Obsessive and Compulsive
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that causes repeated unwanted and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety caused by these thoughts (obsessions). OCD is a chronic or long-term illness that can take over a person’s life, hurt relationships, and limit the ability to work or go to school[1].
Scientists have proven that OCD is caused by one part of the brain being unable to receive information from the other.
In the past 20 years the 24/7 cable news, internet and social networking sites have revolutionized the way we receive information. In the shadow of this information revolution lays a disease that has surprisingly not yet received an official diagnosis. The cause is also a restriction of information. The disease is called Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder or OCID.
For a country that is thousands of miles away, has a population of just 7 million and speaks a completely different language, the world is obsessively and compulsively focused on Israel.
In January 2009, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead, to root out rocket fire from the Gaza strip, the media covered every minute. There was no shortage of information that often presented Israel as the aggressor and perpetrator of all the violence in the region. Just like OCD stops the flow of information from one part of the brain to the other, OCID, stopped the flow of the rest of the important events going in the world.
While a tiny country was trying to secure its borders from rocket attack the world was going through major challenges.
- The Ethiopian military withdrew its troops from the Somalia civil war. This ongoing conflict has killed 300-400 thousand people since 1991.
- Indian Army continued to battle Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in the disputed Kashmir region. This ongoing conflict has seen countless civilian massacres and terror attacks.
- The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka terrorist group, launched major offensives around the northern part of the country including the bombing the state department of defense. 80 thousand people have been killed in the country’s civil war, including 8000 this year alone.
In order to try to understand this disease we have isolated 3 factors that could influence the amount of coverage a country could receive:
- Its population,
- Its geography; and
- Its state of conflict.
As stated earlier Israel’s population is about 7 million. It is roughly the same size as Tajikistan, Papa New Guinea and Honduras, none of which have been able to grab the attention of the world, let alone can most people locate these countries on a map.
What about geography? It is true that Israel’s is in the Middle East but so are countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Oman yet these countries also seldom crack the newsreel, let alone can be located on a map.
That leaves the last category, maybe it’s because of the “disputed” territory in the land. If this is the case, ask yourselves how many stories have there been about Tibet, Cyprus, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Western Sahara, all U.N recognized cases of disputed territory. There is no logic in understanding this disease
While the media was predominantly reporting only on the conflict in the Gaza Strip as a prime example, the world was going through universal struggle. Their continual criticism and singling out of Israel is baseless in its logic vis a vis its abnormal media coverage. The larger worldly causes of global warming, hunger, aids and genocide have to take a back seat to feed a news aristocracy that clearly suffers from the sociological disease, Obsessive-Compulsive Israel Disorder.
[1] Web MD, Anxiety and Panic Health Center,www.webmd.com
