I said in my last post that I feel attracted to the Jews as a people, their gentilesse and love of learning. These qualities may however be an embarrassment to many Jews, especially the ones who have chosen to live in Palestine. Anyway, that seems to be the view of historian Benny Morris. When in Righteous Victims it is time to account in some way for this or that act of aggressive cruelty perpetuated against Arab by Jew, he on more than one occasion mentions the strong desire of Jews to prove that they are not cultivated weaklings.
Suppose you accept, as I do, the psychological phenomenon invoked by Morris to explain the behavior of Zionists in Palestine. How much does it explain? I don't think it's only Jews who are affected. Right-wing political movements find their foot soldiers among men who have suffered some wound to their masculine sensibility. The strut and swagger, the militarism, the supercilious curl of the lip, the sneer, the contempt for opponents and laws--those who have been in some way unmanned find it all irresistible and want to try their own hand. Politics is a salve for their injury. Listen to the way they run down the other side. They're effete. They're elitists. They''re academics and intellectuals. What could be worse! Too much like the Jews.
It's nothing new. One of the most chilling stage directions in drama occurs in the first act of Macbeth, after the protagonist, in a soliloquoy, decides not to kill the king:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on th' other--
His ruminations are interrupted by "Enter Lady Macbeth." She is not pleased to hear of the decision:
Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Woulds't thou have that
Which thou esteemest the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' th' adage? [who wants the fish but does not want to get his paws wet].
Macbeth objects--"I dare do all that may become a man;/Who dares do more is none"--and she replies: "When you durst do it, then you were a man." And so he does it.
One recognizes in Macbeth the kind of psychology Morris ascribes to Zionists. In "The White Man Unburdened," Norman Mailer speaks of "the ongoing malaise of the white American male," which is really just the same thing imported to our shores. Mailer argues that the decision to make war in Iraq might be explained by the need of these damaged white guys to finally win a game.
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