Pre-release Praise

"This remarkable work – part history, part psychology, part sociology, part burning prophecy – has the salubrious, cleansing, and transformative power to shame. It should shame Jews, it should shame Gentiles; it should shame Europe, America, and the Arab world. It should shame every individual and every nation that pretends to own a conscience or claims an instinct for honest insight. In these extraordinary pages, Kenneth Levin writes – with uncommon clarity and brilliance – not so much about the great outer wilderness of anti-Jewish perfidy as about the internal self-mystifications and self-denials that annihilate Jewish dignity and Jewish independence. The Oslo Syndrome may be the most important manifesto of our generation, an indispensable analysis that explains the present and may yet save the future."

— Cynthia Ozick


"That Arafat would honor what he undertook to do in the Oslo accords is but one false belief referenced in the commanding title of Kenneth Levin's new book. Levin traces many others, several influential throughout Jewish history, that are heir to the overarching delusion, namely, that Jews can control their destiny by behaving as their besiegers demand of them. It is this oxymoron, flowing through centuries of Jewish political theory, that Levin outlines so deftly. Levin's credentials are evident throughout this treatise; he is both an accomplished historian and a highly regarded psychiatrist. This is a scholarly and well-written work, appropriately provocative, that will inform those who are undecided, and encourage those it criticizes to rethink their assumptions."

— Fred Frankel, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School


"Part political history of Israel and part study of the relationship of Jews to the Jewish state of Israel, this hugely interesting, highly informed, and very timely work is a must read for all those looking to understand the self-loathing that exists among some Jews when it comes to attitudes to Israel and wider Jewish issues."

— Professor Efraim Karsh, Head, Mediterranean Studies Programme, King's College, University of London

"Controversial and hard-hitting while avoiding rhetorical excess, The Oslo Syndrome is an indispensible contribution to understanding the roots of the Oslo process. With loving exasperation, Kenneth Levin helps us understand why some Jews, both in Israel and the Diaspora, are incapable of identifying and resisting the current war against Jewish legitimacy. Whether or not one agrees with all its premises, this is a book that anyone who cares about Israel should read and re-read."

— Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow, the Shalem Center, and Israel correspondent for The New Republic

"As citizens of a country under perpetual siege, Israelis live with more stress than most and, like others subjected to chronic abuse, could benefit from the attention of an able and caring analyst. Dr. Kenneth Levin, who holds advanced degrees in both history and psychiatry, offers such scrutiny in THE OSLO SYNDROME, a broad-ranging study of Jewish responses to life under conditions of marginalization, denigration, and endless assault. The author's focus on delusional, self-denying thinking as a dominant Israeli response to the aggression directed against them will not win him friends everywhere, but no one interested in the welfare of the Jewish state should forego the challenge of this well-informed, forcefully argued, and highly provocative book."

— Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Professor of English and Jewish Studies and Director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts, Indiana University

"Ken Levin explains why so many Jews and Israelis delude themselves about the malevolent intentions of their enemies. His analysis is persuasive, insightful, illuminating. Readers of the Oslo Syndrome will better know how to prevent the recurrence of a perilous political process that endangered Israel and the world."

- Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

The Washington Times Review

Oslo syndrome symptoms
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Published June 1, 2005

Last week, the president of the United States effusively praised Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's right-hand man for some 40 years. In the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush described Mr. Abbas as a "man of courage," explaining he takes "great faith in not only [Mr. Abbas'] personal character, but the fact that he campaigned on a platform of peace -- he said, 'Vote for me, I am for peace.' And the Palestinians voted overwhelmingly to support him."

In light of what is actually happening in the proto-state Abbas (a k a Abu Mazen) was elected last January to govern, such characterizations seem at best wishful thinking, at worst willful and dangerous self-delusion. As a new Web ad (www.CenterforSecurityPolicy.org) makes clear, if the Palestinian people truly want peace, there is very little evidence they are moving in that direction under Abu Mazen.

To the contary, Mr. Abbas is not dismantling terrorist organizations. Instead, groups like Hamas with the avowed mission of destroying Israel are ascendant. They are winning local elections and taking full advantage of the "hudna" (temporary suspension of hostilities) to rebuild their offensive capabilities against Israel.

Hamas and other terrorists are being integrated into Palestinian security forces, receiving valuable training and even arms from U.S. and European personnel. Burgeoning quantities of ever-more-powerful weapons are smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are encouraged by official imams whose sermons are broadcast on Abbas-controlled media to kill Jews and destroy America. For example, less than two weeks before Mr. Bush welcomed Abu Mazen to the White House, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris claimed on Palestinian Authority TV that history showed the legitimacy of torturing, exiling and murdering Jews and Muslim conquest of the U.S. inevitable.

If the evidence is so clear the Palestinian state Abu Mazen is a-building will be but a new state-sponsor of terror, how could President Bush -- who in June 2002 rejected that prospect and devoted his presidency to eliminating such sponsors -- possibly turn a blind eye to the facts on the ground? How could he insist Israel make still further territorial and political concessions, including over Jerusalem, let alone hand over directly to the PA $50 million in U.S. taxpayers' funds?

Call it "the Oslo Syndrome." This is the title of an important new book (Smith and Kraus Global, 2005) by Dr. Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist and historian who is a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. As the subtitle -- "Delusions of a People Under Siege" -- makes clear, Dr. Levin is concerned with a pathology that has prompted Israel's Jews to embrace the false promise of peace ostensibly on offer first from Mr. Arafat, now from his former right-hand man. A similar malady seems to afflict official Washington, as well.

Dr. Levin describes the roots of this pathology: "[It] lies in psychological responses common among chronically besieged populations, whether minorities subjected to defamation, discrimination and assault or small nations under persistent attack by their neighbors. People living under such stressful conditions often choose to accept at face value the indictments of their accusers in the hope of thereby escaping their predicament."

"The Oslo Syndrome" chronicles delusions of successive groups within the Jewish world, with a particular focus on the most prominent and contemporary of the phenomena -- that of politicians and organizations associated with "the Peace Movement." Dr. Levin explains:"The Peace Movement's stance in fact was as divorced from reality as had been German Jews' blaming of Polish Jews for anti-Semitism, or secular European Jews' blaming of the religious, or socialist Jews' blaming of the Jewish bourgeoisie. But proponents of the Movement, cowed by the persistence of the siege and desperate to see its end, chose to delude themselves. They grasped at any seemingly positive statement coming from an Arab political figure and ignored all the countervailing evidence."

For example, the self-deluded chose to ignore unwelcome statements by Faisal al-Husseini, an Arafat and Abbas crony who was for years the Palestine Liberation Organization's proxy representative in Jerusalem. Mr. Al-Husseini declared in 2001 that the Oslo "peace" accords of 1992 between Israel and Arafat were but a "Trojan Horse," designed to advance the Palestinians' abiding goal of liberating their "country," whose boundaries would be "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." In other words: No Israel.

Mr. Al-Husseini's ambitions were of a piece with those long espoused by his relative, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the notorious grand mufti of Jerusalem, whose complicity with Adolf Hitler helped advance the Fuehrer's "Final Solution" for the Jews and deny the latter refuge in their historic homeland. Incredibly, even the Holocaust Museum in Washington -- a magnificent institution designed to serve as a conscience for all time -- is in denial and contributing to the Oslo Syndrome: It refuses to include in its permanent exhibition anything about the mufti's role in past Arab anti-Semitism, or to address manifestations of this systemic racism now so evident in the Muslim world.

Dr. Levin notes in an article published at www.JewishPress.com: "The ongoing Arab siege does cast a shadow over the lives of Israelis. At the same time, they have created a free, vibrant, extraordinarily successful society. It remains to be seen whether they are prepared to go on nurturing what they have built as they await changes in the Arab world that will open it to genuine peace, or they will instead, in their eagerness for 'normalcy' and an end to the siege, once more delude themselves into pursuing fantasies of peace that will threaten everything they have created." Or, he might have added, whether the U.S. government will, in its own act of self-delusion, encourage or compel Israel to do the latter?


Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

Makor Rishon Review (Translation from Hebrew)

A Historical Analysis of the Jewish Condition after Oslo
Reviewed by Joel Fishman
April 15, 2005

“History is a matter of honesty. To understand Oslo, one has to have a wider perspective.” These are the words of Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor in psychoanalytic training at Harvard and a Princeton-educated historian. This book is a major endeavor of using both psychoanalytic and historical methods to explain the Oslo phenomenon.

Levin maintains that since the Emancipation the Jewish people have been living under a state of siege, forced to confront unrelenting existential hatred. Some individuals are able to cope with this pressure, but others cannot. Those who do not find the necessary inner strength try to solve the problem by identifying, to varying degrees, with their persecutors. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the victims develop the sense that by siding with those who have placed them under siege, they can gain control of their environment.

The “Syndrome” in Modern Jewish History

Levin follows the proponents of each of these tendencies throughout modern history. On the one hand, there have been Jews who were secure in their identity, proudly took part in Jewish communal life, believed Jews should control their destiny, and worked to fulfill Jewish national aspirations in the form of Zionism. Examples include Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, and Aharon Megged. On the other hand, there have been those who identified with the dominant population or culture, rejecting “Jewish particularism” in favor of universalistic ideals. Examples of this second category include the Sulzberger family of the New York Times, Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, Shimon Peres, and Yossi Beilin. Generally, acceptance of the prevalent trend has helped members of this group reach positions of distinction and influence.

The relations between the two groups are not characterized by dialogue. Instead they have tended to be in confrontation, with the universalistic side working to undermine communal and national feeling. Recent scholarship has pointed to the importance of interdependence and trust for the health of societies. It is especially this form of social capital that the universalists, in their war against Jewish “particularism,” seek to destroy. In short, those who are identified with the Jewish idea see themselves as belonging to a larger nation, whereas the universalists live and act as individualists in Jewish matters, while seeking to conform to the values of majority society.

Levin gives a coherent view of modern Jewry both in the Diaspora and in Israel. Although he does not include the Jewish experience in postwar Europe, it is possible to make extrapolations. From his perspective, the history of the Yishuv and the founding of Israel do not represent an exceptional event but belong to the Jewish historical continuum. His argument here is persuasive, and implies that Israeli history can be assessed by traditional terms of reference. Past history, then, is relevant; there is no drastic new beginning—as, for example, the architects of Oslo wanted the public to believe—and there is no “new Israeli man.” In other words, all aspects of Israeli and modern Jewish history are part of the same whole and are fair game for critical examination.

A Respect for Facts

If the medium is the message, then the message of this book is that history matters. Levin has created a framework that enables building on previous pioneering works such as Yoram Hazony’s The Jewish State and Neal Kozodoy’s The Mideast Peace Process. The result is to enhance our understanding of the present and discredit the mindset of the Israeli leaders who joyfully blundered into catastrophe. The Oslo Syndrome reveals the spiritual poverty and intellectual dishonesty of those who claimed past human experience was irrelevant and misled a generation.

The book is well written, well crafted, highly informative, and sums up the state of the historical issues. For example, the ninth chapter demonstrates how England, the mandatory power, failed to honor its obligations. Although the Zionists’ efforts to attain a sovereign state are well known, this chapter exposes the destructive attitudes of their Jewish opponents at a time when the annihilation of European Jewry was approaching. The sixth chapter deals with the powerlessness of American Jewry to influence the U.S. administration to adopt a policy of rescue during the Holocaust, and particularly the ineffectiveness of the Jewish leadership. Levin also describes the aggressive role the British played in preventing the escape of Jews from Nazi Europe. Similarly, the well-documented information he presents with regard to Franklin D. Roosevelt is thoroughly unflattering, and he considers the American Jewish belief in this president’s goodwill as delusional. Had Roosevelt survived the war, Levin maintains, he would have emerged as an enemy of the Jews.

The last part of the book deals with Oslo and its ideological rationalization by Israel’s intellectual elite. The architects of the “process,” Levin emphasizes, misrepresented the facts to the Israeli public. He documents their impatience with democratic governance, the shouting down of opponents, the lack of public debate, and the sacrifice of the academic integrity of sympathetic academics and intellectuals who have rewritten Israel’s history. Regarding the Labor Party’s deceptive and anti-democratic methods, Levin notes:

Beilin’s method of seeking to create faits accomplis irrespective of public opinion or indeed government policy pioneered, or at least epitomized, what became in the course of the 1990s virtually standard Labor Party operating procedure. It entailed employing the subterfuge of denying, in election campaigns and in ongoing articulations of policy, any intention to pursue concessions outside the national consensus or established Labor Party positions, while seeking to negotiate in secret on such compromises of long-standing policy and to present the public with fait accompli agreements incorporating those concessions…. The argument became: If most Israelis still lagged in their understanding that peace could readily be had were they only to break out of old thinking about defensible borders and security and threats posed by their neighbors, then it was the obligation of leaders to do that breaking out for them, to turn such concessions into established facts, despite the public’s resistance. (pp. 328-329)

Similarly, Shimon Peres stated in November 1995: “A leader must be like a bus driver.… He cannot turn his head all the time to see how the passengers feel” (p. 329).

This book gives a sober, well-balanced picture of the Jewish experience in modern times, with special emphasis on how the Oslo adventure affected all levels of Israeli society as well as Jews abroad. The discussion of Oslo gives a more candid and complete treatment than what is commonly known in Israel. This work also reconfirms the relevance of the honest treatment of history. The Oslo Syndrome is not an example of the “new history,” where information is selected and altered to fit in with ideology, but a carefully documented account that follows the facts. Understanding the recent events that are clarified in this book could help in formulating sound public policy, notwithstanding the rootless opportunists who argue that history is merely an obstacle to be disregarded. Not least, a well-educated public in possession of its own narrative is less likely to be taken for a ride by the bus driver of the moment.

The Jerusalem Post Review

The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege
By P. David Hornik
May. 29, 2005

Kenneth Levin, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Princeton-trained historian, has written a definitive, magisterial book about what went wrong during the Oslo era.

The malaise, Levin argues, was not just an Israeli one, but a Jewish one, typical of both Diaspora and Zionist history in the modern era. It was strikingly evident among pre-Holocaust German Jewry, many of whom attempted to win the favor of the surrounding anti-Semitic society via self-reform, and among American Jewry during the Holocaust, many of whom did not seek to aid their European brethren out of fear that such "nationalism" would offend Americans.

This Jewish pathology, in Levin's view, resembles the psychology of abused children who seek to propitiate the abuser by becoming "good" and purging themselves of their supposed failings. The syndrome often entails a "delusional grandiosity" - the idea that one can control one's environment by appeasing the aggressor.

Surveying the history of the pre-modern Jewish Diaspora to find out why it was immune to this self-abasing syndrome, Levin finds the answer in the strong communal institutions that reinforced identity and pride despite hostile environments. Even among parts of Spanish Jewry that had secular educations and relatively high access to the surrounding society, the sturdy communal scaffolding prevented wide-scale defection.

Similarly, much of Eastern European Jewry showed resilience in the modern era, even when religious institutions eroded, by replacing these with secular ones like Jewish labor unions and political parties.

Among the Jews who led the Zionist movement, however, there were many who were scarred by Diaspora anti-Semitism and for whom Zionism meant, in part, purifying Jews of their alleged defects.

Socialist Zionism sought to create a "new Jew" - a sunburned, virile laborer cleansed of the religious and bourgeois corruption of the Diaspora. The circle of German Jewish academics surrounding Hebrew University's Martin Buber and Judah Magnes fervently opposed statehood, and insisted that Judaism was strictly an ethical, universalizing mission that would win the Arabs' affection if so presented.

A countervailing force was David Ben-Gurion, an energetic realist who was able to synthesize modern secularism with healthy pride in Jewish peoplehood, land and tradition.

If this affirmative Ben-Gurionist nationalism basically prevailed in the first three decades of Israel's existence, there were two factors, Levin contends, that partially unraveled it. One was the persistence of the Arab siege, even after the victory of the Six Day War (that to many at the time seemed decisive and final). The other was the triumph of Menachem Begin's Likud Party in the 1977 elections, which finally gave much of Labor and the Left a Jewish bete noire - in the shape of Begin's largely religious and traditional constituency - analogous to the "primitive" Eastern European Jews whom an anxious German Jewry had once reviled and blamed for its woes.

IN THE decade and a half leading up to Oslo, the self-blaming mentality quickly gathered steam among the offspring of Zionist pioneers whose own Jewishness was wounded and ambivalent, and who lacked the inner resources to cope with persistent Arab hatred. They projected the bewildered self-indictment that the Arab siege induced in them.

As the more assertive Ben-Gurionist trend within Labor Zionism was increasingly conflated with the Right, a school of New Historians arose who reinterpreted Zionist history to show the Jews as colonialist aggressors and the Arabs as passive victims suing for peace.

Writers and artists increasingly expressed alienation and even loathing toward the Jewish state. Post-Zionist educators stripped curricula of Jewish content in hopes of producing deracinated, "universalist" Israelis whom no one would perceive as objectionable.

Most significantly, and unlike in other democracies, the anti-nationalism of the elites found a wide resonance in the populace. Many Israelis, worn out by the siege, were eager to believe the peace camp's promises of an end to conflict achieved via self-reform - meaning, in this case, the relinquishment of all territorial claims, the suppression of specific Jewish-Zionist values and the creation of a Palestinian state in whatever borders were demanded. They were enticed by the view that Arab hostility was a function of Israel's misbehavior, and thus within Israel's power to palliate.

Although the Labor Party, in winning the 1992 elections, still made the traditional Labor Zionist concerns about land and security a centerpiece of its campaign, this quickly emerged as political cynicism when prime minister Rabin - who had been portrayed as a holdover of the old, centrist realism - embraced the Oslo program of superdoves Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and their comrades.

The rest of the history is painful and familiar. Yasser Arafat and the PLO lost no time turning the territories into staging grounds for brutal attacks, while the Oslo camp blindly persisted in its delusions.

It is a history that Levin traces with great eloquence and brilliance.

Although not exactly picking up his earlier theme of the importance of strong communal institutions, Levin, in his final chapter, makes the related argument that along with political pragmatism, the main remedy to the Oslo syndrome (i.e. the propensity to internalize the indictments of enemies and seek to prove one's "goodness") lies in imparting a stronger Jewish background to young Israelis. This means "educat[ing them] in Jewish history, Jewish faith, Jewish ethics... Educating the young in their intellectual and spiritual heritage can go far in inoculating them against the depredations of the 'post-Zionist' institutions they encounter as adults."

This basically sound position does not, however, anticipate two possible problems: how an adult elite that is itself infected with post-Zionism could be persuaded to institute such a program; and whether it could be successfully implemented in a society that categorizes its non-Orthodox majority as "secular" and hence to some degree separate from Jewish tradition.

If somewhat open-ended, Levin's last chapter is still a thoughtful culmination of an indispensable book.

The writer is a freelance journalist and translator living in Jerusalem.

The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege

Originally published in The Jewish Press.

The Oslo process was supposed to usher in, finally, peace and normalcy between Israelis and Palestinians. It brought instead the worst terrorist violence in Israel's history, and pundits and policy analysts have yet to explain satisfactorily why the catastrophic failure occurred. They have uniformly avoided addressing what should be obvious questions.

Why did Israel embrace Yasser Arafat as its "peace partner," even as Arafat continued, amid the fanfare of White House signings and handshakes, to assure his own people and the Arab world his goal remained Israel's annihilation? Why were Israel's leaders undeterred even when, in the wake of the initial Oslo accords, the Palestinians unleashed what was then an unprecedented wave of anti-Israel terror? Why was the response more Israeli concessions?

Nissim Zvilli, a Labor MK and member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the time, recalled in 2002, "I remember myself lecturing in Paris and saying that Arafat's double-talk had to be understood. That was our thesis, proved [later] as nonsense. Arafat meant every word, and we were naive."

But naivete hardly captures the self-delusions that underlay Oslo.

In 1997, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, himself a former Oslo enthusiast, wrote of the course forged by Israel's political elite and passionately embraced by its intellectual and cultural elites, "In the early '90's... we, the enlightened Israelis, were infected with a messianic craze... All of a sudden, we believed that... the end of the old Middle East was near. The end of history, the end of wars, the end of conflict... We fooled ourselves with illusions. We were bedazzled into committing a collective act of messianic drunkenness."

But while Shavit's "messianism" gives a label to Oslo-era thinking, it does not explain it.

The explanation lies in psychological responses common among chronically besieged populations, whether minorities subjected to defamation, discrimination and assault or small nations under persistent attack by their neighbors. People living under such stressful conditions often choose to accept at face value the indictments of their accusers in the hope of thereby escaping their predicament.

They may seek to reform their community in a manner consistent with the attackers' accusations. Or they may simply abandon what they have come to see as a tainted identity. Or they may join the attackers as a means of more thoroughly separating themselves from their status as target.

Such reactions have been a staple of Diaspora Jews' responses to besiegement over the centuries.

They can be seen throughout the Middle Ages, for example. But strong Jewish communal institutions served then as a counterweight to the corrosive psychological impact of tormentors' accusations. Those institutions helped Jews sustain a sense of their own and their community's essential validity despite the drumbeat of deprecation directed against them by their neighbors.

The weakening of institutional bulwarks in recent centuries left Jews more psychologically vulnerable. A hundred years ago, so commonplace was Jews' taking to heart anti-Jewish caricatures and canards that the early Zionist Max Nordau famously observed, "It is the greatest triumph for antisemitism that it has brought the Jews to view themselves with antisemitic eyes."

Nordau could have added that if Jews saw themselves as the haters saw them, they often viewed other Jews as fitting those stereotypes even more. Apostates tended to see all those who remained Jews in such a light; German Jews not infrequently viewed Polish Jews as the true and deserving butt of Jew-hatred; secularized Jews regarded religious Jews similarly; and unionized working class Jews held comparable opinions of the Jewish bourgeoisie. Of course, those who looked at others across the various social divides in this way, and who believed that separating themselves from those others would win them acceptance by the wider society, did not acknowledge that their biases reflected a pleading for gentile acceptance. Rather they cast their prejudices as representing a more progressive and enlightened path.

Zionism, as conceived by Herzl, was intended not only to rescue Jews from physical threats but also to save them from the corrosive psychological consequences of being everywhere an embattled minority.

But even among the Zionists there were many infected with the anti-Jewish biases of surrounding societies. While Herzl conceived of the national home as a refuge for all Jews, the Russian socialist Zionists that came to dominate the Zionist movement dreamed of building a socialist utopia peopled by a New Jew. They were very often hostile to both middle class and religious Jews, and they formed their biases against both groups in large part through absorption of European society's attacks on religiously traditional Jews and the Jewish commercial class.

Similarly hostile to Herzl's vision were a number of German Jewish intellectuals who came to the Yishuv championing the concept of a cultural homeland and opposed to creation of a Jewish state. They argued that Jews had evolved beyond narrow nationalism and should devote themselves exclusively to Judaism's universalist spiritual mission. But their views were shaped largely by their having taken to heart the widespread European indictment of Jews as an "alien nation" and their wishing to reform the Jews and foreswear a Jewish state in order to assuage that hostile opinion.

In the 1930's, as conditions in Europe worsened, many of the socialist Zionists opposed large-scale immigration as bringing in the wrong Jews and compromising the socialist experiment, while the cultural Zionists opposed immigration as serving the unholy goal of nation-building. Some even supported imposing limits on Jewish immigration such as those established in Britain's infamous 1939 White Paper.

The war, the Shoah, and creation of the state marginalized such voices. The nation undertook the ingathering of survivors in Europe and the Sephardi Jews of North Africa and the Middle East, and Israel's Jews overwhelmingly dedicated themselves to the state's survival and well-being.

But Israelis were confronted with a persisting Arab siege. Recurrent hopes that the Arab world would reconcile itself to Israel's existence and establish normal inter-state relations went unfulfilled. Expectations, for example, that the Arabs' losses in the 1967 war would oblige them to negotiate with Israel, or that the treaty with Egypt would entail genuine normalization, end anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonizing in that nation's media, mosques and schools, and would be quickly followed by treaties with other Arab states, were dashed. And the continuing siege kept alive old predilections of Jewish self-blame and self-reform in the face of chronic attack.

The election in 1977 of Israel's first non-Labor Zionist government was a turning point for such tendencies. Its significance went beyond simply policy differences between the Likud and Labor parties. On the territories captured in the 1967 war, the major difference was with regard to Judea and Samaria: Labor advocated a territorial compromise along the lines first proposed by Yigal Allon, with Israel retaining key strategic areas while allowing the rest, particularly heavily populated regions, to revert to Arab rule. The Likud position was that all of Judea and Samaria, the heart of the historic Jewish homeland, should properly be in Jewish hands for reasons of history, religion and justice, and that, in any case, all of this area was strategically vital; the accommodation of the Palestinian Arabs should entail granting of autonomy under Israeli sovereignty.

But, for all the substantive differences, both stances reflected recognition that the Arab siege was going to continue, that the state must be ready and able to defend itself, and any arrangement for the territories must allow for this.

In contrast, the perspective of the Peace Movement that had evolved in the wake of the 1967 war was that Israel's retention of captured territory was now the major source of Arab enmity and if Israel would only return virtually to its pre-war lines, peace would follow. Both major parties rejected this view as having no basis in reality.

But the election of 1977 put the nation in the hands of what many in the Labor Zionist camp regarded as the "Other Israel," the more religious and traditional Sephardim and the religious and non-socialist among Ashkenazi. This rendered many in the Labor ranks open to a revaluation of the persistence of the Arab siege as not a rejection of the New Jew who was to have made Israel a normal state with a normal people, but a rejection of the Old Jew represented by Likud. It rendered them more open to arguments by the Peace Movement that if only power could be wrested back from Likud and won by those willing to return all the territories then peace would follow. This was the rhetorical stance of the Peace Movement over the period from 1977 to 1992, when Likud either dominated or was an equal partner in Israeli governments, and the position won more and more adherents from the ranks of Labor's constituency.

The growth of the Peace Movement was accompanied by the evolution of two auxiliary camps. The so-called New History entailed a largely bogus rewriting of the history of the state with the aim of demonstrating Jewish culpability; the corollary of such claims was that Arab grievances were legitimate and if Israelis only recognized their sins, properly reformed themselves, and became sufficiently accommodating then peace would follow. Adherents of the second movement, post-Zionism, argued that Zionist dogma stood in the way of peace and that if the state would strip itself of its Jewish accoutrements, such as the Law of Return, Hatikvah and a flag with the star of David, another obstacle to peace would be removed.

The Peace Movement's stance in fact was as divorced from reality as had been German Jews' blaming of Polish Jews for anti-Semitism, or secular European Jews' blaming of the religious, or socialist Jews' blaming of the Jewish bourgeoisie. But proponents of the Movement, cowed by persistence of the siege and desperate to see its end, chose to delude themselves. They grasped at whatever seemingly positive came from an Arab political figure and ignored all the countervailing evidence.

For example, the PLO's proxy representative in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, declared in 1992, "We have not conceded and will not surrender any of the ... commitments that have existed for more than 70 years... We have within our Palestinian and united Arab society the ability to deal with divided Israeli society... We must force Israeli society to cooperate... with our Arab society and eventually to gradually dissolve the 'Zionist entity.'" He made other statements in the same vein.

Yet Husseini was a Peace Movement favorite. Mordechai Bar-On, a founder of Peace Now and author of the most definitive history of the Peace Movement, wrote of the period before Oslo, the time of the Husseini quote, "A new generation of Palestinian leaders was emerging... Younger people like... Faisal Husseini... Most of the peace groups on the Israeli side maintained contacts with these new leaders and tried to persuade Israelis that these Palestinians could be partners in negotiations."

Labor, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, ran and won in the 1992 election on a platform of standard Labor positions with regard to the territories. But, under pressure from the growing ranks of the Peace Movement, drawn largely from constituents of his own party, Rabin soon capitulated to a "peace process" along the lines dictated by the Peace Movement. As noted, even the subsequent blatant promotion of terror by Arafat and his subordinates, and the horrendous acts of terror that soon wracked Israel, did not deter the Labor–Meretz coalition from its disastrous course.

The terror did propel Likud, under Benjamin Netanyahu, to victory in the 1996 election. Netanyahu made an issue of the PA's failure to live up to its obligations to forego and indeed fight terror, dismantle terrorist infrastructures and end the incitement that prevailed in Palestinian media, mosques and schools. But when he demanded that the PA fulfill its prior formal commitments on these vital matters before he would agree to further Israeli concessions, he was attacked by the opposition for creating obstacles to "peace." Indeed, half the nation remained caught up in the delusions of the Oslo process until Arafat's launching of his terror war in September, 2000, and many have remained devotees of those delusions even through the terror war.

But if the terror war has disabused most Israelis of the delusions of Oslo, can this awakening be sustained? There is no end of the Arab siege in sight. The promotion of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and indeed broadly xenophobic opinion serves purposes of domestic and inter-state politics in the Arab world and there is scant evidence of this changing in the foreseeable future. Israel has an interest in separating itself from the Palestinian Arabs and good reason to pursue some path to separation that takes account of the ongoing dangers it will face and leaves it in a position to defend its population both from continued terror attacks and conventional assault. But some in Israel even now are eager to resuscitate Oslo and insist that peace is presently at hand if the nation will only make sufficient concessions.

The ongoing Arab siege does cast a shadow over the lives of Israelis. At the same time, they have created a free, vibrant, extraordinarily successful society. It remains to be seen whether they are prepared to go on nurturing what they have built as they await changes in the Arab world that will open it to genuine peace, or they will instead, in their eagerness for "normalcy" and an end to the siege, once more delude themselves into pursuing fantasies of peace that will threaten everything they have created.

FrontPageMagazine Interview

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of the new book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.

FP: Dr. Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Levin: Thank you.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Levin: It was obvious to me at the start, as it was to many others, that the Oslo agreements could only lead to disaster. I said as much in a Jerusalem Post op.ed. a few days before the 1993 signing of the first accords on the White House lawn. That there was something very deluded about the thinking of Israel’s leaders and their pro-Oslo constituency became more evident as Oslo proceeded. Arafat and his Palestinian Authority immediately used their media, mosques and schools to promote hatred of Israel and violence against Jews and continued to make clear their objective remained Israel’s destruction. The level of terrorism increased to unprecedented dimensions. Yet Israel responded with more concessions.

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'Honest' Hamas

The eagerness of some Western leaders to offer rationalizations for Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections, to deal with the terrorist group, and to find "moderates" in its ranks even as Hamas reiterates its dedication to terror in the pursuit of Israel's destruction has reminded various observers of the "Oslo Syndrome." Diana West cites the syndrome in her excellent February 3 Washington Times column "'Honest' Hamas".

There comes a point, sometimes, when logic is denied, reason is abandoned, and that vital connection to reality is severed. Once upon a time, we called this a nervous breakdown and prescribed a rest cure. Now, we call it a press conference and take notes.
Read the whole thing here.

Disengagement Delusion

In his article, "Disengagement delusion," Frank Gaffney discusses delusional elements in the Israeli leadership's claims regarding the gains to be had through further unilateral withdrawals. He also talks of analogous delusional thinking among those in America who are calling for American withdrawal from Iraq. Gaffney cites The Oslo Syndrome as offering an incisive explanation for such delusions

Today, even more than is usually the case, Israel is the Free World's "canary in the mine shaft." Its voters are poised to vote for a policy approach their American counterparts are being tempted to embrace in the months ahead. Call it the "disengagement delusion."
Read the whole thing here.