I believe that this is even truer for an entire nation, which is, of course, composed of individuals. I have seen this many times.
For example, for 11 months before Lebanon War I, not a single shot was fired from Lebanon into Israel. Against all expectation, Yasser Arafat had succeeded in enforcing a total cease-fire even on his Palestinian opponents. Yet after Ariel Sharon started the war, practically all Israelis clearly "remembered" that the Palestinians had shot across the border every single day, turning life in Israel into hell.
I call this "Parkinson in reverse" -- while advanced Parkinson patients do not remember things that happened, these patients do remember things which never happened.
THERE IS a mental disorder called "paranoia vera." Patients adopt a crazy assumption -- e.g., "everybody hates me" -- and then build an elaborate structure around it. Every bit of information which seems to support it is eagerly absorbed, every item that contradicts it is suppressed. Everything is interpreted so as to reinforce the initial assumption. The pattern is strictly logical -- indeed, the more complete and the more logical the structure, the more serious is the disease.
Among the accompanying symptoms are belligerent behavior, recurrent suspicions, disconnection from the real world, conspiracy theories and narcissism.
It seems that whole nations can fall victim to this illness. Ours certainly appears to have.
The whole world is against us. Everybody is out to destroy us. Every move is a threat to our very existence. Everyone critical of Israeli policy is an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew.
Indeed, even when we do a good thing, it is turned against us.
Witness: "We left the Gaza Strip and even dismantled our settlements there, and what did we get in return? Qassam rockets!"
(Never mind that Sharon refused to turn the Strip over to any Palestinian body, leaving a void. He cut it off from the world and turned it into one big prison camp.)
Witness: "After Oslo we armed Arafat's security forces, and they turned their arms against us!"
(Never mind that we never quite fulfilled our commitments under the Oslo agreements, that the occupation got more oppressive and that the settlements on Palestinian land increased by leaps and bounds. Also, the Palestinian security services never actually acted against Israel.)
Witness: "We withdrew from South Lebanon and what did we get? Hizbollah and Lebanon War II!"
(Never mind that Hizbollah was born in reaction to our 18-year occupation there, and that we ourselves chose to launch the second Lebanon War after a minor border incident.)
IT HAS been said that paranoiacs also have real-life enemies. The trouble is that the paranoid by their offensive and distrustful behavior, create more and more real-life enemies.
The slogan, "All the world is against us," may easily function as a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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