IS TOI PC?
Is The Times of Israel Politically Correct?
By
Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.
War Blog #24
This blog post is dedicated to Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Eric Hoffer, all are authors who have criticized Islam and like them I am now taking the “heat.” It’s not the first time but. . . This blog post deals with one incident of journalism encountered concerning the current war.
What happens “behind closed doors” is always the most significant and revealing. I received a threat to have my blog shut down at The Times of Israel by their editors. Cf. the following paragraph
Generalizations about Islam such as the one near the end of the article and found in other articles on this blog are not acceptable. Continued statements along these lines will lead to the cessation of the blog. In addition, while we don’t fact-check all blog posts, it should be pointed out that Inbal Nir-Liberman was not ignored and nor was her kibbutz in denial. Nir-Liberman saved her kibbutz precisely because her military skills are highly valued and her instructions were followed.
I believe the editorial comments constitute a form of abusive bullying to get me to “tow their line” as well as a revealingly weak attempt on their part to assert their journalistic authority. The hostile email I received from the editors for my post which was supposed to be on the concept of Hostage Taking in jihad – a very timely subject -- and how to understand it psychologically has motivated me to write this blog post.
I find their hostile criticism ironic since I have been working on normalization of relations as a citizen diplomat for a long, long time. Indeed, I was given the honor of being the first Israeli to be live streamed from Islamabad right at the beginning of Covid.
Muslims reach out to me all the time and tell me that I am the first person who explained to them what they endured growing up.
See my essay “The Violent Brutality of Growing Up in a Shame Honor Culture” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337468698_The_Violent_Brutality_of_Growing_Up_in_A_Shame_Honor_Culture_-_Predicated_on_the_Destruction_of_the_Mother_and_her_Maternal_Bond
Furthermore, I find TOI’s criticism baseless since I have more education than the editors who wrote the hostile comment. I am betting that they do not hold a doctorate in Islamic literature, nor have they trained as a psychoanalyst with a specialty in PTSD and that they haven’t worked extensively with military and police. What I hear is “their envy" of me and hence they attack me.
Commensurate with TOI’s view, I was told early on before 9/11 by a major Israeli counter terrorist expert that one could never ever criticize Islam. Says who? At the time I was taken aback. Of course, those who don’t have an identification with the aggressor, do not hold such a view.
Moreover, and perhaps even more significantly NOT to criticize a religion -- be it Judaism, Christianity or Islam -- is to infantilize the entire body of worshippers. Islam of the three Abrahamic faiths is the only religion that murders people for blasphemy. Now that’s something to think about. Once again, we encounter the subject of murder post October 7th.
In psychoanalytic thinking if a person cannot tolerate criticism, it is an indication of a very fragile personality. (Think of a fused nonfunctioning violent destructive group such as Hamas and the 70% (probably a somewhat moderate estimate) of the Gazans who condone the violence of October 7th.) One of the goals would be to help them understand that criticism is productive and even healing. Not to do so, is to further compound the problem and the fused group’s rage. Obviously, the Times of Israel has not learned this.
While it is true that perhaps I did not get the report about Inbar Liberman correct as I could not find the source where I had originally read that she initially experienced a bit of doubt from others about her sense that there was an impeding attack on October 7th, it does not lessen TOI’s hostility. Is their editorial comment about Liberman an attempt to assuage their guilt about all the IDF young women who were butchered at their intel outpost monitoring the fence? We know that they were tragically not listened to and were sitting ducks. I wonder. . .
The reposting of my entry on Hostage Taking comes from my The Jihadi Dictionary which is due to be published in a French edition this coming year by David Reinharc, Paris. The dictionary has already been reviewed, receiving high marks at the journal Psyche in German, here https://www.psyche.de/article/ps_2017_07_0617-0632_0617_01
To conclude
As a psychoanalyst I look at the ideologies as shared group fantasies that fuel the rage of these Hamas jihadis and which the Gazans by and large condone. It is a rage that exceeds murder itself. Before reposting “Hostage Taking War Blog #2, I want to introduce one more very important concept in Islam. It is known as imitatio muhammadi i.e. everything that the Noble Prophet Muhammad did is to be not only imitated but more importantly venerated. The Noble Prophet Muhammad had three favorite concubines who were two Jewish women and one Christian woman. They were initially captured and obviously held hostage. Concubines are sex slaves, yet no one has mentioned this particular ideology with regard to the rape of Jewish women by Hamas on October 7th. For such a rageful group it was a mere hop, skip and a jump from a belief which is religiously condoned to acting it out. This is Hamas's unconscious lens through which Jewish and Christian women are seen. There are those who will scoff this off. Yet they, too, are a major part of the problem concerning Hamas’s violence and the war. The scoffers remain willfully blind to making such a connection because it is not “Politically Correct.” Tragically such political correctness, which really is nothing more than denial a psychological defense mechanism, will cause the death of many more. The Times of Israel seems to be completely oblivious to how they are contributing to the problem.
Here is the blog post on Hostage Taking War Blog #2 https://www.nancykobrin.org/post/hamas-hostage-taking
a most timely subject.
And finally, here are only two comments that were sent to me upon reading The Times of Israel hostile editorial comments:
From the author of Allah on the Job
I commiserate with you, this is a typical example of wilful blindness.
I filed a complaint with Amazon for withdrawing the English version of the book*, their content review team are looking into it.
I hope the Israeli government doesn't cave in to global public opinion and prolong the truce, they need to let the IDF finish the job.
As I predicted in an article for Clarion many years ago, jihad (they call it a "stabbing incident") has finally arrived in Ireland but the pro-Islam government will undoubtedly stick its head in the sand.
The attacker was Algerian but they have still not officially confirmed that.
And another friend to whom I circulated the TOI hostile comment wrote: That’s actually crazy they are becoming ha’aretz.
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