Gilad Atzmon interprets the indifference with which most Israelis viewed their army's murder of Lebanese innocents as a symptom of "pre-traumatic stress disorder", a collective pathological psychotic condition in which the perpetrators of crimes project their murderous zeal onto their victims and thereby justify their own crimes.

While many may find it heartening or amusing that even an Israeli right winger cannot see a ray of light at the end of the Zionist tunnel, it is rather disconcerting to read that Israelis are already seriously contemplating their next Shoah. I would argue here that it is exactly this form of deadly meditation that turns Israel, Israelis, global Zionists and neo-conservatives into the gravest enemies of world peace.

A growing number of people do indeed want to see an end to Israel, the exclusively Jewish state. Yet, no one around is expressing any murderous or terminal plans against world Jewry or even against their Jewish State. No one in the political or the media spheres is calling for a homicidal act against the Jews or their Jewish State. Thus, the well-established Judaeocentric tendency to interpret almost any legitimate political and ideological criticism as a perpetration of an upcoming Judaeocide should be comprehended as a severe form of paranoia verging on collective psychosis, which I define as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TSD).

Within the condition of Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), in which stress comes as a direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD the stress is clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the focus is on the fantasy of terror itself becomes a grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction.

One may wonder at this stage whether Pre-TSD is just another name for paranoia. I would argue that the difference between the two is rather obvious. In the case of paranoia, he who is subject to the condition makes us feel sorry for him. In the case of confrontation with a Pre-TSD case, we feel sorry for ourselves Unlike the case of paranoia, wherein the sufferer is subject to his own symptoms, in the case of Pre-TSD the sufferer actually celebrates his symptoms while others are confined to the role an audience. Regarding paranoia, we can clearly say that the sufferer is deluded and captured within a phantasmic universe. Concerning Pre-TSD, the "supposedly healthy" are "not so sure"; they too manage to lose their grip on reality. Often, we end up believing the Pre-TSD sufferer when he claims that he is indeed a victim of a "future phantasmic crime". We somehow participate in the fantasy. However, we are the addressees as long as we remain silent. Once we raise our voices, once we point out that the future crime is yet to happen and actually may never happen, we then immediately become part of the crime ourselves.

Projection and Pre-TSD

We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon... What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs." - Commander of an Israeli army missile unit in Lebanon, Haaretz, 12 September 2006

Let us face it once and for all. Since no one is calling for Israelis to be thrown into the sea or to be nuked, one is entitled to argue that the Israeli tendency to accuse Muslims and Arabs of holding such murderous tendencies themselves must be understood in terms of projection. The people who rained Lebanon with "more than a million cluster bombs" are projecting their murderous zeal onto their victims and even onto their future victims.

Yair Sheleg, for instance, throws his own malicious tendencies onto the Muslim world and Iran in particular. As a devoted Zionist who advocates violent measures against almost anyone who is not a Jew, Sheleg is doomed to project his own murderous zeal when referring to Arabs and Muslims. But Sheleg is not alone. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is doing exactly the same thing. In a recent public relations campaign it warned Europe of Iran's long-range missiles. Obviously within their phantasmic Judaeocentric universe, a global war against Islam is a "Judaeo-Christian interest". However, Europeans tend to laugh once confronted with the AJC's embarrassingly aggressive ideology. Europeans are obviously not afraid of Iran at all. Unlike the AJC members who actually promote violence, the Europeans fantasize about peace. In contrast to the AJC, it would seem that Europeans have had enough wars. Europeans also realize that, as long as they do not harm Iran, Iran's ballistic capability would be totally irrelevant to them. In other words, Europeans fail to regard Iran as a murderous entity because, unlike the AJC, Europeans are not murderous to start with. Because they aren't murderers, they simply fail to see murderers in others. The Europeans lack the necessary aggressive zeal, with which the AJC is overwhelmingly saturated. This is exactly where a growing abyss is emerging between the Zionists' utterly phantasmic bloodthirsty universe and the rest of humanity.

Who needs a nuclear arsenal (aren't Katyusha rockets just more than enough)?

The general mood in Israel, which is expressed so eloquently by Yair Sheleg and reflected in the AJC's catastrophic scenario, reveals a severe collective form of Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Israelis and their supporting lobbies are contemplating publicly over their nuclear Shoah to come. This pathological mode is rather bizarre considering the fact that the bold Hezbollah has managed to defeat the mighty Israeli army just with light weapons. It also managed to defeat the Israeli society with nothing more than short-range Katyusha rockets. In fact, the enemy of Israel does not need to "nuke Israel"; all they have to do is just to send a message to the Jews of the world: Israel is anything but a shelter. By doing so, they confront Israelis with the following realization: once again, you have failed the "love your neighbours" test. This is what Arab resistance is all about. It is a metaphysical message rather than a call for a Judaeocide.

However, the Israelis somehow fail to read the message on the wall. Rather than looking at the mirror and spotting their obvious faults, which have already matured into severe moral bankruptcy, the Israelis prefer total submission to the materialist fantasy of nuclear Judaeocide. Rather than thinking in ethical terms, the Israelis surrender to the shallowest materialist discourse solely centred on "the destruction of the I". The Israelis have succumbed to an imaginary phantasmic Shoah in which they are nuked on a daily basis. Worryingly enough, the Israelis are not alone, insofar as the fear of an illusionary terror is concerned. Blair and Bush are infected with the very same mental disease.

Repeatedly, Yair Sheleg, the AJC and Bush confer murderous tendencies on to the Iranian president, but is this indeed the case? Do they have a case? Has the Iranian president ever spoken of the destruction of the Jewish people, the Israelis or anyone else?

Let us confront the obvious fact. President Ahmadinejad certainly said that Israel should be "wiped off the Map". However, the president has never said that the Jews as a people should be murdered. He was clearly referring to Israel, the racist "Jew Only State". This is a legitimate criticism as much as criticism of apartheid South Africa was justifiable. But Ahmadinejad doesn't stop there; he elaborates on the issue. Cleverly and rather reasonably, he challenges the West:

This is indeed a most appropriate question to be asked. Yet there is not a single hint that this man has any plans to annihilate the Jews or their state. If anything, Ahmadinejad does his best to find the Jews a new home. Clearly, the Zionist dream of a Jewish settlement in the Holy Land has turned into a grave disaster. And it is Ahmadinejad who is already pointing out that the wanderers may have to Schlep again. May I suggest that a glimpse into the endless queue of Israeli citizens who are now reclaiming Polish and other EU citizenship reveals that a growing number of Israelis have already internalized the idea that Schlepping is probably the next phase of their Jewish existence.

The real axis of evil

Reading Yair Sheleg's opinion column in Haaretz, one may wonder who exactly is contemplating the liquidation of the Jewish State? It is clear that Iran plans to join the nuclear club. However, even if Iran intends to develop an arsenal of deadly nuclear weapons, surely it won't be the first in the region. It would just be following the example of the Jewish State, a state that has proved beyond doubt that the killing of innocent civilians happens to be its favourite practice. Thus, the Israeli as well as Zio-centric fear of Iranian nuclear aggression must be realized as nothing but projection. Since Israel is engaged on a daily basis in the killing of innocent civilians, Israelis and Zionists are doomed to interpret others' behaviour as a murderous inclination.

This is indeed very sad but far from unique. The case of America's Cold War paranoia is not that different from the case of Israel. Since America was the first - and so far the only - country to use the atomic bomb against other people, it was the Americans who were actually caught in a Cold War Pre-TSD. They simply projected their collective murderous tendencies onto the Soviets. It goes without saying that, unlike the Americans, the "Communists: have never dropped an atomic bomb on anyone nor it seems had they ever considered such an act. Somehow, it becomes clear that the more cruel one is, the more subjected to terror one is. Moreover, the more cruel practices a nation engages in, the more subjected to the politics of fear the nation becomes. This simple formula may throw some light on the emerging bond between America and Israel. Applying some devious expansionist tactics, the two countries are sinking into dark, deadly thoughts that verge on collective paranoia. This collective paranoia maintains the hegemony of the one and only axis of evil around: global Zionism and the neo-conservatives.

A comic relief

The following is a Jewish Telegram: "begin worrying, details to follow".

The joke above is actually older than Israel - it is probably as old as the telegraph itself. In fact, it refers to a devastating reality in which the dialectic of fear dominates the Jewish existence and mindset. Seemingly, fear has been exploited politically by Jewish ethnic leaders since the early days of emancipation. It is possible that, within the process of Jewish secularization and emancipation initiated by Enlightenment and the French Revolution, fear of imaginary phantasmic reality replaced the fright of the almighty evil god, the god that kills without grace or mercy, the very god of Sodom and Gomorra. If this is indeed the case, then "fear" should be realized as the modern Jewish god and the Pre-TSD is better seen as the modern Jewish practice. The Judification of Blair and Bush can be realized as the emergence of the "politics of fear". Seemingly, this very political practice is very successful in America but it proved to be a total failure in the UK.

However, Pre-TSD is not an Israeli invention at all. Jewish opinion leaders as well as ethnic campaigners were specializing in maintaining Jewish anxiety a long time before Israel came about. Early Zionists were very effective in terrorizing their brothers. Herzl was foolishly inspired by the Dreyfus case. (As Lenni Brenner points out, Herzl failed to understand the meaning of the case and its implications. In fact, Dreyfus's vindication proves that the French people and French Jews won in their fight against anti-Semitism and xenophobia.) Other early Zionists were stimulated by some East European anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. In general, Zionism can be understood as an urge to formulate a general political agenda based on self-inflicting fright. This is probably why Zionism must maintain terror in order to sustain its power. It is evident that Bush and the neo-conservatives use exactly the same tactic.

Divine intervention

May I suggest at this point that it is quite possible that more than one world leader may be alarmed by the Iranian atomic programme not because they are afraid of Iranian aggression, but because, by now, they are all aware of the Israeli collective psychosis. Without knowing about Pre-TSD, Western leaders do grasp that Israel would not hesitate to initiate a nuclear war as much as it didn't hesitate to cover Lebanese cities with more than one million cluster bombs. A country that can destroy its neighbour and turn one-third of its citizens into homeless people just for two prisoners of war is basically capable of anything.

I am not a psychiatrist, I am not even a practising psychoanalyst. I do not know whether there is an analyst couch big enough to accommodate the entire Israeli people and their many global Zionist brothers. I am not so sure whether there is a professional around who can take care and help the Israelis to deal with their current Pre-TSD phase. I don't even know whether the Israelis would take the advise of a shrink. All I can do is suggest the diagnosing of a rather severe malaise. While many of us are convinced that the behaviour of Israelis is the outcome of moral bankruptcy, I insist that Israeli identity is emerging as a pathological psychotic case. The moral bankruptcy is therefore merely a symptom of a worryingly acute mental disorder.

Being in a psychotic state, the Israelis indeed enjoy their symptoms. All they need from us is just some brief attention. They basically need our approval. When they flatten southern Beirut, their spokesman insisted upon trying to persuade us that it was actually a Western sacred war that they were fighting. They really wanted us to believe that they have done it all on our behalf and in our name. We may have to admit that, apart from two democratically elected Pre-TSD cases (Bush and Blair) who approved the Israeli atrocities, the rest of humanity that witnessed the carnage in Beirut sensed increasingly began to detest the Jewish State and the entire Zionist adventure.

For those who still fail to see it, we are dealing here with a severe mad case of a state that is reaching the very peak of its collective psychotic phase. For those who tend to forget, this mentally disordered national entity possesses a vast nuclear arsenal, and it has its belly full of deadly intentions. We are horrified and so we should be. We can see them bullying the entire Middle East. We are encircled by their merciless hedonism and self-righteousness and there is very little that we can do except pray for divine intervention.

• *Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician and writer, and a proponent of a secular and democratic one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the two peoples live in one state as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities.