Tension high today in Jerusalem in advance of funeral of Hamas terrorist -- he planned to blow up the Caffit cafe on Emek Raf'im -- who died of cancer in prison.
It's a tension orcastrated by the Palestinian leadership or leaderships.
Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is meanwhile telling US Sec of State John Kerry that he will give the US about a year to pressure Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, accept the "right" of Palestinian Arabs and their descendants who became permanent refugees to "return" to a truncated Israel -- or he will seek these same goals via the automatic majority the Arabs enjoy at the UN.
So Abbas and Hamas compete for the Palestinian Street by ratcheting up anti-Israel violence. While Abbas collects his salary from well-meaning Western donors.
Too bad Abbas isn't interested in a peace deal. Too bad he won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
With all the chaos in the Arab world too bad Abbas is not a force for genuine moderation.
Thursday, April 04, 2013
Abbas Inflames the 'Street' -- Adheres to intransigent negotiating line
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Talking Points -- 2013 Israeli Elections -- the morning after
I suspected something
was up when Lisa and I did our "stroll poll" and came upon neighbors
and friends who told us that they'd voted for Yair Lapid.
Earlier, my father-in-law, voting for the
first time in Israel and after weeks of thoughtful reflection, told us he'd be
voting for Lapid.
Was this a trend in the
making?
Turns out the answer was
yes.
So here are some basic
talking points the morning after.
Big Picture
PM Netanyahu emerges
weakened but still Israel's next PM
-
Likud + YB held 42 seats together; now they'll be down
to 31. And they've already said they are not going to stay a unified faction.
-
It was an unhappy merger.
-
Keep in mind the Likud Party does not reflect not Bibi
(he's more centrist, the party "members" less so)
Centrist party Yesh Atid,
new player, emerges.
PM and Yair Lapid and Naftali
Bennett want “broadest coalition possible.”
Centrist electorate
didn't disappear – as Amotz Asa El says, it simply found new home(s)
Israelis are asking for
a moderate governing coalition in voting for Yesh Atid and Labor lite
There has been no
political re-alignment. No Right-Left shift. The blocs are technically tied.
Remember
"right" and "left" don't mean the same things in Israel as
in the US. Shas is "right"
theologically, "left" economically and, basically, dovish on security.
We the electorate chose
from a losuy menu
So here are the 8AM Jerusalem
numbers (without soldiers & prisoners etc.)
NB Israel does not have winner take all system.
The only losers are those who don't cross the electoral threshold – no party
has ever ruled alone --- coalition building is next stage – see "what next"
below….
Likud-Beytenu 31 [Shalom and Feiglin –most prominent Likud talking heads]
[People want-- though don't trust –Bibi, but they neither trust nor want his
party]
Yesh Atid: 19
Labor: 15 [lost by pledging not to participate in coalition/dumb] [Labor
lite—de-emphasized foreign policy/smart]
NRP /Habayit: 11 (NB captured NRP from old guard] [a return to the Old NRP
influence with new NRP values]
Shas: 11 [lost to two Sephardic schismatic parties that didn't cross threshold]
[Deri return a bust]
UTJ: 7
Meretz: 6 [picked up from less leftist Labor]
Livni: 6 [the Area 51 vote]
Mofaz: 2
Arabs: 12
The stats in Hebrew as
of 8 AM
הליכוד - ישראל ביתנו
|
מחל
|
23.25%
|
832,099
|
יש עתיד
|
פה
|
14.19%
|
507,879
|
העבודה
|
אמת
|
11.45%
|
409,685
|
ש"ס
|
שס
|
8.83%
|
316,151
|
הבית היהודי
|
טב
|
8.76%
|
313,646
|
יהדות התורה
|
ג
|
5.31%
|
189,931
|
התנועה
|
צפ
|
5.02%
|
179,818
|
מרצ
|
מרץ
|
4.59%
|
164,150
|
הרשימה הערבית המאוחדת
|
עם
|
3.80%
|
135,830
|
חד"ש
|
ו
|
3.12%
|
111,685
|
בל"ד
|
ד
|
2.66%
|
95,312
|
קדימה
|
כן
|
2.09%
|
74,735
|
עוצמה לישראל
|
נץ
|
1.73%
|
61,825
|
עם שלם
|
ץ
|
1.20%
|
43,095
|
ע
|
Who is Lapid?
Telegenic celebrity;
columnist; son of Tommy; Middle Class Israel; Tel Aviv Icon
“What is good for Israel
is not in the possession of the right, and nor is it in the possession of the
left. It lies in the possibility of creating here a real and decent center.”
--anti-Haredi
--pro-business
--pragmatic on security
--quintessential middle
class
--Yair Lapid called on
senior members of the political establishment to do everything in their power
to form a government that is as broad as possible in order to face the
challenges before Israel.
-- Said Israel was
facing an economic crisis that threatened to shatter the middle class, mounting
international criticism, and security threats.
--Acknowledged the
weight of the responsibility he was now shouldering, and recalled the similar
situation faced by his father, Yosef Lapid when the latter was leader of the
Shinui party
Who is Shelli
Yachimovich? (Labor)
-- Convinced that the
election results amount to a resounding vote of no-confidence in Binyamin
Netanyahu,
-- Labor would serve as
a fighting opposition and would work to topple the government soon
What did Bennett say
last night?
-- his party had
returned to the center of the political map,
-- Israel had “returned
to itself.”
-- new home for those in
search of a proud, non-servile Zionism
Is there a consensus
on FP?
All major Zionist
parties – Likud, Yesh Atid & Labor skeptical of the Palestinian
leadership’s willingness to negotiate
What Bibi Got Wrong
Tone: on FP
Columnist Ari Shavit, a for
the hard-Left newspaper Haaretz: “This was a lesson in how not to run a
campaign.”
Better to ask what he
got right—not much.
The Real agenda…
--domestic: economy; Haredim; oligarchic capitalism
-- $10 billion budget
deficit
--Iranian nuclear
program
--upheaval in Arab world
security threat to Israel
-- unknown unknowns
(revolution in Jordan); war with Egypt; reassessment with US and Europe etc etc
Turnout
Turnout was nearly 67
percent, higher than the 65 percent in 2009
3,616,947
What next?
Build a coalition…
Likud + Yesh Atid ==
obvious
>>> next pieces
of the block far more problematic
+add NRP
+add Labor? -- ideal for pragmatist/though unlikely
+add Haredim – recipe
for paralysis
+NB Haredim and settlers
have differences
oi vey
Wildcard (science
fiction)
Peres asks Lapid to form
government – he turns to Labor, Likud (Likud fragments) Kadima and Livni –
highly unlikely scenario -- could pull together 48 seats plus 15 Likud
moderates led by Bib --
How'd the polls do?
aggregate of early polls
gave Likud /Lieberman 42-- closing polls 34
Labor 20:17
NRP12: 13
truth is major polls
weren't that far off (even predicted Kadima with 2; Meretz with 6; livni with 7
Media Reaction
Yediot Aharonot:
* A Blow for Netanyahu,
A Surge for Lapid
* The Father of the
Failure
* A Vote of No-Confidence
Ma’ariv:
* The Right Wing
Weakens; A Blow for Netanyahu; the Big Winner Is Yair Lapid
* Protest Vote
* Forget About A
“Blocking Majority”
Haaretz:
* Spectacular
Achievement for Yair Lapid; Disenchantment in Likud
* Netanyahu Has a Future
* Why Netanyahu Failed
Makor Rishon
* 2013 Elections:
Setback for Likud Beiteinu; Major Accomplishment for Lapid
* The message: Social
Agenda
* Netanyahu Lost Because
of Fear
Israel Hayom
* Surprise for Lapid.
Disappointment for Netanyahu
* Possibility for
Stability
* The Lessons of the
Elections
Stay tuned.
In Israel elections
aren't over the morning after the election but the morning after a coalition
deal is signed between the various parties….
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Budapest Blues -
"Be
sure not to wear a kippa on the street," a veteran Hungarian-Israeli
businessman cautioned as we deplaned at Budapest's Ferihegy Airport. I took warnings to be Jewishly discreet to
heart throughout our visit to the Hungarian capital. In fact, the only time I was
made to feel out-and-out uncomfortable was at the airport on our way back to
Israel when two uniformed officials, one staffing the screening machine and the
other a customs desk, separately, went out of their way to be antagonistic to me
and another El Al passenger.
Even
as they confirmed that anti-Jewish
sentiment was spiking, Israeli medical students, longtime Israeli ex-pats as
well as members of the local community seemed inured. Security is tight at all
Jewish institutions though apparently the threat stems less from Islamists than
from locals. In fact, Muslim visitors have not been immune to attacks from
local thugs and I saw few women in traditional Muslim
dress. Some Roma (Gypsy) feel under siege. And, strikingly,
unlike other European capitals there are no African street vendors.
From
a tourist's vantage point, Budapest appears clean, orderly and safe. Away from
the pedestrianized streets, upscale malls, tourist restaurants and pubs
catering to the soccer-obsessed, however, these are hard times in Hungary. The
country is part of the EU though not the euro zone. A copy of the weekly
English-language Budapest Times, for example, costs an inflated 750
forints (about NIS 13 or $3.25). Unemployment stands at over 11 percent, though
considerably higher among young people. One in four Hungarians has had problems
paying their utility bills, the newspaper reported.
The populist-oriented
government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban finds it politick to kowtow to Gabor
Vona's ultra
right-wing Jobbik Party which holds 46 out
of 386 parliamentary seats. There are credible rumors afloat that
Jobbik has received financial backing from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Embarrassingly, a regional
Jobbik leader, Csanad Szegedi, recently learned that he had Jewish
ancestry. With one genetic firm offering dubious tests to establish racial
purity, Jobbik leaders now allow that, perhaps, what really matters is to behave like a
Hungarian.
While
I was in Budapest, Elie Wiesel repudiated a Hungarian state award he had received
in 2004 because government officials recently attended a ceremony for World War
II-era Nazi sympathizer Jozsef Nyiro. For the same reason, Knesset Speaker
Reuven Rivlin disinvited his Hungarian
counterpart, László Kövér, from a Jerusalem ceremony honoring Raoul Wallenberg.
Instead, President Janos Ader will represent Hungary.
Dominated
by the Danube, Budapest is a charming river city incorporated only in 1873 with
the integration of Buda, Pest and Obuda. Today's Hungarians are the progeny of
the Magyars who invaded from central Asia in the 9th century. Their
dogged paganism was bloodily overcome by Christianity, circa 1000. As for the
Jewish presence, there have been Jews in Buda on and off since the 11th
century; in Pest and Obuda since the 1400s.
Jewish fortunes were always subject to the capricious whims of Christian
authorities. Not surprisingly, Jews preferred the comparatively broadminded Ottoman rulers
to Christian overlords. The 150 years of
Islamic administration ended by the late 1600s. Only in 1840 were Jews no
longer officially restricted from settling in Pest.
The "golden
era" of Hungary Jewry, upheavals such as the Blood Libel of 1882-1883 notwithstanding,
mostly coincided with the height of the Austria-Hungary Empire (1867-1919) as
emancipated, mostly German-speaking Jews pursued acculturation, assimilation, and
economic and cultural advancement. This was
the Budapest milieu into which Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau (and also Joseph
Pulitzer) were born.
The Jewish
community built synagogues, schools, mikvaot and colleges (since Jews could not
routinely attend Hungarian ones). The stunning Moorish-style Dohany Street
Synagogue, affiliated with the once dominant Neolog stream was
built in 1859 (well before the nearby Basilica) using a state-of-the-art cast-iron
foundation. The structure is able to accommodate 3,000 worshippers and was
testimony to the confidence Hungarians of the Jewish persuasion had about their
prospects given that it was completed before they were granted their right to
citizenship in 1867.
Even
today it is one of the biggest synagogues in the world. The edifice was
refurbished after decades of Communist-era neglect with the help of Bronx-born
Hungarian Jewish actor Tony Curtis and the Lauder foundation.
On a
recent Shabbat morning fewer than 100 locals and tourists gathered for
services. The organ, actually played by
a non-Jewish woman, remains integral to the liturgy. Egalitarianism, however,
is not embraced. Men and women sit separately in the sanctuary and women play
no role in the services.
The synagogue's
interior courtyard is a graveyard and memorial to the city's Jews murdered
during the Holocaust.
The compound is also home to the Jewish museum
and impressive archives, described by senior
historian Gabor Kadar as the one of the few continuous
surviving community archives of the continent.
Herzl
lived in a building that once stood in what is today the Dohany compound. The small
square in front of the shul is named after him though in its prime the Dohany
elders were anything but Zionists.
Nearby
are some other architecturally interesting synagogues: the "status
quo" traditionalist Rombach (1872) and the Orthodox Kazinczy (1913). The dilapidated
Rombach is open to tourists but does not hold services. Further afield, I attended
an inspiring Friday night service at the (traditionalist conservative) Frankel
Leo Street Synagogue which has been rejuvenated by Tamas Vero, its dynamic
rabbi and his wife, children's book author, Linda Vero-Ban. There was a
parallel children's service; a dozen young women lit Shabbat candles, and part
of the service was beautifully chanted by a cantor who also happens to be an
opera singer. Again, women play no role in the service and sit separately in
the sanctuary, but there was a genuine sense of community.
We
ate Shabbat lunch with Chabad -- across the street from the Dohany -- which
caters mainly to Israelis living in Budapest. While waiting for davening to
end, I met a Holocaust survivor visiting from Australia. Accompanied by his son
and grandsons he was visiting the concentration camps he had survived to
memorialize members of their family who had perished. Though he did not hold
the right papers, he had somehow managed to find refuge in the protected
"International Ghetto" for Jews who carried life-saving passports
from neutral countries.
As a
Jew, you simply can't visit Budapest without encountering the Holocaust and
what preceded it. The interwar years were punishing as Jews were made to pay
the price for having been in the vanguard of two leftists revolutions that
convulsed Hungary after the First World War. By 1938, discriminatory laws were well
codified.
Under
Miklós Horthy, Hungary sided with Nazi Germany and thousands of Jews were
conscripted into dreadful labor battalions. Polish Jews living in Hungary were
summarily expelled only to be murdered by the Nazis. A rescue committee headed
by the controversial Rudolf Kastner was later
established to assist Slovakian Jews who sought refuge in Hungary. Whatever
outsiders may think, Kastner is remembered fondly in the Dohany compound.
Germany
entered Hungary only in March 1944. By July, close to 450,000 Jews from the
countryside were deported by the Hungarian authorities to Nazi concentration
camps under Adolf Eichmann’s personal supervision. Budapest is also where
Switzerland's Charles Lutz and Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg heroically used their
diplomatic offices to save as many Jews as possible. (Lutz was punished by the
Swiss government for exceeding his authority; Wallenberg disappeared into the
Soviet Gulag).
In
October 1944, as Horthy wavered in his fidelity to Berlin, the fascist Arrow Cross
took direct control of the country. Death marches, pogroms and extermination
followed. In November-December tens of thousands of Budapest's Jews were herded
into a ghetto in a compact area bordered roughly by the Rombach, Kazinczy and
Dohany synagogues.
Many
other thousands remained confined to the “International Ghetto.” But in early
January 1945 the fascists stopped honoring its neutrality. By the time the Red
Army conquered Budapest on January 16, half of Hungary's Jewish population –
some 564,000 souls -- had been wiped out.
Then,
as was the case elsewhere in eastern Europe, there were pogroms carried out by
the locals against Jews who had survived the war.
When
the communists took over in 1948-1949, Hungary still boasted one of the largest
Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. (There
were many more Jews in the Soviet
Union.) Thousands would flee in the wake of the 1956 uprising against
the Soviets. Yet relative to the Soviet Union, Hungary's Communist rulers
allowed a semblance of organized Jewish life.
Which
brings me to today. The community numbers somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000, many
of whom are unaffiliated and Jewishly illiterate. Some discovered only recently
from elderly or dying relatives that they are Jewish.
With all that historical
baggage, and without minimizing the difficulties, Hungarian Jewish life appears
resurgent stoked financially from abroad by family foundations such as the Rothschild,
Balint and Lauders and by Jewish Federations from the US, the JDC and the Dutch
JHF. The real burden on the ground falls to the locals who patronize and
maintain the JCC, kosher bakery, grocery, restaurants, café, shops, mikva and chevra
kadesha.
It
would be easier to be optimistic about Hungary's Jewish future were its political
elites actively promoting the kind of tolerance that needs to go hand-in-hand
with Western-style democracy and if public opinion surveys did not show
it to be among the most anti-Semitic country in Europe.
###
Want to read more about this topic?
Jewish
Budapest Michael K. Silber, YIVO Encyclopedia.
At
the turn of the 20th century, Jews comprised twenty-five percent of
the Hungarian population.
Hungary
Lauds Hitler Ally Zoltan Simon, Bloomberg.
The
current government may be embracing parts of the ultra-right's xenophobic
agenda.
Usual
Scapegoats Frank Bruni, New York
Times.
Hungary,
population 10 million people, could turn out to be a test case of the E.U.’s
imperiled sway in these days of debt and austerity.
Wither
Hungary? Kester Eddy, BNE.
A
new book suggests that the Budapest government is leaning away from democracy
toward authoritarianism.
New
Wave of Hate Erich Follath, Der
Spiegel.
Hungary
has failed to come to terms with its anti-Jewish legacy.
Misunderstood
Hungary Herb Keinon, Jerusalem
Post.
The
fractious Hungarian Jewish community is not of one mind about the prevalence of
anti-Semitism.
###ENDS###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Freudians in the Promised Land
Three Jewishly-conflicted
German speakers changed the course of modern history. By the time the first,
Karl Marx, had died in 1883 Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl were rising stars in
their 20s; later, incredibly, they came to be neighbors living a few doors
apart on a Vienna Street.
Herzl determined
that solving the Jewish problem necessitated sovereignty and statehood. While Marx
and Freud held that fixing what ailed universal man could not be achieved merely
by tinkering with where or how their polities were organized. Marx believed that
character could not overcome social and economic reality. Freud said that no
matter the political system, the human instinct of aggression and
self-destruction was omnipresent.
All three men had
acolytes in Palestine during the British Mandate who tried to harmonize some or
all of their disparate views.
How Freud's ideas
and those of his German-speaking followers fared in pre-state Palestine is the
subject of Freud in Zion by the Tel
Aviv-based psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and historian Eran Rolnik.
The book's subtitle: "Psychoanalysis and the
making of modern Jewish identity" is a bit of a tease. We really don't get
any straight answers about the impact psychoanalysis had on shaping modern
Jewish and Zionist identity. Instead, we are given to ponder whether there is a
contradiction between "psychoanalytic man" and "Zionist man."
What this book, intended mostly for a professional readership – the 2007 Hebrew edition was well-received by the Journal
of the American Psychoanalytic Association – does offer is a deeply
researched history of the coming of the psychoanalytic idea to Palestine.
Nineteenth century
political Zionism understood the Diaspora as being mentally, physically,
politically and culturally injurious to a healthy Jewish life. Recovery could
only come by negating the galut. In contrast, in developing
psychoanalysis Freud's goal was universal, to help people understand their drives,
themselves and thereby ameliorate emotional pain.
With Hitler's
coming to power in 1933, hundreds of German-speaking Jewish doctors came to
Zion mostly because they had no other choice. Rolnik's history of the psychoanalytic
profession in the Yishuv explores the challenges faced by its early
practitioners in adapting to a non-European environment and tells how they
competed for Freud's affections while feuding among themselves.
All the while Freud's
overriding fear was that anti-Semitic attitudes would tarnish the all-embracing
message of psychoanalysis. He did not want his theories to be seen as a
commentary on the Jewish condition, writes Rolnik. Freud was thoroughly
assimilated – the family celebrated a secular Christmas and Easter though not
Passover – still it never dawned on him to convert perhaps because he came to view all religion as neurosis. Raised
Jewishly illiterate he and Martha Bernays brought up their six children in a
similar fashion (though two sons flirted with Zionism).
Yet he was not an
ashamed Jew. He peppered his letters with Yiddishisms; stayed a member of the
B'nai B'rith lodge where he had first publicly presented his ideas; admired
Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann; and according to Rolnik, was not unsympathetic
to the cultural Zionism espoused by Ahad Ha'am and took pride when his works
first began to be translated into Hebrew in 1928.
But Freud was put
off by any hint of Jewish chauvinism. Perhaps the zenith of his disconnect from
Jewish civilization was his odd last book, Moses and Monotheism which,
as Rolnik interprets it, was Freud's attempt to show that Jewish ethnicity,
nationalism and Zionism were not prerequisites to its main gift to humanity.
It seems that as
Arab opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state became ever more
unyielding, Freud wobbled. He worried that by demanding the British honor the
Balfour Declaration the Zionists were being fanatical. A product of his milieu,
he hoped to ride out Hitler by keeping a low profile in Vienna. Earlier, he had
refused to bequest his papers to the newly established Hebrew University (then riven
by two factions, those who wanted to build the Mount Scopus campus as a Zionist
citadel, and the camp that wanted it as a repository of Diaspora intellectual
capital). Not coincidentally, the university rejected overtures from Freud's
followers to establish a training institute in psychoanalysis. In the end, a Sigmund
Freud chair in psychoanalysis was finally established only
in 1976.
For a lay reader
one of the book's highlights is the section on Freud's foremost and obsequious Hassid
in Palestine Max Eitingon (1881- 1943) who was at once fabulously wealthy, himself
a psychoanalyst, physician, and a pro-Zionist. The Nazi threat compelled him to
move to Palestine in 1933 where he basically transplanted the Berlin
headquarters of psychoanalysis to Jerusalem. It was a move Freud sitting in
Vienna hoped would be only temporary until the Hitler thing blew over. Rolnik
had access to Eitingon's papers and put them to excellent use fleshing out the
rivalries between Freud's various followers, Zionists, non-Zionists and
anti-Zionists.
Despite the
upheaval caused by Arab belligerence and the world war, Eitingon's institute,
which served as a sort of professional guild, conducted regular meetings (in
German) while its members carried surprisingly heavy patient caseloads. They also shared their frustrations. Eitingon,
for instance, complained that neither Palestinian Arabs nor Orthodox Jews were
suitable subjects for psychoanalysis. On the intriguing charge that Eitingon
was -- on top of everything else – also a Stalinist agent, Rolnik comes
down against the idea.
Can
Freud be said to have a political philosophy? In an email exchange, Rolnik
emphasized that Freud never
claimed to be offering a solution to the Jewish people or to any other people. Freud's most
political book, Civilization and its Discontents, addressed the inherent
tension between the individual's quest for freedom and society's need for
discipline, arguing that for a polity to function humans had to sublimate their
desires. In the book, Rolnik writes that "from Freud's point of view, it
makes no difference how humans decide to organize their lives together"
for at the end of the day "inherently irrational components of social
existence" preordain individual behavior.
The
aims of psychoanalysis and the Zionist enterprise did not necessarily
complement each other. Rolnik points to the pedagogical guidelines set by the
HaShomer HaTza'ir youth movement (then infatuated by Soviet Communism) regarding
teenage sexuality which were motivated not by helping the young people achieve psychological
individuation but in enforcing collectivist group dynamics.
Rolnik
wraps up Freud in Zion by airing his own worries – which he insisted to
me were made as a psychoanalyst with no political axe to grind – about contemporary
Israel. He worries about an Israeli political culture "in which violence,
omnipotence…and victimization takes precedence over assumptions of
responsibility." As he looks around, he sees an Israel colored by militant
nationalism and religious fanaticism deluding itself that most of its problems
are not, in fact, self-inflicted. The Shoah and now the existential threat from
Iran have made Israelis ever more myopic. In a back and forth he told me that
while paranoids have real enemies that doesn't make them any less paranoid. He
believes that the psychoanalysis practiced in Israel today does not adequately take
innate aggression into account. What we hate about ourselves is the key.
Israelis, he told me, put too much blame on history which makes us less accountable for our
aggressions. Too many therapists focus on childhood depravations, but Rolnik
argues that Freud taught that unconscious drives within all of us better explain
our antagonistic behaviors.
Freud died at age 83 in London exile just weeks after Hitler invaded
Poland thus outliving the madly optimistic Herzl by 35 years. Freud dreamed about Herzl. The rest of us can
be grateful that Herzl's dream became the emphatic reality. But Marx, Herzl and Freud operated on
different planes and it is only fair to evaluate the founder of psychoanalysis not
by his political acumen but by how he proposed modern man understand his
frailties.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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