Europe, Israel and the USA: the triangle of guilt

Thank you for clarifying this complex and terrible situation. It highlights the imperative of distinction between Jews and the state of Israel. And denotes the state as a pariah state. Its victims, including survivors will never forgive or forget its crimes against humanity. Those of us living in the U.K. whose government and so-called “opposition” have armed and supported war crimes feel the moral guilt, the psychological guilt and the political guilt. How is it we have allowed such politics in our government? Furthermore, I fear the retribution of fully justified armies and/or individuals who will seek to harm us because we live here. How can we blame them? Our children and grandchildren will be stained by historical guilt. How can any peace be negotiated and held to the satisfaction of all who have been so very badly abused in this atrocity? Blood will cry out for justice. The self-immolating American soldier surely speaks for us all.

Reading the above on Jaspers’ ‘metaphysical guilt’ reminded me of what elsewhere is called ‘existential guilt’. In ‘Existential Psychotherapy’, the psychotherapist (also philosophical novelist) Irvin D Yalom, discusses it in his chapter, ‘Responsibility.’

Existential guilt, he writes, ‘is not the result of some criminal act that the individual has committed … [this guilt] by any of its many names—”self-condemnation,” “regret,” “remorse,” and so forth — issues from omission.’

Yalom continues, ‘Most simply put: one is guilty not only through transgressions against another or against some moral or social code, but one may be guilty of transgression against oneself.’

Yalom cites Paul Tillich, who wrote of the various ways nonbeing threatens our being; of relevance here, threats to ‘our moral self-affirmation — [whereby] we experience guilt and the anxiety of self-condemnation.’

He quotes Tillich:

‘Man’s being is not only given to him [sic] but also demanded of him. He is responsible for it; literally, he is required to answer, if he is asked, what he has made of himself. He who asks him is his judge, namely he himself…’

I’ve been looking at some Twitter/X posts by a few Zionist fellow-Jews, unrepresentative of course of all Jews and not even representative of all Zionist Jews. But such posts do not engage with the valid denunciations of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, but deflect to condemn, self-servingly, to the current series of marches in London and other UK cities.

It’s impossible to take as made in good faith the political decision to misrepresent solidarity marches as ‘hate marches’, but that phrase acts as a comfort blanket against reality. The risk to the future selves of people choosing not to see what is too visibly before them is precisely that form of guilt we call existential.

Disagreement
Though there is much I find to agree with in the article there is also much to disagree with. In particular there are points which from my perspective are misconstrued from the author’s point of view.
We should firstly admit that something in the distance can seem very different to people viewing the same thing from different vantage points. My perceptions will be very different from the perceptions of a per, son in a different culture, place, and time in their life, than mine. I am seventy five years of age, shortly I hope to be seventy six.
I am the descendent of English, Irish, Scots and Welsh ancestors and consider myself to be Celtic in origin but who knows if at some point there was not a Viking or Roman in my ancestry both attempted to invade and rule Britain the Romans with longer success than Vikings. The Normans came next, but I am fairly certain that there is no Norman connection other than my father’s stay in a trench for three weeks with his platoon, and only tinned butter to sustain them. My Catholic upbringing is more due to the Irish and Scots ancestry than Norman, the descendents of who still possess large parts of the country in vast estates. We are all affected by history in some way: can we be held responsible for the actions of others hundreds of years, or even a few short years, before our time on earth?
Our experiences alter our perspectives of both internal and external horizons as individuals, as communities and Nations. My perspective is from the position of having been born into a post world war two, British society, in a country that was victorious in its fight against the German attempted colonisation of Europe and eradication of Jewry, But the reality was manufacturing cities in ruins with factories and houses bombed…..
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