Some kind of an ending

56.129 words I have written, so far, in this manuscript about my talks with my enemy, Moshe Rosenstein. I would say that is one word for every Palestinian killed by Israel since October 7th, but that would be inaccurate. I think the death toll is much higher than is being reported.

I have trouble finishing things and have a tendency to either quit writing a manuscript or to keep adding to it.

I wish to finish this one. I wish the hatred to stop, I wish the dying to stop, I wish the systematic western misrepresentation of this conflict to end. Maybe that motivates me to finish this manuscript. It’s not a published book and maybe it never will be, so I call it a manuscript. Writing it and reflecting on Israel-Palestine has made me more acutely aware of how much the words we use shape our reality. For example, that’s why I have started using the vocabulary of the US hegemony against it. I now prefer to call the leading forces behind the oppression of the Palestinians and Israeli land grabbing ambitions the ‘Tel Aviv-Washington regime’. I want to be as exact as possible in my word choice in my own personal life as well. The wrong words sustain dangerous illusions. This is a manuscript, not a book, at least not at the moment. It’s not exactly a conflict, it’s a genocide, it’s a war of conquest heavily marketed as self-defense.

There were moments my friendly enemy was getting to me. There were times I was starting to believing certain Israeli myths. That the Naqba was caused by an Arab genocidal drive gone wrong (totally false). That Gaza was given back (totally false). That Israel’s savage attack on Gaza was a fight for survival, because if Israel didn’t react with lots of violence its neighbours would take that as an invitation to annihilate Israel (preposterous). One of the clearest patterns I have noticed in soaking up everything I could find on this topic is ‘every accusation is a confession.’ Israelis have the reflexes of a somewhat talented, but uneducated bully. They have a knack for applying all the dark tricks of human psychology, but on a simplistic level. I think this is because they imagine themselves to be vastly superior to everyone else. They do not take the time to actually go really deep into psychology in order to manipulate people better. I recognize their arrogance, because there is arrogance in me too. For example, I am strangely convinced that I would do a much better job at turning out Israeli propaganda than the Israelis themselves.

It’s been a confronting journey. In discovering just how vile the alliance between the western media, western politicians, the western establishment and Israel’s ambitions is, I have had to look at some dark corners of myself too. Am now certain that I can read Israel’s evil agenda, because I have the potential, at least in theory, to come up with similar evil. I confessed this to my enemy on several occasions. If I were in Netanyahu’s position I might act the same way purely for reasons of ego and megalomania. That’s an insane confession to make. One could also argue ‘the proof is in the pudding’, meaning that I have never actually activated my potential for evil doing and latent lust for power and dominance to become the leader of a country and start playing smash with millions of innocents for my own greater glory. So in the end that’s mostly a self-indulgent, irrelevant thought exercise. The pudding I have made is a manuscript that condemns evil wherever I see it, also when I see it lurking inside me.  

It will of course surprise nobody that I now claim that my enemy was not willing to go that far. He remained entirely loyal to his starting position. Israel can do no wrong in his eyes. Israel’s cause is right. Arabs raise their kids to be martyred and people like me would like to do away with all Jews. He did state several times that he is certain am not like that, but all other people ‘on my side’ are like that. This is simply not true. I have almost never met someone who would want that and when I did I let them quitely fade out of my life.

I am left with the impression that my enemy only saw value in our connection as long as he had hope that he could convert me. For some reason I was very willing to build a friendship with someone who sees things radically different from me. This is also a strange motivation to build a friendship. Real friendship shouldn’t have any kind of special motivation. That’s not why he cut ties with me, but yes, partly I was running some sort of social experiment. We had several things in common, for example, we both have a more feminine side to our personality than is common in today’s men. We both have quite a lot of empathy, but I would say mine is less conditional. Shocker, am more critical of him than of me.

I realize this manuscript is trying to be too many things at the same time, not having one clear focus in my life has always troubled me. That’s why my orthopedic surgeon is an accomplished orthopedic surgeon making more money than I do, but knowing less than me on about 100 topics unrelated to orthopedic surgery. When it comes to success one is better off specializing as much as possible in one lucrative field. My orthopedic surgeon thought Robert E Lee won the battle of Gettysburg, but that’s only relevant to fact greedy geeks like me. He’s doing hip replacements and spinal surgery. He doesn’t need to know all the little facts I know. I – insert expletive – know Lee’s birthday (19th of January). This manuscript is similar. Instead of giving you a clear history of Palestine it’s an odd blend of self-help literature, autobiographical elements and psychology, especially the psychology of how we come to beliefs.

I still agree with Jonathan Haidt that our emotional framework decides what we think about any topic and then our mind goes to work, as a lawyer, to prove our emotional framework right.

There are many elements in my personal history that predispose me to be pro-Palestinian. I have explained these earlier. I do believe that I have rigorously and fairly investigated these biased beliefs and come up with the fair conclusion that there is something inherently wrong with Israel, that it is an anomaly, that it should not exist and that it can only exist through violence, ever more violence in fact. The Palestinian version of this issue is the correct one. That doesn’t mean everything every Palestinian ever said is the truth and nothing but the truth, but generally the Palestinian representation of this issue is much, much closer to the truth than the Israeli version.

I honestly did not write this manuscript to convince anyone of that. I wrote this to understand myself better, to understand this issue better. If someone enjoyed reading it, than that’s just bonus.

Before and long after October 7th I was of the opinion that Israel was a ‘fact accompli’, it existed and there was no point in trying to end it. My position has changed. Israel should not exist, but what it should be is tougher to answer. Israel has proven itself to be a state rooted in evil, unable to overcome its evil beginnings and is always doubling down on being evil. The only reason to not simply dissolve it, is that I rather prefer to keep so many indoctrinated people in one spot. Quite like the police doesn’t want to disperse all drug dealers from one particular spot in a city because it’s easier to monitor the situation then. If they crack down on them, they will resurface elsewhere or go underground.

So far my answer is that of the one state solution. I have outlined tentative proposals for how to go about that elsewhere in much more detail. Those Israelis on board with the genocide should be reeducated, in lots of cases jailed, in some cases for life. The country should be renamed, all Palestinians should become full citizens of this country. It will likely be called Palestine. Some rectifying of so many things gone horribly wrong needs to take place. Am of course radically against flipping the power dynamic and instead of seeing a genocide against the Palestinians unfold seeing another genocide unfold, but with the roles reversed. Justice has to be had. There are countries with large minorities and very diverse population who manage to function as a country without ever going to war with each other. With the right approach the same could be true for Palestine, but it will be a huge challenge. If humanity manages to solve this issue, then anything is possible. This issue has so many toxic tentacles, like Israel’s highly unusual ownership of the US government, that if we can fix this, we can fix almost anything.

I have done this throughout the book: I see Israelis, Israeli mentality and the mentality of their allies as the problem, not Jews. There are far too many Jews who oppose Israel for Israel to have the right to speak in the name of all Jews. Catholic countries have done horrible things and one isn’t labeled an anti-catholic if one speaks out against their atrocities. I saw a sign yesterday reading: ‘Am not an anti-semite, am just not a psychopath.’ Those Israelis who use Jewish heritage as a shield to act like psychopaths are also guilty of trying to pervert a religion (some will say it’s an ethnicitiy or a people, but to me it’s a religion).

We are talking about a country driven by psychopathy, gaslighting, pathological narcissism. It is a rogue state that is like the spearhead of everything western imperalism stands for, but is unwilling to do as openly as Israel does it. It’s like a relic of the past, psychologically it’s like a time capsule of how colonial powers used to act openly, brazenly and filled with supremacist pride. The west, especially western Europe, has become a bit squeamish about meeting out violence openly, but via Israel it still can. It’s like their attack dog. With the dog actually chaining its owner and pulling it towards an abyss over a road strewn with the corpses of children.

Anyone standing up to this, even though all mainstream messages advocate the exact opposite, has the intention to rectify the wrongs of our world. They may not know how to go about it, they may not know the outcome, they may not have much power to bring about change right now, but they are doing what they can to get a world without violence and to get a public dialogue going free of lies and distortions. The two go hand in hand. The media has not done enough to stop this madness and in many cases their actions have help bring about a climate in which genocide with western weapons is possible, condoned and swept under the rug. In fact, western media and politicians are doing that was drives people to rage. They force us to blow up the reality we live in and to adopt a fictional world that is only beneficial to the richest, the most violent and the most powerful.

I was extremely naïve in thinking I could be friends with someone who embraced this spearhead of western dominance as his home, as his identity, as his mission in this life. It also lays bare my drive to do something unusual and if I get anything out of this manuscript other than a better understanding of Palestine I hope it will be a less confusing, more altruistic, but also more fertile, use of my energy and time.

I will end up re-rewriting this end, I can already feel it, but this concludes A journey with my enemy as my guru. Through Israel, Palestine, my soul and other contested areas. You can read it in installments here, this is the first installment: https://projectauthenticity.org/2023/12/03/1-a-journey-with-my-enemy-as-my-guru-through-the-israel-palestine-conflict-my-soul-and-other-contested-areas/