Mass Delusions? - Ian Joseph

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events. - Adrienne Rich

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular. - Frank Ocean

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion. - Robert M. Pirsig,

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. - Ronald Reagan

A delusion is a false belief that is at once held with great conviction and impervious to revision, no matter the strength of the contrary evidence. Those suffering from delusions perceive their false beliefs to be self-evident and immutable truths. It has long been recognized that delusions can be contagious, sometimes virulently so.

Delusions are spread by word-of-mouth, in the media, and, in the modern world, through social networks. Ever-greater numbers of people buy into the delusions, all of whom proceed to reinforce the others in their delusions. Often the modern mass media will overwhelmingly buy into and support the public in their adherence to mass delusions by choosing what they do or do not show the public or even through outright lies and fantasies.

While each of the topics listed below merits an in-depth, lengthy treatise, I have nonetheless attempted to give a brief precise description of each of them. The mass delusions that most Jewish Israelis live under are:

1.    There is a Two-State Solution (TSS).

2.    Israel is a democracy

3.    Israelis only want peace

4.    Palestinians do not want peace

5.    The world is antisemitic and prejudiced against Israel

6.    Israel is the only safe haven for Jews in an antisemitic world

7.    The State of Israel contains ten million inhabitants

8.    The status quo of Jewish supremacy can be maintained forever

9.    Oppression and harsh security measures will quell violent resistance

1. There is a Two-State Solution (TSS)

In order for a TSS to come about the Palestinians have to give up their decades-old dream and objective of destroying and replacing the Jewish State. Equally, Israeli Jews have to give up their dream and plans for a “Greater Israel” over all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Currently, about 15 million people are living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Slightly less than half of them are Jews. About 740,000 Jews have moved into the territories that are East Jerusalem and the West Bank with about 500,000 of them living in the West Bank. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to evacuate sufficient settlements in order to create a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The TSS is effectively DOA, a non-starter simply due to the depth, extent, and locations of the settlements scattered throughout the West Bank which are, as intended by the messianic settlers, a barrier to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. This is even more so, post October 7 when few if any Israeli Jews are prepared to chance the creation of a Palestinian state on their border.

2. Israel is a democracy.

There can be no true democracy without a governance system which has the equal protection for the fundamental rights of every individual under the state's authority at its core. While it is true that about 2.1 million Israeli Palestinians enjoy Israeli citizenship with equal medical and social benefits, nonetheless their political equality and freedom are circumscribed by a number of laws and regulations which amount to discrimination against them based on their ethnicity. There are those who point to a single Christian Arab jurist on the Supreme Court as evidence of equality, but forget to mention that proportionate representation on the Supreme Court bench would require three Muslim Arab Supreme Court judges rather than the solitary Christian. Together with a multitude of laws discriminating against Palestinian Israelis is the fact of the occupation. Half a million Israeli Jews, living in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, enjoy full civil and political rights under Israeli civil rule, whereas the 2.7 million Palestinians in the same area live under military rule with no political rights despite the token existence of the Palestinian Authority which administers little more than education, garbage collection and some aspects of security. There cannot be a democracy when 2.7 million residents of the area ruled over and controlled by Israel do not have equal political and civil rights, equal freedom of movement, equal opportunity, and equality under the law.

3. Israelis only want peace.

   
   

Peace can only come about when Israeli society realizes that it is not only not Jewish and immoral, but also impossible to secure Israel's existence and future through the oppression and subjugation of another people and that the people Israel imprisons, bombs, starves, and robs of their freedom and land are entitled to the exact same civil, political and human rights as Israelis are, down to the last detail. I find it depressing, disheartening, and even amazing, that after so many decades of bloody conflict, wars, and other atrocities, the Israeli Jewish public, by and large, still refuses to recognize and internalize the simple fact: as long as there is oppression, there will be resistance –violent and non-violent. If Israelis truly wish for peace, then they have to undergo a basic conceptual change of how to approach the conflict as the tools of both the past and of today are obviously not producing the desired outcomes.

4. Palestinians do not want peace

This delusion flies in the face of what we all commonly accept as human nature. No parent wants to send their child to fight and die in unnecessary wars. No sibling wants to lose a sibling to unnecessary violence. No child wants to lose a parent due to violence. The dehumanization of the other, the pretense and delusion required to think they are different is a necessary precursor to being able to brutalize, oppress, terrorize, and kill. Palestinians and Israelis are more alike than they are different. They are all members of the same human race, susceptible to the same frailties, desires, dreams, and hopes. Palestinians, as a group, do not want war and desire peace, security, and prosperity as much as Jewish Israelis.

5. The world is antisemitic and prejudiced against Israel

   
   

This is one of those common conflations where one forgets that about 25% of Israelis are not Jewish. Factually, the sentence should read “The world is antisemitic and prejudiced against Jewish Israelis, the majority of Israeli citizens”. However.,. It is quite clear that every time this belief is expressed it is normally based on some action that is taken whereby Israel is criticized, censured, or other action taken whereby the perception is that Israel is being unfairly singled out for deeds, actions, or words where other countries are not being singled out or as harshly criticized for similar actions. Generally, the comparison is between Israeli actions and those of third-world dictatorships, or communist countries like China. It's as if Israel desires to be perceived as a first-world democracy, but should be treated as a third-world dictatorship when it comes to human rights abuses or acts of war. The other comparison freely used is the actions of the Allies in World War 2 which conveniently forgets that norms, behaviors, and expectations have changed in the interviewing eighty years, as well as the fact that the Geneva Conventions were created to prevent some of those WW2 actions in future conflicts.

6. Israel is the only safe haven for Jews in an antisemitic world

This is self-evidently not true. More Jews are killed and maimed every year in Israel, simply because they are Jewish than in the rest of the world combined. Israel, is for all intents and purposes a war zone, with constant attacks and terror incidents that threaten the physical safety of its residents. The sad irony is that Israel has become the least safe place in the world for Jews because of its addiction to occupation and oppression of the Palestinians in pursuit of the Greater Israel dreams of far-right Israelis.

7. The State of Israel contains ten million residents as of 2025

One can only count the residents in a state by knowing where the borders of that state are. Once a year, on or around Independence Day, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics proudly proclaims how many citizens live in the state, but conveniently omits where the borders are. Included in that count are 740,000 citizens living beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Omitted from that count are 2.7 million Palestinians sharing the exact same space over the Green Line. So… either Israel is the territory inside the Green Line, in which case it has a population of 9.26 million, or it includes East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in which case it has a population of 12.7 million people.

8. The status quo of Jewish supremacy can be maintained forever

This delusion is self-evident. No country in history has managed to quell an internal resistance against the oppression and denial of rights to a significant minority. The violent resistance to Israeli rule, which often takes the form of stabbing and car-ramming attacks by lone wolf individuals, who almost without exception are summarily executed, is not going to stop. Most police officers in the Western World carry tasers which are a non-lethal way of neutralizing an assailant. That appears not to be the case in Israel where summary execution, euphemistically labeled “neutralization” is the order of the day. The policy of summary execution invariably leads to irreversible mistakes where innocent bystanders are also mistakenly killed either by security forces or armed civilians.

9. Oppression and harsh security measures will quell violent resistance

The Israeli policy of escalating retaliation –strike us and we will strike back harder –  has been a resounding failure for the last 77 years. For more than 77 years Israel has used oppression and harsh security measures as an integral part of attempts to totally control the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Israel has succeeded in prolonging the occupation and “managing the conflict,” but, despite ever-escalating harsh measures, it has not and could not truly erase the Palestinian issue, has not succeeded in ending the hundred-year Israel-Palestine war, has not succeeded in imposing an Israeli solution on the Palestinians, and has not eliminated the Palestinian nationalist concept and dreams of self-determination. Israel, after more than 500 days of war with Hamas may finally realize the limits of military power. After more than sixteen months of war, neither of the stated primary objectives of eliminating Hamas and releasing all the hostages has been achieved. I'm still doubtful that either the current American administration or Israel's coalition government has fully understood the limitations of military power.

Conclusions

Ultimately, I believe, that either the balance of military forces or the demography of Palestine, meaning the discrepant national birth rates and/or emigration, will determine the country's future, and either Palestine, between the river and the sea, will become a Jewish state, without a substantial Arab minority, or it will become an Arab state, with a gradually diminishing Jewish minority. This is especially the case as the forces of violent resistance access more sophisticated technologies, are better trained, have leaders who learn to organize and mobilize in large numbers, and weapons of mass destruction proliferate. There is always the ultimate threat overhanging the region of nuclear proliferation, after Israel introduced atomic weapons into the region, potentially leading to it becoming a nuclear wasteland, a home to neither people.

While the above paragraph is a somewhat pessimistic assessment, I believe that a lasting majority Jewish state in the region could still be achieved, but only via a radical change in the mindset of both Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

by Ian Joseph