Hatred by Willard Gaylin (best manga ereader txt) 📗

To the Palestinians, the Israelis are invaders occupying land that the Palestinians view as rightly theirs. But the latter’s readiness to displace their rage onto innocent Jewish targets around the world exposes an anti-Jewish bigotry that contaminates what well may have been considered authentic and righteous rage. The antisemitic hatred is facilitated by the radicalism and bias of Islamic preachers who declare all Jews infidels, all Jews enemies, all Jews suitable for attack.

Independent of just and rational debates about the differing claims of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters and the Israelis, the two peoples now differ in psychological terms. The Palestinians have become a community of hatred and the Israelis have not. I am not here entering the debate about who has victimized whom; of where historic fairness lies; of right and wrong. I am not making a case of who has necessarily inflicted the most pain or has done the greater injustice. I am not even measuring the bigotry of one group compared with the other. I am talking of the emerging psyches.

The Palestinians daily demonstrate, in their actions and words, their delight at the sight of the macerated victims of suicide bombers and their pride in the bombers. The Israelis, even when they have clearly committed atrocities, have struggled with shame and angry denial, not self-congratulations (this may be changing with time and frustration, particularly among the ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers). The reasons for hatred lie in the degraded nature of the life of most Palestinians in a modern world that owes them more. The have-nots are always more likely to be involved in mass hatred than the haves. Unfortunately, even the haves may perceive themselves as have-nots—witness the leadership of Al Qaeda. What is “not had” is respect, not just money. Francis Bacon in his superb essay on envy linked deprivation to general causes of envy:

Men’s minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain to another’s virtue will seek to come at even hand by depressing another’s fortune. . . . He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another. . . . [This] is the case of men that rise after calamities and misfortunes. For they are as men fallen out with the times, and think other men’s harms a redemption of their own sufferings.77

The Arab world is a community of people “fallen out with the times.”

The Power of Religion

The typical community of haters is formed through their allegiance to a common cause—the unborn, the environment, helpless animals—and a common enemy. While the community is often strident, its major danger comes from those at the fringe of the movement ready to act out their own despair in the service of a legitimate cause. It is an assemblage of the converted. It has relatively little opportunity to evangelize a larger population

The radical Islamic movement is different. It, too, is a transnational group linking like-minded people. But Islam is a natural constituency of people joined by history, culture, and authentic beliefs. It is one of the major religions of our world. It starts with a following already unified in their identification one with the other. Radical Islamism is a major threat to world stability because of its ability to create hatred by converting normal populations of individuals into crusaders for a cause. Typical hatemongers do not have an existing constituency. They do not have the reach, or the authority, of religion. They cannot both direct and legitimate violence in a large community in the way that the mullahs of radical Islam have done. Religion has historically provided a fertile field for the definition of enemies and the creation of hatred. It is a traditional venue for the sponsorship of hatred.

It is unfashionable these days to implicate religious orthodoxies for their role in cultivating and disseminating hatred. We are a culture of tolerance and diversity, and we strive to protect ourselves from religious bigotry and hatred. But political correctness must contend with historic data. It is not just coincidence that when we examine the environments of persistent hatred such as Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Indian subcontinent, and the Middle East, religious differences define the opposing populations, even where territory may be the ultimate aim.

Whenever religion is involved—whether for purposes of conversion or conquest—the name and power of God will be invoked in justification of all actions. Religious leaders, since the First Crusade and even before, have motivated the masses with the same promises that the mullahs use in encouraging Al Qaeda. Urban II promised absolution of sins and financial support for the families of crusader heroes. The mullahs promise instant admission to the kingdom of heaven and supply monetary rewards to the families of suicide bombers. The battle cry of the First Crusade, supplied by the pope himself, was “Deus volt”—God wills it, setting historic precedent for the battle cry of the terrorists: “Allah be praised.”

The individual paranoid must oppose his culture in insisting that he has been chosen personally by God, and in claiming that he hears the voice of God. He has to go through the psychic distortion of forming a delusion. No such radical suspension of reality is required of modern terrorists. Their religious leaders, who presume to speak for God, offer their followers an alternative to the delusion formation required of the paranoid.

The arbiters of many orthodox religions, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, have arrogated to themselves the right to interpret the word of God in all areas of life, secular as well as religious. They have been granted this authority by the masses who willingly accept their authority. If the mullah indicates that a woman must be stoned to death for bearing a child out of wedlock, it will be done “in the name of Allah.” The faithful