Political analyst and journalist Caroline Glick has harshly criticized Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s inability to stand up to the new US administration. She recently shared her insights into Bennett’s policy gained from his speech earlier this week to the UN General Assembly.
Glick states at the outset that the prime minister’s speech not only did not change anything about her criticism of him, but on the contrary, only served to strengthen it. “The great threat to Israel these days from Iran is reflected in the unwillingness of the US administration to do anything active to prevent Iran from crossing the last line towards independent nuclear capability. Instead of dealing with it in a real way, that is, militarily, the US administration is doing everything to resume the nuclear talks with the Iranians, which will lead to American and UN legitimacy for an Iranian nuclear arsenal.”
In this reality, Glick emphasizes, “Naftali did not say anything about it. He did not condemn, not even a little bit, the dangerous nuclear agreement. On the contrary, his defense minister said that Israel was fine with the American talks leading up to the nuclear agreement.”
Glick states that she is not holding Bennett to a higher standard than his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. “I demand that he represent the interests of Israel. He did not represent Zionism and Israel. He did not defend us against our most bitter enemies, Iran and the Palestinians. He did not preach morality to anyone when we are fighting for our right to exist.”
As an example of whether or not Israel’s interests are a priority, Arutz Sheva reports today that the United Arab List (Ra’am) has issued a list of demands to the government for its support in passing the state budget. Israel’s narrow coalition government must pass a spending plan by November or face immediate dissolution and snap elections. With a bare majority in the Knesset, the government must win the support of the UAL for the budget to ensure the bill’s passage.
But in recent weeks, UAL members have threatened to block the budget’s passage in the Knesset plenum if an agreement is not reached regarding spending for the Arab sector.
Without more transparency from Bennett’s government, it does seem that Israelis are being pushed aside to appease the Arabs and Iranians and in doing so, America. Why and at what cost to Israel? Whether or not it’s ultimately true….those are the optics and we remain concerned.
Vice President Kamala Harris broke with several decades’ worth of bipartisan support for the Jewish State on Tuesday when she said she “was glad” that a student had brought up concerns about funding Israel’s “ethnic genocide” and “displacement of people.”
The student was referring, of course, to the standalone bill approving $1b to replenish Iron Dome after terrorists in Gaza shot more than 4,000 missiles at Israeli civilians earlier this year, and this is important to state: noncombatants. The Jewish men, women, and children targeted by these missiles are not soldiers. And no one gets to call them that for just living in a city that has belonged to their people for thousands of years. They are simply just Jewish people, living their lives.
Contrary to what Vice President Kamala Harris told this student—who may be quite sincere, being ignorant, or, on the other hand, perfectly aware she is spreading anti-Semitic propaganda—it is not healthy to debate the right of Jewish people to defend themselves in the face of terror. It is not healthy to encourage the voices that speak out against the rights of Jewish children, for example, to live.
Yesterday, the High Court of Justice approved the government’s request for an additional six month extension of the deadline to present to the court its plan for the evacuation of Khan al Ahmar, an illegal Palestinian Authority/European Union – supported outpost in the Adumim Region. The decision is the most recent stage in the sixth petition filed by the Regavim Movement against what it has called “the Palestinian Authority’s flagship outpost in the systematic takeover of Area C.” In 2009, Regavim filed the first petition against this Bedouin encampment on Route 1, a few short minutes’ drive from Jerusalem, in an attempt to compel the Israeli government to enforce the law and block the PA’s creeping annexation of state land throughout Judea and Samaria.
Responding to the decision, Meir Deutsch, Director General of Regavim, noted: “The chronic ‘after-the-holidays” excuse isn’t a solution – it’s part of the problem. In the case of Khan al Ahmar, procrastination is an attempt to ignore reality and erase hard facts. The state is attempting, for the umpteenth time, to push off its commitment to evacuate Khan al Ahmar – until after the next holiday, Passover. Procrastination won’t change the bottom line: The State of Israel must take action against the ongoing Palestinian takeover of Judea and Samaria. Khan al Ahmar has been, and continues to be, the test case for the larger strategic challenge.”
Naftali Bennett spoke at the UN General Assembly today at 9am (EDT) today to deliver his first international political speech since being sworn in as Prime Minister of Israel.
Bennett talked about the Israeli fight against the coronavirus and presented his government’s current policy – encouraging vaccines while having fewer restrictions and avoiding lockdowns. Bennett focused on messages about Israel’s independence in the face of the threats that surround it.
Part of the speech was devoted to the Iranian issue. Bennett demanded significant actions by the international community to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. Against the background of the US intention to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, Bennett message stated that the days of speeches are over and now the test of action has arrived.
Bennett did not respond to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the UN last week and called on the PA to “engage in the welfare of their people and not obsess over Israel.” A source in the Prime Minister’s entourage said in a conversation with reporters that “the prime minister has a clear position on the Palestinian issue and on a Palestinian state. There is currently no possibility of political negotiations – we are dealing in the realms of possibility.”
Shortly before Bennett’s address to the UN General Assembly, Israel’s ambassador to the United States and United Nations, Gilad Erdan, spoke. He said that the US and other world powers are increasingly considering a “plan B” to stop Iran’s nuclear program, should talks fail. “The international community and Americans are starting to talk to us more about a plan B on Iran.” Erdan did not elaborate on what the alternative plan would entail. “In the past, the estimate was that there was an 80 percent chance it [Iran] would return to the [2015 nuclear] deal, today that has dropped to around 30%. If Iran doesn’t return [to the deal], this changes the whole picture for the world,” he added.
We applaud Prime Minister Bennett for standing up to world leaders in the well-known Halls of Israel Hatred at the UN. He remained strong against Iran’s commitment to obtain nuclear weapons. He also touched upon the recent anti-Semitic Durban Conference and thanked the 38 nations who chose to side with Israel by not attending. Bennett also emphasized the fact that can no longer be ignored: “…Israel is forging ties with Arab and Muslim countries. Ties that began 42 years ago with Israel’s historic peace agreement with Egypt, continued 27 years ago with Israel’s peace agreement with Jordan,
and even more recently with the Abraham Accords – a “warm” peace deal that normalized our relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.”
We still question the stability of the new government that needed to pay the Islamist Ra’am Party 50 Billion shekels and agree to normalize many dunams of Arab settlements in the Negev (how can this be excused?) in order to form the slimmest coalition. But in speaking at the (almost empty) United Nations, Bennett seems to have hit many of the right notes.
Several clusters of illegal Arab homes are being built these days in the eastern part of Gush Etzion, near the communities of Tekoa, Nokdim, and Herodion. At some point, Regavim movement monitors who are always on the hunt for illegal Arab construction noticed the construction start of an illegal school in an area between two of those clusters. (Today they are sure to have noticed the blatantly aggressive arson fire at nearby Jewish owned Kashuela Farms.)
“The Palestinians figured out that they would not gain a state through peace agreements or intifadas, so they decided to establish a state through a sprawling settlement push across all of Judea and Samaria,” explained Eitan Melet, coordinator of Regavim in Judea and Samaria. “As part of this strategy, they picked the location of this specific school with precision, to create continuity of the construction sites involved.”
Instead of tackling the problem of illegal construction from its inception, the Civil Administration holds off for five or six years. This makes things worse because when it tries to act on the demolition order, by then it faces clusters of homes with families and children. Now a mess is created along with a PR nightmare with world media looking on passing negative judgement on Israel.
The US House of Representatives narrowly passed a stopgap spending earlier this week, dropping planned funding of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
The temporary spending plan was approved 220 to 211 along party lines, with House Democrats backing the bill and Republicans uniting against it.
The bill was scheduled to go to the Senate for approval, though no timetable was set for a vote in the upper chamber. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Israel’s Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday the removal of the provision was a “technical delay.”
At least twice this week, Jew-hating Congressional “Squad” members were behind their blatant attempt to harm Israel. On September 21, “Squad” members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”) (D-NY) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) convinced the Democratic House leadership to remove $1 billion of funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, by threatening to vote against a key Democratic bill to increase the debt ceiling and continue funding the U.S. government. The House then passed the government funding and debt-limit increase bill without the Iron Dome allocation.
There are still allies on Israel’s side. US Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced a bill for $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense on Wednesday, following the sum’s removal from a US budget bill. “The United States’ commitment to the security of our friend and ally Israel is ironclad. Replenishing interceptors used to protect Israel from attacks is our legal and moral responsibility,” she said in a statement.
AFSI is happy to report that the vote today for the DeLauro’s bill was in favor of funding the Iron Dome. The US House of Representatives today passed HR 5323, the Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act. The bill passed 420-9.
Israel was being used as a political football again with the Democrats giving in to the demands of Progressive, Israel hating Congress members. When they do this – no matter what the political agenda or technical delay – it sends a negative message about Israel’s right to defend and secure herself. It also tarnishes the Democrats image of being the pro-Israel party in the United States. We thank those Congress members from both sides of the aisle who want to maintain a strong relationship between the US and Israel. They worked decisively and swiftly in defense of Israel to get the Iron Dome funding reintroduced and passed.
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday commemorated a landmark but contentious 2001 anti-racism conference that was accused of being anti-Semitic over its attitude towards Israel.
Israel and dozens of other nations boycotted the 20th anniversary commemoration event of the contentious Durban Conference in South Africa, amid worries that it would also feature attacks on the Jewish state. However, reports from the event indicated that Israel was not mentioned.
The UN pledged to redouble efforts to combat racism around the world. We’ve heard it before and are still waiting to see this happen. Words mean nothing without action.
Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan lambasted “the radical antisemitism” of the 2001 Durban Conference in remarks at a competing, virtual meeting organized by a professor at Touro College in New York.
At least 32 nations skipped the assembly’s event on Wednesday, by Israel’s count. AFSI thanks those 32 brave nations for standing side by side with Israel and for sending a clear message about the truth.
What’s going on in Area C? That was the question posed to Gilad Ach, director of the Ad Kan non-profit organization, and the answer received was shocking.
According to Ach, while Jewish construction in Area C has been severely curtailed if not outright frozen during recent years, Palestinian construction under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority is going right ahead, funded by member countries of the European Union.
Area C is under effective (not very effective) Israeli control and in the horrifying event of a future “peace (pieces) deal” must be included within Israel’s sovereign borders. This hasn’t stopped countries like Germany and Great Britain from transferring huge sums of money to the PA to be used for Palestinian construction in Area C. The latest installment of a hundred million Euros comes from Germany, and on the Israeli side, no one is doing anything about it whatsoever.
Ach asks the burning question: “And what about the current Israeli government? Will the ‘government of change’ make changes here?” We wonder the same thing.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “at it again,” according to former NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Hikind claims that AOC “would like to see Israel defenseless the next time Hamas or Hezbollah rain thousands of rockets on Israel.” She seems to be only interested in the demise of Israel and becoming a social butterfly at the Met Gala. (A $30,000 ticket to the Gala which was gifted to her far exceeds allowable gift levels for a member of the United States Congress. Add the dress, limos, hotels, etc. and her dress which read “Tax the Rich” (another target) should have had Hypocrite scrawled across it instead.)
What prompted Hikind’s lengthy tweet was Ocasio-Cortez’s recent introduction of legislation to stop arms sales – to Israel. Not to Saudi Arabia, “who is engaged against Iran in a bloody and costly proxy war that’s ravaging Yemen on a massive scale.”
Responding to the congresswoman’s tweet, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and the UN, Gilad Erdan, shot back: “I would expect a Congressperson to understand that Israel is defending its citizens against Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Your amendment further legitimizes their heinous attacks against innocent civilians, as well as antisemitic lies.”
This means that operationalization of both the assessment of inconsistency and the manipulation of inconsistency is required, and that only systematic measures would allow for investigation of the relations between inconsistency, CDS and the regulation process. Moreover, in the present state of conceptualization, assessing the inconsistency may https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/cognitive-dissonance-treatment-in-sober-living/ also be the most relevant way to assess the “dissonance” construct. As a consequence, resolving the issue of the relation between inconsistency and the CDS could be achieved by using conditions that involve several degrees of inconsistency (e.g., low; medium; high), assessing it, and by measuring the CDS generated by these different conditions.
However, all the variations we have seen could actually be interpreted as evidence for a general and unspecified negative affect.
Your behavior contradicts not just the beliefs you have about the world, but also the beliefs that you have about yourself.
For more than six decades, CDT suggests that cognitive inconsistency leads to a motivational state that promotes regulation, which comes mainly through a change of opinions or behaviors.
Like CDT, these certainty theories emphasize the need to supplant aversive, “nonfitting cognitions” with consonant ones, and focus on need for cognitive clarity and consistency. When faced with uncertainty about themselves or their environment, people defensively restore certainty, often in unrelated domains with the confidence-inducing help of social consensus and group identification (Hogg, 2007; Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & De Grada, 2006). Study participants who complete an uninteresting task have been found to rate the task as more enjoyable if they were first asked to tell someone else it was enjoyable—an effect attributed to cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance
For example, a person who is the perpetrator versus a third-party observer of an injustice might want to maintain BJW while avoiding feelings of guilt or social censure (see Chaikin & Darley, 1973). Derogating the victim of injustice could serve both motives better than some other strategies, such as compensating the victim. Note that social comparison mechanisms and consistency reduction mechanisms are both self-enhancement strategies, yet they seem to have little in common. Threat from dissonance rarely has anything to do with the performance of another, i.e., social comparison. Similarly, inconsistency is generally irrelevant to an SEM threat, whereas other’s performance is crucial. Attitude change is the usual mode of dissonance threat reduction; on the other hand, changes in closeness, performance, or relevance are the SEM modes.
When BJW-threat was high, participants who were told the victimization took place in the recent past blamed the victim’s behavior more than did participants told the victimization was in the distant past.
He told the consumers that they would be able to take home one of two items from the longer list of products.
When cognitive dissonance theory was first presented, three experimental paradigms (namely decision justification, effort justification and induced compliance behaviour) were used to empirically test and provide evidence to support the theory.
Derogating the victim of injustice could serve both motives better than some other strategies, such as compensating the victim.
Oak Park Study Group members were taught that on the eve of the cataclysm, an alien being from the planet Clarion would come to rescue the true believers from the fate that awaited humankind the next day.
Despite its long tradition in social psychology, we consider that Cognitive Dissonance Theory presents serious flaws concerning its methodology which question the relevance of the theory, limit breakthroughs, and hinder the evaluation of its core hypotheses.
Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides video and telephone psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching to individuals in over 40 countries worldwide. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org. Because the CDS is the core motive of the model and could vary depending on the induction situation, we must get closer to standardized instruments. The prevalence of a unique tool should permit comparison and reliable expected effects (i.e., size and quality). Collectively, the methodological issues concerning assessment in CDT invite consideration of the examination of regulation as a secondary goal for now.
Adding More Beliefs to Outweigh Dissonant Beliefs
Moreover, as one of the rare social psychology theories that propose a general pattern characterizing the human psyche and construction of reality, CDT is a very important theory for the field. Despite its status as the old lady of the discipline, CDT should be questioned as thoroughly as a young theory. It was hypothesized that participants in the Counter-attitudinal condition would experience less Pleasure and more Arousal than participants in the Pro-attitudinal condition. As a classic result in dissonance studies, they were also expected to report more positive attitudes toward the counterattitudinal topic. Participants were invited to participate in a study about students’ attitudes toward tuition fees. They read instructions explaining that a faculty committee wanted to know students’ attitudes towards a possible increase in tuition fees.
Hypocrisy involves a contradiction between a person’s supposed principles, beliefs, or character and who they really are or how they behave.
We may have dozens of cognitions of which we are at least dimly aware at any moment in time and innumerable more of which we can become aware, once our attention or memory is set in motion.
Psychologist Leon Festinger first described the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957.
If you took the job you would miss your loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would pine for the beautiful streams, mountains, and valleys.
However, testing such a model would require a huge amount of data with a high degree of precision, something that could only be attained with cooperation between cognitive dissonance scholars.
After 1 minute of writing, the experimenter feigned to have forgotten a phase of the study and gave the PAD scale to the participants.
At the end of the scale, a complementary question assessed participants’ attitude towards an increase of inscription fees on a 7-point-scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). The most effective way to resolve cognitive dissonance is for a person to ensure that their actions are consistent with their values, or vice versa. It provides an introduction to the theory and covers the topics of cognitive dissonance following decisions, the effects of forced compliance, the impacts of voluntary and involuntary exposure to information, and the role of social support. Dissonance can also be experienced vicariously through people of a social group that we identify with.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
For instance, could the affect assessed with Elliot and Devine’s three items (1994; uneasy, uncomfortable and bothered) and Matz and Wood’s five items (2005; uneasy, uncomfortable, bothered, tense and concerned) be considered the same? The Dissonance Thermometer has been initially used to support the claim that CDS is experienced as a specific psychological discomfort instead of a general negative affect (Elliot & Devine, 1994). However, all the variations we have seen could actually be interpreted as evidence for a general and unspecified negative affect. When Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory, the behaviorist perspective and reinforcement theory (e.g., Skinner 1938) were influential in how theorists thought about human behavior.
To serve that purpose, the term regulation fits best with the idea of generally decreasing the motivational state, while the term reduction could be reserved for regulation specifically aimed at reducing the inconsistency. In our opinion, this terminology is more integrated with the general theory (see Vaidis and Bran, 2018), as well as more connected to current knowledge (see also Proulx et al., 2012; Jonas et al., 2014; Levy et al., 2017). Recently, several important theories which contributed to social psychological knowledge were partially discarded or relegated to a secondary role (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). This has been the case for ego depletion theory (Hagger et al., 2016), as well as for priming effects on impression formation (McCarthy et al., 2018), and cognitive performance (O’Donnell et al., 2018).
Such cognitions can be about behaviors, perceptions, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs. If the cognitions are relevant, they can be in agreement (consistent) or disagreement (inconsistent) with one another (Festinger, 1957). Only scant research has investigated multiple dissonance reduction strategies simultaneously (McGrath, 2017). However, in general, the likelihood that a particular cognition will change is determined by its resistance to change, which https://ecosoberhouse.com/ is based on its responsiveness to reality and the extent to which it is consonant with other cognitions (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019). Therefore, changes are more likely to happen in an element that is less resistant or less important (Cooper, 2007). An individual may fail to restore a consonance, if there is a lack of social support and new harmonious elements, or the existing problematic element is too satisfying (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007).
For instance, in their seminal paper, Zanna and Cooper’s participants had to ingest a placebo pill that allegedly induced a negative mood. Because of this belief, participants in the dissonance condition were inclined to misattribute their psychological discomfort to the pill instead of the inconsistency, and thus they did not show any use of an inconsistency reduction strategy. If the CDS is a negative state, it is difficult to understand how individuals can misattribute it to a positive source. Incidentally, this discovery has motivated the conceptualization of the New Look Model (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) which defines cognitive dissonance as a state of neutral physiological arousal that may later be labelled positively or negatively (see also Schachter & Singer, 1962). While some data provided support for this conceptualization (e.g., Martinie et al., 2013), most scholars still consider the dissonance state to be aversive per nature. Although many studies have focused on a single dissonance reduction strategy (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Aronson & Mills, 1959; Brehm, 1956), it is important to note that people may simultaneously adopt multiple strategies to counter the dissonance.
Social Verification Theory: A New Way to Conceptualize Validation, Dissonance, and Belonging
Instead of owning up to our hypocrisy, we will try any means possible of twisting our beliefs and judgements in a way that justifies our inconsistent behaviour. Despite our constant frustrations with inconsistencies in others, none of us can honestly deny the presence of incongruence within ourselves. Another way to make sense of what happened is to maintain the same belief about being taken away in a flying saucer but just change the date.
