Israel’s penchant for self-flagellation

By Vic Rosenthal

Israel’s Cabinet has authorized security officials to use “administrative detention” and “aggressive questioning” against suspected “Jewish terrorists,” following the arson attack at Duma that left an Arab baby dead and other family members in the hospital.

This was done against a background of national mea culpas by everyone from the President and Prime Minister on down, both for this crime and for the stabbing murder of a young girl and injuring of several others at the Jerusalem Gay Pride march.

All of this is happening despite the fact that there are as yet no suspects, Jewish or otherwise, for the Duma arson. It is also true that no connection can be demonstrated between homophobic murderer Yishai Schlissel and any Jewish nationalist movement or ideology.

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It is a sickness, a Jewish sickness.

Pathological guilt isn’t a problem only because it leads to stupid Woody Allen movies. The demonization of the Jewish state by our enemies has a purpose: to provide reasons to oppose our self-defense, which is presented as just another war crime. By feeding and supporting it, which we do every time we apologize for yet another non-existent ‘crime’ – al Dura, the Gaza beach incidents of 2006 and 2014, shelling the Lebanese village of Kfar Kana in 2006, the Mavi Marmara affair, etc. – we participate in our own demonization, and amplify it.

The damage isn’t confined to the international arena. What other country is so obsessed, in its public discourse, journalism, art and literature, with its supposed moral failings? While other countries – think of Turkey or Russia – try to write embarrassing episodes out of history books, our historians, sometimes very creatively, look for sins to put in. We have a major newspaper – Ha’aretz – dedicated to besmirching our nation, every day. How many serious films made in Israel have you seen that don’t suggest that something is rotten here? What do most academic researchers in the social sciences and humanities prefer to write about? Do we even need to ask?

Possibly because of my American background, I am really attached to the principle that an accused is innocent until proven guilty. Here a crime is committed and before there is even any evidence, we fall over ourselves demanding that we be punished!

Naftali Bennett was right: stop apologizing. We don’t need the unearned guilt. We live in a great nation, which, like any other nation, has some bad people in it. Let’s punish the criminals, not the nation.