The battered child syndrome

Op-ed: Isaac Herzog’s latest comments about peace prospects reflect his unwillingness or inability to look reality in the eye and see that accords cannot be reached, no matter how Israeli leaders act.

By Eiyakim Haetzni, YNET

Herzog and Abbas in Ramallah. Delusions of a possible peace.

Isaac Herzog recently visited the Mukataa in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, and returned bursting with compliments for Mahmoud Abbas, who is packing his bags ahead of a trip to Tehran before establishing an Iranian delegation office in Ramallah.

With magnetic optimism, Herzog promises that the Palestinians are ready to take “original steps on core issues.” Are we in for a historic concession of the Palestinian “right of return?” And perhaps Abbas is planning to offer Israel a defensive perimeter in the Jordan Valley south of Beit She’an, so that we may stop ISIS or the Revolutionary Guards from reaching Route 6?

Herzog has found a “historical”, “rare regional opportunity”, aided by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim countries’ fear of ISIS and willingness to lean on Israel’s military strength in the name of their self-defense.

In one of Rabbi Joshua’s proverbs, the lion allows the stork to put its head in his throat, in order to dislodge a bone he’s choking on. The face that she was allowed to exit from between his jaws unharmed is her payment for the task. But here, instead of them paying us in their hour of need – for instance, by forgoing the principles of the Saudi Initiative (dividing Jerusalem, a return to the ’67 borders, refugees) – with Herzog, the stork is the one who pays for taking out the bone.

Herzog’s optimism is reminiscent of the protagonist of Voltaire’s classic Candide: or, All for the Best (1759), who goes through a series of disasters and incidents that emphasize the worst of human evils: An earthquake in Lisbon that kills tens of thousands, the kidnapping of his dream woman and her repeated rape, syphilis, the horrors of the inquisition, a person being saved from drowning and then drowning his savior – and in all these, he sees “the best of all possible worlds.”

In such a spirit of absurd optimism, Herzog “believes that both leaders will enter a room together and look each other in the eye and reach an agreement.” They just need to “not worry, not be afraid, to dare.” How does this fit with calling Netanyahu a “criminal” just because an Israeli soldier killed someone who attacked him with a knife? How does that fit with terrorists being admired and given prizes and gifts? How does that fit with Abbas himself being a Holocaust denier, who’s working against us by operating the largest boycott and propaganda machine since Goebbels?

And what is the explanation for there being not one signature, not one obligation that the Palestinians haven’t callously broken? Only a Candidean optimist can shut his eyes, and is willing to hand over the mountains of Samaria, which overlook the land from the Beit She’an valley to the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area, for another signature.

Innocence? Candide isn’t naïve, and Herzog is far from it as well. Candide was hypnotized by a philosophy that distorted his vision and his mind. This kind of ideological fixation isn’t affected by reality. When faced with the conception of peace, facts do not matter.

A scientific explanation for this suicidal possession is given by Professor Kenneth Levin, a historian and psychiatrist, in his book “The Oslo Syndrome”. According to Levin, the “battered child syndrome” is in work here. In it, the child deludes himself that his bad behavior is the cause of his suffering, and that if he behaves well his situation will change for the better. He can’t contend with a reality where his suffering is arbitrary.

Like the child, some here refuse to accept the reality that the Arab rejection of peace, and the siege that comes with it, are given and permanent facts, as long as we wish to have a state here. Against this fact of life the irrational anti-despair slogan asks “Must the sword devour forever?”

For the sake of his own mental health, the one under siege needs to have the illusion that if he retreats from here and there the enmity will stop and the siege will be lifted. Will it be possible to open the eyes of the battered child?