In contrast to Edward Said's concept of Orientalism, that describes how Westerners perceive Orientals, Palestinism refers to how Palestinians view themselves through the lens of the ideology of return. This ideology serves as a cornerstone of the strategy that Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf have termed
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In this short article, after describing the deranged cognitive mechanisms of this ideology, I will focus on the psychoanthropological aspects of its emergence. I will conclude that Palestinism is a reaction to Zionism, its mimetic rivalry in 's terminology, and a vengeful religion of lament in 's.
Description:
Myths:
Palestinism consists of the following core beliefs:
- A lost paradise based on an idealized and almost fictive past of perfect bliss, destroyed by:
- A catastrophe (Nakba) of unprecedented dimensions, creating the greatest suffering that any human beings have ever known, the greatest injustice of all time provoked by:
- Zionism, the most diabolic and inhuman enterprise ever.
- The absolute apocalyptic belief that this Nakba will be reversed, by the return of all Palestinian refugees and the restitution of the lost paradise, which is understood as a place emptied of Jewish presence from the river to the sea.
Cognitive bizzarities:
- The Palestinian Israel conflict is a , not only on the collective level, but also on the individual. Each prosperous Israeli owes his prosperity to the expropriation he has inflicted on a Palestinian. The relation of Arabs and Jews is understood as a situation, in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off.
- As if they were quantum elementary particles, many Palestinians see themselves as if they were with an Israelis even when they are separated by a large distance (or to some Jew anywhere in the world). If an Israeli feels joy, the Palestinian feel sadness and vice versa.
- The suffering of the Palestinians is the most extreme suffering that ever existed. This is typified by their lack of solidarity with other comparable causes. Like, for instance, the plight of the Ukrainians.
- No partial outcome is acceptable, it’s all or nothing. If the liberation of Palestine is incomplete, it is as if it were none. Nothing is better than something.
Delusion of victory:
Has no Palestinist asked himself what would be left of the land from the river to the sea in the case of a full victory of their deranged project?
What spoils will they win after having destroyed the Jewish state and expelled all the Jews?
Do they really believe that they will inherit something more than scorched earth and a lunar landscape?
Have they not seen the examples of Angola and Mozambique that expelled all its “white” settlers and became poor, backward countries?
Have they not considered what kind of nightmarish country Algeria has become after expelling the Europeans?
Note: The above-mentioned countries ultimately obtained their independence through direct negotiations and peace-agreements, something that Palestinian leaders refuse to do.
Additional note: Decolonization largely failed across many regions, a trend that can be attributed to the influence of the Soviet Union. The USSR actively supported National Liberation Movements in colonized countries, aiming to undermine capitalism by destabilizing its colonial footholds. This support often led to the rise of movements that, once in power, dismantled the administrative structures established by previous colonial powers.
In contrast, the few nations that successfully navigated the decolonization process—such as Bahrain, India, Israel, and Singapore—did so by retaining these colonial administrative frameworks. By maintaining these structures, they were able to foster stability and continuity, which facilitated their development post-independence. For more on this, see .
Material conditions:
Contrary to the journalistic hogwash about indestructible ideologies, that they so passionately use when referring to Hamas, ideologies don't have legs nor wings or wheels, they need people to carry them, and people need food and shelter. If the faucet that feeds these people is turned off, there is no more ideology.
Palestinism, while emerging as a spontaneous product of Palestinian individual and collective imagination, was in the early sixties shaped into an ideology by KGB experts that promoted the creation of the PLO, and has become an institutionalized product of a well organized educational and propaganda system sustained by well-funded organizations that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, perpetuating the chronic conflict that has become an important source of revenue for millions of beneficiary perpetual and hereditary refugees and the officials who serve them.
Anthropological damage:
This has created a nefarious social experiment where a significant portion of the population has relied solely on charity for over four generations.
Imagine a community of millions where no one has ever held a job—neither their parents, grandparents, nor great-grandparents. This scenario encapsulates the Palestinian work-allergic society.
The aspiration for Gaza to transform into a new Singapore has proven to be a pipe dream, primarily due to its lack of a substantial Chinese and Indian population that could have facilitated such a development. Instead, the region is characterized by a sense of entitlement among Palestinians, where the notion of working to earn a living seems almost eccentric.
Psychoanthropological explanations (R. Girard and E. Canetti).
René Girard's theory of mimetic rivalry, central to his concept of mimetic desire, explains how individuals imitate each other's desires, leading to competition and conflict over shared goals (as explained in ).
Mimetic Desire and Rivalry
Girard argues that desire is influenced by others, forming a triangular relationship between:
- Desirer: The person who wants something.
- Object of Desire: The sought-after item or goal.
- Model/Mediator: The person whose desire influences the desirer.
When two individuals desire the same object, rivalry arises, especially among similar people who imitate each other’s desires, escalating competition.
Mechanisms of Rivalry
Girard outlines how this rivalry manifests through:
- Imitation of Desires: Individuals adopt the desires of others, turning friends into rivals.
- Social Competition: Rivalry can emerge from jealousy and comparison, even without direct competition for resources.
- Escalation of Conflict: Rivalry often leads to violence or retaliation, shifting the focus from the object to the act of competing itself.
Vengeful religion of lament
Elias Canetti's concept of the vengeful religion of lament in , explores how religious expressions of communal grief can evolve into justifications for violence, particularly in Abrahamic faiths.
Religious Lamentation: Canetti sees religions of lament as those that channel collective grief, often in response to suffering. While this unites communities, it can also foster a sense of victimhood and desire for revenge.
Cycle of Violence: This cycle is evident when communal mourning, such as Shiite rituals during Ashura, shifts toward justifying violence against perceived enemies. Grief becomes intertwined with vengeance.
Cultural and Historical Context: Canetti argues that this is a recurring pattern in monotheistic religions, where grief and identity formation can lead to hostility toward outsiders.
Mimetic Theory: Canetti applies mimetic theory, suggesting that imitation of grief can fuel rivalry, turning lamentation into a trigger for cycles of violence.
Palestinism is a reaction to Zionism.
As Aryeh Avineri () has demonstrated, the Zionist settlement and its desire for the Land attracted more Muslim migrants from all over the Ottoman Empire than it attracted Jews.
Besides the Arab migrants from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, it attracted Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Chechens, and Uzbeks, the latter three fleeing the Bolshevik revolution and the ensuing civil war.
The magnet wasn't the Zionist desire for the Land, but more concretely the economic growth that resulted from the drying of the marshes that covered more than half of its malaria-infested territories. Most of the first Jewish settlers contracted malaria in their successful effort to dry these.
Once that, thanks to the Zionist efforts, the Land became largely habitable and on the way to becoming prosperous, the imitation of desire developed in the Arab-speaking population, leading to social competition and escalation of conflict. This embryonic form of Palestinism, with the repeated defeats and frustrations suffered by the Arab side, evolved into the full-fledged vengeful religion of lament, i.e., the death cult that we know today.
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Further readings:
In , I explain why mimetism is a prevalent phenomenon in nature and culture.
In , I explain that beliefs, even such crazy ones as Palestinism, don't explain human behaviors. The behaviors of all living beings is determined by material needs. In the case of humans, beliefs are a form of storytelling that are used as and justifications of behaviors.
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