A campaign in Norway to orient the public about the victims of terrorism against Israel has encountered a lot of resistance - Bjørn Stærk writes about it here. The Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions, for example, posted a big sign on its office building behind the remains of a bombed bus, with the following text: "Occupation doesn't create peace but does create terror." Bjørn wonders why so many people who consider themselves unbiased observers to this conflict would rather not deal with tangible reminders that terrorism is a bad, inexcusable thing.
I have a hypothesis, if anyone's interested. The collective and seeemingly irrational European antipathy to Israel is driven by several factors, namely these:
- Fear of being targeted themselves (SELF PRESERVATION). I think there are two incidents that weigh heavily on Europeans' mind: one was Munich in 1972; the other 9/11 in the United States. These proved that a) terrorists don't respect borders, and b) terrorists will not only kill their enemy, but also their enemy's friend.
- Entrenched cold war mental models (NOSTALGY). The Vietnam war gave rise to a worldview that was simplistic, but compelling: that the US and USSR were pitted against each other as imperialist rivals. European intellectuals found a sense of moral superiority in being above and in opposition to this dynamic. Every problem in the world - be it pollution, poverty, regional wars, etc., - could be attributed to the cynical machinations of American and Soviet interests. Israel is the last of the American "client regimes" for which terms like "imperialist," "colonial," etc., can be applied without embarrassment.
- ANTISEMITISM, the long European tradition of. Prejudice against Jews has been institutionalized in European societies from time immemorial. It is ingrained in every European nationalistic movement, even the Socialist varieties. By adding guilt for past atrocities to the mix, antisemitism has become a paradoxical pathology. More often than people care to admit, Europeans are trying to find ways to pin some of the blame for the Shoah on the Jews themselves. Europeans are therefore anxious to make the distinction between those "ethnic" Jews that conform to European expectations, and those uppity Jews (i.e., Zionists) whose behavior attracts hostility.
- The intolerable implications of an alternative truth (DENIAL). If you can make yourself believe that Israel is primarily responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict, you will also believe that it is within Israel's power to end it. This is a simple and comforting proposition, since Israel presumably can be persuaded or pressured into doing the right thing. The alternative - that Israel has a limited set of options, and that Arab regimes must make changes for there to be peace - is simply too painful to consider.
Self-preservation, nostalgy, antisemitism, and denial are attributes of the collective and individual psyche - they are not typically something that people would acknowledge. And to be sure, the anti-Israeli crowd will reject out of hand the very premise for this piece by asserting that Israel's villainous ways are a matter of objective truth. They are like the racists of the old South who claimed that they were standing up for reality, not bigotry.
Exhibiting a blown-up bus in a public square in Norway evokes cognitive dissonance among those who have adopted a rigidly anti-Israeli position. Terrorism is no longer an expression of righteous anger, and Israelis are no longer oppressors but victims. And this is unacceptable to Norwegians right now.
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