The importance of fear in group manipulation

These wars (and we must include preparations for war, even when there was no resulting conflict) cost a fortune and caused great damage, suffering and sorrow to the Israeli people (as it did to the Arabs); but they also proved to be the bond – the very cement – which kept the Israelis together. For, especially during the first decades of the state, Israel was the gathering place of Jewish immigrants from the four corners of the earth, and rather than a homogeneous society it was an assembly of communities and diverse people, some of whom were still ‘adding up the grocery bill in Arabic; others dream[ing] in Yiddish and singing to their children lullabies in English or Russian’. It was the transformation of these people into a nation-in-arms, and the establishment of a military system where almost every citizen – male and female – was a trained soldier and a reservist, that transformed the Israeli-born Sabra, the orthodox Jew from New York, the scientist from London, the silversmith from Yemen, the lawyer from Egypt and the small shopkeeper from Morocco – from individuals into a society and a nation. And above all, what kept this Israeli organism together and helped rally Israelis round the flag and its leadership, was a deep sense of external danger and the fear that the Arabs intended and would try to destroy Israel, and that to cope with this problem Israelis must stick together and take up arms whenever its leadership requested them to do so. As Abba Eban, an intelligent and well informed eyewitness, wrote in his book My Country: ‘The Israeli scene is often turbulent, contentious and effervescent but when danger threatens ... the ranks tighten’.

- Israel's wars, Bregman

And all this for what?

People and their passive desire to be accepted, be supported and be denied of their most basic freedom.