“Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.” – Ludwig Börne (1786-1837)
One of the wittier and more brilliant satirists ever to have come out of Germany, Börne identified with characteristic precision that indispensable preliminary step in Everyman’s quest for solutions to whatever plagues us. “If you seek wisdom,” he advised, “seek the destruction of the illusions you hold as true more than you seek new truths.”
This is counsel that should be heeded here and now by our inveterate hawkers of megadelusion – Israel’s very own proponents of the two-state solution. Unflaggingly they peddle tattered, intrinsically disorienting delirium. Incredibly they never seem to tire of pulling the wool over their own and our eyes. They present themselves as possessors of singular insight, as harbingers of a greater truth and as wise beyond our plebeian grasp.
They won’t let go of the grand delusion that underlies their self-professed wisdom and purported truth. Their two-state delusion was certainly sweet – simplistically and seductively so. It claimed that all conflicts can be amicably and fairly settled by just dividing up whatever is contested. It touted idealistic goodwill and seemed compellingly rational. But it was from the start delusionary.
By all empirical yardsticks, that delusion has finally and undeniably crumbled into grimy dust. The illusion of a reasonable accommodation with genocidal foes – which without fail anyhow failed the test of coolheaded analysis – ignobly disintegrated when Ramallah’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas banded back together, at least pro forma, for the sake of expediency.
Whatever their motives and whatever the long-range plans of the old-new partners, their joint venture should persuade even the most diehard of our peaceniks that the time has come to finally wise up and lose the illusion.
The prevalent illusion thus far was that we face two dissimilar Palestinian entities – negotiation- espousing Ramallah and Gaza, whose unaltered goal is Israel’s annihilation. Now that the pair has retied the knot, their deception has been exposed. That should mean that the illusion has been shattered irrefutably once and for all.
In reality the only distinction between the two always was tactical. Ramallah excels at propaganda warfare, while Gaza fires rockets. Ramallah is funded by the Quartet, while Gaza is underpinned by Damascus and Tehran. Both wish to obliterate Israel, but Ramallah is more cunning and Gaza more candidly confrontational.
Neither Ramallah nor Gaza was ever a reliable or viable peace partner. Only our indomitable wishful thinking and obsessive illusion kept conjuring up interlocutors on whom we could unload slices of homeland, directly atop the soft underbelly of our densest population centers.
Gaza’s Hamas thumbs its nose at us and glorifies the IslamoNazism of infamous Second World War-criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini, who from his Berlin residence avidly abetted Hitler’s Final Solution, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue even of several thousand Jewish children.
Conversely, in his Moscow Friendship University PhD treatise, Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas attempted to dwarf the Holocaust’s proportions drastically, while simultaneously accusing Zionists of colluding in Holocaust perpetration – i.e., it didn’t happen, but Israel is guilty. This history-warping dissertation is compulsory study material in his fiefdom’s schools.
ABBAS’S FATAHLAND is nothing but a more outwardly decorous version of Hamastan. All the rest is desperate illusion.
Moreover, our self-imposed hallucination arises from deep desires for something that far transcends Israel’s well-intentioned, if strategically misguided, yen for compromise. Our irredeemable devotion to delusion is inherently Jewish. Perhaps it’s the defensive adaptation of the weak.
Most members of the dysfunctional family of nations indeed advocate the two-state solution, but we alone are delusional. All the others are stimulated by cynical vested interests, which impair our self-preservation prospects. In other words, other states don’t push us into the two-state abyss for our own good. Quite the contrary.
Nevertheless, too many of our headliners and opinion-molders voluntarily embrace that detrimental external pressure. They avidly engage in scare-mongering. If we don’t succumb to what’s dictated from abroad, they hector, we’ll be left alone, ostracized, vulnerable and on the verge of extinction.
But are these demoralizers weakening our resolve for altruistic ends? Or, perhaps, are they identifying with foreigners whom they regard as sources of clout and influence? Are they obsequiously out to win coveted international credentials of enlightenment, that would differentiate them from all those bothersome insular, intransigent and politically incorrect Israelis?
A cooperatively toadying disposition could secure Israel’s peaceniks the acceptance they crave, allow them to bask in the limelight of those who really scorn Israel, win accolades in places Israelis should naturally shun, and earn approval from the most disapproving sorts.
The illusion is that serving the purposes of powers whose greedy, shortsighted interests negate one’s own interests will help promote personal or factional aggrandizement. This isn’t a recently evolved illusion. It has been with us for at least two millennia, perhaps the manifestation of a persistent, pesky mutation in the Jewish genome that keeps popping up exasperatingly in all manner of circumstances, no matter how superficially different.
Somehow Jews appear to crave acceptance, to seek to bask in the limelight of those who really revile them, to win accolades in places they should naturally shun, to yearn for approval from the most inimically disapproving sorts. Ingratiating ourselves with our enemies – and friends-of-enemies – seems preprogrammed into too many of us.
The Jews of Germany, who historically comprised one of the most successful of Diaspora communities, were mind-bogglingly susceptible to the aberration. The list of famous Germans who were born Jewish yet strove not to stay Jewish is unbelievably long. For those cursed with Jewish parentage, talent and brains were never enough to make it in intensely Judeophobic surroundings.
Too many Jews with both talent and brains deluded themselves that Christian credentials would secure them the acceptance they craved, allow them to bask in the limelight of those who really reviled them, win accolades in places they should naturally have shunned, and earn approval from the most disapproving sorts.
Razor-sharp Börne was disturbingly typical. He was born in Frankfurt as Leib Baruch, and that critically was a colossal fly in his ointment. He couldn’t even keep a bureaucratic public-sector job because of his Jewishness. His illusion was to ditch said Jewishness by becoming a Lutheran convert with a suitably Teutonic name.
Gallingly, though, even that failed to erase the original sin of Baruch’s extraction. Eventually he ended up in Paris banding with other frustrated Jews to fix up the world.
Börne-Baruch’s illusion of ingratiating himself didn’t pan out. He didn’t succeed in currying the favor of non-Jews. To them Börne remained who he was born. Perhaps it was this life experience that led him to conclude that the prelude to any progress is losing one’s illusions.
Illusions won’t lead any of us anywhere – not to peace with Ramallah or with Gaza, and certainly not with both. Before we rummage around for yet more appeasement-expediting supplementary sacrifices, we must rid ourselves of specious illusion. First things first.
www.sarahhonig.com
Which is why I put the word “faith” into “scare quotes” in my previous comment.
We’re not dealing with something unknowable. That’s your assumption.
Hey Guys,
If you “know” something you no longer need “faith” – it has become “fact”.
Religion can be a valuable tool for human understanding; the Torah is a great book written be extremely intelligent MEN with deep understanding and insight of the human psyche and and cruel nature.
Nature is always neutral and perfect, the strong [physically, mentally and spiritually] personally and collectively will survive.
Only humans with our ‘superior’ brain are capable of evil – and we do it well.
Why not concentrate on what is knowable and leave the unknowable to ‘the infinite’, in whatever form you imagine.
Question all you like – at the end of the day you are left holding conjecture. I have no such problem. Faith is ME knowing something that YOU question. It’s faith to you only, not me.
Whatever you say, Marvin.
We Jews know our “faith” is true and we’re quite rational about it.
Shy guy wrote:
Only if you assume that no religion is true.
But that’s your delusion.
Questioning myth [“revealed word”] is surely not delusional but unquestionably sane and necessary for human discourse.
“Faith is believing something you know ain’t true”.
Great culture, even civilization has developed from some religious faiths but I fear “belief” which is not subject to scrutiny and adaptation, while welcoming ideas which are fluid and capable of growth and change.
Only if you assume that no religion is true.
But that’s your delusion. 🙂
Israel and Jews must learn to see the world for what it is. As one of my favourite philosophers noted: “the truth is what is – not what should be”.
I agree wholeheartedly that the loss of illusions is a necessary step in the learning continuum.
But before we assume the enormous leap into “wisdom”, let us first strive for understanding – a level very few ever attain.
As an observation, couldn’t it be said that religion relies on the acceptance of illusion/delusion as a fundamental requisite for belief?
Sarah Honig, Evelyn Gordon, and Caroline Glick are the three most brilliant (women)journalists in Israel. Long may they reign. Those interested in the horrible subject of Jewish self-abasement should read Dr. Kenneth Levin’s The Oslo Syndrome and Edward Alexander’s The Jewish Divide over Israel–and of course, the many other depressing books that try to come to grips with our perhaps-genetic defect.
Honig said,
I think Honig is being a little too philosophical, trying to contrast Jewish Israeli behavior with, say, Christian French behavior. Both countries are victims of cynical vested intersts — namely, the crony capitalists into whose hands they have given their countries — and both peoples are willingly self-deluded, hoping their problems will go away if they just think nice thoughts. America is in the same boat, along with China, India, the whole world. The only additional delusion the Jews suffer from, is that they think they’re somehow different from everyone else in this respect.
Jews and Israelis are different from the rest of mankind, in that they are perennially singled out as scapegoats. In this past generation, Bible-believing Christians and Americans are in the same boat, which makes for a potential alliance.
I stress the word “Bible-believing”: During WWII, there was only one Christian group that was singled out to die alongside the Jews in the death camps. That was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were given the chance to avoid their fate, if they would only refuse to have Bible studies in their homes. They did not refuse, and were killed. The rest of German Christians, save literally a handful of preachers, all joined the “Fatherland Church”. In the United States, there has been a revival this past generation in the “home church” movement. It is participants in this revival who are targeted by the same people who attack Israel. The “Fatherland Churches” — the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. — are all on the other side.
The great divide is not between self-deluded Jews and cynical Gentiles: EVERYONE is self-deluded, mistaking wishful thinking for reality. The great divide is between persecutors and the persecuted, between those who seek the favor of God and acknowledge His word, and those who seek the favor of men and acknowledge vanity.
Where have you been?
Brilliant!