Israel's Undigested Meme

One thing curiously missing from all the discussion about Israel and the Occupied Territories is the clearly observable, recognizable Nazi techniques in the Israel state. This is not surprising--the trauma of the holocaust, part and parcel of Israel’s founding meme, undigested, has been passed on through generations. In this post, I attempt to, make my case.

At the outset, let me make clear that I am not (or do not think that I am) anti-Semite. Rather, I feel for both sides and hope that they both make peace with each other and live in harmony. My fear is that the lack of acknowledgement of this meme will cause its continuous acting out, and that consequently peace will never be reached. Hence the motivation for this article.

The main thrust of my argument is that certain obvious actions of the state of Israel are demonstrably found in the actions of Nazi's to the Jews in Europe during the World War II, and before. These main actions by the Nazi's were: 1) acting against the Jews "legally" i.e. within "state law", 2) appropriating Jewish land and property 3) ghettoizing of the Jews including the use of walls and barriers and 4) killing a multiple of Jews or their supporters for every single German death.

Aspects of this Nazi driven meme can also be found in hard-core supporters of Israel outside of Israel such as AIPAC--who subscribe to the policy of "Israel, right or wrong" strangely oblivious to the old Nazi slogan "Deutscland uber alles." In most cases, you willl find that the supporters have close ties to someone who suffered horrendously at the hands of the Nazis. I do not go into these points as they dilutes from my main case--that the current actions of Israel contain clearly observable latent Nazi techniques.

One of the curious aspects of the Nazi actions against the Jews is that they were all "legal" as per Government rules in effect when the Nazi regime was in power. Thus the majority of Israeli incursions into the Occupied Territories, the assassinations of Palestinian targets, while all illegal under international law, are legal under Israeli law.

Another prominent aspect of the Nazi oppression of the Jews was that all property was confiscated not just by the Nazi state, but also opportunistically by rank and file citizens of the Nazi states. For example, to this day there exist living Poles who live in houses that Jews once owned, the Poles having settled into these houses, when the Nazi’s, often with their help evicted and deported the Jews to concentration camps. So too the Israeli settlers. They see nothing wrong in their actions, as the still undigested meme handed down to them by those who in turn lost their property, continues to operate.

Conditions in the occupied territories resemble those within many Jewish ghettos. The barriers and checkpoints that the Palestinians go through to reach their work resemble similar barriers that Jews had to go through in order to go outside the ghetto.

A standard Nazi technique was to kill multiple members of Jews and their supporters for every single Nazi death at the hands of the Jews or their supporters. So to the "kill ratio" i.e. the ratio of Palestinians to Jews is typically three and sometimes higher. As in the case of the Nazis, the Palestinians killed often have no direct connection to the Palestinian that did the original killing.

Sadly, Adolph Hitler's hatred still lives today, ironically embedded in a meme that exists at the heart of Israel's psyche, driving the very targets of his hate, making them act in a fashion he would have immediately recognized and understood. The unpalatable, unfortunate result is Israel's harsh actions, which in turn create a lot of new anti-Semitism and cause many would be or one time sympathisers to loose their empathy for Israel.

Gandhi was correct to say that one should guard against imitating and following the same techniques of ones own oppressors. Rather one should identify those aspects of the oppressor in oneself, and then consciously guard against acting out these tendencies. India itself has failed to do this so how can one really blame Israel. They are trapped in their own nightmare.

I too have failed in this regard. When I look into my own heart, I find that I too tend to use the tools and techniques of those that did me the greatest damage, and that enshrined in my own heart, is the image of the person that had the greatest negative impact on my own life. In this way, I am no different from Israel, but I hope to change by my conscious recognition of this interior landscape of my psyche.