Psycho-Political Analysis of Netanyahu’s Israel

Itzhak Benyamini teaches at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and in the Psychotherapy Program at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Benyamini is the author of numerous books and articles, which have been translated into English, French, and German. His main interests cover, as well as weave together, the intricate relations between psychoanalytic theory and religious and political discourses.

“Benyamini’s text zooms in on the signifier “Israeli”, in a stunning philosophic-psychoanalytic hermeneutic of self-analysis. It unpacks a kaleidoscopic heterogeneity, produced by phantasmatic dreams of past and future projected upon a present endlessly circling the unrepresented Real of trauma. The text embodies and tells of a pulsating vitality, that seeks both home and structure. Conflicted elements of this vitality continuously re-inscribe a precarious balance of complementarity and negation. In this complex, intricate ambiguity Benyamini portrays the dangers and appeals of the unequivocal, fragmenting figure of Netanyahu, before and after October 7th. The book offers a remarkable explanation of the disquieting and gripping fascination with Israel.”Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot, PhD, Chair of the Psychotherapy Program, School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. Co-author of “Lacanian Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction” – Routledge 2023."A Psycho-Political Analysis of Netanyahu’s Israel: The Israeli Anxiety" brings continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, biblical studies, and political theory to bear on the most intimate and deep-seated features of contemporary Israel. By weaving together these diverse fields of knowledge, it offers a fresh and penetrating critique of Israeli society, culture, and politics—from its origins to its current crises. This is a bold and original work by one of the most creative Israeli thinkers of our time.”Yotam Hotam, PhD, University of Haifa. Author of: "Critiques of Theology: German-Jewish Intellectuals and the Religious Sources of Secular Thought" (SUNY 2023).

• 1. Introduction: The Citizen Crushing under the Political Entanglement 2. The Non-Non-Affiliation of the Citizen to the Political: Conceptual Background to the Citizen’s Abjectivation and Anxiety 3. Civil Anxiety: The Tent Protest and the Theo-Political Uncanniness 4. The Israeli Anxiety: With Freud, Heidegger, Lacan, and Netanyahu 5. There Is Something of the Mizrahiness: On Re-Inscribing Identity Contents Retrospectively 6. The Political Ontology of Time 7. The Pre-Theological YOU: Reading Psalm 23 following October 7 8. Netanyahu's Anxiety Machine: Afterword – October 16, 2023