mention of $cn/quackery I think this guy needs to take a good look at the US too :)

http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=1205 ChronWatch

Israel, Land of Extraordinary Superstition

By Dr. Steven Plaut Saturday, January 04, 2003

Israel is a country of high-tech, computers, biotech, universities, highly educated labor force, PhD's crawling everywhere, and technology wonders.

It is not well understood outside of Israel, but Israel is also a country of extraordinarily widespread superstition. Israelis are by and large an ignorant, superstitious lot, even when they have advanced college degrees. The superstitions are everywhere. Pseudo-medicine is all over the place, and every HMO offers ''alternative'' medicine, from laying on hands to herbal and aroma treatments. The newspapers and cable TV are filed with astrology.

Pseudo-rabbis dispensing magical incantations and charms are common among the religious crowds, but the secularists are no less superstitious. Silly cult groups rise and fall all the time, and world-wide the Church of Scientology is filled with educated Israelis. It is only a matter of time before the Ra-El crowd shows up, and I suspect Barry Chamish is already a follower. (The belief in Chamish's ''theories'' is as good an illustration as any of Israeli superstition--this time on the Right.) Thousands of Israeli companies hire people on the basis of ''handwriting analysis'' or ''graphology.'' The army uses quacks practicing ''graphology'' and similar snake oil.

You would not believe how many times I have been asked by people with serious faces if Haifa University has a department that offers a degree in ''graphology.'' Dating services use it and people decide whether or not to marry on the basis of graphology. The country is full of ''psychics'' and similar quacks. People with serious diseases routinely die because they are relying on some quack to cure their cancer with carrot juice.

And even the army and police use pseudo-science. Back in the first Gulf War, the army hired a ''graphologist'' to analyze Saddam's handwriting. The diagnosis: he has dictatorial tendencies. This weekend's Haaretz magazine has a long piece on the use of ''psychics'' by the police to locate kidnapped people or missing relatives. The quacks feed off the desperation of families, but what is most outrageous is how the police themselves use them. In two very ugly cases recently of children murdered by family members, before the children were found the police were utilizing ''psychics.''

This all goes beyond the usual beliefs in ''urban legends,'' of which Israel also has quite a lot. It is an escape to pseudo-thinking, pseudo-rationality, pseudo-science, pseudo-medicine.

The diffusion of superstition and belief in magic in Israel is dangerous though for an additional reason. It is this same mindset, seeking solutions through denial of reality, belief in magic, and denial of rationalism, that is at the foundation of Oslo. People vote for Mitzna or Meretz because they believe in magic and detest rationality and deny reality. Israelis entered into, and prolonged Oslo because of the same ignorance, belief in magic, and superstition exhibited by those running to seek the aid of psychics. Oslo Israel--in short--is a psychotic place.

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