With all the focus on the Plame game coming to a denouement, it is easy to miss the importance of recent developments in the Middle East. By now, everyone knows that the new President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, has publicly stated, and then reiterated, that the policy of the Iranian government is to "wipe Israel off the map." The Iranians are allied with various terror groups whose avowed aim has always been to destroy Israel; again, this is not news to anyone who has been paying attention, although it has been instructive to see that the Europeans have noticed the words of Ahmandinejad.
Noticeably silent in condemnation of the threat have been the Muslim countries; again, this is not news.
In a closely related development, the Palestinian terror groups seem unlikely to disarm under the minimalist approach of their President Mahmoud Abbas. In yesterday's Jerusalem Post, Matthew Gutman reports in Aksa Brigades far from ready to disarm, that the murderous competition between terror groups is unlikely to end any time soon:
The world may have thought otherwise, but in the warrens of Gaza's refugee camps the war against Israel is very much still on. The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that it planned to disarm the Brigades and absorb its members into the PA security forces, but these gunmen seem anything but ready to disarm.
The IDF and Gaza-based terrorist groups had exchanged frequent fire since Israel quit the Gaza Strip six weeks ago. But over the past week, the groups amplified their rallying cries against Israel and even the Palestinian Authority. Hamas publicly reiterated its dreams of creating an Islamic state between the Jordan and the sea, and Islamic Jihad pressed forward with terrorist attacks and vowed more.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades would not be outdone. In an interview in an orchard, Hassan Abu Ali, the group's commander here, claimed that the brigades have developed a new rocket, the Aksa-3. These rockets have a maximum range of 17 km., he tells The Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, a sad debate took place in the pages of the Jerusalem Post between the Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Vice Premier Shimon Peres:
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz criticized Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in an interview in Friday's Yediot Aharonot daily, expressing despair with the PA leader.
"Abu Mazen [Abbas] is a one-man show, and there is nothing backing him," Mofaz told the paper. "We will not reach peace with the current Palestinian leadership - we have to wait until the next generation," he added. [Emphasis mine-SW]
He went on to say that for the time being, the best that could be expected was another round of interim agreements between the sides rather than any final peace agreement.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres responded harshly to Mofaz's statements, telling Army Radio on Friday morning that despite the escalation of terror, it would be a mistake to entirely dismiss the current Palestinian leadership.
"It is impossible to pass over a full generation in history," Peres maintained. "What, history is going to stop for an entire generation? We need to think about what will be with this generation, and not just the next."
The Palestinian response was predictable: it is all Israel's fault.
"There is a significant difference between the current situation today in the Palestinian Authority and what it was in the past," (PLC member) Abu Zayid asserted. "There is a leader who says what he believes and does what he believes, but it is impossible to expect him to do more while he is in the shadow of the targeted assassinations and IDF operations inside Palestinian territories," the council member concluded.
Two things that have not changed are the Palestinians refusal to disarm their terrorist gangs and their need to blame others for the failure of the Palestinians. In Back to provocation, Khaled Amayreh presents the argument that the Israelis are provoking the Palestinians to start another intifada:
It is amply clear that these provocations, including the re- imposition of a draconian blockade of Palestinian towns and villages, and the declared policy of barring non-Jews from using main intercity roads throughout the West Bank, have one main aim: pushing the Palestinians into a corner and coercing them to restart the Intifada.
According to Israeli thinking, the resumption of violence on a wider scale would enable Israel to achieve two main goals: first, corrode, weaken and eventually topple the Mahmoud Abbas regime, which would further throw the already fragile Palestinian Authority (PA) into chaos and anarchy. Needless to say, in such an atmosphere, the organisation of Palestinian legislative elections would be utterly impossible.
Reading this article in its entirety, one is struck by a sense of the surreal. Somehow the writer finds it possible to completely ignore the terrorist bombings, the Qassam missiles, the knifings and shootings of ordinary Israelis when explaining the current deteriorating situation.
Palestinian children are raised with hatred of Jews mixed in with their mother's milk. The PA has never made even the most minimal moves to curtail the horrid anti-Semitism that is endemic to the Arab media; it pervades the airways, is taught in the schools, and nurtured until the young can grow big enough to carry a bomb belt. There can never be peace with people who know nothing but hatred.
In the genesis of self-esteem, the ego ideal is crucial. I described, in brief, what is incorporated by the ego ideal and that people's self-esteem is related to how closely they can approximate their ego ideal in my post on Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part I:
The ego ideal is the collection of abilities, traits, strengths and weaknesses, that make up the person who the child wishes he could be. This will include identifications with various important people in the child's world (including fantasies of people, but that takes us farther afield) and can include famous people as well. Many adolescents and pre-adolescents long to be like their favorite athlete or movie star (though what they want to be like is their fantasy of the person based on the celebrity's carefully crafted persona. Despite the celebrity culture in this country, most people give up their longing to be someone else well before they reach adulthood.)
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In the healthy person, by adulthood, the ego ideal has been tempered by reality and includes a realistic assessment of one's abilities and attributes. (Many a "great" third grade athlete recognizes, by high school, that his two left feet render him a better bet for college than for pro sports, and is able to negotiate the metamorphosis, without too much emotional pain, of his ego ideal to more closely approximate reality.) The healthy person sees himself as lovable, likable, able to like and love others, able to do good and useful work, and adding some benefit to the community.
In Iran and Palestine, the suicide bomber has been elevated in status to become the model of success for Palestinian and Iranian youth. In my post on The Suicide Bomber, Narcissism, and the Ego Ideal: Part I, I commented on the story of Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a damaged young woman who tried and failed to blow herself up in an Israeli hospital where she had received treatment for kitchen burns which left her unsuitable for marriage in Palestinian society and with no other role of honor to aspire to:
Clearly, al Biss comes from a culture in which celebrity-hood is bestowed upon those who are killed, or kill themselves, fighting the hated, larger than life, Jew. People who pay attention to such things (MEMRI, for example) have been pointing out for years that the Palestinian authority has glorified suicide bombers as great and holy martyrs deserving of love and admiration. Unfortunately, politicians, diplomats, media people, blinded by their own need to fight for the imagined Palestinian victim, have had to close their eyes to the menace (especially to the Palestinian culture and their children) of constantly nurturing their impressionable young on such toxic nutrients.
Young children form their ego ideals primarily out of the mixture of identifications with their parents and other important people in their life, but the exact form that the ego ideal takes is heavily influenced by the cultural milieu in which they grow up. In Palestine and Iran parents often say that their child who committed an act of suicide/homicide bombing is a hero; their state run media reinforce this and glorify the "martyrs" who die trying to kill Israeli innocents.
Until a generation can be raised that is not nurtured on the poison of anti-Semitism and offered murderous martyrdom for their highest aspirations, no peace will be possible. The best the Israelis can do is build their wall/fence, respond overwhelmingly to terrorism, and make the cost of war to the Palestinians higher than the cost to the Israelis. The Palestinians have to decide if they want to sacrifice another generation to the altar of hatred and murder.
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