My headline takes me back 35 years to the day when I had a remarkably frank (honest) conversation in Tel Aviv with then retired Major General Shlomo Gazit, the very best and the brightest of Israel's Directors of Military Intelligence. I put to him my conclusion that "It's all nonsense." I meant and said that contrary to the assertions spewed out by its leaders, Israel's existence had never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab and other Muslim military force and was never likely to be. Through a sad smile Shlomo replied, "The trouble with us Israelis is that we've become the victims of our own propaganda."

In reality the problem is much bigger than that because most Jews everywhere are victims of Zionism's propaganda.

On most days of most weeks of most months the Israeli who makes the most outrageous and ridiculous propaganda statements about threats to Israel's existence is Prime Minister Netanyahu. But leaving aside his assertion that the Mufti of Jerusalem was more responsible for the Nazi holocaust than Adolf Hitler, the most outrageous and ridiculous Zionist statement of recent years was not made by him. It was made by Dr. Ben Chouake. Who's he?

This gentleman is the president of NORAC, a political action committee which works to strengthen Israel's relationship with America. It is also the agency which distributes much of the money raised by the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations to fund the election campaigns of those seeking election to Congress and who are prepared to put Zionism's interests before those of their own country.

Last year in a statement to the National Journal Chouake asserted that with nuclear weapons "Iran wants to do to the Jews in 12 minutes what Hitler did in 12 years."

That statement has no relationship whatsoever with reality.

Even if Iran did possess a few nuclear bombs the notion that it would launch a first strike on Israel is crazy in the extreme. If it did Iran would be destroyed in a counter-strike. Its leaders know that, and unlike some of their counterparts in Israel they are not mad.

More to the point is that the intelligence services and other security agencies of all the major powers know that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and does not want to possess them. And over the last few years there have been indications that most of Israel's security chiefs and top military people know this, too.

The question arising is this.

Why, really, does Zionism put so much propaganda effort into making Jews everywhere believe not only that they are victims today but will remain so for ever?

The answer is obvious.

It's the only way Zionism can prevent most Jews everywhere from stopping for a split second to consider the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel.

This truth, which includes the fact that Israel was created mainly by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing and is today continuing the ethnic cleansing process slowly and by stealth, is not to be considered, even for a split second, because of the conclusion it invites (I say demands) - that Israel is the oppressor not the victim.

In my view it follows that all Jews everywhere who support Israel right or wrong and/or remain silent in the face of its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians are complicit by default in Zionism's oppression.

The upshot of Zionism's brainwashing propaganda is not only that most Israeli and very many other Jews regard themselves as victims, more to the point is that they are beyond reason on the matter of justice for the Palestinians.

To put it another way, they are suffering from PARANOIA.

My Chambers Dictionary describes this condition as follows.

“A form of mental disorder characterized by constant delusions, especially of grandeur, pride, persecution, intense (especially irrational) fear or suspicion.”

That being so it seems to me that political and diplomatic efforts to get a credible peace process going - one with a real chance of bringing the Israel-Palestine conflict to an end on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all - will never succeed unless, first of all, the mental disorder of Israeli and other Jewish paranoia is treated.

The treatment for paranoia is psychotherapy and from the web site Psych Central I learned the following.

“As with most personality disorders, psychotherapy is the treatment of choice. Individuals with paranoid personality disorder, however, rarely present themselves for treatment. It should not be surprising, then, that there has been little outcome research to suggest which types of treatment are most effective with this disorder.

It is likely that a therapy which emphasizes a simple supportive, client-cantered approach will be most effective. Rapport-building with a person who has this disorder will be much more difficult than usual because of the paranoia associated with the disorder. Early termination (of the treatment by the client) therefore is common. As the therapy progresses, the patient will likely begin to trust the clinician more and more. The client then will likely begin disclosing some of his or her more bizarre paranoid ideation. (The term "ideation" is new to me. My Cambers Dictionary tells me it means "the power of the mind for forming ideas and images.")

The therapist must be careful to balance being objective in therapy and with regards to these thoughts, and of raising the suspicions of the client that he or she is not trusted. It is a difficult balance to maintain, even after a good working rapport has been established.

During times when the patient is acting upon his paranoid beliefs, the therapist's loyalties and trust may be called into question. Care must be used not to challenge the client too firmly or risk the individual leaving therapy permanently. Control issues should be dealt with in much a similar manner, with great care. Since the paranoid beliefs are delusion and not based in reality, arguing them from a rational point of view is useless. Challenging the beliefs is also likely to result in more frustration on both the part of the therapist and client, too.

All clinicians and mental health personnel who come into contact with the individual who suffers from paranoid personality disorder should be more keenly aware of being straight-forward with this individual.

Long-term prognosis for this disorder is not good. Individuals who suffer from this disorder often remain afflicted with prominent symptoms of it throughout their lifetime.”

In my view the question of how to treat Israeli and other Jewish paranoia is one that should be urgently addressed by the world's most eminent and universally respected psychiatrists. I also believe that in private world leaders should urge them to do so.

As I have previously written and said on public platforms, the consequences of not treating this mental disorder are predictable. They will most likely include a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which almost certainly will speed up the transformation of the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism, setting the stage for, at some point, another great turning against the Jews.

Could this be what sickeningly, self-righteous Zionism really wants in order to have in its own deluded mind never-ending justification for its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians?

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ALAN HART.