Multiple Personality Disorder

There have been stories throughout history of people who have behaved strangely and who were later unable to recall their actions. But the first medical studies of what we now call Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD/DID) did not appear until the 1800s. It was regarded as a very atypical medical oddity, and by 1944, only 76 documented cases of MPD were documented worldwide.

By 1984, the number of reported cases had jumped to a thousand, and by 1989, to four thousand. Just between 1985 and 1995, 40,000 people were diagnosed with this disease. However, in the mid 1990s, the number of active cases of MPD/DID abruptly decreased, as belief in the illness became less common and most or all MPD/DID clinics in North America were closed down.

The main reason for this strange jump and subsequent decline of the illness is the existence of two conflicting views of the disorder. One school of thought sees MPD/DID as a valid common diagnosis of an illness that it believes is "induced by extreme, repeated, physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse during early childhood."

According to the other view, "MPD/DID is a psychological fad." Those who defend this approach think that "the illness does not occur naturally and is a therapist-induced disorder, unknowingly created by the interaction of a therapist and patient." To put it differently, people diagnosed with the illness are victims of bad therapy, rather than MPD itself. According to the proponents of this view, "If true MPD exists, it is an extremely rare phenomenon, affecting perhaps fewer than a dozen people in North America."

Yet, if in North America fewer than a dozen people are afflicted by MPD/DID, it appears that Israeli Jews have been hit by an epidemic of this disease. It seems that hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even several million, Israeli Jews are suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder.

The Internet site of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) describes the mental curse that afflicts Israeli Jews in the following way:

"Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously referred to as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a dissociative disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personality states (or identities) control the individual's behavior at different times. When under the control of one identity, the person is usually unable to remember some of the events that occurred while other personalities were in control. The different identities, referred to as alters... are often quite striking."(1)

This definition perfectly describes the mental condition of vast numbers of Israeli Jews. By this, we mean that in their behavior and attitudes related to Israeli territory inside the so-called "Green Line" - the armistice lines of 1949 - they wear a Jewish identity. However, when they deal with Judea, Samaria and Gaza, they immediately don a distinctly Arab identity, absolutely unable to remember why the Jews returned to Eretz Yisrael in the first place.

It is especially noticeable in the different status that these Jews assign to Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and Israel proper. They place the former into the category of "occupied lands", accepting the Arab view, and feverishly demand the expulsion from their homes of mentally sound Jews who do not distinguish between different parts of Eretz Yisrael.

At the same time, the Arab alter makes them believe that Jews came to Palestine, occupied it and expelled the Arabs from their homes. They accept the Arab position that the Balfour Declaration brought to the Palestinian Arabs their greatest tragedy, relegating millions of them either to the status of refugees or pariahs in their native land. Together with the Arabs, they condemn Zionism as an imperialistic movement created for the purpose of colonizing Palestine. They blame the settlers of Judea, Samaria and Gaza for all the ills and all the bad blood that exists between the Jews and the Arabs.

However, as soon as their thoughts wander into Israel proper, crossing the armistice lines of 1949, a striking metamorphosis takes place. Their Jewish identity returns, and they have no recollection that only moments ago they were controlled by their Arab personality. What the Arabs consider to be Arab lands occupied in 1948 becomes for them primordial Jewish territory. They worship the Balfour Declaration that opened the gates of Palestine to the Jews. Zionism changes back into the Jewish national movement, whose purpose was the creation of a Jewish state. They shrug off Arab complaints about destroyed Arab houses and villages, stressing that Arab refugees exist today only because the Arabs tried to destroy the Jewish state. They glorify settlement activity, proudly recalling the days when the first settlements, kibbutzim and moshavim, were taking root in Palestine.

People affected by MPD/DID are usually not aware of their condition. "A very common complaint in people with DID is episodes of amnesia, or time loss. These individuals may be unable to remember events in all or part of a proceeding time period."(1) This is exactly what is happening to Israeli Jews. When their Arab identities take over, they are completely unable to remember all previous Arab attempts to eliminate the Jewish state. Their memory loss is so profound that they cannot recall at all that Jewish settlement activity at the beginning of the last century is absolutely on par with the Jewish settlement activity at the beginning of this century. Though, in truth, today it is far more benign, since not a single Arab has been expelled from his home to make way for Jewish housing projects of the last 30 years.

Psychiatrists explain that "often people with DID are depressed or even suicidal."(1) Perhaps this is the real reason for the Oslo Kevorkian Process and Sharon's idee-fixe to expel the Jews from Gaza and four settlements in northern Samaria. The suicidal tendency among these mentally ill Israeli Jews has become so persistent that they are unable to make even simple logical conclusions from obvious things.
For example, while Sharon keeps insisting that he will expel the Jews from Gaza, come what may, thus demonstrating Israel's strength, the Arabs see every Israeli retreat as a sign of Israel's weakness. Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said in a 2002 videotaped message to Palestinian Christians, "One has seen in the history of the last ten years that the Israelis have moved only when forced by violence." It is not surprising, therefore, that over 70% of Palestinian Arabs see the expected expulsion of Jews from Gaza by Jews as a clear victory for the Arabs.

The NAMI fact sheet tells us, "Approximately one-third of [MPD] patients complain of auditory or visual hallucinations."(1) In the case of the Israeli Jews, the number of these hallucinating people is obviously much greater. And they do not complain, but are simply happy to succumb to the mirages of blissful coexistence with their murderers. While the Arabs keep saying that their goal is Israel's destruction, the Jews hear in their words the sirens of peace.

Just several weeks ago, in a sermon transmitted by Palestinian Authority TV on December 31, 2004, Sheik Ibrahim Madiras said, "[We will say] no to the return to the '67 borders. We are interested in returning to our genuine borders. We want to return to the 1948 [pre-Israel] borders.... We want to return to these borders, and we will yet return to them, by Allah, even if it will take time."(2)

The time that the Arabs are ready to wait, the Jews must use to defeat their mental illness. In treating MPD, "the goal of the therapist is to enable the patient to achieve... the unification [of the patient's separate identities] into a single identity."(1) While Moshe Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit try to accomplish this among the members of the Likud, who are themselves not immune to the illness, it is the task of all the healthy nationalist forces within the Jewish state to reach out to the rest of the affected Jews. It is only the return of the Israeli Jews to an exclusively Jewish identity that can stop the plunge of the Jewish state into the abyss.

Notes:


1. Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin of January 9, 2005.