Thursday, March 24, 2011

FLYING IN THE FACE OF REALITY

Egypt Air has removed Israel from the map--achieving in fantasy what so many in the Arab world desperately desire:
Egypt Air, the largest airline in Egypt, has removed Israel from the map – literally. On its website, Ynet has learned, Jordan's land reaches the Mediterranean Sea.

The airline's subsidiary, Air Sinai, flies to Israel regularly, but customers seeking flights to Ben Gurion National Airport will have a hard time finding them. On the map are the names of the Mideast capitals – Amman, Beirut, and Damascus – but Israel is nowhere to be found.


This, of course, calls to mind Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel from the map" back in 2005 when he spoke at a conference on "A World Without Zionism."

What is it that makes them emotionally unable to accept a successful, democratic and non-Muslim state in the middle of all their Muslim dysfunction and failure? In psychological terms, the answer to that question is that they suffer from a malignant and destructive paranoid style, fueled and fanned by Islamic fundamentalism.

Instead of coming to terms with the reason their societies and cultures are so dysfunctional and toxic; instead of facing a series of unpleasant truths about their backwardness and lack of achievement; or questioning the religion that keeps them that way; or the leadership that manipulates them and needs them to remain backward and willing to descend in barbarism on cue; they have allowed their society to regress to a concomitant primitve emotional level where a paranoid world view is all that stands between them and total psychological disintegration .

Under these poisonous circumstances, paranoia does not wax and wane. It must continually expand and try to incorporate and explain more and more data that documents their multiple failures as individuals; as a culture, as a religion. Rhetoric and behavior must always escalate to ward off the encroaching reality.

Thus, without ever having to question their own evil, they can psychologically project it onto the Jews, whose success in the face of Islam's failure is a shame too great to bear.

One of the hallmarks of the paranoid, and paranoia in general, is the ability to fixate (or obsess) on one particular point to the exclusion of all other reality and to select that point as the "evidence" of their predetermined delusion.

The paranoid is actually quite perceptive--rigidly so; and they focus their attention only on those details that give support and credence to their beliefs. The nation of Israel gave them a focus and a scapegoat onto which they could project their own cultural and religious failures.

If Israel did not exist, the Arab world would have to invent it, because without Israel to blame all their problems on (and, by extension, America), the nations of the Middle East would not be able live with their own shame.

David Frum suggested in an article titled, "Why is it Always About Israel?" that:
Might it not be closer to the truth to say that Arab radicalism is the cause of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute--not the result of it? There is no peace because Israel's neighbours--and too many of the world's Muslims--cannot accept the right of a non-Arab, non-Muslim minority to live unsubjugated in the Middle East. That is the true "core" of the dispute, and it cannot be fixed by negotiation.
Frum was correct in suggesting that the problem cannot be fixed by negotiation, but he is off the mark about the source of the problem. While it is true that Arab radicalism deliberately promotes the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and continually disrupts any possibility of resolving it, the cause of that dispute lies in the psychological dysfunction of the Arabs themselves, aided and abetted by the perversion and extension of all the worse elements within Islam.

Those who dwell in this paranoid culture have closed off their rational, thinking minds; and with the encouragement and justification of the most medieval aspects of their religion are operating on the basis of the most primitive and dysfunctional of unconscious needs and feelings.

They are indulging in group projection and paranoia--deliberately developed and encouraged by their dysfunctional leaders--in order to maintain their dysfunctional identity, as well as their dysfunctional political and pseudo-religous agenda.

Personally, I do not have much optimism that current events in the Middle East are going to lead to increase liberty and tolerance there. While I truly believe that there are many people there who yearn for freedom and who want to take themselves and their culture and religion move toward the 21st century (and since their starting point is psychologically in the 12th century, they have a huge task before them). But I fear these voices of reason will be subsumed into the collective paranoia of the Arab mind and fanned by ideology of Islam.

For too long that collective mind, marinating in Islamic fundamentalism, has been flying in the face of reality and willfully refusing to acknowledge it. Why? Because there are far too many unpleasant truths and painful self-knowledge that need to be faced about both their culture and their religon before thay can escape from the medieval rut they are in.

I would like to believe that all the recent upheavals in the region herald a psychological step forward....but then you read about the new, improved Egypt Air and you realize that the old paranoia and projection; the same old lack of insight and unwillingness to face reality still rules.

UPDATE: More reasons why I am not optimistic about all this "pro-democracy" upheaval in the Middle East. Here's who's coming out on top in in Egypt. And guess who the rebels in Libya are turning to....

And, if you've forgotten about the Muslim Brotherhood in all the euphoria of hope and change, here's a little ditty that goes a lot like an old Tom Lehrer song:

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD WEEK

Oh, the Shia hate the Sunni,
And the Sunni hate the Shia.
But to blow up you and me-a
Is an old Quranic rule.

During Musim Brotherhood Week, Muslim Brotherhood Week,
Egyptians and Syrians are dancing cheek to cheek.
Musims love to fatwa-tize
Any sects that they despise,
And take turns burning down each other's mosques.

Oh, the Saudis hate Iranians;
And Yemenis hate Jordanians;
Muslim socialists hate Muslim fascists,
But during this week they're all pacifists

Except that they can kill some Jews
And count on making front page news!
They do it with such great aplomb
It's as Islamic as a suicide bomb!

During Muslim Brotherhood Week, Musim Brotherhood Week,
Tehran makes nice with Riyadh cause it's oh so very chic.
Kneel down and start to pray
With someone you'd prefer to flay;
You can be peaceful if you try.

Oh, Hamas will sleep with Fatah,
Persian or Arab will no longer matteh
They all have women they can batteh
And everyone can hate the Jews!

And during Muslim Brotherhood Week, International Caliphate Week,
It's everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood Week.
Be nice to any Muslim who
Allah's decreed inferior to you.
It's only for a week, so have no fear.
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

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