He describes how he witnessed a lighthearted conversation in a Jerusalem coffee shop between a graduate student and a young teacher about classroom cheating. “Well, if I caught a student cheating, I wouldn’t view it as a negative,” the teacher said. “I would see it as an indication that he wants to succeed.” Gratch concludes: “The Israeli mind’s failures at empathy, its lack of regard for reality, and its relentless drive for success, all produce a predilection for cutting corners, bluffing, and lying.”
The values and behaviors that make up what Gratch calls the Israeli national character can be seen as a form of psychological self-defense. “Israeli psychologists … have noted that everyday belligerence in Israeli society is rooted in unconscious anxiety,” he writes.
I think you can see the Israeli mind as a distillation of the Jewish mind.
Israelis are oppositional and quick to say no, Gratch says, which, as a reaction to danger, serves as a survival mechanism. It is rooted in the Jewish Diaspora experience, and it continues to operate in an independent Jewish state, even though it is no longer essential and even counterproductive.
This psychological defense mechanism, Gratch says, is largely responsible for Israel’s success, but “to the extent that the oppositional character of the Israeli mind drives or shapes Israeli actions, reactions, or policies, it is imperative for Israel’s as well as the world’s security, that we understand it and learn how to deal with it.”
…Despite their achievements, Israelis have not been able to fully free themselves from what Gratch calls “the ideology of affliction.” In the Israeli mind, he maintains, ingrained feelings of insecurity clash with the reality of Israel being the most powerful and advanced country in the region.
…Annihilation anxiety, combined with hyper-masculinity and a narrative of self-sacrifice, Gratch says, all clash with the nation’s aspiration for normalcy or even greatness.
On one hand, the Jews’ self-identity as the chosen people allowed them a self-aggrandizing role in history; on the other hand, their “outsized” accomplishments in all fields over the ages have resulted from a “compensatory drive” to overcome their sense of insignificance. Another facet of Israeli narcissism, Gratch notes, is the lack of empathy, revealed in the inability to understand and experience the plight of their neighbors, the Palestinians. More troubling than the Israeli disrespect for authority and penchant for cutting corners is the deeply internalized sense of victimization that manifests in paranoia and defensiveness—a frightening mix vis-à-vis the Iran nuclear crisis and conflict with the Palestinians.
