“Israeli society is suffering from trauma due to the Holocaust,” Avraham Burg said in an interview to Ynet this week, claiming that it was this trauma that stood at the basis of Israel’s “sense of despair.”
Burg, a former Knesset Speaker, Jewish Agency chairman and Labor MK, recently published a book titled, “Defeating Hitler,” which is stirring controversy in Israel due to its radical claims.
According to Burg, the book’s central thesis is that due to the many catastrophes it had to endure, Israeli society has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust either itself, its neighbors or the world. This, he says, is the cause for the rampant “belligerence, growing fascism and surging nationalism” that are plaguing society.
In the interview, Burg also criticized the Israelis’ closed conception of religion, which is “Orthodox, not humanist and not universal,” as he stated, and offered a spiritual alternative not affiliated with institutions or political camps.