Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Amnesty International are stating that Israel’s policy against Palestine is the equivalent to apartheid. Is this a gross distortion or an accurate reflection of the situation? What do you think?“

Instead of arguing whether the report is a gross distortion or accurate reflection of the situation, there are deeper factors at work in the “Israel as an apartheid state” narrative. While the report describes Israel as conducting apartheid policies toward Palestinians and also toward Israeli-Arabs, the negative views about Israel are in fact sourced in the egoistic relations among the Jewish people themselves.

Overtly, we find no reports about negative connections between Jews, but covertly, there is a deep-seeded feeling in the nations of the world that the Jewish people owe the world a method of correction of human relations up to a point of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and that the Jews are failing to provide this method. The feeling of the Jewish people failing to provide the world with a method for rising above divisive drives is then what ultimately forms as negative views that the nations of the world hold toward the people of Israel, and the “Israel as an apartheid state” narrative is one such consequence. It is as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his “Writings of the Last Generation”:“It is a fact that Israel is hated by all the nations, whether for religious, racial, capitalist, communist, or for cosmopolitan reasons, etc. It is so because the hatred precedes all reasons, but each merely resolves its loathing according to its own psychology.”

In short, connection is a law of nature and the people of Israel were established as a conduit through which to pass the connection in nature’s deeper levels to humanity. The solution to the increasing negative views about the people of Israel is thus for them to realize their role in the world, i.e. to implement the method that leads to “love your neighbor as yourself.” As such, they become “a light unto the nations,” i.e. a conduit for the tendency of “love your neighbor as yourself” to spread worldwide. On the contrary, their failure to realize this method holds back such a tendency from spreading around the world, and the world increasingly feels that the people of Israel are a source of darkness, up to a point where the world would feel that there is no right for this nation’s existence.

We thus have no choice but to start increasing our positive connections to each other up to a peak of love. By doing so, we would invert evil to good, and see peace and harmony throughout the world. Likewise, we would find that the world would invert its attitude to us from negative to positive.

Based on the video “Why Does the ‘Israel as an Apartheid State’ Narrative Gain Increasing Attention?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Israel, Q&A, Quora | Add Comment →