An Israel Defense Forces anthology includes poems expressing desires for revenge and paints the fighting in Gaza as a religious war. When the basic pact that holds a society together collapses, absurd rumors and conspiracy theories proliferate.

This reasoning is just one step away from saying that Jews should thank Hitler for creating the conditions that made the State of Israel possible. In developed countries, unrest and revolts tend to break out when poverty has receded, writes Yossi Ben-Ghiat, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the U.S., some legislators want those sentenced to death to be hanged in public again, he says, and if that were not enough, from a tree. He asks: Why not bring back the pre-modern practice of publicly torturing those accused of crimes to death? Or more importantly, how is it possible to bring “normal” people to the point where they are able to enjoy watching such sadistic spectacles? Ben- Ghiat: It takes the kind of power that only mythical discourse, religion, or poetry can possess.