorist enemies portions of Judea, Samaria and Gaza that directly adjoin Israel's population centers, and thereby facilitated the much-intensified campaign of terror and murder against Israel's people during in the course of the last fourteen years).

Perhaps the victimized Swedish women originally played up to their oppressors in the hope that by appeasing them and supporting their demands, they could win over the rapist/abductors and thereby save their lives. But once they had started on this course they came to identify with their oppressors and even to love them, even after they were freed from the hostage-takers and no longer had a practical need to appease them. Perhaps this identification with their oppressors helped these women overcome the feelings of utter helplessness and degradation that their captors inflicted on them by holding them hostage for days and constantly threatening them with death at any moment, in addition to raping and humiliating them .

Levin also compares the Israelis' delusions of "peace" with their implacable and cruel enemies to those of abused children, who often conclude that the beatings and ill-treatment that they receive at the hands of their elders must be their own fault, and that by redoubling their efforts to please their elders, they will somehow end the abuse.

Dr. Levin sees similar feelings of helplessness on the part of the many Israelis who support appeasement of, or even collaboration with, their enemies to those of both the victimized Swedish women and of abused children everywhere. Like the Swedish captive women , these Israelis find some relief from their feelings of helplessness in the face of constant danger to their lives by identifying with their tormentors. And like abused children, the Israeli victims of terrorist aggression and abuse imagine that by pleasing those who hold the power of life and death over them, they can persuade these tormentors to end their reign of terror, and even transform them from oppressors into protectors.

Levin also relates the "Oslo Syndrome" to the efforts of some European Jews, in the years between the late eighteenth century and the rise of Hitler in 1933, to appease anti-Semites by partially accepting their indictments of the Jewish people . Then , as now, Levin contends, many Jews hoped to appease the wrath of anti-Semitic bigots and racists, and even to win their approval and goodwill, by to some extent accepting their point of view, and by engaging in "self-reform" to satisfy the anti-Semites' complaints against Jews. That effort at appeasing the enemies of the Jews also failed miserably, Levin points out.

How accurate is Levin's diagnosis of Jewish self-abnegation toward, appeasement of, and even identification with, the Arab aggressors? Does he have any solutions to propose to cure this terrible collective illness of Israelis and other Jews? More on this subject in a subsequent posting.