Dear Friends, Adversaries and Disturbed
people.
by Steven Shamrak
You might be surprised, but I do like
receiving messages from people who disagree with ideas I express, as long as
they are able to support their views with facts and intelligibly present them.
It gives me an opportunity to revisit my own ‘pre-conceived’ ideas and analyse
them from an antagonist’s point of view. While doing so, I have been finding
more supporting facts and ideas for the main point I advocate – the right of
Jews to the land of Eretz-Israel – that I might not look for otherwise!
Unfortunately, intelligible opposition is
very rare and hard to find! Israel bashing has become a common substitute and
camouflage of ordinary anti-Semitism, which hardly bothers with facts and
common courtesy! At the same time, Jews and Jewish issues have become a magnet
for distorted people who thrive on and need attention from others. At least our
true adversaries have some political or religious convictions and sometimes,
although not often, they respond to common sense.
The necessity for attention is a very
common behaviour among people. Modern technology provides them with ‘wonderful’
tools like emailing, instant messaging, chat-rooms, blogs, YouTube etc. There
are people who, due to some personal problems, need external attention in order
to function and feel good about themselves. Some of them create this source of
attention using anti-Semitism as a provocative way of communication. It is a
classic case of Psychology101; “Even negative attention is better then none”.
They throw baseless, stupid, rude or outrageous ideas or accusations one after
another, just to get any response. They do not care about the content of an
answer or facts one gives. Often, they do not even mind if you are rude to
them. Just the fact that someone is replying to them makes them feel important.
This is the gratification they are seeking and need!
The best course of action we can take, for
their sake, is to end the pattern of instant gratification by breaking this
chain. We have to stop replying to them and starve them of the attention they
are seeking. It will, hopefully, help them to recognise the problem and seek
professional help! It is the best course of action anyone can take to help
another human being, regardless of their political standing.