By Stewart Wechsler
I want to offer another perspective on why the Israeli government first ordered the killing of those Gaza Peace Flotilla members, and now are using the second aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, to silence their critics in a pattern of a victim turned abuser, but be patient, it is tied together at the end of this piece.:
When I was a kid growing up as a Jew in the New York area, I frequently heard the phrase "Never again!" At the time I originally thought it meant that we should never again be silent and complicit in genocides or even smaller injustices to ANY people. I later realized that to those of my fellow Jews that protested "Never Again!" the loudest, it really meant "Never Again to us Jews!"
These Jewish brothers for whom "Never Again!" was all about us Jews, stood in sharp contrast with my Jewish heroes and heroines. My heroes and heroines were the Civil Rights Movement activists that risked or gave their lives fighting for the freedom of Blacks in Mississippi in 1964. They were the Jews that made up a disproportionate number of those that fought General Franco's fascism in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 - 1939. They have been the Jewish journalists that have spoken truth to power, from Amy Goodman to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn (whose New York accent sounded just like my socialist uncle Ed Hoffman, another one of my Jewish heroes who, as an African American History professor in the South devoted much of his life fighting for Civil Rights in his own way.). My Jewish heroes and heroines have always been my brothers and sisters that were leaders in movements for social justice for all peoples. More recently Jewish heroines have included those such as Heddy Epstein, the 85 year-old Holocaust survivor that has been devoting her life to fight the abuse of the Palestinian people, and the Jewish writers, Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf that have exposed the abusers of power in their books "The Shock Doctrine" and "The End of America".
In my analysis, those who were only thinking of the Jews when they proclaimed "Never Again!, were my emotionally scarred Jewish brothers who never healed from the post traumatic stress of the Holocaust and the other abuses passed through generations of victim-hood. Both in New York and in Israel the worst victims of abuse have ended up becoming those with the greatest emotional need to gain power and possessing the greatest willingness to abuse others to get the power they feel they need to feel emotionally invulnerable and not "less than".
In Israel the greatest victims of these emotionally scarred Jews have been the indigenous people of pre-WWII Palestine / Israel, especially the Arab - Muslim Semites, but also the Sephardic Semites that had been living for so long in peace with their Semitic brothers. These Sephardics were then also treated as second class citizens by the more urbane Ashkenazi (my tribe) immigrants from Europe.
In America and the rest of the world, some of the most emotionally abused Jews went on to misuse the skills and strengths that we should be most proud of as a people. These Jewish brothers went on to misuse their great intelligence and strong business skills. Instead of being the greatest business people that provide valued products and services that maximally benefit both buyers and sellers, employees and their communities as many of us Jews do so well, the Bernie Madoffs, Jack Abramoffs, and Goldmans and Sachses among us used their business skills to get the most for themselves at the expense of their customers, employees and communities.
When we get in this abusive mode, due to the shame of our circumstances we cannot see what we are doing and we end up in an endless vicious cycle of trying to get more for ourselves at the expense of others and our earth, to try to make ourselves feel better because we don't feel we have enough. In reality these brothers and sisters are trying to compensate for not having enough love, but they try to make up for their lack of love with more power over others, with this power often being in the form of money. Consequently, they then end up digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole of being hated and despoiling the earth that sustains us all. When others do anything to expose our abuses, our insecurity makes us defensive and we are likely to attack them viciously. And when such attacks are pointed out, it only further confirms our feeling of being unfairly persecuted, and hardens us even more.
This is what the Gaza Peace Flotilla members were guilty of. They were guilty of exposing the abuse, by the weak-egoed people that have come to dominate Israel, of their Semitic brothers in Gaza. For this, at least 9 or 10 of the Gaza Peace Flotilla members paid with their lives.
I expect that with the treatment of the subsequent aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, the abuse victim - turned abuser - state of Israel will try to whitewash its earlier abuse of Gaza Peace Flotilla members by showing that they did not kill any of them. With this they will try to show the world, or maybe fool enough of them into believing, that they really are not abusers. I expect they will examine all of the ship's contents and let them go into Gaza after showing that they don't have any supplies that would help so-called "terrorists". After showing that the second ship had no supplies that would aid "terrorists" they will imply that the earlier Gaza Peace Flotilla did. While the wise among us pleaded that the world should "Never Forget!", in this case the killings on the Gaza Peace Flotilla, the Israeli decision makers cleverly (foolishly?) believe that they can get us to forget. With defenders of the Israeli government having near monopoly control of the the voice of the people in the US media and substantial global media control also, they believe they can silence their victims. This is another well known pattern of abusers, they scare their victims, in this case the media workers of the US and world, into silence.
In their abuse of others, these most powerful Jewish Post Traumatic Stress victims are calling out for help and healing, but few of us have the wisdom and strength to heal them. Yet, in failing to do so we let these sickest of our brothers go on to destroy our peace and our earth like a child on a temper tantrum. These sickest among our brothers will up the ante by calling out for help louder and louder until they are heard and healed or until we and our beloved earth are almost all dead. Even if some survive this temper tantrum of titans of industry an enormous amount of God's ancient art in the form of species, ecosystems and cultures will be destroyed.
As a Jews I do believe we should be proud of our intelligence, business skills and media savvy, but sadly, a minority of us have used those erstwhile strengths in a sick way. Though our sickest brothers have become prominent among a top predator/abuser/controller group that dominates the money, the corporations, the media establishments and the governments of the world (especially in America and Israel), we have no monopoly on this disease. I don't know whether or not any of the top players in British Petroleum are Jewish, but they are now certainly among the world's sickest abusers and it has nothing to do with being Jewish or not. As far as I can tell, all of the people in this top predator/abuser/controller class suffer from this same addiction to power over others to try to compensate for the love they can't buy or have. But in trying to control everyone, they only become more hated or more distant from others, and those that might appear to love them are, more often than not, just sucking up to their money.
Thus, the fundamental solution to most of the world's man-made problems caused by these emotionally unhealthy people, is to end the cycle of victim becomes abuser who victimizes others who in turn again become abusers. We may not all be ready to love our enemies among the greatest power abusers as a clever Jewish guy named Jesus might have suggested, but we should at least understand that the abusers are a product of an abusive society. I would contend that they are also usually products of sick personal circumstances. We now have an opener with a better than ever connected world to recreate a sort of world community where it is no longer acceptable anywhere in the world to prey on others anywhere on earth.
Author's Bio: I've been an activist to one degree or another since I was 11 years old. This started with attending rallies against the Vietnam War with my family. At that age I also remember attending a grape boycott picket with my older brother and attempting to win people to my side. I now have 2 focuses. One focus is on the war against the truth by the media now controlled by the most powerful few. The second focus is on the war on the ecosystem by both the corporations and the lifestyles of most Americans and others. These people are either oblivious to or insensitive to the effects our life styles have on ecosystems and all of the other species on earth that make up those ecosystems.
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