Perceived anti-semitism is cited as evidence for why Israel needs to be even more violent, militaristic and tyrannical than it already was, and why its brutal treatment of Palestinians is justified and correct.
Pro-Israel rally in Los Angeles. (Israeli American Council/Wikimedia Commons.)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley
There’s a certain particularly toxic personality type which thrives on being hated. They behave in wildly odious and destructive ways, and then when people react to this with hostility they plunge into poor-me victimhood, which they then use to justify more odious and destructive behavior.
You may have been unfortunate enough to have encountered such personalities in your own life. They behave atrociously, and then when people react to it they say “See?? I really AM being persecuted!”
Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of this personality type taken to the extreme. People hate her because she’s a phony, egomaniacal sadist who has spent her entire political career pushing for mass military bloodshed at every opportunity, but she then frames this hatred as evidence of widespread misogyny and far-right extremism, which is why the world desperately needs Hillary Clinton to help fight those things.
Any remotely normal person who was both as wealthy and as despised as Hillary Clinton would have simply retired from public life to enjoy their hundreds of millions of dollars, blissfully sheltered from the vitriol and condemnation of the common riff raff.
But Clinton keeps showing up, adamantly refusing to go away, because the hatred she receives is actually what fuels her entire personal dynamic.
We see a large-scale version of this same dynamic with the state of Israel. A Jewish anti-Zionist Israeli named Alon Mizrahi posted an interesting piece on Twitter a few days ago that’s been rattling around in my head ever since, wherein he argues that Israel is actually intentionally generating hatred towards itself in order to shore up political power.
Claiming that “Israel and American Jewish organizations took it upon themselves to keep Jews afraid and isolated” in a “strategy of intentional paranoia,” Mizrahi opines that when Oct. 7 hit, “the right wing, nationalistic, paranoid section of the Jewish political spectrum, realized it could be translated into political gold.”
“It doesn’t seem like Israel is trying to be hated globally. It is actually what it’s doing,” Mizrahi writes. “It is intentionally airing its cruelty and barbarity so that it will remain closed up to the world, thus guaranteeing the continued rule of the paranoia camp.”
“Palestinians are just crash test dummies in this scenario,” he adds. “Their deaths are used to get people angry and Israel hated, so it becomes even more paranoid.”
Whether you accept or reject Mizrahi’s perspective, you can’t deny that Israel’s apologists have been seizing on the outrage its actions in Gaza have caused as evidence of anti-semitic persecution.
The Anti-Defamation League has started categorizing pro-Palestine rallies as anti-semitic incidents, including rallies organized and attended by Jewish groups, leading to the Israel-friendly mass media reporting a massive spike in “anti-semitism” in the wake of Oct. 7.
Common pro-Palestine chants like, “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” have been deceitfully labeled calls for the genocide of Jews, and any criticism of Israel’s actions is met with a deluge of accusations of anti-semitism.
Once Israel and its western supporters succeeded in framing any opposition to the Israeli government as evidence of anti-semitism, it was guaranteed that any time Israel does something evil it will cause a new wave of “anti-semitism” per those standards.
This perceived hatred and persecution could then be cited as evidence for why Israel needs to be even more violent, militaristic and tyrannical than it already was, and why its brutal treatment of Palestinians is justified and correct.
This in turn could be used by western governments to justify pouring more weapons into Israel and providing military support against its neighbors.
In this dynamic, anything Israel does causes more people to hate Israel both in the middle east and around the world, to which Israel responds by tearfully proclaiming “See?? They hate us! We must defend ourselves against their hostilities!”
This is not the sort of behavior you would accept from someone in your life, and it shouldn’t be the sort of behavior we accept from nuclear-armed ethno-states.
As with any other widespread dysfunction, the key to dismantling this one is to spread awareness of what it is that Israel is doing.
And what Israel is doing, ultimately, is weaponizing sympathy and victimhood. When somebody is using a weapon to hurt others, you take their weapon away.
The world needs to stop giving Israel sympathy and stop buying into its victimhood narratives, because those narratives are only ever used to justify more and more western-backed atrocities.
This won’t happen until enough awareness has spread of what’s really going on here. For there to be a movement toward health, a lot of eyes need to open to the unwholesomeness of this manipulative dynamic?—?both inside and outside of Israel.
Luckily that does appear to be the case. More and more people are recognizing the unwholesomeness of the pro-Israel victimhood narrative, just as you’d eventually recognize the unwholesomeness of someone in our own life who keeps behaving terribly and then playing the victim.
It’s going to be a messy, two-steps-forward-one-step-back slog, but I think we’ll find our way out of this mess eventually.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
It is their mythos. I was shocked when I was invited to a Synagogue in a very affluent, highly educated neighborhood and the Rabbi told the congregation, “Everyone hates you because you are Jewish.” This was shortly after their worship of Esther in which they were ecstatic that the Jews massacred 50,000 Cannonites a couple thousand years ago. My conclusion at the time is that this sort of manipulation is very deliberate; their leaders are using their own people by creating a narcissistic culture with a siege mentality that can be triggered to unleash against any opposition. They are programmed to see the world only in terms of their own existential survival. In the end, I see them as very important pawns of the MIC, who arent even aware of how they are being used.
It baffles the mind why MOST US or Western journalists fail to understand HOW & WHY the US Financial Empire has purposely stationed its power in Israel. Naturally, the US always find the most corrupt politicians because the US merely buys them off and turns on the screws to do the will of the US. Zelensky and Netayahoo are perfect examples of Corrupt.
The US is compelled to keep its overwhelming power in the Oil World. Oil is “energy.” Energy produces products, goods throughout the World. Being Masters of all those shipping lanes is a key structure to the US Financial World.
Is that too difficult for Western Journalists to understand?? We guess so.
“There’s a certain particularly toxic personality type which thrives on being hated.”…. a large congregation of idiots and amateurs in matters strategic who engage in various manifestations of emotionalism not restricted to hatred, and some who thrive on being hated by emotional opponents who understand that resort to emotionalism is best left to opponents, idiots and amateurs in matters strategic.
The Trinity of Insanity: Judaism-Christianity-Islam
The three factions of the same skygod cult are undoubtedly responsible for more death and destruction over the course of human history than all other ideologies put together.
Another CJ bullseye, and spot on comment by RW.
Thank you, Caitlin. Any resemblance between the behaviors of Bibi and those of Trump is chillingly obvious. Presidents come and Presidents go, but the Pentagon remains, using them as cats’ paws.
But the thing is hatred may have started as a religion based in traitor at a supper engagement that may not even have happen and perhaps even used as a weapon to preserve an occupation. It may have gotten out of control and spread massive hatred through history with an imaginary god urging it on.
What Hillary used as a weapon against Russia may be missing the point. A culture war against women rights knocked her out of one nomination and then cost her the next because of religious culture war and a deal with republicans willing to hold a Supreme Court nomination hostage for after an election they help throw the republican way and Trump just happened to benefit since Jeb’s brother ruined any chance for anyone else.
The empire of religion has manipulated rule using various hatreds for thousands of years and hatred gone viral over the ages are hard addictions to halt or defend from as well. Western civilization really has no humanitarian defenses historically….
DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender. I have an estranged family member who would experience mental breakdowns every few days. She would become manically vitriolic, but when angrily responded to would plaintively cry, “Why are you attacking ME, what did I do !?” Israel does need to stoke the fires of contrived antisemitism and victimhood to justify it’s brutal and deranged behaviour. Claims of antisemitism are a central part of Hasbara and pro-Israel propagandists in the West. In the excellent documentary The Lobby {about the Israel lobby in the U.S.A.}, the film’s ostensibly Zionist investigator visits an ADL office and inquires about recent reported incidents of antisemitic attacks. All an employee can find in it’s records is something comically trivial. As there is no honest, factual, or humane defense for the colonial apartheid state, or the twisted ideology that spawned it, a tautology of victimization and smearing of opponents as hatemongers is necessary. It’s remarkable that a nation and society is entirely dependent upon a fictional narrative to rhetorically justify it’s criminal actions. The United States needs enemies to justify it’s grotesquely inflated military budget and arms industry. Israel’s monstrous occupation, torture, and murder of Palestinians requires a mythical beast. To the extent that barbarism can be defended, a preternaturally barbaric nemesis, mirroring it’s own hideousness, is needed.
In this surreal modern world, words get twisted far away from their original meanings. Both ‘racism’ and ‘antisemitism’ have been weaponized is such a fashion, both involving an ‘official’ redefinition of the word away from its original meaning.
Thus, while opposing anti-semitism was once an act of opposition to genocide, today we are told that anyone who stands up and opposes genocide is actually a hated anti-semite. That’s the Definition and the Rules under the Rules Based Order.
Meanwhile, we are told that we must support a genocidal theocratic state that regularly spouts racial drivel about its opponents and calls them “human-animals” and “creatures”, and we must support its normalization with a head-chopping monarchy with an equally horrible human rights record, all as an alliance against the people who stand up and try to stop genocide …. and that we must support these states and their plans all in the name of “Democracy” and “Freedom”.
Its a surreal world out there, where you can’t trust that the words mean what you think they mean. Trust your heart, it knows.
“When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head”
— “White Rabbit”, Jefferson Airplane, from the hit album, “Surrealistic Pillow”.
Today all the Knights are talking backwards. Never stop learning, follow your heart.
I read that Navalny suddenly turned up dead today in his Siberian prison colony.
From the way Navlany’s “game,” the main object of which has been to bring down the Putin administration, has been played versus the national government of the Russian Federation by the US State Department and the CIA, including the most logical conclusions that Navalny must have been carefully and sub-lethally poisoned at least twice by American agents (or their traitorous native Russian minions) within Russia (to get him out of the country) and then again within Germany (to temporarily keep him there whilst ginning up the propaganda), I would surmise that his final move as a pawn was played by an American-directed spook actually embedded within the gulag (a la “Hogan’s Heroes”) to counter all the terrible press that Genocide Joe was clearly getting in the immediate aftermath of the Tucker Carlson move to interview Putin. What we the world’s public were supposed to believe is that Putin, somehow embarrassed by the verbal thrashing he allegedly (but not really) took in the interview with Tucker, ordered the “liquidation” of just one more gadfly, which Putin allegedly does all the time to eliminate problems no matter how contrived or trivial they may seem to rational observers.
The CIA may actually have wanted you to believe that the move was taken because Putin was greatly affronted by Tucker’s brave but brazen attempt to speak truth (call for the release of the American spook on trial in Russia) to power (in the guise of Big Bad Putin persecuting yet another “innocent” American tourist or diplomat). What I find hard to believe is that Washington would NOT stoop to such treachery. Ironically, these are the kind of outrageous acts that Stephen F. Cohen used to matter of factually deny that Putin ever used when incessantly accused of such by the American government which much more likely uses them in its standard operating procedures. Perhaps Stephen knew too much, eh? HE sure died unexpectedly. Forgive me for always searching for the most logical explanation of a mystery or an exercise like Hesse in his “Das Glasperlenspiel.”
RT explained that Navalny went for a walk and somewhat thereafter went unconscious and died. The examination yielded the answer at blood clot. (He may have fallen; but still he was only 47 whereas the blood clot danger here is usually reserved for old gaffers like myself.) So, then, ah yes! the conspiracy theories spring like the buds of late February! It MUST have been Putin, smarting from his “thrashing”! Did any of these idiots actually watch and listen to the interview? A studying, cool gaze; Tucker staring seriously, evidently out of his depth; “deer in the headlights” sort of response. Putin afterwards saying he was disappointed; having expected more challenge and pushback. Also there was the Putin irony, eyes amused. “Boogie man theory of China.” Thrashing, my ass. These people look more and more ridiculous, and I think credibility ratings are actually going down.
Last week: “who’s Navalny?”
Today: “EVILDICTATORPUTLERKILLEDDEMOCRATNAVALNYRUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA!BLAHBLAHBLAH”
Next week: “Who’s Navalny?”
On the article I’m over joyed someone as talented as Caitlin finally stepped up and and called Israeli behavior for what it is. Thank you so very much!
I did some looking, it didn’t take long. I found a term for the condition in individual adults and the young, Histrionic Personality Disorder. I know what you might be thinking but hang on. While this condition alone is not indicative of a propensity toward violence, there is, however, the risk of violence is increased by comorbidity. hXXps://pubmed.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/24057452 ; Comorbid personality disorder and violent behavior. Everyone interested might want to check this out.
As we all have been thinking all along something drastic is wrong with the leadership of Israel and their fanatical followers.
It would follow those who are overly sympathetic and obliging to this group are facilitators. Can you Zionist maybe!
The twisted mind is a terrible thing. You listening “Joey?”
Thanks CN
Needs to be hated?
Well, for the very first time of my life I do hate something. It is Israel, its arrogance, its cruelty, its self promoted importance, its influence over a corrupt US Congress and its obvious control over the United States of America. It will be the reason that the US empire comes to a screaming end with corruptible members of government not able to distinguish between support and total ownership making any member a tool for Israel and its hateful actions. The last example of such cruelty was the Third Reich.
Israel has now beaten that one hands down.
Sadly, the American people do not appear to see where they are heading.
Thanks Caitlin.
Free Palestine!
Another group that is needy regarding hate, that any criticism of immediately triggers offense and censor is Psychiatry. The history of it is kept to a large degree under wraps because of that. All of it’s influence regarding forwarding Eugenics and Racism and its’ interference in the judicial system, even the Holocaust is relatively unknown because it is like breaking a sacrament to criticize it.
Recommended reading: “Psychiatrists–the Men Behind Hitler: Architects of Horror” by Thomas Roder as sn extremely eye opening book.
The title is unfortunately misleading. It is satirical but that will sail over the heads of those who most need to understand the validity of the article’s premises and they will assume, erroneously, that it is a call for antisemitism, which it definitely is not. Read the article objectively, … if you can. Most Americans cannot.
Most American can’t read.
Watch an American try to use a ‘search engine’. They can’t spell. This is the attraction of services of AI chatbots. They can search for things without requiring the user to do more than talk. Spelling is not required. Many Americans are functionally illiterate, which is why they only watch ‘videos’.
We saw quite vividly during the pandemic that ‘schools’ are for ‘warehousing’ kids. Wall Street screamed in panic that the parents might stay home to take care of kids, so Genocide Joe agreed with DeSantis that all education must be in person. Nothing says “warehouse” like a football coach or a ‘school security officer’ pretending to teach to an assembly hall full of kids because all the teachers are out sick and the most important purpose of the school is to warehouse the kids during the work day so school can not close.
Then, at the end of the year, we do ‘social promotion’, an advance them to the next higher grade. Watch Americans, and realize that can can’t do reading, writing or arithmetic. Public education was a cornerstone of democracy, and the oligarchs have destroyed it to create a stupid and gullible public that is easy to manipulate.
Look at the themes of American political campaigns:
Vote for Obama, because he’s black.
Vote for Hillary, because he’s a woman.
Vote for Biden, because you hate Trump.
Believe anything Trump says, because he’d never lie to you.
That is not a sign of a literate society having an informed debate on the direction of the nation.
Please don’t underestimate us. There is a lot of noise here, but also a lot of people who see the truth. The answer to our problems in the US is to not discount those who are generally discounted.
Thank You Caitlin
Clearly correct. Thank you, Caitlin.
There are definitely parallels among zionists, narcissists, bullies, the ruthless elite. They all sadistically enjoy the hatred of so-called inferior people. To me, what really ties it all together is the ‘objectivist philosophy ‘ of Ayn Rand, which is rooted in selfishness, materialism and amorality. Rand followers really believe they are entitled by their ‘superiority’ to abuse ‘lesser’ people, and that they are victims of such people, who only seek to abuse and destroy them. It makes complete sense that Rand’s philosophy was inspired by William Hickman, who murdered and dismembered a helpless young child. Rand defended him, saying he was ‘victim of society’, lauded his ‘courage to defy society’, and to lived a ‘truly free life, free from the morals of society’. Some have compared Rand’s philosophy to the twisted forms of judaism and satanism.
Get the laptop contents published. Interview Jack Maxey.
hxxps://rumble.com/veb71f-jack-maxey-on-the-contents-of-hunters-laptop-and-why-it-matters-to-every-am.html
What an excellent article with the inclusion of a thought-provoking and very realistic description of what could be the whole way of understanding the terrible stories and images before our eyes every day since October 7 2023. The lies about that day that have pushed the present excuses from Israel for their “retaliation” have been exposed by people like Max Blumenthal in the “Grayzone” but still remain imprinted on the minds of many of the Western population whose sympathy for Israel the victim has been cultivated for the 75 years of the “right to exist” no matter what it does.
Your passion and sincerity are so obvious I feel u r one of the best commentators on the left
Thank you again Caitlin for your wisdom and truthful reporting – if only we had someone like you reporting in the MSM – just imagine…
To not hate Israel would almost border on masochism in a certain sense.
I think it’s possible to hate, and I mean HATE, what they are doing, without hating the generality of hating the whole country, though it is sure not easy. I wouldn’t want someone to hate my whole country and everyone in it because of the despicable things that half or more of us are not even aware have occurred, due to lying mainstream media, owned by corporate criminals. It is not pretty when organized crime gets into your government and no one does anything effective to stop it. And if they try they get assassinated. I feel sorry for people who have complete immunity from any responsibility and are never held accountable. The truth is they are not just trying to kill you and me and every other innocent and beautiful person. They are also on a path of self destruction. I’ve seen them get sick and die if you do end up proving them wrong – no easy task. Sometimes we wish it would happen faster! But they come back anyways. Some beings are actually born insane. Sometimes I wonder if some of the beings who were Nazis died and got born again as Israelis, the way they are acting. Possible.
“I think it’s possible to hate, and I mean HATE, what they are doing, without hating the generality of hating the whole country, though it is sure not easy.”
It is useful to others for amateurs in matters strategic to hate and resort to other forms of emotionalism since by doing so in various degrees they become complicit in their own transcendence – We the people hold these truths to be self-evident being an example of useful facilitation and longevity of hatred and contingent vindictiveness in “The United States of America including Israel and friends”.
Sour grapes rule in both Washington and Israel. What they want they cannot have and are outraged that a new multipolar world is emerging that is marginalizing them. They are trapped in a psychotic spin cycle and refuse to take available off-maps.
Too much Money and power infantilize despots as they retreat into their violent tantrums.
Your last sentence encapsulates what happens to the human psyche when allowed to be completely unaccountable to the human family for too long.
This is perhaps off-topic but I hope relevant in the sense that it provides contrast to the “victimhood” view. And perhaps some readers have not yet seen it.
From Hamas itself, titled:
Our Narrative . . . Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (reference to October 7 events)
Two passages stand out for me, noteworthy in tone if nothing else to indicate the psychological disposition on this other hand to the lunacy Caitlin has been describing:
1) Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.
. . .
2) We urge these countries, especially the US administration, Germany, Canada and the UK, if they are meant for justice to prevail as they claim, they are ought to announce their support to the course of the investigation in all crimes committed in occupied Palestine and to give full support for the international courts to effectively do their job.
hxtps://static.poder360.com.br/2024/01/Hamas-documento-guerra-Gaza-21jan2024.pdf
Circling the wagons is a shoaling behavior, an ancient and effective survival strategy. Similarly, America’s constant need to discovery new and imminent threats accomplishes the same thing. In this respect, it is absolutely necessary for us to be living in a “dangerous” world. I fear we will never outgrow this primal behavior. We needed to bond as a group in order to make it through the Pleistocene. Such behaviors arise from the depths of our being. We own them. That are what we are.
I would never have cared for Germany’s Nazis…and I most certainly don’t care for today’s ZIONIST-N-AZIS – as a matter of fact, I have been BOYCOTTING israel for a very long time already. And I have now broken off with the Jewish part of my family. Shameless…no conscience.
I am sorry to hear that, Vera. I am hoping that my sister — an arrogant, cruel person — is no longer calling everyone an anti-semite for not agreeing with her (when my mother began to question her support for Israel, my sister called her anti-semitic), but I have no idea because I cannot abide her behavior. I hope you have good friends and family you can turn to.
Thank you, Susan
How can any person – regardless of race, religion, stand by and not be repulsed by what the Nazi Zionists are doing. This isn’t a matter of being ‘anti’ anything…this is plain racism of which Zionists are very knowledgeable.
Surely they exhibit none of “God’s love” towards their fellow man, if such a thing actually exists.
BEAUTIFUL CAITLYN!!!!! THANK YOU!!!
Awareness, Truth and Accountability are the real answers. It doesn’t even have to involve hate. But when it is unavoidable- hate the crimes. Hate the hatred and injustice itself. These perpetrators who cannot restrain themselves from harmful acts, even up to genocide need to be held accountable and stopped. They are responsible, even though not able to restrain themselves. Because they won’t get a conscience and stop themselves, the sane must restrain them. It would be therapeutic for humsnity to see genocidal maniacs behind bars.
Applying the individual pathology and semi-pathology of narcissism to nations (and other large collections of peoples organized around some common principles ) dangerously simplifies the complex interplay of personal pathologies with geopolitical motives. Johnstone’s outrage is fully warranted, but the analysis here seems misdirected.
Bravo, CJ
Keep writing
Spot on! One little criticism: The title, “Israel Needs to be Hated” might have read better as “Israel Has a Need to be Hated.” We wouldn’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism.
Why an article should never be judged or commented on based on just the headline.