Netanyahu's shameful government

President Reuven Rivlin attends the state ceremony
marking 44 years since the Yom Kippur War. (Mark Neyman/GPO)

Not a single member of Netanyahu's government saw it fit to honor the memorial service to the fallen soldiers of the Yom Kippur War, held at the military cemetery at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl, on October 1, 2017. When contacted by the organization commemorating the fallen soldiers, the office of the PM responded that the ministers are very busy.

Ehud Barak expressed outrage at the ministers’ absence, “This is shameful and infuriating. This shames the soldiers who died. Where were Bibi and his ministers? Too busy making political appointments or at a political ceremony in Gush Etzion? This is a new low.”

 Ehud Barak further noted that a government that "forgets the fallen soldiers, will eventually fall and be forgotten."

Labor leader Avi Gabbay said, “A government that does not respect its past and does not have an impressive present does not have much of a future.” 

empty seats at the 10 million shekel
ceremony, Sept. 27, 2017

Netanyahu and his government did have the time - and the money, 10 million shekel - to arrange what they claimed to be a 'state ceremony', celebrating fifty years of settlements. They expressed outrage at the absence of the opposition, the High Court of Justice (as well as the President) from the ceremony, but managed to gather a merely 1600 attendees.

More than two thousand Israeli soldiers were killed in the Yom Kippur War, that began when Arab armies attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, on the holiest day of the Jewish year, and more than seven thousand were wounded. Considering that Israel's population in 1973 was 3,338,000, the number of killed would correspond to two hundred thousand in the US of today.

The following is an excerpt from The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel:

Inflated Strength and Denial of Fear

Illusions of safety and self sufficiency were the result of excessive reliance on strength with concomitant denial of fear following the Six Day War.  President Sadat’s attempt to initiate negotiations in 1971 72 did not elicit an unambiguous Israeli response, because there was no real feeling of need.  The psychological frame of mind was such that no one seemed able to pose a threat to Israel, or even evoke fear.  Thus, despite Sadat’s repeated declarations that the coming year would be one of either war or peace, the warnings were foregone and the 1973 Yom Kippur War erupted in complete surprise to the Israelis.  As a consequence of such an illusion of self sufficiency and invulnerability, Israel’s leadership was unable to correctly interpret the intelligence at hand about imminent attack.  Like the entire Israeli collective, the leadership was caught in the dangerous psychological condition of fusion between the individual ego and the extended national or collective self. Personal and collective identities had merged, they were as if inseparable. The individual could (and, in fact, social undercurrents encouraged him to) identify with the national image of strength, omnipotence and fearlessness.  Even death was challenged.  Nothing could inflict harm or injury.  This state of psychological inflation affected the entire nation, including the political leadership, which was unable to differentiate itself from the collective process.  The leadership had fallen victim to the collective self-image of invincibility, and was therefore unable to prevent the war.  In striking contrast, following the Declaration of Independence, May 14, 1948, when the people rejoiced and danced in the streets, Ben-Gurion was gravely concerned with what lie ahead, contemplating the possibility of the Arab nations’ forthcoming attack.  In 1973, however, the process of redemption, of the individual ego merging with the collective self, had attained its tragic peak.

The position of strength, force, and power, disconnected from its opposite pole of loss and fear of annihilation, collapsed following the Yom Kippur War.  Since any trace of weakness might have threatened the sense of hubris, and therefore had been denied, the gap between reality and self-perception had reached unhealthy proportions.  With devastating clarity, the Yom Kippur War brought to light the weakness that lingered in the shadow behind the persona of strength and self sufficiency, by which the collective ego had become possessed.  The war brought forth the sense of loss and – again – the deeply rooted fear of ultimate destruction.  This, in turn, generated the release of strength and the will to survive.  The Yom Kippur War was the tragic outcome of a complex having taken possession of a nation’s collective consciousness.

The Yom Kippur War and Its Aftermath

From Ambivalence to Unconditional Ideology

The mood in the wake of the Yom Kippur War was entirely different than the triumph and euphoria that had followed upon the Six Day War. Israelis now found themselves depressed and in grief, the narcissistic illusion of grandiosity and invulnerability had shattered.  …

Contents

Preface       The Beggar in the Hero’s Shadow      

Chapter 1    Return to the Source               

Chapter 2    From My Notebook             

Chapter 3    From Dream to Reality             

Chapter 4    Origins and Myths             

Chapter 5    From Redemption to Shadow         

Chapter 6    Wholeness Apart               

Chapter 7    Myth, Shadow and Projection      

Chapter 8    A Crack in the Mask          

Chapter 9    The Death of the Mythical and the Voice of the Soul

Dedication of The Hero and His Shadow

I dedicate this book to those, all too many, whose voices were silenced by man’s evil.

   I dedicate it to those, all too few, who raise their voice against fascism, who speak up in the struggle for peace and reconciliation, especially between Palestinians and Israelis, incessantly on the verge of yet another cycle of violence and hostilities.

   I dedicate it to those who try to hold the vulnerable balance in that ultimate conflict of Abraham between Father and Son, divine and human, idea and implementation, past and future, ego and self.

   I dedicate this book to the daughters and the sons whose future is endangered.