Carlo Strenger – Israel. Inleiding op een moeilijk land
I am translating fragments of “Israël. Einführung in ein schwieriges Land” (Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011) (“Israël. Introduction into a difficult country”) written by Carlo Strenger. He is a Swiss-Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst and public intellectual. He is Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program at the Department of Psychology of Tel Aviv University. His research centers on the impact of globalization on meaning, personal and group identity. As a publicist he focuses primarily on the Middle Eastern Conflict on which he takes a liberal perspective favoring the two-state solution.
Strenger approaches the complex history of Israël, its politics, it’s differentiated population and it’s controversial position in the world. His greatly written book is important to Western-European readers to understand better the dynamics in Israël and our part in it’s history and reason of existence.
“Israel is nowadays dealing with one of it’s biggest crises since the establishment of the state. The land is politically isolated, the peace negotiations are frozen, and the escalating conflict between religious and secular Israëli’s threatens the fundaments of the society. Carlo Strenger demonstrates the state of the Jews in contradiction – but he also shows the possibility of looking at the country beyond the cycle of guilt, blaming the other, revenge and the battle of the monotheisms.”