A Psychologist Is Thinking, Thinking

Only Heretical Thoughts

First, people simply do not understand why so many vocal and angry Muslims feel that they are being “persecuted.” That’s simple. Most Muslims are brought up to believe that they must dominate all others. If they are not dominant in Hindu or Christian or Jewish countries, they might experience that as persecution, discrimination, and shameful. And coming from a shame-and-honor tribal culture, they may grow violent, or even kill over this.

Although I have read very good arguments both for and against Israel instituting a death penalty: Here’s my question. Why are terrorists simply not routinely killed in battle? Really, why not?

As Jews or as Israelis are we commanded to extend mercy to everyone, beginning with our most dangerous enemies? While they are attacking us? Just asking.

Why are so many recent rabbis not only women (I’m in favor of that), but also are members of the ever-widening LGBTQ community, one which has indeed exiled homosexuals and lesbians and has even supported surgical mutilation to change one’s sex--no, as they would say, one’s identity.

I see that my old Jerusalem-based feminist colleague, Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, described as a “Palestinian of Armenian descent and an anti-Zionist,” will soon be teaching at an elite university in the United States. (Is it Princeton?) She is one of the many true believers in Israel’s alleged “genocide in Gaza” and in its forbidden “whiteness.” What? Has she never looked around Haifa, where she was born, or Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Ber-Sheva? Has she failed to see the many olive, brown and black Jewish faces from all over the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia? Also from Spain, Portugal, Turkey? She once told me that Israeli officials stopped her at the airport, searched her computer, and took so long doing so that she missed her flight and, demoralized, disgusted, she decided to return home. HA! And some time ago, the honorable Bassem Eid came to see me and laughed about this incident. He said (I’m paraphrasing): “Has she never dealt with airport officials in Egypt, Syria, Qatar, or Turkey? If they’re suspicious, they might detain you for a long time, perhaps even arrest and jail you.” I always wonder how Bassem and Khaled Abou-Toamech have managed to stay alive. How powerful can their families be?

And then, there is something unmentionable on my mind. I dare not spell it out, but it has to do with the high price Israelis were willing to pay to rescue 20 living hostages and all those precious murdered corpses. There are many views about this. No soldier ever left behind, no captive not redeemed. But think about the price and the future...that’s why I’m thinking about what it will take to have no terrorist prisoners to trade...you can tell me what you think.

And then, there’s NYC’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani. What more can I say? These days, politics is all performative; memes rule the day--even if those very memes are filthy lies.

However, please allow me to recommend Ken Burns’s latest documentary about the American Revolution. I am in the midst of watching it now. I may have something to say but not quite yet. It is so very “politically correct,” and yet, it is a true and just corrective to previous versions of our history. I would only hope that someday historians and filmmakers, not to mention professors, would balance out their portrayals of historical figures, allow them their greatness, even as they acknowledge their most profound moral failures. George Washington had slaves as did other Founding Fathers. What are we to make of this? And the stories of how Americans, both loyalists and rebels, mistreated each other, mistreated and betrayed the enslaved African Americans living here and the Native American Indians, who were here long before anyone else came from somewhere else--it is all painful, very painful to learn about this. I say: Suck it up. But then, there’s the rape of women by the British soldiers...of women by everyone. Then--and still now. No, there is no way I can suck this up.

Anyhoo--I was sick for five full days, and all this, and more, was on my mind. Thought I’d share. Why the hell not?