Projection Makes Perception

Have you ever wondered....do those people who say the Holocaust never happened really believe it never happened? Can some otherwise intelligent people really deny all the evidence that confirms the horrific mass murder of Jews? Or are the Holocaust deniers just out and out anti-semites who know the truth but pretend otherwise?



That question came up for me again as I watched the protests around the world over Israel's incursion into Gaza. Tens of thousands of people chanting, marching, carrying signs all decrying Israel as a wanton aggressor. So many otherwise intelligent people oblivious to all the evidence of the evil that Hamas does and is. So many people of conscience calling the bad good and the good bad....How can so many people be so fooled?...Are they willful anti-semites, albeit closeted?

Or do they really believe the absurd, that somehow Israel a democratic caring society really has a hateful agenda against the Palestinians and the people of Gaza....



All one needs to ask is who are the soldiers of Israel...and who are the fighters for Hamas?...Israel's soldiers are its citizens...young men who live in the neighborhood and want only to go to college...get married and raise a family....They have no desire to fight...and would not if not absolutely necessary...They are the future doctors, lawyers, plumbers, carpenters, and landscapers...They are the backbone of Israel's future, now called upon, like every citizen, to fight for their country...On the other hand, Hamas's fighters are career terrorists who live to fight...and who have done nothing but fight...Their life has meaning only in the context of destroying Israel...They are not focused on building but rather on tearing down...They value power...pure and simple....

Yet remarkably in the diaspora even some Jews start to question who's right...

How does this happen...



All we need do to understand this paradox is read the opening passages of the parsha of shmot.

The Torah tells us that the Israelites prospered in Egypt, their number expanded and their influence grew...and then "a new king came to reign over Egypt, one who did not recall Joseph.... And he said to his people "the People of Israel are greater in number and more powerful than us....Lets strategize how to deal with them lest they grow still greater and when war occurs they will side with our enemies and fight against us and leave the land"."
And so a bitter servitude began, one whose end ironically ended with what Egypt most feared and sought to prevent. The Israelites had no reason to ever turn against their hosts...The precautions the host Egyptians took gave them one....

As a wise person once wrote, "Projection makes perception"...meaning that that which we want to see, albeit at times unconsciously, is that which we will in fact see..If we want to see someone as evil we will see the evil in them and similarly with the good...If we want to see someone as a threat we will see evidence of it everywhere...If we want to see a world absent of the good we will always find proof...If we want to deny the suffering of Jews we will see that which confirms it...and only that. My eyes see what my mind wants them to see...And then I bring proof to a conclusion I already desired with the evidence my bias produced..

Scientific experiments are rife with proofs that were not proofs, but rather results tainted by the desires of the one doing the experiment and his/her vested interest. The experimenter was sure s/he was seeking objective evidence to support a theory. And it was a surprise to him/her that s/he either over-looked or denied the obvious. Our desires and prejudices blind us.

That's what happened to the Pharaoh. Rashi quotes the Talmud when he translates the verse referring to the new king "who did not know Joseph" as 'he made himself not to know'...Indeed all bias starts that way...We have a desire and then we 'make ourselves not to know'...Most often we are unaware that we have skewed our knowledge to support our preconceived position.

The worlds reaction to Israel's war in Gaza is a product of an underlying if unacknowledged anti-semitism. It thinks it is being objective...merely reacting to the facts...when in reality it is adapting and organizing data, albeit for most unconsciously, to support a bias against Jews and Israel...Hasbara can only go so far...No matter how well Israel attempts to use public relations tools to convey the truth and the correctness of its efforts ..where one does not want to see one will not...Is the world media biased? ...of course it is...Whats worse is that the bias is hidden even from the media itself...who therefore believe it is conveying the truth...when in fact it is conveying to the world that which provides evidence for a preconceived prejudice...

The deniers of the Holocaust, the world media, the protesters around the globe are all blinded by their projections...It is sad how the truth gets distorted by the very senses we rely on to come to know...
The others we may never be able to change...For ourselves, so that we come to know the truth...we must always have a love for the truth that is greater even than our love of ourselves....We must have the courage and openness to want to know even if that knowledge means we need to totally change who we are and the way we lead our lives....Then and only then can the truth be known to us...Then and only then can we know we have lived authentically and in concert with the will of Hashem....