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The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege Paperback – August 15, 2006

ISBN-13: 978-1575255576 ISBN-10: 157525557X

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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: 1.2 x 6 x 8.8 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: #1,678,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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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.

Review

"....Levin is concerned with a pathology that has prompted the Jews....to embrace the false promise of peace...." -- WASHINGTON TIMES, June 1, 2005

"Israel’s Deadly Illusions" "....tells the appalling story of what has been called the greatest self-inflicted wound of political history...." -- NEW YORK POST, June 13, 2005

"Ken Levin explains why so many Jews and Isrealis delude themselves about the malevolent intentions of their enemies..." -- Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

"Kenneth Levin....has written a definitive, magisterial book about what went wrong during the Oslo era." -- JERUSALEM POST, June 1, 2005

"That Arafat would honor what he undertook to do in the Oslo accords is but one false belief referenced ..." -- Fred Frankel, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

"The Oslo Syndrome is an indispensable contribution to understanding the roots of the Oslo process…" -- Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow, the Shalem Center, and Israel correspondent for The New Republic.

"This book is a major endeavor of using both psychoanalytic and historical methods to explain the Oslo phenomenon." -- JERUSALEM CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS, April 15, 2005

"this hugely interesting, highly informed and very timely work is a must read ..." -- Professor Efraim Karsh, Head, Mediterranean Studies
Programme
King's College, University of London.


Levin's book analyzes why so many Israeli Jews saw promise..despite Yassar Arafat's public refusals to renouce terrorism. -- The Dartmouth, October 11, 2005

This is the title of an important new book by Dr. Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist and historian. -- Center for Security Policy, Decision Brief, May 2005 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

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50 of 56 people found the following review helpful By M. D Roberts on July 2, 2005
Format: 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.
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful By Henry Oliner on November 26, 2006
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
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.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful By Jill Malter on June 6, 2005
Format: Hardcover
This book starts by relating the Oslo disaster, in which Arafat arrived in the Levant and took control over Arab schools and media there. This was already enough to accomplish his goal of precluding peace. The author continues with a fine history of Israel, emphasizing those who, by accepting arbitrary and racist complaints about Zionism as valid, refused to demand for their own people the human rights they demanded for everyone else.

Why would people do that? Lewin says that some Jews have "deluded themselves into believing they could win peace through embracing the indictments of their enemies and seeking to appease them."

I think the author is right about that. But I also feel there is more to it than this. I think that some religious Jews want to avoid taking what appear to be provincial political public stands. And that some people of Jewish descent are even more reluctant to appear Jewish at all, either religiously or politically. Meanwhile, we can see in this book that some Israelis, aware that Israel needs peace, feel they have to snap at every piece of bait marked "peace" offered by anti-Israelis.

Israel exists because the British White Paper of 1939 convinced a large majority of Jews, both in the Levant and outside it, that Jewish rights to life, liberty, property in the British Mandate (and immigration to it) could not be protected unless a Jewish state were declared there. We see the reactions of many folks to those who want to undo all this by having Israel renounce the Law of Return, or by giving non-Jews the right to revoke human rights for Jews in the country. If the need for Israel to ever be a refuge for Jews no longer existed, and if the threat to Jewish rights were no longer present, there could be a good reason to consider such steps.
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