The Psychology of Accusation: Projective Identification and the War Over Israel

Socrates warned that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Modern politics, however, often thrives on unexamined narratives. Few contemporary issues illustrate this more clearly than the discourse surrounding Israel. The persistence and emotional force of many accusations against it cannot be explained by history or ideology alone. A psychological mechanism—visible in conflicts far beyond the Middle East—helps explain why certain accusations not only endure but continually reproduce themselves.

Projection is a commonly understood psychological defense first described by Freud. It occurs when one “projects” an impulse, feeling or (unconscious) desire of which they are generally unaware onto another. Common examples include an insecure spouse struggling with their own temptations or doubts accusing their partner of infidelity, or an angry person accusing others of hostility.

A more complex and less widely understood dynamic is that of “projective identification,” in which the accuser places the other in a position (unconsciously) designed to elicit responses that confirm preexisting expectations.  Any response is filtered through the accuser’s expectations.

Therapists see this, for example, when a person convinced that others are hostile interacts in ways that elicit irritation or distance. That reaction is then experienced as proof that the original accusation was justified. The expectation helps produce the confirmation.

The accusation comes first. Then circumstances are created that make the accusation appear true.

Projective Identification on the Global Stage

Erich Fromm, who left Nazi Germany in 1934, a year after Hitler took power, argued in Escape from Freedom (1941) that societies under severe stress often displace anxiety and forbidden impulses onto external targets. In such conditions, psychological defenses like projection and scapegoating can become politically mobilized, allowing aggression to be expressed under the guise of victimhood. Fromm saw Hitler’s interpretation of Germany’s post–World War I humiliation as a paradigmatic case: national resentment and insecurity were redirected toward Jews, who were portrayed as the source of Germany’s suffering and therefore as deserving of persecution.

This illustrates how projective identification operates on a political scale. Jews were cast not simply as opponents but as embodiments of corruption, manipulation, and national betrayal. Once that identity had been assigned, any response could be interpreted as confirmation. Denial became proof of deceit. Flight confirmed guilt. Even inaction could be read as a strategy to evade exposure. No response could alter the identity already imposed. The accusation did not respond to reality; it structured how reality would be interpreted.

Variants of this dynamic have reappeared in the sharp rise of antisemitism and in the growing volume of charges directed at Israel—particularly since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023—and, more recently, in anti-Zionism.

From Accusation to Orthodoxy

The now familiar claim that Israel is a colonial, imperialist, genocidal enterprise has a traceable intellectual lineage. Mid-twentieth century polemics by Arab Muslim academics in the Middle East were adopted in the West and in recent years have developed their own academic scaffolding and institutional legitimacy. The climate is now one in which students who try to introduce historical or political context are often treated as hostile to populations seen primarily as victims. Real suffering does not prevent rigid narratives from forming around it; it can sometimes reinforce them. Victimhood has been established, and where there is victimhood, there is an oppressor. The projective identification trap has been set.

From universities, the construct migrated into journalism, international institutions, human-rights organizations, and political rhetoric, where criticism of Israel increasingly functions as a doctrinal frame that resists examination because it presents itself as moral truth.

Engineering the Confirmation

Hamas’ ideology has long called for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. The October 7 attack—marked by mass murder, sexual violence, and hostage-taking—did more than initiate war. It set in motion a sequence in which Israeli retaliation would become the narrative’s necessary proof.

Hamas embedded military operations within densely populated civilian areas. Its tunnel network—constructed for fighters and leadership—was closed to civilians seeking shelter, ensuring that any Israeli response in such a densely populated environment would produce civilian casualties.

Casualty narratives were tightly controlled. Civilian and combatant deaths were often presented as a single undifferentiated figure, with suffering framed as proof of Israeli intent rather than as the foreseeable consequence of a military strategy embedded within civilian areas.

This differs from ordinary political spin. Spin attempts to shape interpretation of shared events; negotiation anticipates eventual compromise. Projective identification instead requires that the accusation be continually confirmed. Events are interpreted—or structured—so that the response of the accused appears to validate the charge.

Israel’s subsequent conduct illuminates the trap. Advance warnings prior to strikes—through multiple warning methods—have been unusually extensive by historical standards of urban warfare. Yet these efforts have had no discernible effect on the accusations leveled against Israel.

Civilian casualties, each tragic, are cited as proof of genocidal intent irrespective of warning practices or military context. Evidence that might complicate the narrative is absorbed rather than evaluated. Counterevidence becomes further confirmation: proof not of restraint, but of alleged duplicity.

This is characteristic of projective identification at the political level. The accusation must survive intact. Any response by the accused is interpreted through the conclusions already assigned.

The result is a closed interpretive system. Israel cannot act without confirming the identity assigned to it. Restraint confirms guilt; self-defense confirms guilt; even inaction confirms guilt. The accusation becomes self-sustaining.

Why the Narrative Persists

Projective identification helps explain why the narrative surrounding Israel remains so resistant to contradiction. It serves multiple psychological and ideological functions.

For movements committed to Israel’s destruction, portraying Israel as uniquely evil provides moral justification for violence against civilians. For sympathetic audiences elsewhere, the narrative offers moral clarity without moral cost: one side is pure victim, the other pure aggressor.

Projection can also resolve deeper historical and cultural dissonances. The existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East disrupts long-standing assumptions about hierarchy, religious order, and power.

Debates over colonialism often omit the region’s longer history of Muslim conquest, displacement, and cultural transformation. The absence of that context helps sustain a simplified narrative in which domination is projected almost exclusively onto the Jewish state.

Recasting that state as a colonial intruder or genocidal actor allows unresolved conflicts—about religion, empire, domination, and historical responsibility—to be externalized rather than confronted.

Civilian suffering becomes not only tragedy but currency, confirming the narrative and stabilizing identity. Facts that complicate the story become obstacles rather than correctives.

Apart from Nazi Germany’s actions, antisemitism—and other forms of discrimination—have an extensive history. Stalin’s “Doctors’ Plot” projected state paranoia onto Jewish physicians during a period of mass purges and nearly triggered the planned deportation of millions of Soviet Jews—an operation halted only by Stalin’s death in 1953.

Projective identification adds a further dimension: the effort to engineer circumstances that make the accusation appear justified. Violence provokes response; response confirms accusation; accusation legitimizes further violence. The cycle becomes self-perpetuating, allowing suffering to be interpreted—and sometimes instrumentalized—within political narratives largely independent of evidence or proportionality.

Variants of this dynamic are common. North Korea portrays itself as a victim while provoking crises that invite confirming responses. Soviet authorities similarly treated dissent as evidence of subversion while using coercion that ensured resistance.

The Cost of the Unexamined Narrative

As projective identification becomes embedded in political discourse, it erodes the possibility of genuine analysis. Causality collapses. Agency disappears. Self-defense becomes indistinguishable from aggression. Such narratives make coexistence difficult by assigning fixed moral roles that cannot be revised without disturbing the psychological balance they sustain.

The danger extends beyond any single conflict. A political culture that accepts projective identification as moral reasoning becomes vulnerable to future manipulations of the same kind. Accusations can be engineered. Evidence becomes secondary. Moral clarity can be manufactured at the cost of reality.

Socrates’ warning remains apt. An unexamined life invites error, an unexamined narrative invites catastrophe. Recognizing how psychological defenses migrate into political strategy is not merely clinical insight. It is a prerequisite for understanding the conflicts that shape our world—and for resisting the moral inversions that sustain them.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)