The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not mainly about politics, nor religion, nor even geo-politics. It is about pathology. The traumas of the 20th century have driven millions of intelligent, capable people into active psychological pathologies, which they experience as ideological realities. Some of the cult-like groups associated with Christian evangelicals and the national-religious settlers in Israel will settle for nothing less than an apocalyptic religious war to punish the world for allowing the Holocaust to happen.

By Lawrence Swaim