“They Are Our Government, Our Leaders—They Cannot Be Crazy”

By on December 13, 2010 in News 10
Regions of the brain associated with stress and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Regions of the brain associated with stress and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Are the Israelis repeating Holocaust traumas upon the Palestinians?  From the July 1992 issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:

Dr. Jan Bastiaans, a Dutch psychiatrist, is an authority on the Holocaust syndrome, and has treated many survivors. In 1973 he wrote, “In recent years the Ka-tzet (concentration camp) syndrome has suddenly received general recognition…This concept is concerned with…pathological processes that occurred after the war in former concentration camp prisoners…The Ka-tzet syndrome is the expression of a permanent, chronic obstruction of sound human relationships. The victims are not free from the concentration camp…Behind their adaptation facade continues to live the child or adult of [that time] in all fear, in all misery, in all powerlessness.”

Dr. Haim Dasberg, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Hebrew University and medical director of the Ezrat Nashim Jerusalem Mental Health Center, has written extensively on PTSD and the Israeli army. Now living on the outskirts of West Jerusalem in an apartment pleasingly filled with books, paintings, and oriental rugs, he resisted conversion efforts by the Christian couple in Holland who adopted him after his father was put into a Nazi concentration camp and his mother went into hiding.

As a therapist for the Israeli military, he encourages battle-shocked soldiers to return to the front because he believes there is no cure for PTSD except the return to community and belonging. “If you leave your comrades in war, you are exiled and cannot function again,” he writes.

Dr. Dasberg and three colleagues have written thoughtfully on the psychological disintegration that can follow severe trauma, explaining: “The trauma forces the opening of boundaries (in the sufferer). This forced, open state and the inability to terminate it is accompanied by intense emotions, immense fears. The usual supports…have been drastically de-structured. The final realization is that the rules which define reality are not operational anymore and the individual loses the capacity to function and collapses.”

An American-born Israeli, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, heads Israel’s Clergy for Peace. A tall, slender, compassionate young man, he explains: “The Holocaust has left Jews so scarred we believe powerlessness is a sin. We feel the whole world is hostile to us. This is sick behavior. Our political agenda is irrational because of the Holocaust. Our Jewish state has been implemented at the expense of the Palestinians (partly) because spiritual Zionism changed to statehood after the Nazi persecution. Our agenda is corrupt because we’re not permitting the Palestinians to reunify. We Jews feel guilt toward the Palestinians and we’re unwilling to have a dialogue with them because it will be so unpleasant.”

Similar Symptoms

An Israeli psychiatrist, who wished to remain anonymous, warned me that “It is very dangerous to suggest that our people in government still suffer from the Holocaust. They are our government, our leaders—they cannot be crazy.” Pressed as to whether these leaders “suffer from PTSD,” he responded, “Holocaust survivors do not suffer from PTSD. But they have similar symptoms.”

Read more here.

, , ,

  • Alturn

    Another perspective on the problem was discussed by Benjamin Creme in Share International magazine (April 2005)

    Q. You said a number of former Nazis have incarnated in Israel. It seems they are continuing the same pattern from their previous life — oppression and racially motivated abuse of others, taking land for the ‘chosen’ group. How does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?
    A. The Law of Karma does not help individual souls to learn and evolve in that way. Certainly, the Law of Karma is at work in the displacement of these Nazi military and other leaders, who are acting in Israel as they would have done in Germany in their previous incarnation.
    It is because of their ray make-up and because they find themselves in a similar situation. They see themselves as Israeli. I do not think they know they were Nazis.
    Do they know their previous incarnation? No. They would simply read the problems of the time. The problems to them are that Israel is visited every other week by young men and women who blow themselves up when they get on a bus or enter a café, and kill Israelis. The Israelis hate this. They hate the unexpectedness of it; that is one of the terrors of terrorism.
    How does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?
    That is seeing things from an idealistic point of view. The Law of Karma is not involved with idealism. The Law of Karma is a very benign law, which you yourself set in motion and which brings to you the events that you have initiated.
    As you think, you create thoughtforms. Your actions create causes. These causes make effects. The effects are what you experience. They make your life, for good or ill. That is the Law of Karma, and shows the need for harmlessness in every situation. That is what people do not know.
    “Does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?”
    These people incarnated in Israel in relation probably to thousands of Jews in Germany that they had murdered, oppressed in every way. They grew to hate Jews for whatever reason. It was Hitler’s aim to get rid of all the Jews in the world if he could do it. He could not do it, but the Nazis got rid of about 6 million in Europe.
    They are responsible, and have now come back as Jews.
    It is not learning to evolve. It is the Law of Cause and Effect, that is, karma. They are living as the very people that they were so hateful to and oppressed in their previous incarnation. They are also bringing with them the quality of their ray structure, the energies which they use, which gave them power in Germany. These people were not the top people, but the people under them in the SS and army. It is not just the odd individual, there are a lot. Large numbers of Nazis have also reincarnated in Argentina and other places, including the USA.

  • Alturn

    Another perspective on the problem was discussed by Benjamin Creme in Share International magazine (April 2005)

    Q. You said a number of former Nazis have incarnated in Israel. It seems they are continuing the same pattern from their previous life — oppression and racially motivated abuse of others, taking land for the ‘chosen’ group. How does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?
    A. The Law of Karma does not help individual souls to learn and evolve in that way. Certainly, the Law of Karma is at work in the displacement of these Nazi military and other leaders, who are acting in Israel as they would have done in Germany in their previous incarnation.
    It is because of their ray make-up and because they find themselves in a similar situation. They see themselves as Israeli. I do not think they know they were Nazis.
    Do they know their previous incarnation? No. They would simply read the problems of the time. The problems to them are that Israel is visited every other week by young men and women who blow themselves up when they get on a bus or enter a café, and kill Israelis. The Israelis hate this. They hate the unexpectedness of it; that is one of the terrors of terrorism.
    How does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?
    That is seeing things from an idealistic point of view. The Law of Karma is not involved with idealism. The Law of Karma is a very benign law, which you yourself set in motion and which brings to you the events that you have initiated.
    As you think, you create thoughtforms. Your actions create causes. These causes make effects. The effects are what you experience. They make your life, for good or ill. That is the Law of Karma, and shows the need for harmlessness in every situation. That is what people do not know.
    “Does the Law of Karma help individual souls learn and evolve in this way?”
    These people incarnated in Israel in relation probably to thousands of Jews in Germany that they had murdered, oppressed in every way. They grew to hate Jews for whatever reason. It was Hitler’s aim to get rid of all the Jews in the world if he could do it. He could not do it, but the Nazis got rid of about 6 million in Europe.
    They are responsible, and have now come back as Jews.
    It is not learning to evolve. It is the Law of Cause and Effect, that is, karma. They are living as the very people that they were so hateful to and oppressed in their previous incarnation. They are also bringing with them the quality of their ray structure, the energies which they use, which gave them power in Germany. These people were not the top people, but the people under them in the SS and army. It is not just the odd individual, there are a lot. Large numbers of Nazis have also reincarnated in Argentina and other places, including the USA.

  • Haystack

    Israel reminds me of an abused child that has grown up to abuse others.

  • Haystack

    Israel reminds me of an abused child that has grown up to abuse others.

  • DeepCough

    It would interest a lot of people to know that Psychiatry, too, was instrumental in the Holocaust, much like everything else that came with the Industrial Revolution.

  • DeepCough

    It would interest a lot of people to know that Psychiatry, too, was instrumental in the Holocaust, much like everything else that came with the Industrial Revolution.

  • Synapse

    “Our Jewish state has been implemented at the expense of the Palestinians (partly) because spiritual Zionism changed to statehood after the Nazi persecution. Our agenda is corrupt because we’re not permitting the Palestinians to reunify. We Jews feel guilt toward the Palestinians and we’re unwilling to have a dialogue with them because it will be so unpleasant.”

    Many things wrong with this statement.
    1. Zionism was a movement for actual statehood long before the Nazis were even created in the PTSD (aka post WWI) Europe. There wasn’t a change in the Zionists, but a change in non-Zionists to realize that anti-semitism won’t go away no matter where the Jews are.

    2. The Palestinians were never unified, unless he means unified within the larger middle east as simply “Arabs.” Pre-1948, Jews were called Palestinians, while Arabs were simply Arabs.

    3. Are Jews unwilling to have dialogs with the Palestinians? It seems that all the groups working for dialogs, coexistence, etc are actually Jewish/Israel, i.e. B’Tzelem, Shalom Achshav, etc. There are currently no Palestinian (or even Arab) groups working on creating a dialog with Jews, most likely because that would admit some kind of acceptance of Jews in the middle east. A repulsive notion to their culture.

  • Synapse

    “Our Jewish state has been implemented at the expense of the Palestinians (partly) because spiritual Zionism changed to statehood after the Nazi persecution. Our agenda is corrupt because we’re not permitting the Palestinians to reunify. We Jews feel guilt toward the Palestinians and we’re unwilling to have a dialogue with them because it will be so unpleasant.”

    Many things wrong with this statement.
    1. Zionism was a movement for actual statehood long before the Nazis were even created in the PTSD (aka post WWI) Europe. There wasn’t a change in the Zionists, but a change in non-Zionists to realize that anti-semitism won’t go away no matter where the Jews are.

    2. The Palestinians were never unified, unless he means unified within the larger middle east as simply “Arabs.” Pre-1948, Jews were called Palestinians, while Arabs were simply Arabs.

    3. Are Jews unwilling to have dialogs with the Palestinians? It seems that all the groups working for dialogs, coexistence, etc are actually Jewish/Israel, i.e. B’Tzelem, Shalom Achshav, etc. There are currently no Palestinian (or even Arab) groups working on creating a dialog with Jews, most likely because that would admit some kind of acceptance of Jews in the middle east. A repulsive notion to their culture.

  • Alex

    Dr. Bastiaans was also a pioneer of psychedelic therapy, using LSD to help concentration camp survivors relive and thereby reinterpret their traumatic camp experiences. He successfully continued this practice until the early ’80s.

  • Alex

    Dr. Bastiaans was also a pioneer of psychedelic therapy, using LSD to help concentration camp survivors relive and thereby reinterpret their traumatic camp experiences. He successfully continued this practice until the early ’80s.