What bends in youth does not straighten in old age. Israel was born out of savagery, there will be no redemption. ‘Attacking bought Israel time’. When talking is hopeless. I have just read an essay and the warped logic with which a Rabbi I know calls Israel’s attack on Iran a ‘success’. Israel’s narcissistic self-destruction seeking drive is so exhausting, so exasperating. Not a shred of remorse over killing so many, no notion of ‘who lives by the sword dies by the sword.’ Some Jews crave nothing more than this to be proven true: ‘You see? You did want to kill all of us!’ They simply cannot fathom that you cannot bomb your way to peace and security. In the whole essay I find only minimal lip service when it comes to pointing out how many have died – again! – by Israel’s action. It does not even explictly state how much suffering there was among civilians in Iran, in Lebanon and of course in Gaza. The most disturbing of the whole essay is this, the writer seems convinced that Israel can never rid itself of all the threats facing it, it can only ‘kick the can down the road’ and somehow it kicked the can far down the road by bombing Iran. That bombing is exactly why Israel faces so many threats is just too self-reflective to even begin to consider.

That is why I now think that some Jews are hell bent on recreating a ghetto for themselves and for mysterious psychological reasons want to see the world unite to destroy them.

It’s like Ted Bundy asking his lawyer where he was most likely to get the death sentence if caught. Texas or Florida was the answer and then he escapes all the way to Florida, as if deliberately raising the stakes for himself. That’s what I see in Israel too. It does everything it can to make its own worst fears come true. At least I thought they were fears. Maybe being under permanent existential threat is the fantasy they crave and want to realize.

In the picture: a photograph of the Naqba, the catastrophe, in 1948, when Israelis pushed the Palestinians out. I wish Israelis could see how the hurt they inflict is the cause of any threats to their state, but it’s not in the cards.