The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege [Paperback]

Kenneth Levin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 157525557X | ISBN-13: 978-1575255576 | Publication Date: August 15, 2006

The Oslo Syndrome examines the Oslo debacle in which Israel sought to win peace through territorial and other concessions even as Palestinian leaders assured their people their objective was still Israel’s destruction. Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin relates Oslo to the long history of Jews under siege, subjected to defamation, discrimination and other abuses, seeking to end the assaults through self-blame and accommodation to their oppressors.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While the subject of this study is specific—"the delusional thinking that underlay Israel's attempt to achieve peace with its neighbors through the so-called Oslo process"—the author's interests and conclusions are wide-ranging. Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a commentator on Israeli politics, attempts to analyze why many Israeli Jews chose to believe in the peace negotiations of the early 1990s, even when Yasser Arafat was refusing calls to publicly renounce terrorism. Levin analyzes this through both historical and psychoanalytic lenses, mapping out how people who have lived under siege are likely to internalize the hatred they encounter and become "delusional" about their own self-interest. Levin also discusses European and American anti-Semitism and its effect on Jewish identity, from the mid-19th century to 1948, with some background material on the emergence of Zionism and the British Mandate. While the word "delusional" may be too strong, Levin's psychoanalytic arguments about the "corrosive impact of... besiegement" are fascinating and generally persuasive. But once stated, their truth becomes self-evident and their explanatory application over 600 pages of Jewish and Israeli history begins to feel thin. Levin's documentation of the Arab-Israeli conflicts of the past three decades is exhaustive, but while there is mention of the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, Levin might have spent more time exploring how his ideas affect other countries or political situations. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

In the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel embraced Yasser Arafat as its "peace partner." It then installed him in Gaza and the West Bank as head of a nascent Palestinian government, allowed him to bring with him some 7,000 of his loyalist gunmen, and provided the gunmen with weapons, even as Arafat continued to support terrorist attacks on Israelis and to assure Palestinians and other Arabs his goal remained Israel's destruction.

Why did Israel pursue the path of Oslo? Why did it persist on that path when, in the wake of the initial Oslo agreements, the Palestinians unleashed an unprecedented wave of anti-Israel terror? Palestinian leaders also routinely called for holy war against Israel and compared Oslo to the Treaty of Hudaibiya, which Mohammed had signed in 628 and abandoned when his forces became strong enough to overwhelm his adversaries. Arafat and his subordinates told Arab audiences that Oslo was a step in the PLO's 1974 "plan of phases," a strategy of acquiring whatever land could be won by negotiations and using that territory as a base for pursuing Israel's annihilation. Yet Israel responded with additional concessions.

What psychological, historical and communal forces spawned policies that undermined Israel's security and even threatened its survival?

Dr. Levin's original and powerfully persuasive analysis relates Israeli diplomacy of the nineteen-nineties to psychological responses common among chronically besieged populations, whether minorities subjected to defamation, discrimination and assault or small nations under chronic attack by their neighbors. More particularly, he demonstrates links between the evolution of Oslo and the long history of Diaspora Jews being subjected to persistent abuse. The reaction of many enduring such abuse was to seek to improve their predicament by endorsing elements of the surrounding societies' bigoted indictments and embracing delusions of salvation through self-effacement and concessions.

This case study in the psychology of a community under chronic attack takes on broader significance at a time when even traditionally safe and secure societies such as the United States are confronting the psychological challenges posed by terrorist assaults. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 599 pages
• Publisher: Smith & Kraus Pub Inc (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157525557X
• ISBN-13: 978-1575255576
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, powerful and sometimes disturbing., July 2, 2005

By 

M. D Roberts (Gwent, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions Of A People Under Siege (Hardcover)

With particular reference to the basis of the Oslo Accords, and quite disturbing at times, this book delves into the "mind-set" of Israelis which has resulted in their pursuit of "peace" with the Palestinian/Arab world.

The book outlines how in 1993, the Israeli leadership made the decision to embrace Yasser Arafat as it's "peace partner", installing him and what is cited as a "nascent Palestinian government" in Gaza and the "West Bank" (Biblical Judea & Samaria).

Israeli leaders are shown to have allowed Yasser Arafat to bring some 7,000 Palestinian gunmen along with him and provide them with the weaponry which was intended for use by his security services. Weapons which are depicted to have been subsequently used for attacks upon Israelis.

The Israeli pursuit of "peace" under what is called an "unprecedented wave of anti-Israeli terror", the subsequent effects upon Israeli society and the "peace process" itself, are all investigated in some detail.

Many pertinent questions are asked as to "why" such a path was trodden,whilst Yasser Arafat and his PLO are described as addressing Arab audiences to the effect that, any/all territory acquired from Israel is only part of the PLO's own "phased plan" to eradicate the Jewish state. Due reference being provided throughout.

Living in a country which the book describes as being "under perpetual siege", the reader is provided with an extraordinary insight into how "psychological and historical forces" have spawned such Israeli policies.

This is provided specifically in the context of how such a political process is still being allowed to proceed when the cited agendas of Arafat and the PLO are still being met with further, territorial, financial and related concessions without any reciprocity from the Arab side.

References revealing that Israel's "peace partner" was allegedly becoming accustomed to receiving Israeli concessions without giving anything in return and that unilateral withdrawals were only accelerating that phenomenon.

Further significant reference is also made to how Israelis have purportedly been confronted with what is termed "revisionist history".

Many pivotal and foundational issues cited to have been distorted to such a degree that innocent "peace-famished" Israeli civilians are described as being colluded into falsely believing that "anti-Jewish sentiment was grounded in a fair and truthful assessment of the Jews".

This giving rise to the perception that, through "submission", the Jewish community could pave the way to it's eventual "acceptance" and that it was subsequently possible to achieve peace through territorial and other concessions, irrespective of the ongoing terrorism. The delusional nature of this impression is examined in some depth.

The cover of this work carries two photographs;-

One photograph is of the late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, shaking each other's hands under the auspices of former US President Clinton on the White House lawn during 1993.

The other photograph is that of an Israeli bus, blown apart by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The carnage is horrifying.

The reader is left to his own interpretation of these presentations but their relevance & significance are as difficult to ignore as the implications of this study upon the ongoing "mind-set" behind the current "peace process" at this time.

Whether or not the individual reader agrees with the assertions of this work, this is a book that desperately needs reading by anyone who seeks to understand the feelings of those on the ground. It's importance cannot be under-estimated.

Highly recommended.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique History of the Delusions of an Oppressed People, November 26, 2006

By 

Henry Oliner (Macon, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions Of A People Under Siege (Hardcover)

Why would the Israelis and the Jews sacrifice everything for a shallow peace accord with a "peace partner" who increases terror attacks, indoctrinates intensely virulent anti-Semitism at all levels of education and the media, and continues to vow annihilation of the state they feign to be negotiating peace with?

Kenneth Levin's answer approaches a perspective that is different from much of the current histories of the region. Levin illuminates a delusion that is the result of the stress of five decades of being under siege, and the result of centuries of demonization in Europe. He explores the history of the responses of the Jews in Europe to the hatred that spanned centuries and the futility of the Jews who vainly sought to appease their state sponsored tormentors by trying ever harder to assimilate. Ultimately the more they tried to assimilate the more the host nations persecuted them. Thus in spite of serving heroically in the German army in WWI they were ultimately rewarded with the holocaust.

The delusion that was Oslo was just a continuation of a desire of the Jewish community to either fit in or be left in peace. But it was also a delusion that the Jews could control the will of another party by giving more and more concessions, even when nothing is given in return. It is a unique form of arrogance and is ultimately self destructive.

The siege is not likely to end soon and Levin's prescription for Israel's survival is to educate its people on the history and moral purpose underlying the existence of the nation. Under Oslo many in the Israeli educational establishment pushed a curriculum that diminished the Jewish history and culture in favor of a more universalist approach. Revisionist historians embellished this approach with an anti Zionist slant to the story of Israel's history. Levin retorts the revisionists, but draws parallels to much of the self criticism from the Jews in Europe hoping to appease their state sponsors. Meanwhile the Palestinian educational structure, in clear defiance of Oslo, taught that the Jews had no right to the land or any historical connection to it and that it was their divine moral purpose to drive the Jews from their homeland.

The results of Oslo have taught what the Jews should have learned from centuries of oppression: that while it takes two people to make peace; it only takes one to make a war.

This book is a wonderful addition to the writings and analysis of the situation in Israel and is uniquely illuminating. I highly recommend it.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading, January 22, 2006

By 

Steven Parker - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions Of A People Under Siege (Hardcover)

This book is problably the most detailed and researched book ever written on the history of how liberalism has infected and destroyed the State of Israel. Through the constant appeasment of its enemies who want nothing but the death of Israel, Israel has backed itself into a corner from which even the author (I infer) feels it has little chance of recovering. I truly believe Yosi Belin (along with Simon Peres and too many others) will go down in history as the architects of the destruction of Israel. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about Israel!