Israel’s problem is not psychological

Zsolt Hermann
1 min readAug 10, 2024

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An article in The Jerusalem Post:

Can psychology prevent military incompetence from allowing another Oct. 7? — opinion

These observations require explanation, and that is the goal of a future commission of inquiry, which may attribute blame and even impose disciplinary action.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-813973

My comment:

We keep ignoring the elephant in the room. The disaster that unfolded on the 7th of October happened due to the intolerable divisions, infighting, and hate within Israeli society. There were civil war-like conditions in Israel in the weeks and months preceding the Hamas attack.

It is pointless to accuse certain parts of society while absolving others of responsibility.

After all, we are all born and governed by an inherently egocentric, subjective, and 100% self-serving and self-justifying nature that makes all of us succeed and progress at the expense of and above others.

As long as it remains more important to prove who is right or wrong and we try to undermine, disqualify, and oppress each other within the Nation, we will remain vulnerable and easy to divide by external powers.

It is not psychology that we need to solve our glaring problems.

Instead, we finally need to learn from our own history: as long as we maintain our “supernatural” — above the inherently egoistic and hateful human nature — unity and mutual guarantee, we succeed. The moment we start infighting and reject one another, we face existential danger, and we lose.

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Zsolt Hermann

I am a Hungarian-born Orthopedic surgeon presently living in New Zealand, with a profound interest in how mutually integrated living systems work.